Painting my Crews

[the imp]

Exactly.

I wanted to try something a little more lighthearted and possibly get my girlfriend to play.

[AvatarForm]

RE: 'Crystalline' - try basecoating in white then only applying washes/inks before using white to edge highlight and apply lines of reflection/refraction as if you are looking through them.

Simplified recipe: White primer; purple wash/ink all over; black ink/wash in deep recesses; blue wash/ink on rasied, flat surfaces; white edge highlights (thin); white lines for the light reflecting/refracting through the mini.

[the imp]

I got some time to work on my Handgunner to December Acolyte conversion this weekend.

Since my previous update I also finished up the hoarcats with some snow-leopard style markings, and painted up a couple old Confrontation figures and a Kahdor Destroyer, but didn't take any pics. I'll fix that shortly.

Oh, and my LGS is planning to start a Kill Team league with the release of the new Dark Eldar kits. I'm very tempted to kitbash the hell out of a team of wyches. If I do, it'll put the gremlins on the back burner for a couple months.

Edited October 11, 2010 by the imp

[tewfik]

All around Awesomeness!!

I LOVE your Ice Golem, the two tone effect works really well, I also like the 3 shades of the gamins.

Rasputina looks as tho she just fell off the pages of a Manga/Anime...

I like the conversion youve put together for the Acolyte as well.

On a final note, I awating to see the finished ice pillars!!

Keep up the Great work!!

[Omenbringer]

Disco Rasputina (disco-ball not included)

More like Club Kid Rasputina.

[thaehl]

Rasputina's Avatar form is Rainbow Brite?! :hmmmm:

Off topic i know but this inspires a Rotten belle conversion.

[the imp]

More work done on the Acolyte Conversion.

Once I finish off the actual December Acolyte model, I'll be done with this crew until the Silent One and SnowStorm come out. If the figures are anything like the concept art, I'll definitely be adding them to my collection. I'll put up a photo of the whole crew including my ice-pillars and severe terrain marker sometime next week.

I have gotten to play a couple games of Malifaux too! Even though I'm still figuring out the rules, it was pretty fun. I really like how being able to play a card out of the hand enables a player to manipulate the results. It adds a nice bit of strategy to the game while speeding up play. So far Rasputina has been very effective for me. Her ability to lay down the hurt at long range is very impressive.

Also finished basing and priming So'Mer Teeth Jones and crew.

And I'm making a couple frogs to throw on the bases. Purely decorative.

At some point, I'll need to try my hand at making some giant mosquitoes. I don't like the model Wyrd makes for them.

[the keeper]

frogs are win

[the imp]

Finally got a group picture of my Decemberists and Rasputina's terrain markers.

Didn't make any headway on the Malifaux models this week. Two excuses: It was very cold for a couple days and I didn't want to paint. There was a Halloween 40K vs Zombies game at the LGS that I wanted to paint for. I ended up not going, but I did get some work in on one of my battlesuits.

The weapons are magnetized. Funny story about that; the magnets I have are a lot larger than would be convenient for this kind of project. On a whim, I stuck one in my wire cutters and snapped it into smaller pieces. It worked out very well. In addition to those pictured, I'm also painting a plasma rifle for the suit. I was initially thinking in terms of maximizing my available number of shots, then I recalled that players would be switching sides as the zombies overtook them. A plasma rifle seemed like a better plan for cracking a more heavily armored melee guy that was stupid enough to get mobbed.

I'm trying for a pattern that gives the impression of a very dirty piece of equipment that has just gone through a rain shower; hence the drips from all of the panel lines. I plan to continue with that on the gun-drones. This is my first attempt at any kind of weathering, but I like the way it's going. I may add some mud spatter as well. I'm also debating exactly how to, or even if I should, highlight the black areas. I like the way it looks now, but I don't know if I'm comfortable leaving it.

I'm pretty proud of the Tau'n sept insignia. It wasn't easy to paint and I'll be including one on each of the drones as well. I also want to add some unit and rank markings, I just have to figure out where and what they should say.

[the imp]

So the shop I frequent will be doing Kill Team, including a couple modeling and painting contests. I mean to win at least one of those. This does mean that So'mer Teeth and friends are on the back burner for a while. In fact you can see them literally behind the current project.

The shop will be using the 4th ed team construction and scenario rules rather than the ones from Battle Missions. So, rather than start an entirely new army for Kill Team, my previous plan being to buy $90ish dollars worth of plastic sets to kitbash a team of Wyches like none ever seen, I decided to finally pick up a box of vespid stingwings. I never bothered to pick up the 4th ed Tau codex or any of the models released for it, so these are my first. I'll be fielding six stingwings and four drones.

I like the overall design of the vespids, but I really hate the way they were cast. The legs are connected to the abdomen at about the knees. This makes it a real pain to do more than subtle reposing. I really don't care to saw the legs free from it, so I'll be leaving them mostly as is. One thing you can see that I have done is file away the metal under the feet. They were probably modeled like that to reduce flaws in the casting of the toes, but it would look crummy on a nice base. I'd really like to do a more complex conversion of some sort, like adding a drone controller or auspex to the strain leader. And I've got some spare axes from the minotaur kit that I think would look pretty good on one. I don't think it's going to happen though. These figures are really difficult to alter without requiring some sculpting and I don't think my skills are up to the job.

My overall plan with these is to model them on urban bases. Streets and maybe a little sidewalk. As you can see I've covered the bases with a little sandpaper, which should give me a more uniform texture than sand and better simulate asphalt. I'm leaning towards coloring it with dry pigments, though I've never done that and I'm not sure how it will work. The drones will be the same scheme as my previously pictured crisis suit.

Where I'm going to push my limits really though is the paint job. I want to shoot for an iridescent beetle finish. Kind of like the rainbow effect you can see here. Obviously, I can't pull off an actual refractive paint job that will shift colors as the viewer moves around it. Color shifting paints are available, but they don't generally go through more than two colors and the better ones are way too expensive. Instead, I'll be painting the effect so it looks right to the viewer from above.

To try it out, I painted an old Thalos Hammerer figure that I've had laying around for a few years. Keep in mind that I shot the picture from eye level, so it doesn't look right at all.

Thoughts?

[the imp]

I made some progress on the Stingwings this weekend.

I'm very pleased with where I'm at right now. I think the shift from violet to green works quite well and that the whole unit is very pleasing to look at. My next step will be a gold to red shift. I'm a little nervous about it. I think I could very easily ruin what is a beautiful paint job, but I think it's worth the risk. After staring at pictures of beetles for a couple hours, I've decided that the heads will be left green. I'll probably hit the recesses with some blue to make the details stand out better, but otherwise it'll be green heads contrasted against the red of the carapace. I am debating how to handle the guns and armor. Since they are clearly of tau manufacture, I'm leaning towards making them match my crisis suit; but there's no reason why they would need to.

These are progressing faster than I had expected and I may be back to my gremlins sooner rather than later.

[dgraz]

they're looking great. awesome job duplicating the effect. can't wait to see it with the red and gold. good luck.

[the imp]

Thanks for the compliment. I got in a little work on the unit over the long weekend. It was the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States and many of us have had the last four days off.

After putting the red on, yellow was the obvious choice for the tau equipment that these bug-men carry. I think it makes them look very cartoony, but I like that. While I was hoping to finish the set before the end of November, I can't see that happening. I still have the wings to finish and the bases.

To make the bases more interesting and give me a nice display piece when I'm done, I've attempted to order a Gale Force Nine Display Tray through my LGS. If they can't get it, I'll go direct; but since the Kill Team league is supposed to promote the shop I thought I'd try them first. My plan is to create a simple Imperial street scene with the Vespid moving through it. Since Kill Team is about infiltration and surgical strikes rather than huge assaults, it'll be an intact street rather than the typical rubble-strewn mess that we've all seen. I'm debating exactly what an Imperial postbox and fire hydrant should look like.

[fcwookiee]

Thanks for the compliment. I got in a little work on the unit over the long weekend. It was the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States and many of us have had the last four days off.

After putting the red on, yellow was the obvious choice for the tau equipment that these bug-men carry. I think it makes them look very cartoony, but I like that. While I was hoping to finish the set before the end of November, I can't see that happening. I still have the wings to finish and the bases.

I've always really hated those models until now I've seen your paint jobs. Very well done!

[the imp]

Thanks! They're actually fantastic designs, but being cast in metal makes them very static and the studio paint job really doesn't do them any favors. Hopefully they'll get a plastic kit when tau get updated for the new edition of 40K. I doubt very much that they will, another new auxiliary race seems much more likely, but it would still be nice.

[johnni]

Ice Golemn paintjob is awesome along with the Acolyte alternate that you built! Rainbow Brite Rasputina will have to grow on me still but it's probably just a complete shift from the usual colours that you see her painted in.

[the imp]

So...yeah...I've made a little progress on the kill team, but not as much as I'd like.

And I didn't take as many pictures as I should have to show off my fancy little diorama base. And I spent way too long working on my post-box. The base is a GF9 11-15 man skirmish tray covered in sandpaper. I had initially thought to go with the 6-10 version, but I'm glad that it was out of stock. The smaller area would have really cramped the distribution of the models and given me a lot less space to work with for my sidewalk. I really like the way this is coming together and I expect that I'll be buying a few more of them to display my skirmish groups.

The sidewalk is a slab of water-putty that I embellished by hand. The post box is a piece of plastic tubing with a hatch from the old Imperial accessory sprue and a winged skull icon that I removed from an old hunter-killer missile launcher. Cursus is Latin for course and refers to the cursus publicus, or the public courier service of the Roman empire. I'm still working on a fire hydrant for the scene as well as the vespid wings, and I'm debating whether or not to include a street lamp. I'm for the lamp, but I don't really want to build one and I think it'll cause problems when transporting the model.

I also got side tracked when Inso, who frequents a couple other sites I visit, sent me a handful of Grymn.

New models are far too exciting for me and I couldn't resist pulling them out to clean off the mold lines. Ironically, I happened to have a box of OOP Bauhaus Vulkan Battle Suits laying around too. If you check out his Grymn Tunnel Fighters log you'll see that Inso used a few of these early in his project. He's since moved on to modified VOTOMS models, but I liked the way the Vulkans looked with the Grymn. I'll be ordering an Enviro-suit conversion sprue so I can add a more appropriate head to the model.

I'm currently planning to add wings to the helmets and paint them all up like the Marvel Comics version of Thor. I'm debating whether to add capes, and at this point I'm leaning towards yes. I'm also considering doing a quick conversion of this figure, removing the pistol in his extended hand and adding leashes tethering a pack of lesser mawes, similar to another of Inso's models.

I've also got a custom daemon prince conversion starting to come together in my head which may side track me further. The body should be arriving shortly and I've already dismantled an Insecticon toy for parts; at $8 I think it's a stellar deal if you're in need of some nice articulated legs.

I haven't totally forgotten about my gremlins, I just have a little trouble focusing on one project at a time...

[the imp]

My plastic bloodcrusher arrived in the mail Friday evening. Naturally everything else ended up on the back burner and I had to knock out my daemon prince conversion, inspired by Nigel Davenport's bloodcrusher -> ogre conversions.

This was a surprisingly simple conversion to pull off and I'm very pleased with it. The body is, as I've said, a modified bloodcrusher. That much is obvious. The less obvious parts are that I removed about a quarter inch from the abdomen to make it look more humanoid in proportions and I altered all four legs to get them to fit in a more convincing fashion.

The servo-limbs are from the insecticon toy I mentioned in my previous update, the thrusters are off a dollar-store jet plane I bought years ago, and the head is an unidentified piece I found on the floor when I moved into my apartment. It fit perfectly, sadly validating my impulse to never throw anything away. The hands and axe are from the minotaur kit.

I intend to tidy up the piece a bit, making the hands into gauntlets with putty and filling in the joints better. It's really a proof of concept piece more than anything else though, so it may not get finished anytime soon. The total cost on the piece was less than $30, so for a little less than the actual kit you could have something pretty unique for your army.

A couple observations: The chest on the bloodcrusher is huge compared to its limbs. I would have much preferred to have used the legs off a plastic carnifex over the bloodcrusher's own, but I couldn't nail down a set for a decent price. That said, the chest is mostly superfluous. I noticed after removing it that the remaining torso looked about right for a largish humanoid, and all I would have needed to do to complete it would be add shoulders, a neck, and a head. In fact, with a little more work, the chest and neck would work as the torso of a second model when turned upside down. I'm considering using this idea for custom obliterators or extra-large terminators.

I also cleaned my desk this weekend. I feel like I have much more room to work.

[the imp]

Oh, hi! I've been preoccupied by other projects for the last seven months. The Tale of Skirmish Game Painters at Warseer has drug my attention back to my Malifaux figures though.

As you can see, I hadn't made any real headway on my Silent Ones. But I have put fur on the conversion's cloak, finally! A bit more work on the bear head and her mask and she'll be ready to paint.

I stalled out on my convict gunslinger conversion because I wasn't happy with the guns I had made. I think this new one is much better. I'm trying to get a couple good copies press-molded so I won't need to build a second one from scratch.

I just happen to have a couple plastic bears, they were part of a 1:32 set of gladiators I picked up for another project, so I'm converting one into the new arcanist bear. I don't have a progress picture yet, but I've sawed one in half and I'll be adding a second set of forelimbs to it. If anyone can point me to a picture of the bear or tell me the appropriate base size and height, I'd really appreciate it.

I also have Snow Storm on order.

[dgraz]

I love all the custom work. I can't wait to see the bear.

[alegionaire]

Sorry mispost...correction: I love your stuff, keep up the good work!

Edited August 19, 2011 by alegionaire
posting to wrong subject

[Jon Kerr]

Would love to know where you got the bear from? I know you said it was a 1:32 scale gladitor set but what any idea what company? It's a great basis for the new bear!

[the imp]

Thanks for the replies, folks. Feedback helps keep me motivated.

Would love to know where you got the bear from? I know you said it was a 1:32 scale gladitor set but what any idea what company? It's a great basis for the new bear!

The bears are from this kit by Italeri. The plastic is much different from what I'm used to working with. It's almost a little rubbery and it resists putty. Eh, if it were easy, everybody would do it.

[the imp]

I am behind on the Tale of Skirmish Game Painters 2, but I am not out. I picked up Snow Storm at my LGS two-weeks ago and this is where I'm at with it.

The model had some serious mold lines and other flaws when I bought it. It took me about a week to clean it up to my satisfaction. I'm especially happy with how the color scheme is working out. It will fit in well with my glammed-out Cult of December.

[Vinncent]

wow, this coat of greenstuff looks amazing man, i'm impressed :congrats: