Three thousand points of Dwarfs Done!

Greetings and jubilations to all! Why am in such a celebratory humour? Because 3000 points of Dwarfs are finished! The Beard Bunker challenge is complete. Lets take a look at the final few models:

The miners are deeply, deeply silly models but they do possess a charm all of their own and the rules are handy! The most interesting - for me anyway - parts of the painting are what I did not do rather than I what I did. For starters, you won't see a whole bunch of object source lighting (OSL) on these guys. I was in two minds about this. On the one hand, it would have been delicious to have every light source on these guys emitting light. The problem was that it would have made them look like they were in the dark, none of the rest of the army is painted this way. I decided in the end that daylight overrules candlelight and left them as just the flames.

Yes kids, its a steam powered jackhammer, silly... but cool.

The other ommission was one that I thought I would be using extensively, weathering. Miners end up filthy, absolutely covered in mud, dust, coal dirt and the like. I did a test model with a dramatic amount of dust and dirt and realised that the unit would look like mud golems. In the end I erred on the side of army cohesion and kept them fairly clean.

The last model to be painted was the Stormbourne host Army Battle Standard. A thane by the name of Vindalf Stormbourne, brother of Hafnir. As usual the camera has played its cruel tricks and made the lines look scrappier than they really are. The design of the standard marries a ships wheel, the axe of the Stormbournes carried by Hafnir, and a pair of crossed anchors with the three ancestor heads of the brothers that founded the Stormbourne naval legacy.

When I do a banner like this I frequently mock up a design either on paper or in this case on photoshop. In this instance I changed a few elements when painting but the essence of the thing is the same and saved a lot of head scratching.

Vindalf himself was a limited edition standard bearer from a very old army box. His helm is one of the most remarkable features of the model, being a beautiful boar capped, sapphire studded creation fit for a prince of a noble household.

The other feature I really like is the combover. It tells you so much about the character of the man in one instant. Vain, proud, stubborn, a little deluded. It fits the arrogant and hubris laden character of the Stormbourne family really nicely.

And so here is a beautiful thing. A completed workometer. Indeed, a completed 3000 point workometer. I don't mind saying that I am chuffed. Over on the Beard Bunker there is a photo of the completed army as part of the campaign set up. Back to work on Monday-ish (I usually need to warm up after a protracted break - these lads were finished Monday, I just based them today). So progress will be back to normal!

TTFN