The Toffs of Colony 87

Hiya folks, guess what... we got shinys to look at!

Yup, not only are the last three Colony 87 residents finished but I am finally, finally wrangling the new camera into shape. Thus... content for the blog for the first time in too long. Lets get straight to it: These chaps are - like all the other colony 87 residents - nice, slightly cartoony resins with bags of character. While the cartoonishness has never been quite to my liking I really love that this range exists. More roleplay-esque characters need to exist for sci-fi in particular but heck, just more in general please! Speaking of these characters, let's meet these:

First up we have the corpulent governor. Over-fed and indulged this peacock struts about the Colony armed discretely with a tiny digital weapon (seriously, the ring on his left hand is a digi-weapon). I actually ended up painting both this chap and his missus below twice as I started off reaching for the purple. Heck, purple is rich and I wanted these two oozing money, trouble was, it looked terrible. For some reason the purple just did not work. So I ditched it and went instead for a dark but vibrant red (that the camera completely failed to capture due to the layers of ink that went in to it) and a bottle green tunic. The combination seemed to work fine and the greying blonde - ridiculous - hair carried the yellow accents up into the head.

His missus shares hubbies colour scheme but with more brass armour plating. While painting her I was trying to figure her story (helps with the colour selection and effects), eventually I got to the point where some seriously dodgy science had been brought to bear in order to allow the tiny be-ruffed heir to the dynasty to be born. I painted her skin as pale and drawn, made the tubes that enter her nose (if they were supposed to be jewellery - nose chains - then they are waaaay to thick) be supplying cleaned blood and nutrients and assumed that the armour was actually an augmetic suit to help her walk. Yup, happy stories provided free folks, sheesh.

Finally we have their hapless bearer toting their purchases from colony stores. I think he's actually a general labourer in the original intent but I had three figures to showcase and it made sense to link them. While painting him I got the impression of "employee", he didn't seem to be acting for himself as the scavengers were or have a lot of agency. Thus when choosing his colours I went with recollections of some of the downright weird corporate uniforms I or friends have had to wear in our early years. Petrol blue was from my old Woolworths uniform as a young 'un and it paired rather nicely (in some colony exec's eyes) with a salmon pink shirt. The Amphibon style jackets they all seem to wear got the usual XV-88.

And that's all folks. Obviously there will be more shinys in coming weeks, hopefully with increasing quality of photographs as I figure out what tricks I need to get the best fidelity and reproduction of my work. Until then

TTFN

From the Wastes of Colony 87

Hiya folks, today we are returning to the inhabitants of Colony87 and adding a couple of new faces to the lineup.

As is usual for my painting I had come up with vague identities and narratives for these chaps. So on the left we have an old successful tech prospector and dealer and on the right we have a down on his luck chap scavenging the worst areas around the Colony. These are my two favourite sculpts of the Colony87 range and were a blast to paint. Let's start with the prospector:

I wanted to keep quite a drab palette for both of these. They felt like "salt-of-the-earth" chaps and thus less likely to be toting bright colours and finery. Vallejo paints covered most of my bases, in this case the dominant colour being the coat and that being German Fieldgrey. Interestingly, both this model and the scavenger have the same colour on them but you wouldn't guess it. This has been shaded with a wash of Athonian Camoshade while the scavenger got the brown Earthshade wash. Otherwise this fella is a mix of leathers and XV-88 on the body warmer/armour. All the colours in the scheme were highlighted with Deck Tan which made for a pleasing almost mono-chromatic feeling palette. The skin got my usual trick of adding a little light grey in place of the normal bone as the final highlight tones to make the prospector feel older.

Like the prospector, the scavenger needed a muted scheme but with one battered splash of colour, the re-purposed space helmet keeping him alive in the nastier bits of the world. His robes are again German Fieldgrey (the top bit) and US Olive Drab which I think might just be my new Charadon Granite, it is awfully close. Might try the "Andy-green" with it and see...

The helmet I was quite chuffed with, starting with my Averlander yellow and then adding little chips and dings with Ammo Chipping paint. Then I started in with streaks of lots of different enamel weathering paints, streaking and stumping them with odourless turps to make a nice rich collection of stains, muck and rust which of course the camera captures about 30% of. Sheesh. Anyway, I decided that a rusty poking stick/metal detecting wand would finish him off nicely. 

I've enjoyed these. The colony87 project is proving a fun little diversion amongst the larger projects (the Tau Battlesuits I'm working on for instance) and the client giving me complete carte blanche for colour scheme has rather set my imagination loose to just have fun with it. Nice.

That's all for today folks

TTFN.

It's Not That Easy Being Green

Hi folks, today, we have a bit of a departure from our normal faire with a rather nice frogman. No, not that sort, a Colony 87 Frogman (well "Amphiron") apparently called Barcoon Krobosh:

Yep, let the Frog Chorus play (those of a certain age hate me for that earworm, those who don't know it, google it and then remember it was released by a profit seeking entity and former Beatle to boot...). I have spent the past week working on a big batch of Praetorian infantry and while they are lovely, they are a bit involved. While they are looking good (cue sneak peek)...

...I was starting to get fatigued and needed a bit of a palette cleanse, something very, very different. Fortunately another client had some sci-fi civilians that needed doing, among which was ol' Barcoon the Froggy up there. Couldn't resist.

The colour scheme was determined by the frog skin I went for. On a split complimentary scheme, lime green works with a yellow-orange and red-purple. The purple is actually a lot more red than this photo shows. The camera decided to ignore the glazes and cut down to the darker bits. Grrr. Anyway... The skin started from a clean coat of Vallejo Stone Grey, this was going to be the basis for the underbelly so it made sense to use it for the bright green undercoat too. The green started with Moot Green, again just getting a clean coat, which was then shaded with two glazes of green ink mixed with glaze medium. That's it. It needed nothing else; anyone else thinking "Lizardman army in a weekend"? To keep the colour scheme balanced a tan leather bodysuit (XV-88 shaded and highlighted by adding Skrag Brown and Deck Tan respectively with a Seraphim Sepia wash) and a purple-ish magenta cape were married up with bronze, brass and gold decorations. A splash of extra contrast colour with the eyes and a mysterious steel flask (?) in his hand and job done.

I quite like the Colony 87 stuff, it's nice to see civilians getting some love in miniature form although some of the detail is a little soft. Might need to go around the foot claws again as the softness there really needs some sharper paint than it got on this pass (sometimes you only spot this stuff with the camera). But yeah, I think they're a useful addition to the canon. That's all for this time folks, predictably, it should be Praetorians next!

TTFN