Squaddie September: 40K Beastmen

First off, a quick note that I fixed the photos in the previous Squaddie September post, got some new pics against a black backdrop. Still not perfect, those Models are just as much of a pain to find a good angle for photography as they are for finding a good angle to get a paintbrush in there, but at least the colour scheme is visible now.

Anyhow, as the title indicates, this time we've got the Blackstone Fortress Beastmen ready to go. These guys were much more fun to paint than the Megavolt Cultists, and I decided to mostly stick to a pretty limited palette and see how many browns I could use in there:

The rusted metal on the machetes was my fave bit, I always like doing rusty metal. Then they got some cleaner metal on the Chainswords and pistols, and a bit of red and yellow flair to tie them in with the Renegade Guard Squads. Looking it it now, I notice I also forgot to do the brass rings that a couple of them have in their noses, but whatever. I may get to it at some point.

Even some pretty cool detail back here. I like the hair they've got, lots of cool details like braids and little charms woven in.

Pretty simple lot, it's back to the grindstone for now, but I've got a couple more posts from the September challenge to write up, so they should be along reasonably soon. Until then, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

Squaddie September: Megavolt Cultists

EDIT: Better photos added!

The first of a few posts for Azazel's Squaddie/Scenic September Hobby Challenge. It's taken me way too long to get this stuff photographed and ready to post, but now it begins.

First off, no, that isn't a typo in the title. When I was a kid back in the early 90s, one of my favourite cartoons was Darkwing Duck, and as soon as I saw the name "Negavolt Cultists", I knew I was going to have to do them up as a tribute to his longest-lasting and most persistent nemesis, Megavolt.

I tried as best I could to go with a similar colour scheme, with a drab yellow for most of the clothes, greenish-blue for the gloves and leg wrappings (Megavolt's boots), red for most of the backpack unit and wire insulation, and brass for the electrical contacts and exposed bits of wiring.

Bangles Approved

Unfortunately, nearly all of this seems to have been washed out by my camera not being able to handle them against a white background. I may have to re-shoot with my black backdrop, but I can't deal with it right now. Dealt with! But I did get this one "action shot" on the black background before I shut down my photo setup.

Megavolt Cultists attempt to hunt down Beastmen within the corridors of the Blackstone Fortress, but are outflanked and ambushed in turn.

Also, on a totally different note, this was supposed to be part of my last post, on my Death Guard army. I made up some "souvenir" copies of my Army List for the event, but it turned out that almost no one wanted them. One guy wouldn't even pick it up. All that, despite the fact that it was just done with coffee grounds and used tea bags and they actually smelled quite nice.

It amused me to wait a moment after handing these across and then say "And here's a copy you can actually read" and give them a non-aged sheet in a much more reasonable font.

That's it for now. I'm going to take a look through the other shots I took and see how many of them really want the black background as well. Hopefully at least some of them will be decent as they are, and I can get them up relatively quickly. Until then, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

Death Guard Army Showcase

I'm submitting this one for Azazel's Awesome August Hobby Challenge. Not because every single one of the Models seems awesome to me or anything like that (tho quite a few of them would probably qualify on their own), but because I painted almost all of it in a week. I had finished the Angel of Disease for Jewel of July, and one of the Predators, plus the underlayers for the rust on the other Vehicles, were done then too, and one Squad of Plague Marines just needed touch up and re-basing, since I did them in like 2002. All the remaining work on the Vehicles was done in that week, tho, and the other 22 Infantry Models were primer at the start of it. Anyhow, on with the show!

90s metal Plague Marines with newer arms, the Serpents of the Light. I had a couple of the old backpacks, and got someone to help me cast up a few more to fill out the Squad.

This is the Squad from 2002, the Unyielding Kings of Agony. Those are Tactical Marines, a few random bits, and a whole lot of putty. I am still damned happy with how they came out.

The new guys, Cleansed in Pestilence. Even with no easy customizability, there is a ton of variety in the sculpts, and they were a whole lot of fun to work on. There are only six right now because it's OFCC tradition that every team who didn't win puts a Model in the Bucket of Death, and there was one that I have a dupe of.

The Doom of Artifice. I fucking love this Predator sculpt (altho not dealing with hybrid kits), and particularly for Nurgle, it just feels right. Hopefully at some point I'll get around to doing a couple more back and forth bouts of stippling on green and rust colours to really get the transitions right.

The Unholy Blasphemies. These are cool Models, very fun to paint, altho I kept finding more bits partway through that I hadn't realized were actually something else and needed to be re-done. I tried to mess with them a bit to get a little variety, but they're only available as an ETB kit, so there's not a whole lot to be done. A proper kit for them with some options would be great.

The Lord of All Plagues and Fever. Converted from a Dark Vengeance Chaos Lord.

I forgot, I meant to do more work on the pattern on his cloak. Well, that's what happens when you're finishing an Army in a week.

Last, but not least, my BlightKing Terminators, Blessed Are the Sick. These guys were a hell of a lot of fun to make and paint. I'll try to do another post on each of them individually at some point.

The names mostly come from Morbid Angel songs, except for the Unyielding Kings of Agony (Slayer), and the Serpents of the Light (Deicide). As mentioned, due to rushing, there's a lot more I want to get to, particularly some obnoxiously bright highlights on the green, and without those, I had to tweak the colour balance really carefully to get them even this visible. Need to clear my desk off properly again so I can get in to the light box and change out the backdrop for a darker one, but that's not happening anytime soon.

This really shows how feast and famine my productivity can be. I got whatever it was done between January and March, then nothing from then 'til mid July, and then another 36 completions in less than a month. Unfortunately, the two purchases I made since then added another 46 unpainted Models plus Terrain, so I'm even further in the red despite that. Hopefully some of those will make it as part of next month's Scenic & Squaddie September Hobby Challenge. I have a bunch of other stuff well along, too, and have been keeping my momentum up fairly well, so hopefully there will be more soon, probably a mix of stuff for various smaller-scale GW Games, since I'm way more into those than full-on 40K these days. Until then, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

Rot and Rust in Progress

So, yeah, moving sucks. Gradually getting back in the groove here, but the hobby area ended up not working out as planned, and the best place for a backup hobby spot is still in flux for a while to come as well. Similarly, I don't have my light box set up again yet, so the pics are kind of crap, but I wanted to get something up, try to get back in the habit of another hobby aspect. And I have been making some progress, just not actually completing anything. Most recently, a bunch of Nurgle stuff, most of it for the Ordo Fanaticus Club Challenge this summer.

I've got a couple of trios going here, with the Blight Haulers so they can cover more area and also get the +1 BS, and the Predators so they can get off a Killshot. Well, hopefully at least, on both counts. It's entirely possible for either group to lose a member before I get a chance to shoot. Also, the threes grouped like this bring to mind the Mark of Nurgle, so they feel reasonably fluffy as well.

I'm almost done with the modeling on these BlightKing Terminators. And no, that's not a typo. They're a mix of parts from the BlightLord Terminators, the Putrid Blightkings from AoS, and some regular Chaos Terminator/Terminator Lord parts. Still need some more putty work, but not much, magnets on two more Combi-Plasmas, and some fiddling with the base on the Champion with Flail of Corruption.

This last one isn't actually part of my planned OFCC Army, but since I was stippling browns and oranges all over Vehicles anyhow, it was easy enough to add this guy to the line-up. It's a Scuttlebug Transport, from Miniature Scenery, just about perfect to use as a Rhino. Their Chaos-ish stuff isn't that great, because they can't really get the fine detail for spikes and such from MDF, but it still looked cool enough, and was cheap enough, that I decided to grab one anyhow. I also got a couple of their Terrain kits (I think I posted at least one of them. It was a couple of years ago.), and I'm really happy with those.

Here's hoping my next post both comes sooner and has more finished stuff, but regardless, until then, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

Ryza Pattern Ruins: Detail Shots

So, apparently, back when I made the post with my Ryza Pattern Ruins, I took a whole bunch more pics that I then completely forgot about, and just found a little while ago while processing pics for another post. There's not really a whole lot to talk about that I didn't say in the previous post, but you can see better what I was talking about in that post, in terms of the colour contrast, the weathering/corrosion, and the sloppiness, so I'm just going to jump right to the pics:

So, not a whole lot there, but hopefully at least some of it looks cool enough that it was worth your time. I've got a couple more posts in the works that are taking longer to write up, the next part of the  Genestealer Cult Codex Review and the last post about the Gellerpox Infected. Until I get one of those finished, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

Gellerpox Infected: Vox-Shamblers

OK, again with the Nurgle warning here. These guys aren't as bad as the Nightmare Hulks, but they're still pretty gross.

I like the metal masks inherently, but not so much here, so I did some head swaps. I also decided to do some variation in skin tones, like some of them were flushed and feverish from the infection, while others were pallid and drained. You'll see that continue when I get to the Nightmare Hulks. Other than that, it was mostly just tons of Typhus Corrosion and various browns for rust, and then Nurgle's Rot, Blood for the Blood God, and various off-coloured washes for the injuries and signs of infection. I tried actually using Ryza Rust for drybrushing rather than blobbing it on as a base, which worked a bit better, but I'm still not a huge fan of it, and some of the rust really doesn't feel right to me. The washes and other fluids on the infections, on the other hand, I'm really happy with how they came out. Anyhow, here they are, you have been warned:

Dreadtober: Mid-Month(ish) Update

I've been chugging along reasonably well on these two. The Armiger just wants a few more details picked out and then the base finished. The Redemptor needs that, plus a whole bunch of touch-up on all the parts that need to be black, but got some of the spillover from the blue.

A better look at a different base that I'm doing the same way as the Redemptor. They look like crap right now, but once there are a couple more layers of grey drybrushed on, the spots of colour leave just enough left to add some interest and visual texture, like there's litter and spills and all the other stuff that ends up on pavement.

I'm hoping to finish up some more Silver Tower stuff tonight, since my brother's coming by in the morning to play. So I should have something from that done to show soon. Until then, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

Neglected Model September

As with so many of my plans, my goal of breaking this down into multiple posts over the course of the week got derailed. In this case, when my camera's batteries died on the very first Model of the lot, and then that snowballed into all the other things that tend to derail my intended posting schedule. Anyhow, it was quite a productive month thanks to this challenge, and I'm really happy with the results, so I've kept all the pics at full resolution, just cropping and adjusting the colour levels. This means that this is going to be absolutely huge, so I'm putting most of it behind a cut. Let's start with Spiteclaw's Swarm:

Rust and Ruin in the Underhive

Just a quick post on how I did the rust and grime on the Necromunda barricades. I have chosen to assume that the paint used on Underhive structures has some serious protective properties, so my starting point was to keep the rust, corrosion, and accumulated grime near the areas where the barricades have been shot up or chopped apart. I also went with the association that there are some seriously nasty corrosives and such just sort of generally around the environment down there, so when that protective paint gets taken off, the resulting effects are pretty extreme.

To this end, I wanted to get some major texture on there, so I started by blobbing on some very heavy dollops of Martian Ironcrust, Ryza Rust, and Stirland Battlemire. I tried to mix them up, so any larger area would have some of each, because rust patterns are rarely super consistent.

This gave some nice texture, but was way too bright, so I ran Typhus Corrosion over all of those splotches. It lets a little of the original colour come through, but tones it down so it's not eye-searing.

But now it's kind of boring. So I went back in with a selection of reds, oranges, and browns, and stippled them all over the rusted areas to bring out the texture and get some more visual interest back in, without going day-glo like the Ryza Rust is on its own.

This shows the progression of colours I used. I started with the Khorne red over on the far right, and then added on some Jokaero Orange, Cadian Fleshtone, Mournfang Brown, and then finished them off with Skrag Brown, which is actually a pretty good rust colour in and of itself if you want something simpler. 

I included the Cadian Fleshtone after reading some stuff by Cavalier over at Frontline Gaming. He pointed out that it's actually a kind of weird pastel orange, and showed it as the final highlight on the red on his Dark Eldar vehicles. I figured I'd give it a try here, and was really happy with how it came out.

So yeah, remember, don't be afraid to try out new stuff and experiment with no fixed destination, and until next time, y'all have a good one, y'hear!