Friday, October 24, 2014

(Near) Completion of a Monster

I have been gradually settling into my new schedule and working in times to paint around the various hours of work and wedding plannings. As such, soon Tomcats should be finished, and I'll work up the nerve to continue with my Geckos. In the meantime, I can show off something I've mostly finished, save some final basing elements.

Some time ago, when I was still playing GW, I wanted a Tyranid Prime that wouldn't just be another Tyranid warrior. Where to find something that was unique, and distinctly me? Where, indeed, to spend my next bout of nerd-model energy?

Why not Kerrigan?

Why not indeed?
I have finally managed to paint her to a point where I am okay with resting. As you can see in my previous posts detailing her conversion, she's a heavily modified Dark Eldar warrior, mixed with a Mordheim acolyte's head, Eldar biker arms, and one hell of a lot of greenstuff and modeling wire.

I kept her fairly bland in paint scheme. Since her various portrayals depict her anywhere from bland to brilliant in colour, I figured I'd pull what I liked from wherever.

To that end: Any bony plates are Burnt Umber highlighted up to Leather Brown (all Vallejo) mixed finally with Vallejo's equivalent to bleached bone (so well used that I have rubbed off its official name!)

The flesh is a rich dark purple, highlighted up through paler versions with the bone colour again. Her skin is actually almost the same mix I use on my Nomad armour, which emulates the pallid nasty flesh she has. The lips are a much more rich colour based off the flesh of her body. The base is a mix of Vallejo Violet, with successive layers of drybrush and wash to make it look like whatever died and fell has just mulched together to be the "Creep" from Starcraft Zerg fame.

The hair was the most fun/difficult part. getting the segmentation right involved careful highlighting of first each segment with the midtone, and then an almost drybrush pass on each segment end with the highlight colour. In a few cases I went back with the basecoat to re-add the fine dark line. The hair locks themselves aren't segmented, because they're too fine to make easily, and wouldn't look any better than painted as-is anyway.

And that's Kerrigan! Will she end up as a Tyranid prime? Sadly likely not. I've taken a GW hiatus for an unspecified time, but she will join the noble nerd-model ranks of Cthulhu, Ash, Hogan's Heroes, Indiana Jones, and Gordon Freeman, and will soon (I hope) be joined by Hot Fuzz's protagonists and Section 9 of Ghost in the Shell!

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

I am back! (Sort of)

Wow it's almost been a month...

Between a best friend's wedding and trying to plan my own, plus a work schedule that shifted to right in the middle of my usual painting hobby time, I've not had much chance to do anything!

Today though, a brief update of what's on my desk. Nothing especially finished yet, but I'm getting there:

(All photos from my cell phone for the time being)

My Intruder is essentially finished. I need to clean up belt buckles and belts, and spray-coat him (hopefully such that he doesn't go foggy like the last round did!)
It's kind of surprising how much of him ends up drab when your goal is to paint all the armour plates!

Likewise are the Alguacile hacker and Clockmaker close to finished. Clockmaker needs insignia and pouches, Alguacile needs final highlights on her straps and pouches. I had to convert the Clockmaker head; I just found the original to be too bizarre, and so gave him a helmet that looks a bit like a welder's mask.
(You can also see the troublesome Daktari in the background: I've been trying to figure out how I want to paint her hair for some time.)

Finally, the Tomcats are on the blocks! Using my current scheme 'rules', they are nearly entirely red! I should try to limit this, since I'm generally against glowing red soldiers, but I think I may keep it. They are, after all, primarily an emergency response team, and there's a reason firefighters aren't camouflaged!

The amount of detail on these figures is astounding. I've had to go almost instantly to fine detail brush to make sure I don't miss anything! I have to debate if I'm going to do the butterfly zondcat in the drab of the zondbots, or bright red, or a combination of the two.

More soon! (Hopefully not a month from now at least).