Agram Group Build Project #1 (part 4)
In this series of articles, we will follow our Goran, Kruno and Marko in the making of a diorama set in New York / Gotham in the mid-1980s. Diorama is being built as part of a new UMS "Agram" project called Agram Group Build, which was created after the trio discussed joint projects to be done on Wednesdays and how cool it would be to gather more people to work on something together… This gave birth to the idea of Group Builds... The idea is for everyone to do something on each of these three projects - the main rule (except that there are no rules) is not to mess with other people's work. That we all participate and make some kind of Frankenstein monster ...
KRUNO: With the obligatory lemonade and important information from the world of miniatures, Marko and Domagoj easily introduced me to today's tasks (last time I was not here). After going down to the basement, primarily due to worsening meteorological conditions, we first arranged the workspace for the terrain workshop and complied with epidemiological measures. Finally to the modeling work… I drew the window curbs on the diorama drawing. We opted for 2mm edges on each side of the window to get a more realistic look and to fit the frames more easily. I listed the dimensions to make it easier for us to manage when making the moulds. I started drawing a decorative brick stucco above the window of the brick building, but I didn't have the information about the dimensions of the bricks we intend to push into the decoration, so for now I just determined the angles of the decoration ... the rest next Wednesday. Then I decided to "show" Domagoj how to assemble small plastic elements for dioramas. I finished a metal trash can, made two gas containers and a metal trash can. After that, I also arranged one plastic trash can and half a plastic container. All this was accompanied by Goran's imitation of David Attendorough, who presented my work as a documentary. An additional difficulty was the constant clogging of the plastic adhesive in the tube, so fortunately Domagoj's "device-for-unclipping-the-tube-adhesive-for-plastic" (read: lighter) often helped, and I seemed to the participants of Agram's terrain workshop to know what I work with it… yeah right!.
DOMAGOJ: Coming into a group project among the last, I spent the beginning in a brief conversation with Kruno and Marko to see how I could best help. So far I have not had the opportunity to work on projects like this, so I am extremely glad that Kruno took the time to demonstrate assembling plastic details. I set about assembling the gas cylinders, and I finished a few. The techniques that will be used in making the diorama seem extremely interesting, and the plastic models we work with are much more delicate than the models I am used to. New modeling techniques and delicate models are a fundamentally different experience from the tabletop and wargaming models I’ve worked with so far.
GORAN: My tasks the previous evening were exclusively of an observational and auxiliary-narrative nature, since I did not come with the intention of doing anything on the group build. I mostly provided Marko with the necessary materials and tools for the terrain workshop, and the rest of the time, as Kruno said, I made him laugh by playing the narrator Sir David Attenborough. Towards the end of the evening, I was thinking about which Ork I would put together for the Miniature Painters Croatia Winter Painting Competition, as well as participating in economic and political discussions that socializing with Marko almost inevitably leads to.
MARKO: This time, due to my obligations to lead the Workshop for making spatial models, I only participated from the side, disturbing the team more than constructively contributing to the work of the group. Fortunately, the economic and political debate was well received and the team enthusiastically set to work.
Feel free to contact us here if you are interested! We are every Wednesday from 8 pm to 10 pm in KD ZZTK on Trg žrtava fašizma 14.
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Science behind Acrylic Paints
- Binders (eng. resin) – form a film – in our case probably pure acrylates, I suspect they are styrene acrylates.
- Fillers – in addition to adding volume to the paint, they also affect the viscosity, coverage and appearance of the dry film
- Pigments – the main division is into organic pigments and inorganic pigments. Inorganic ones are more covering but have less vivid shades, while organic ones are often quite poorly covering (yellow for example) but their shades are vivid and bright
Additives:
- Anti-foam
- Rheological modifiers – affect the behavior of wet paint on the substrate (e.g. spillage) and the behavior of the paint when a force is applied to it (brush, roller, spray, airbrush). Rheological modifiers also include thickeners that affect the viscosity of the paint.
- Dispersants – envelop pigment and filler particles and prevent their agglomeration during standing. Good dispersion of pigment and filler affects the coverage and uniform appearance of the dry film. There are a bunch more but I won't go into too much detail
- Solvent – in this case water.
Contrast paints and speed paints – high pigment content, but not so much that it causes high coverage. They are formulated to spread, not to stay where you put them. The result of spreading is that the paint collects in the recesses, where a thicker film of paint remains than on the protruding parts of the miniature. Where the film of paint is thicker (the recesses), the shade of the contrast paint is more pronounced, unlike on the protruding parts where the film is thinner, which is why the shade is then influenced by the color of the substrate.
Composition:
- Binders
- Pigments
- Additives – all listed above + surfactants that reduce the surface tension of the wet paint film, which is why it flows
- solvent
- I would say they do not contain fillers, or contain very, very little of them
Washes – similar in formulation and behavior to contrast agents, only they have a much lower proportion of pigments, certainly no fillers, a higher proportion of surfactants, lower viscosity, and probably less binders.
If we want to greatly dilute acrylic paint or contrast, it is better to use a product intended for this purpose from the manufacturer of that paint rather than water, because it contains all the necessary amount of binders and additives for that paint to retain its properties.
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U ovom članku, naša Dunja nam otkriva znanost iza akrilnih boja.
Akrilne boje – visoki udio pigmenta i dobra pokrivnost. Ako su dobro formulirane ostaju tamo gdje ih naneseš, ne ostavljaju „brush marks“ i suše se dovoljno sporo da stigneš napravit što želiš na minijaturi a opet dovoljno brzo.
Sastav:
- Veziva (eng. resin) – formiraju film – u našem slučaju vjerojatno čisti akrilati, sumnjam da su stiren akrilati.
- Punila – osim što dodaju volumen boji utječu i na viskoznost, pokrivnost i izgled suhog filma
- Pigmenti – glavna podjela je na organske pigmente i anorganske pigmente. Anorganski su više pokrivni ali manje živih nijansi, dok su organski često dosta loše pokrivni (žuti npr) ali zato su im nijanse žive i jarke
Aditivi:
- Protiv pjene
- Reološki modifikatori – utječu na ponašanje mokre boje na podlozi (npr razlijevanje) i na ponašanje boje dok na nju djeluje sila (kist, valjak, sprej, airbrush). Pod reološke modifikatore spadaju i ugušćivači koji utječu na viskozitet boje.
- Dispergatori – obavijaju čestice pigmenata i punila i sprječavaju aglomeraciju istih stajanjem. Dobra dispergiranost pigmenta i punila utječe na pokrivnost i ujednačen izgled suhog filma.
- Ima ih još hrpa ali neću toliko u detalje
- Otapalo – u ovom slučaju voda.
Kontrastice i speed paints – visoki udio pigmenta, ali ne toliki da uzrokuje visoku pokrivnost. Formulirane su da se razlijevaju, a ne da ostaju tamo gdje ih staviš. Posljedica razlijevanja je skupljanje boje u udubine gdje onda ostane deblji film boje nego na isturenim dijelovima minijature. Tamo gdje je film boje deblji (udubine) nijansa kontrastice izraženija, za razliku od isturenih dijelova na kojima je film tanji zbog čega na nijansu onda utječe boja podloge.
Sastav:
- Veziva
- Pigmenti
- Aditivi – svi nabrojani gore +
- surfakanti koji smanjuju površinsku napetost mokrog filma boje zbog čega i dolazi do razlijevanja
- otapalo
- rekla bih da ne sadrže punila, ili ih sadrže vrlo vrlo malo
Washevi – po principu formuliranja i ponašanju slični kontrasticama, samo imaju puno manji udio pigmenata, sigurno ne sadrže punila, veći udio surfakanata, manji viskozitet i vjerojatno manje veziva.
Ako želimo jako razrijediti akrilnu boju ili kontrasticu bolje je koristiti za to predviđen proizvod od proizvođača te boje nego vodu, jer sadrži svu potrebnu količinu veziva i aditiva kako bi ta boja zadržala svoja svojstva.
" ["created"]=> string(19) "2025-11-20 13:03:37" ["modified"]=> string(19) "2025-11-20 13:03:37" } ["Member"]=> array(10) { ["id"]=> string(2) "64" ["group_id"]=> string(1) "1" ["first_name"]=> string(9) "Krunoslav" ["last_name"]=> string(8) "Belinić" ["first_name_mask"]=> string(9) "krunoslav" ["last_name_mask"]=> string(7) "belinic" ["username"]=> string(5) "Kruno" ["password"]=> string(40) "eb3fda45fbec0258e90d809803b10491c548b22f" ["born"]=> string(19) "2015-01-18 09:19:00" ["created"]=> string(19) "2015-01-18 09:20:39" } } Krunoslav Belinić, 20th November 2025 - We attended: ModelMania 2025 Marko Paunović, 5th November 2025
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