These are the first in a series of Inq28 commissions that I am doing, we'd kind of split them into their gangs and a gang of assassin types emerged. "Well," thought I, "I suspect I'll be using the same techniques on all of them... lets batch paint some characters!". With that in mind I'll discuss most of the painting side with the first group and then just get on to blathering about miniatures and anything unique for the rest. Where to start? I think the classics:
The only two officio assassinorum types in the batch. The Eversor on the left and the Culexus on the right. For those unfamiliar with the backstory, the Eversor is a berserker, a warrior juiced up on every rage-inducing, reflex enhancing, pain-blocking hormone and steroid they could find. You don't guide these, you pull the pin, drop them in and if somehow they are still moving after they've gone through an entire complex then you scoop them up and throw them straight back into suspended animation. The Culexus is somehow worse, they are untouchables, those with the pariah gene and thus no soul. They've been trained in the use of a thing called the Animus Speculum (the big eye thing on the helmet) that converts the aching blankness of their soulless form into a kind of spirit vacuum. A hoover for life energy. To say the least, Leon these guys are not.
Painting wise, all of the assassins started the same way, solid basecoat of Val German Grey. Follow that with picking out any leather areas with Val German Camo Brown-Black and the metalwork in AP Gunmetal. Then, unless there are adjacent areas of black that need basecoating in another colour a wash of thinned black ink mixed with lahmian medium is glazed over the whole thing. This almost does all of the work for you. Just go back in and edge highlight with the original base colour. For these two I needed to play around a little more, especially the bone. I needed it to look artificial, part of the helmet not an actual honest-to-god skull as a head. To do this I started straight from Ushabti Bone, washed it down with Agrax Earthshade to get the contrasts and then started adding white to the bone for highlights. The Culexus also got some object source lighting to represent the active Animus Speculum:
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| not a great photo, sorry |
As with all OSL this was mainly thinned very, very pale mixes of the colour I wanted built up in translucent layers and then highlighted with the addition of even more white.
The next up for our little parade of lethal are the Death Cult Assassins. These girls are often the enemy as much as allies. They worship the Emperor through human sacrifice and as such are a deviant heretic cell that needs to be wiped out... or... tolerated and used during a crisis. These models are a classic case of where what is called dolly sculpting was a bad idea. It is clear that the sculptor got the basic - and very distinctive - shape, cast up a few (the dollies) and then armed and dressed them. This works fine if you've got a lot of normal infantry to do, they'll all be similar sculpts mutatis mutandis and so making a dolly makes perfect sense. For these highly distinctive sculpts you have to start making up narratives about how they are performing some kind of synchronised kata-style dance of death. Cool, sure, but I think the posing stops them from being classics. Anyway, enough grumbling. The differences in painting for these really boil down to the scrolls (Karak Stone, shade with Agrax Earthshade, highlight by adding bone to the Karak Stone) and the blood. I was using that new Blood For The Blood God technical paint and I gotta tell ya, it is great. Works perfectly. Only does one "flavour" of blood - i.e. fresh - but it does that very, very well.
Then we move out of the normal imperial assassins and into some more unusual ones. These next four are all from the infinity range and will be representing some of the smaller assassin temples. The first one - above - is my favourite, sadly my paint scheme does him no favours at all on camera though if you zoom in you'll see the detail of the sculpt. The hakama (trousers) and the positioning of the scabbard in particular are lovely. You can scarcely see as the camera cut through the glazing, but the hakama are actually a bluey tone.
Another infinity sculpt, quite liked the faceless visor on this one and the next for assassin types. Very daft punk in style but gives a "faceless killer" vibe nicely.
Another nice sculpt, the hair in particular is impressive. Would not photograph. I only got these two shots, the rest would not focus. Clearly such a ninja that even cameras can't detect him.
Then, a a bit of an oddity, an infinity SAS type model, I swopped the gun for a DKK laspistol but everything else is as the model comes. I figure this guy to be an Imperial Guard infiltrator/assassin specialist. Tough to see on the picture but every area of adjacent black is a different colour. Looks cracking in real life.
And finally a trio of Charlie's Angels types, I figure them for an inquisitor's retinue. All three are from Andrew Rae's Statuesque Miniatures range, the sculpts are very nice, if you like them I can recommend them!
Not much to say about the girls, they were the quickest and easiest of the lot.
I'd decided that the weird dismembered fembot thing she is standing on was some sort of necron and had died a long time ago. I rusted it up with AK Rust Streaks and let it blend into the base. Painting it brighter would have drawn too much attention from the model standing on it.
And that is all, hope you've enjoyed this bumper assassin update despite the difficulties in photography (seriously, I took like 50 shots, these are all the good ones). Until next time
TTFN
That is a lot of assassins! Great stuff. I especially like the light-sourcing on the animus speculum.
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