Nobz for ETC

I recently finished five out of ten of the Nobz I am painting for Shaun Kemp's ETC army.  I'm really pleased with how the blood came out on the mad dok. 

Blood is a very difficult effect to achieve with model painting.  It is very easy to go overboard and make it look terrible.  My method is pretty simple, and I am very happy with the effects.  I remember there was a picture of an Eversor Assassin in the Assassins codex  back in 3rd ed.  The blood on his blade was so well done, and I have tried to emulate that with this technique.

Step 1: Scab red.  Think about how the blade would have gotten blood on it.  if its a sword, paint streaks of red parallel to the motion it takes when it is being used.  If it is a bandage of a wound, blot the red on.

Step 2: Blood red.  Blood dries from the outside in, so keep the edges of the blood area scab red, and use blood red to bring out the center of any blood stain.

Step 3: Gloss Coat.  This is a really important step.  dab on some Gloss Coat on to your blood mark.  It will make a huge difference. 

This is a quick but very effective method to get a good blood effect.  Remember to err on the side of less is more with blood effects.

Bikers ready to roll out

Today, the bikes are essentially done.  I still need to do some weathering on them, but I will probably save that and the basing for until I have the whole squad done.  My next project is 10 Nobz on foot for Shaun Kemp's Ork army which he is taking to the European Team Championship.    Shaun has helped me out with the hobby over the short time I have known him, and I wanted to give something back, so I offered to paint some models for him.  He is a gentleman and refused to not pay.  This means I will just have to do a really good job for him. 

Last weekend I played in a local tournament with my fluffbunny Witch Hunter list.  I did alright, but I had three games against armies I rarely see, so that was a really good bonus.  I ended up winning best painted for the first time in my hobby life, so that was really exciting.

Next weekend the first PLASTIC DUDESMEN that I helped write will be posted.  I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little nervous about it's reception.  I think the comic is really funny, but the internet is a cruel mistress.

I also wrote an article for BOLS about tournament gamers that grind my gears.  I also hope that is well received.  Let me know if you like them when they are posted.

Ork Skin Secrets Revealed!

Alright.  So I have been working on some Ork Warbikers lately.  They are coming along brilliantly.  These guys are some of the most underrated units in the Ork codex.  They shoot like crazy, kick ass in melee, and are hard to shoot away.  I have finished with their skin, and their Red parts.  Flames compete.  I also finished the bone effects.

 Here is my ork skintone recipe.  I use similar recipes for any skin tone that is supposed to be more bestial.
Start with Dark Angels Green
Then comes Snot Green on the raised parts
Then I use Snot Green with a touch of Goblin Green
Finally, I paint striae or small lines which go in the direction of the muscle fibers in plain Goblin Green.  I really like the effect.

Marketing. It works.

So I painted some more Lootas.  That's the rest of my squad of ten.  Next I will slam out a few bikers here and see how those go.  I'm kinda excited because I have painted some of the old ork bikers, and those models sucked.  The new ones though, those are amazing.

 Also, those of us who went to Adepticon and signed up early, got a pretty sweet swag bag.  Everyone got a Warmachine starter set.  Mine was Cryx.  I always kind of wondered what the game was like.  Well I decided I was going to find out.  So I need to paint my models up.  I also can't help but doing some custom stuff to these guys.  The warmachine models have a lot of untextured metal plates.  Warmachine Cryx is supposed to be the evil faction, so as a result I want to sculpt some demon faces on the armor plates.

 This guy is one of the dog looking bonejacks

This guy is called a Slayer I think.  I am learning a lot about sculpting faces which is good because I have pretty much no experience in that area.

Orks!

Alright, I am up and moving on the Orks.  I finished 5 Lootas the other day.  Now I just need to do the other five.  I like doing models in batches of five, although for the rank and file boyz I painted in sets of ten.  Here's a pic:

You can see a runt herd I put in there too.

Also I played a 1500 point game against my friend's hybrid IG army with the orks.  It was capture and control.  I won the roll off, and chose to go second. 

I should mention that this guy almost always plays as Foot Guard, so I was not expecting any tanks.  As a result, I was a little light on tankbusting in the list.  I still had a unit of lootas and a unit of kannons so it didnt seem like I was tailoring to beat what he usually plays.  He ran a leman russ executioner I think, the one with all the plasma cannons.  Let me tell you, between that, and his stock Russ, I was loosing boyz left and right.  Of course it didn't help when my boyz couldn't roll a run of more than 1" and rolled two 1's for difficult terrain.  I lost about 18 inches of potential movement in two turns.  That really hurt.  I ended up pulling a draw, with my steadfast gretchin holding my objective.  Fun game, and a good learning experience.

Way she goes....Way she goes.

So as you know, adepticon came and went.  I did not have enough time to finish my beastie to the extent that I wanted before he took to the field.  He still needs a lot of work.  I am very pleased with how the carapace came out on the Sea Dragon, but everything else is not perfect. 

Unfortunately, he will remain in his barely finished state until another tournament comes up where I use him.  It might be a while, as when I used him during the tournament I really didn't enjoy using him.  There is no finesse to the Wolf lord on a thunder wolf, and it really makes it unexciting to play. 

At any rate, the next event for me will be the Boston Brawl.  I plan on bringing my Orks, and they need some work before they are in top fighting form.  To finish the army, I need 90 boyz, 12 bikes, 3 kannons, 15 Kommandos, 10 lootas, and some other bits and bobs.  Luckily I have already finished the 90 boyz for the ETC and a few other models, so here is what actually is on the painting Docket:
10 lootas,
6 kannons with assorted hangers on,
Warboss on a bike,
8 warbikers
15 kommandos, and snikrot

Oh My God I Have So Much To DO!

Soo Adepticon is at the door step.  I have two Exams this coming week.  I have done little else besides go to class, eat, paint, and study.  The painting is coming along.  I blocked out some colors.  I had issues with the bleached bone on the Leviathan because I tried to shade him before hand with acrylic flow release.  Apparently, the stuff does not dry very fast, and painting over it is a terrible chore. 

Hagar himself is coming along well.  I tried using multiple transitional shades on the armor rather than the typical Shade, Base color, Highlight that I tend to do.  I'm reasonably pleased, but it certainly could have been carried out better.

I painted his face first because I tend to work from inside to outside so that I can cover my mistakes as I work.  I finished the gold on him recently too.

Now he is starting to look acceptable.  I need to develop a technique for NMM silver, and he will be very close to completion. 
I started on the leviathan too.  His mouth being the innermost part of him and the eyes were completed first.  Next I plan on painting his Bleached Bone Chitin, and then the Carapace.

Battle for the Burbs

This weekend past I attended the Dorkamorka Battle for the Burbs in Watertown MA.  I ended up getting best overall with my 1750 witch hunters.

Included in this post are two pictures they took of some of my models which were runners up for their painting competition. 

My first game was against a speedy ork army.  He had three units of trukkers, a battlewagon with defrollas and shootboys, some killa kans, a big mek, lootas, wartrakks and some deffkoptas. 

He took first turn which after playing as orks, is actually not a great idea against an army like mine without a lot of long range shooting.  He deployed centrally with his fast stuff with the kans off to a flank.  I deployed as far away from the slow stuff as I could and castled in a corner.  The primary objective was kill points.  I slowly fed expendable units into his battlewagons path.  The highlight of the game was a seraphim going death or glory on the deffrolla battle wagon, and immobilizing it.  This was a turning point as it really messed up his timing and allowed me to target his units without worry of getting nailed by a multiassault.  We only got through 4 turns, and I made a mistake not assaulting his HQ's unit on the final turn in order to destroy the big mek.  I would have done it at 5 turns, but it wasn't to be.

Round two I was paired up against a BT player.  He had a foot mob of 20 templars, and a few units in drop pods as well as two units of shooty terminators.  This was a game of frustration for my opponent.  I Got first turn and he went all reserves in a spearhead mission.  Not a bad idea.  I focused fire on parts of his army that I didnt mind getting assaulted by (the terminators).  I completely ignored the big foot squad until later.  He ended up assaulting my seraphim with his terminators that I was shooting at.  They went invulnerable and survived.  Then they hit and ran 13" and then in my turn moved another 12" to get around to the rear of the big foot squad.  The foot squad was very spread out in order to avoid damage from templates, and this ended up biting him in the ass, since I assaulted the very rear of the huge unit with my seraphim.  They managed to hold his unit there for 2 assault phases and pulled the entire unit away from my line (they would have assaulted if the seraphim hadn't intervened) 12", and missed a movement phase, so essentially 18" of displaced movement.  The rest of his army was dismantled by my shooting over the rest of the turns, and the game ended with his army wiped out aside from the 20 man crusader squad which was essentially untouched.

Round three I played a deamon player in dawn of war.  I won the roll and made him go first.  This sucks with deamons.  Right off the bad he had a huge disadvantage, and his luck didn't get any better.  I ended up tabling him aside from 3 horrors of tzeetnch.  I'm not even certain he managed to get one killpoint off of me.  There wasn't really any incredible tactical maneuvers on my part.  His bad luck almost screwed me out of some battle points, since his Keeper of Secrets didnt come in until turn 5.  I had one turn to kill it, and luckily I managed since his rolls were so bad.

It was a heavy soft score tourney, and I did really well on my soft scores, and with three wins, my battle points were good too.

No Time to Prime

Hello there,
I have been unable to continue work on Hagar the Horrible due to crummy weather not allowing a good time for me to prime.  Hopefully I have an opportunity this week.

This weekend I plan on attending a local tournament which is heavy on soft scores.  Luckily I have an excellent army for tournaments like this.  I will be bringing my Brides of the Emperor.  I posted some pictures of their guardsmen cultists earlier in the blog.  I may touch up some of my chimeras before the event, but I have an anatomy test coming up soon which will require a lot of my attention.

At any rate I am looking forward to this tournament.   They have a bar there so that will be a whole new beast.  I usually get better sportsmanship scores when I am hungover/half in the bag. 

Once more to war we go.

Ready to PRIME

Hagar the Horrible is ready for priming, pretty much right on schedule.  I am pretty pleased with how he has come along.  Below you can see the harpy wings I added to the flanks as smaller flippers.  These fit into the hole which spines usually occupy on a trygon.

 Check out those barnacles on the back next to his leg!

 I also put a lamprey of some sort attached to him here.  It covers up a wonky spot on the sculpting of the tail.

 This is a good shot of the rebreather I made.  I am pretty pleased with it.

I might hit him with some sandpaper to smooth out some of the greenstuff transitions, but that will happen right before priming.

Climb Upon My Faithful Steed

Like I promised, I am working on this guy at a rapid pace.  Today he finally comes together.  Hagar has bent a mighty leviathan to his will, and rides him into battle.  Enough jibber jabber. Here he is!

Yes that is a valkyrie base.  I think the truscaling came out pretty well on the marine.   It was good that I worried about it as much as I did, because it was essential to get him to look right.  I still have to finish his rebreather, make a sheild, add the chains, and decorations, but overall I am very pleased.

OMG, I'm learning so much about sculpting you guys.

Alright.  Big updates.  Now that this guy is beginning to really take shape, I am getting really excited about it which means more motivation which means more work on him and more posts for your amusement.  Watch this spot.  

Below you can see what I have done to created an underwater breathing apparatus for the beast.

 

 Here is a picture from a different view.  You can see that I've left a hole down there at the anterior (look at me using anatomy words I learned in dental school!!!111!).  The idea is that from each of the three protrusions that compose the gill, will be a gill like frilly thing which will connect the rod to the neck.  I will probably use fake eyelashes for this.  I will be purchasing them incognito.  The idea is that water can enter the gill through the hole I left as the beast swims along.  It will then pass the frills and oxygen exchange will occur, just the way nature (or the hive mind) intended.

Also Hagar is moving right along.   He is essentially finished.  I need to glue him together, add a rebreather of sorts, and finish the shield.  Unfortunately the shield is somewhat of an embarrassment currently.  Ill probably scrap it and start over.  I want a Scottish Inspired Targe which should fit in nicely with the designs on the shins as well as the viking theme of these guys. 

So what is left to do?
Hagar:
1. Glue him together
2. Sculpt rebreather
3. Make Shield
4. Removably pin him to the Leviathan

Leviathan
1. Glue the head on
2. Fix the nicks in the gills
3. Add fake eyelash frills
4. Affix him to a base
5. Add chains to connect him to Hagar
6. Add Space Wolfy decorations and battle damage.

The Grind Continues

So I have been swamped with school work, however I have managed to put some time into Hagar the Horrible.  I made a tread on the left foot, and Ill soon have a matching one on the right.  I'm pretty pleased with it.  I also added a strap on to the back of the leg in the calf region.
 

Below you can see some of the thigh armor detailing I did.  It is supposed to look sort of like the rims on the grey hunter legs.  I plan to do similar work on the opposing leg.

Next I need to finish work on the gill apparatus for the leviathan, and sort out the other leg.  From there I just glue him together, and its pretty much good to go.  I want to finish building by the end of the month to give me a month to paint this guy.

Recent Work

So I just realized that my deadline for this monster is approaching faster than I wanted.  I need to get crackin!

I worked on this recently:

The rider has had his left foot finished.  I'm really pleased with it in general.  Also his torso has been bulked out laterally.  Once the arms are in place I think he will look just about right as far as scale goes.  Tonight I want to finish the other foot, and maybe do the calf on the left leg. 

I also worked on the leviathan's head and neck.  I eased the transition on the neck.  It looks pretty solid, but now I need to figure out some way to make gills for this guy.  The things I have on there at the moment I am not really happy with at all.  Here's a picture:

A New Hope

Alright, so I'm not going to say that I am a wise hobby zen kung fu sort of fellow, but here is something I learned this past week or so:

If something isnt looking the way you like, start over.

My last post showed a picture of the green stuff fins that I made for the Leviathan.   One side was thicker than the other.  The ridges from one side to another didn't match up.  They looked bulky, and un-hydrodynamic.  I thought long and hard about how to fix them.  I sanded and sculpted, but nothing really fixed the problems mentioned.  Finally I decided enough was enough.  I needed to try a new method.

What I ended up doing was drilling more wires into the tyranid arm, spaced at even intervals.  These would act as support and as the ridges of the fins.  Then I took regular printer paper that had been dunked in water and then used wood glue to affix it to the wire frame work.  Afterwards, I painted on several coats of wood glue to make a smooth transition from the paper to the copper wire.  Im very happy with the result in comparison to before.  You can see the results below

Also there has been a lot of work on the rider.  Hagar the Horrible is what I have named him.  I have worked on the legs, and just as I feared they are clearly too large.  The feet are almost twice as large as a normal marines.  I plan on sanding them down quite a lot in order to make it look like he doesn't do weekend as a clown at childrens parties.  The thigh armor looks good and is the correct size.  I think I will need to bulk out the chest laterally somehow in order to keep him from looking crazy.  I also want to try putting on his left arm before I decide exactly how much he needs to bulk out. 

I also finished converting some chaos warhounds into Fenrisian Wolves.  They are pretty simple.  I just green stuff over the ear holes, and then put a wire up their butt, and then put on green stuff tails.