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:

First off, we have Spiteclaw himself. I just noticed that I didn't actually get a good shot of the rust on his halberd blade, and I kind of wish I'd done a better one of his base, too. I used different washes on the different sections of his cloak, to try to show that it's been pieced together and repaired with cloth that didn't quite match the main colour. The buttspike on his halberd is the blade that normally goes on the Festerin Skaven's tail knife.

 

Like Skritch, Krrk has red as his main colour, to indicate them coming from a Warlord Clan. Since the others have characteristics of Pestilens, Moulder, and Eshin, I thought I'd do the band as a sort of microcosm of Skaven culture. I am a bit disappointed that none of them really fit Clan Skryre, tho, since they're my faves. The blade of his halberd broke at some point, and I couldn't find the other part to fix it, so I replaced it with the end of an old Clanrat spear.

Similarly to Skritch, I used different washes to indicate poorly matched dye/paint lots

I love his little rat buddies.

The Festering Skaven is the only one to not have at least one little rat with him, which is a bit of a bummer. I went for Pestilens-type greens here, again with variation in the washes. The blade of his tail knife has been replaced with the remaining part of Krrk's broken halberd, and I added more Nurgle's Rot to the base than with the others. He's also the only one to have Nurgle's Rot actually on him, and has used something totally gross to poison his weapons.

Hope you've had all your shots if you get stabbed by this guy

The Hungering Skaven, I decided was good to represent Clan Moulder, since one of the common side effects of Moulder's experiments is a brutally fast metabolism, and a resulting voracious appetite. Unfortunately, they've never had any really strong imagery for their Clanrats, being more known for their mutated beasts. So he's pretty basic, but I did swap his shield out for a cool old one from the otherwise terrible 90s plastic Clanrat set. They all have some degree of conversion because at the Shadespire events I most often go to, conversions weigh pretty heavily in the Appearance scoring, even if they're fairly minor ones. I wanted to give him one of the racks of meat that come as an extra bit on the Kroot sprue, but couldn't figure out where I put those, or even if I still have them at all.

Could use another coat or two of gloss brown ink on the "water" down there

Finally, we have the Lurking Skaven, probably a Night Runner or something from Clan Eshin. He's got the fighting claws and throwing stars and all that jazz, so I went with a very dark colour scheme, with most of the metal fairly subdued. I did try to get a bit of variation by using Eshin Grey to highlight his clothing and Dark Reaper to highlight his fur, but I'm not sure how well it comes across.

Next up, we have some of the Champions from Silver Tower. I showed the Mistweaver Saih earlier, I didn't finish the Tenebrael Shard, and I don't even know where the Doomseeker is, and don't really care, since I don't like the Fyreslayer Models much. I have better Dwarf Models to use for him if desired, with proper armour. Because these were all Models that I thought I might actually use in AoS, they got my generic Army basing rather than the flat blue on the Mistweaver.

The Knight Questor is pretty basic, being one of the early Stormcast Models. That said, he's not bad at all, and is one of the best in the set at taking advantage of not needing to rank up like previous WHFB Models. At some point, I'll go back and give him a light wash of purple and then highlight back up (and touch up the scrollwork), but for now, he's good.

The Darkoath Chieftan is your basic Conan knockoff, with just enough extras added that he's clearly a follower of Chaos. I'm really happy with how the Army Painter Strong Tone brought out the details here, and the more subtle rust I got by just using thinned Skrag Brown instead of a whole mess of different stuff like I did with the Skaven. I also like all the little bird skulls he's got. They're another nice little touch that makes him a bit more distinctive than past Chaos Marauders. The jewel on his ring is the old Mithril Silver (I think the current Runefang Steel is more or less equivalent), with some Blood for the Blood God over the top, since I don't have the red Gem Paint. I picked out his scars in Kislev Flesh, but that might have taken them up a bit too far. Not sure. I might go back over them with Cadian Flesh instead.

Last of this group with the Excelsior Warpriest and his faithful Gryph-Hound companion. His scrolls and the gold (especially on his cloak) want some touch-up, but I'm super happy with how he came out for "arm's length" viewing. I think that's my best attempt ever at getting something that looks vaguely like text on a book or something. All the detail makes him a kind of fiddly Model to paint, but it's really fun when it comes together.

EXCELSIOR!

Honestly, I kind of treated the Gryph-Hound as a practice run for Aximillion from the Rogue Trader set. I have a few more of them, and I'm planning on getting way more involved with the colour schemes on some of them, but this one is basically just some sort of Doberman or Rottie-type dog (with an unusually floofy tail) combined with a generic brownish hawk-type bird. I really love this Model, her pose is such a great "faithful hound awaits orders" one, and the canine and avian parts are brought together really well. Looking at these pics, I see that my touch-up work on the left flank came out a slightly different finish, and I forgot to do the claws, but she's still a good birb-puppy.

On to some examples of the other side of the set! I actually have all the Horrors done, but the ones not pictured here were done back when the set first came out, and this post is only for the stuff I finished in September.

The flames were an experiment that was...sort of successful. Regular fire is easier, because it's a familiar image as long as you get reasonably close, the brain will consult its various schema, and go "Oh, hey, I know that stuff!" Pink and blue fire, on the other hand, we see less often, so it really wants to be more accurate to trigger the brain's recognition.

I like to mix metallic and "normal" colours on my Daemons. It started with my Khorne stuff, which is heavily bio-mechanical, and then I extended it into my Tzeentch Daemons. If I ever run them in AoS, they're totally going to be using the Chamon Realm traits and relics and whatnot. Pretty simple paint jobs for the most part. The big thing to mention is probably that I used Soulstone Blue for all the gems. They don't really look like gems, but they do look cool, which is the important part. Also, again, looking at them now, I see I missed something, in the case highlighting the feathers hanging from one of its wrists.

The Blue Horrors are pretty much inverted from the Pinks. Where one has gold, the other has silver. Where one has pink, the other has blue. For the most part. The gems are red instead of pink, because I don't have a pink gel paint, and I kept the daggers with gold handles and silver blades, but other than that. The one with the dagger is also the one where it's most noticeable that I added some 'Ardcoat on the tongues.

I didn't notice while shooting or processing the pics, but when they're together like this, they look like some sort of Scooby Doo style chase scene, where who's chasing whom switches randomly.

Last, but not least, we have what I know at least one person is specifically waiting for. What is in that containment chamber?

A xenos fiend! Or at least a portion of one. Probably some sort of heretical research or something. Since it slots together really well, I left the top and front unglued so we can take a better look:

Something about the flash on my camera sort of goes through the ink on it. In person, the red and blue areas are more like different shades of purple than being clearly red and blue.

I tried to use an ink to tint the clear front part, like there's some sort of preservative or stasis field on in the chamber. It was, as with a number of my recent experiments, sort of successful. I've done something similar before, but on flat surfaces, where I could leave each section in turn level as the ink dried on it. The curved surface made that impossible, and my various attempts at evening it out still ended up with some overly-sharp transitions. My first attempt actually went way too dark, and I scratched it up pretty badly, but fortunately, I have two of these, and had been planning on doing the other one with the "glass" broken anyhow, so I just swapped them.

Finally, my favourite part. I've never really gone wild with bright colours like this before (excepting some very poorly done Noise Marines, back before the turn of the century), and so, while it was very fiddly, and I probably spent more time on it than I really should have, I'm super happy with the final result.

The screens were done in metallics with gloss ink over the top. I wish I had some orange ink, so it would have been like the green-on-black and orange-on-black monitors of the first computers I ever saw. The blue looks pretty cool, tho, and I love how all the buttons and knobs and pipes and wires and all came together.

Welp, that's it for today. Congratulations if you made it this far, thanks for reading, and until next time, y'all have a good one, y'hear!