Cygnar marches on!

Bet you thought I'd forgotten about Warmachine huh? Been a while since I posted the Cyclone but here is the next member of the Cygnar force, a Grenadier Light Warjack:

Grenadier 'jacks are designed to work alongside Trencher infantry in the field. They provide fire support and help with entrenchments and fortifications. They are a very compact design in comparison to the heavier warjacks and consequently a little smaller as well:

Painting the Grenadier proceeded in an identical manner to the Cyclone so I shall leave you to get the basic information from the older post and will focus on areas of interest within this model.

I have kept the furnace glow thing for the face and the Cygnarite runes denoting it's class on the pauldrons. The gun looked to be a mini steam generating cannon and so I painted in a steam gauge and made sure that there was light rusting around any area where steam would escape. I initially painted the hose in a rubbery colour before checking myself and remembering that rubber was a fairly late invention and oiled leather was used in the early Victorian period that the very steampunk Warmachine seems to emulate. I therefore repainted the section in my usual leather tone of Dark Flesh with a Devlan Mud wash.

The back of the model is just lovely, the little pouches emphasise the connection that the 'jack has with the men that work with it (Trenchers can reload the Grenadier's cannon for faster firing). The barrel has no texture applied to it and I suspect it was intended to be metal. The design of the ends though screamed wood to me and so I applied wood grain to the barrel. Took a while but looks quite charming. Verdigrised copper piping and oily joints finished off the figure and it was time to get to the basing.

Time for a little plug here I think. The bases for both the warjacks were finished off with leaf litter from Antenociti's Workshop. This store is a treasure trove of wonderful products and I own a bunch of them. The poison ivy tufts that also adorn the bases come from here too but you can get them from Army Painter. The logs were sticks picked up from around the woods in Candlestone, South Wales. I was camping there and noticed that a lot of the thinner sticks branched and broke in scale to represent logs. Half an hour of busy collecting later I had a tupperware box full of scale logs. Then I saw Woodland Scenics selling boxes with a tenth of the amount I had gathered as "deadfall" for £4! How I laughed...

I also went back and "leafed" the base of the cyclone too. This sort of attention to the bases takes quite some time and I would baulk at doing it for a Warhammer army. A Warmachine force though is generally smaller than most of my Warhammer units so a little more effort is justified I think. Next on the workbench for Warmachine is Captain Alaistair Caine. He'll be the first "normal" person I paint from the Iron Kingdoms, it's all been steam driven robots till now. Sadly he has to wait for a bit because with only 29 models to paint for my Blood Angels to hit 4000 points and the end of that project for good I am focused on them. Till next time

TTFN

Ancients of Baal!

Greetings all, and for your delification and delight I present the most ancient of heroes the Blood Angels have to offer, their dreadnoughts:

For those who aren't in the know: Dreadnoughts are a form of walking tank that contains a life-support sarcophagus to keep alive a greviously wounded Space Marine hero to continue to fight for the chapter. They are functionally immortal as long as battle does not claim them and many represent the memory of their chapter's history and legends. Oh, and Ms. Funnymoney is about to demonstrate, they are big!

The larger of the pair is Abraxus, the Furioso Dreadnought:

With a frag cannon strapped to his left arm and that fist of doom on the left he will be a nasty prospect for anyone to face, particularly as he will be dropping out of the sky in his very own drop pod. Painting for these fellows started with a nice heavy metal basecoat starting from Tin Bitz and working all the way up through Boltgun Metal and Chainmail to Mithril Silver on the hard edges. Then the usual Blood Angels red basecoat (see Book of Jeff) and highlights drybrushed on.

I gave the frag cannons shell belt a rubberised feel as the metal that I had painted it in just wasn't doing it for me. Looked too inflexible, there aren't any joins in the belt to indicate chain feeds or anything. I figured rubber would distend neatly to spit out the shell casings and would grip the coke can sized bullets nicely. My usual mix of Charadon Granite with a couple of layers of Badab Black sorted out the effect pleasantly.

I decided to really scratch and ding up the paintwork on the fists of both dreadnoughts as, lets face it, they are huge lumps of metal designed to punch other lumps of metal. The effect is simple to achieve. Just get a bit of sponge, load it up with the top highlight colour of the paint you are using and then stipple and drag chips and dings randomly around the area. Then paint in the largest chips and scratches with a 1:1:1 mix of Chaos Black, Scorched Brown and Boltgun Metal. Creates a lovely effect. I go into lots more detail on this technique here.

Smaller, but still huge, is Helios a standard Blood Angels Dreadnought. This chap is the dread that is contained in the Assault on Black Reach kit. I chose him primarily for his weaponry, multi-melta plus drop pod = lots of sad tanks.

Speaking of the multi-melta, I am really happy with how the burnt nozzle effect came out on this kit. To replicate this effect you start with a fairly liberal drybrush of Bestial Brown, avoid having the drybrush end in a regular stripe around the gun. Next drybrush Scorched Brown around the same area taking care to fade out the colour to leave some Bestial Brown showing. Finally Chaos Black is drybrushed around the nozzles themselves. Quick, simple, effective. My favourite type of painting!

To make the generic dreadnought a bit more Blood Angel-ey I nicked a shoulder pad wing from the death company box, filed it flat and glued it on. Little details like that can help to lift a model and make it fit with the army better.

So that brings us ever closer to the end of project Blood Angels. Though the planner above is for a 3k arny I am just 30 models away from hitting 4000 points and that is where the project will stop, end, finito, no more. The next image shows the 4k plan:

It is designed to represent the moment that Tycho turned at Armageddon and was replaced by Machiavi. With the options in the 4k list I can create pretty much any Blood Angels army I please and can replace Tycho with Machiavi if anyone is grumpy about special characters. I think I'll have a drop pod session next, get that big job out of the way! Till then:

TTFN

DKK Bodyguards, and what bodies...

Although not part of the DKK army I found these two among the resins and decided to paint them as bodyguards for the regiment commander.

I am not sure who the manufacturer is, but I am pretty sure they are part of a Weird War II range. They have the feel of Nazi S&M pinups. [Edit: They are West Wind Secrets of the Third Reich]

First, the slightly more sensibly clothed one! The MP40's she has in each hand had very shallow detail and thus didn't respond well to drybrushing or washing. As such I lined in the edges with mithril to give them some definition. I contemplated painting the gas mask in the same canvas colour as the rest of the army but it was clearly sculpted to indicate rubber. My usual method of charadon granite with a badab black wash and some grey highlights served me well and gave her quite a sinister look.

Both models have nicely modelled bases that benefitted from careful painting and weathering to add interest but avoid detracting attention from the miniatures.

Now for the slightly less subtle figure! The stockings and shirt were the cause of a fair amount of experimentation. I wanted the shirt to look like thin cotton and thus appear slightly shear at areas where it was pulled tight over skin (shoulders, back, bosom, upper surfaces of arms). This effect is annoyingly difficult to photograph as it is more subtle than the translucent effects you often see on fantasy miniatures (have to paint one like that one day). It is a simple matter of adding the top highlight of your skin tone to the colour used for the fabric, you have to be careful to make the effect blend very gently as otherwise you make the fabric transparent.

The stockings caused a bit of head scratching, I didn't want to paint them in the same way as the shirt as I thought the effect may be too obvious. Instead I decided to take the slow path and build up the colour in very thin layers. A 50:50 mix of Vallejo Smoke and Black inks was thinned by at least a 5:1 ratio. Very, very thin in other words. This was then gradually layered on until I achieved the desired denier.

These were fun figures and a bit of a break from the norm for me, also gave me the chance to try some new techniques. Having cleared all my current commissions (now is the time if you want something done fast!) I've got a personal day tomorrow. Hmmm, Blood Angels, Dark Elves, Warmachine or cowboys tomorrow...

TTFN

Iron Within, Iron Without...

Today we are back to one of my favourite subjects: Tanks! Iron Warriors Predators to be precise:

These were painted for my regular chaos client and were an interesting challenge to work on. The challenge was mainly to make them look realistic despite being just metallic. I could have just drybrushed on some boltgun metal, added hazard stripes and called it good but that just isn't how I roll...

The main bodywork of the tank needed to look like old, heavy iron. I therefore started the painting process from a heavy covering of Tin Bitz to add the shading within the texture of the metal. This is important to give the smooth plastic a sense of unpainted metal. The smooth thing is fine for paintwork. Not for metal. Sequential drybrushing and stippling with a mix of highlights all the way up to chainmail with a little mithril added. Brass areas were painted Vallejo Brassy brass, shaded with brown ink and highlighted with a mix of the brass shade and mithril silver. The hazard stripes were a whole other thing! You need them to be about as precise as you can, using a small steel ruler that I keep for a cutting straight edge and a really sharp pencil I roughed in pencil lines roughly 3mm apart following the nearest predominant angle. This was over an Iyanden Darksun basecoat. I then filled in the lines with Chaos Black. A thin Gryphonne Sepia glaze brought the yellow to life and highlights of Darksun and White defined the edges. I then relined the black to create the most precise edges I could. Don't be tempted to do too many of these as it will be overwhelming and don't do them too thin or they will look messy.

In an effort to introduce some more subtle colours to the scheme I painted the tops of the batteries a verdigris copper shade and painted the rings of the lascannons as green glass electrical isolators. Little details could now be added, the client wanted the names "Boomhowler" and "Warmachine" added to the vehicles so I picked one of the few open areas - the turret - and went for as precise and mechanical a handwriting as I could manage. Anyone know of a company that makes really small dry transfers for lettering? All the ones I've found are huge in scale! I also added a pseudo-barcode above the name reasoning that the heavily bionic augmented Iron Warriors would include many warriors whose eyes would read machine code faster than script.

To further distinguish the two vehicles I painted some personal decoration on the gun mantlet. Boomhowler got a half chaos star and Warmachine got a line of devotional script in chaos runes.

These were fun to do, even if the hazard lines created a dazzle painted effect that messed with my eyes! It's difficult to see in the photos but as you turn the vehicles the lines do mess with the angles. I ended up adding some scrapes and dings to the edges of these areas to break up this effect. I like the look of the metalwork to the extent that were I to do another chaos army for 40k I would be sorely tempted by the Iron Warriors. That's all for now, so 'till next time:

TTFN

Finecast review 2 - revenge of the Finecast

Part one of this review (looking at the rather badly mangled kit) can be found here.

After the disappointing showing of the first kit I sent photos of the problems to GW customer service. To their credit, the next working day they dispatched a full, free replacement kit and many apologies. So here it is:

The first thing to notice is the lack of warping of the frames in this kit. Compared to the first one this is a major improvement. There aren't any really miscast parts but the problem of the "sword and scroll" dude's tiny thin ankles is still there. That is the fault of the original sculptor though, not the caster. The same mold-slip lines are present but are incredibly easy to carve off. The entire kit took me 15 minutes to clean up and assemble. The same metal kit has taken me upwards of an hour in the past.

Most of this speed is down to how fast and hard the superglue grabs the resin. I didn't mention this the first time but it is AWESOME. My advice to modellers before when using metal was "Hold it until you think it is dry and then hold for another 30 seconds to allow for impatience" and it still would not be dry. 3 seconds is all I am holding Finecast parts for, 3 seconds. With the lack of weight I am seriously considering selling the metal Azhag that I've got and replacing it with the Finecast version so that I can put it together in less than a month.

I may have been hasty in my first review when I said that Finecast wasn't designed for war machines. This cast is lovely for the bolt thrower and as you can carve the surfaces smooth easily you can get razor edges and smooth curves even on internal surfaces. Really nice material to work with.

Forgive the slightly hasty clean up job on the crew folks. I'm not going to be using them (I'm using corsair models to help the kit fit in with my corsair raiding army) so I just got rid of the obvious bits of flash to show off how nicely the finecast deals with things like the roped skull, the breastplate and the scrolls. The undercuts are all crisp and allow for really precise modelling. Really nice.

To summerise then. My conclusions from last time are still valid. To them I will add the following advice, when Finecast is good it is very, very good and when it is bad it is rubbish! Same as metal really. My advice is to check the castings carefully in the clamshells or, like my boxed set, if you find a problem let GW know immediately. They are not in the business of selling rubbish figures and will replace any problem pronto. I'm glad I got a decent one to show you all and am just a bit gutted that my first one was unlucky! Guess I'd better paint these now eh? Till next time

TTFN

Death Korps sir! Thousands of 'em!

A very short update today as there is only one picture that matters, this one!

This is the first time I have attempted to shoot such a large amount of figures and I reckon I've got some learning to do. Regardless, that is 181 painted figures! They make quite an impression, can't wait to get a place big enough for my gaming table so I can take shots like this on pretty scenery rather than the planet woodwork. So that is it for now on project Death Korps. No more, all done. We're probably going to revisit at some point in the future to add some more units or to expand the army.

Next post will be Finecast 2: Revenge of Finecast. GW very quickly got me a replacement Repeater Bolt Thrower and it is everything I hoped the first one would be! I'll take some shots and get you a review of what Finecast should look like over the weekend. Toodles, folks and

TTFN

We'll keep the khaki flag flying here...

Well, this is it! The last Death Korps! I decided to leave the banners for last as a treat so here they are:

This fellow is the Command HQ standard bearer, almost more of an icon bearer than a true banner bearer. I thought about doing all kinds of fancy painting on the pennants but quickly realised that it would detract from the central icon. Thus I wound up keeping it simple and maintaining the colour pallette that had served me well thoughout the project.

The other three are the Lieutenant's standard bearers, these are the classic "flappy flag" style of banner and look lovely for it. The banners are moulded from resin and are seperate componants to the bearers. You need to use a metal pin to attach them. Be very careful when drilling the flag for the pole as it is very easy to go right through. Search as I might I could not find the finials from the top of the banner poles. As a result I needed to find replacements, beads superglued on and painted made a decent job of it.

The banners themselves were painted with the same colour pallete as the rest of the army but with pseudo non-metallic metal gold edging and detail to make them stand out and thematically link them to the brass of the officer corps. This colour is based from Snakebite Leather and is shaded and highlighted with nothing but black and white. Normally this is a disaster but works well with NMM techniques. Obviously, this is not true non-metallic metal, there are nowhere near enough layers, shading or highlighting for that. The main reason for this is that the flag would not be gold either, just heraldic "gold" yellow. The "Unto Death" motto was chosen for two reasons, first, it fit the morbid Death Korps vibe. Second, it was two short words that would actually fit!

And with that the Death Korps project is finished. I am told that we will be doing some more at a later date but the vast bulk is all done. I will be doing quality control over the next day or so to check that there is nothing glaringly wrong. You would not believe how easy it is to miss an entire limb or a base when batch painting. You answer the phone, pick up the next model rather than the one you were working on and everything goes wrong! On such a large project I confidently expect to find 3-5 miniatures that will need some form of remedial work before I dispatch them to the client. Already working on the next projects: a pair of Iron Warriors predators and a super-secret present for a friend of the commissioning client. I'll post up a mass group shot of the painted DKK army once Quality Control is over. Till then,

TTFN