An Irish Scotsman?

The most recent Mayacast masterglass requirement was a "Named Character" - So I decided I had to finally paint up McMurrough for my Nomads.

I had debated how I was going to do his armour for a while, before I decided to go just dark, to call more attention to his kilt and face. The skin (fur?) colours were decided by me wanting him to be red-ish, and still skin-ish. I figured a dark grey almost-black would allow those to stand out more, and would believably be an armour colour he'd have as a default. I figured it'd be odd for him to have white, and equally weird for it to be camouflaged, since he gains no benefit from camouflage.

The fur was airbrushed with Vallejo Light Rust (71 129) before being washed with sepia, highlighted with Iraqi Sand. The more skin bits of his face, hands, and feet were midtone flesh.

The symbol on his shoulder is a simplified version of his infinity army profile symbol. The tartan was airbrushed with dark-red to bright-red, having masked off the rest of his fur. After I painted the reds, I struggled a bit with how to make his tartan look like woven fabric. First I did hatch-style highlighting on the red, and then tried it on the bands. I gave up after a few attempts, painted solid bands, and then 'worried' the edges of the bands with the red of the undertone kilt to get the effect. Crossovers between two sections of tartan were done in solid black, hatch-painted to give it a rough-edge vibe.

The final thin band is fleshtone lightly dotted for the main lines, before being dotted with a bleached bone colour where two lines would meet.

The rough leather of the backpack and his torso gear was a lot of fun. I painted it with a leather brown, washed heavily with mahogany brown after. I then stippled on corners and edges with a colour roughly equivalent to the old snakebite leather, before again washing with the mahogany brown. After that dried, I painted a very rough and random line of the medium fleshtone, making sure to do at least one round with a fine brush adding scratches and random creases to the leather. My metals were done in the usual way for me. (I think I've done a tutorial. If not I'll do one in a future entry!)

The sword was my first real attempt at masked airbrush metallics, since it's supposed to be a crazy sci-fi sword. The colours are all Vallejo, from pure black through default blue, a bright cyan and white. I went back and added white scratches, light glints, and worry-marks, since his blade has not been upkept properly! The same colours are on his gauntlet tech, and the sword's hilt.

I kept his armour markings to a minimum, since he's a mercenary.

But now to the fun stuff alluded to in the title; I had a hard time picking out a tartan because I couldn't find a Scottish clan named McMurrough: Turns out that's because McMurrough is an Irish family name! That suggests that our boy here has a very interesting history. His first name, "Tearlach" is a Scottish Gaelic version of "Charles", "Dearg" is Gaelic for "Red", and McMurrough is Irish.

Even his clan slogan, or personal slogan, "Buaidh No Bas" is an Irish/Scottish clan motto for "Victory or Death"!

So what does that mean? Well, if his last name is Irish, it means he wouldn't have a family/clan tartan. Irish tartans are based on county or region. So in this case, working as he is for Corregidor, he wears a kilt with primarily red, with black and white highlights in honour of his clients/patrons, the Corregidorans!

I love playing with McMurrough. Win or lose, he's almost guaranteed to do something epic, and the look on an opponent's face if he succeeds, and rampages across half an army alone is worth the effort!

DRUZE!

Hey folks,

This started because of the contest in early 2018 (I'm trying to back-fill all the things I didn't post!)

An entire Druze force, and I tried to make it not look like any force that already exists. Green is already taken by Ariadna (and to a lesser extent by Haqqislam).

I thought about what colour is not taken by any army, and brown came to mind. Supported by Red, because that'd look cool. Hilariously I later realized that also makes it look like the Browncoats from Firefly!

The labeled picture! A link team of 5 to the left with a few proxies (notably the brawler doctor from Bipandra, and Valeria Gromoz as played by the Druze limited hacker. On the right is the Brawler Haris, with a Heavy Rocket Launcher, the Haris leader, and the spec ops as Doctor.

Back view. The bases are custom-made by me on a laser etcher: I wanted to get a different feel than my typical transparent bases, and especially with how many of the models have very thin connection points, it would make it easier to lock the models in place!

A cluster-shot of the group, dynamically posed, and finally:

The glamour shot!

Hope you like it, next time I try to find more of my "oh yeah, I did take photos of this" stuff!

Long Hiatus and the Critical Conversion

Hey folks, I know it's been a long time... I started a new job, and ended up where my painting was more industrial than fanciful.

That said, recently the wonderful folks at the Mayacast Podcast did a conversion contest rather than a painting contest. I decided there was one absolutely critical conversion that needed to happen. One model whose conversion wasn't a case of personal challenge or what-if, but an absolutely, only-way-I'd-play-him necessity.

I give you, Saito Togan:

He's supposed to be a master ninja, ghost in combat. Not a sumo wrestler.

Thank God for jewellers saws and greenstuff, because it let me 'fix' him. Underneath that weird pose is an actually good model design, and I hope I have more conveyed his awesome ninja-ness with my conversion.

Two cuts, just above both knees, let me notice that just with his lower legs removed, you can get a very good pose going. It was great for me, as I originally thought I might have to resculpt the entire upper leg bit. Instead, I ground away at the 'fabric' until I had slots for the calf muscles/armour, pinned the limbs in place where I wanted, and refilled the gaps with putty, imitating the fabric that was there. For the most part, the head is just slightly repositioned, and the arm is pushed out wider (and greenstuffed in the gap) to fit.

On his back you can see I've moved the scabbard to a more shinobi-logical back draw, as opposed to the default model's samurai hip draw location.

And finally, for a nice ridiculous shot of him bisecting a guijia in full anime style!

I'm going to try to post more frequently now. I've been working these last few months on a Skaven army, and while much of it isn't especially fascinating from a paint exploration standpoint, there are a few things that I can draw attention to.

After that, ghosts!

Heroes in a Full Shell

Hey folks! Happy New Year and happy gaming!

For the most recent Mayacast contest, the challenge was to produce a TAG. Any TAG (From Infinity) painted to the best of your ability. I decided to paint up my Guijia:

The idea I have for my Yu Jing is for them to be the Emperor's personal guard (The Jade Guard) - As such, he doesn't want mundane war-tech in his beautifully crafted palace halls, so every heavy infantry or TAG under his personal guard is painted like jade statues.

Let me tell you; it's tough to get the iridescence of jade right on a flat pewter model...

This is a primer coat black with airbrush, followed by a carefully layered up "Sick Green" (72.029 Vallejo Game Colour). following this was a bit of a white airbrush of highlight spots and some edge-lining with the same, followed by Light Green (Vallejo 70.942) over the white and to clean up any missed spots in the first run. This switch of greens gives the somewhat varying iridescence. Next comes a layer of gloss varnish, black-lining in the cracks to really pop the highlights, and a few final spots of white lines on high gloss areas.

As a result of the "Jade Statue" design intent, I played down my usual heavy detailing of warning signs, arrows, stripes and other elements to better suggest the statue trompe l'oeil, and since these would be only the most veteran pilots, they'd already know the warnings!

I also converted the TAG to be holding the HMG. Considering a Guijia has almost no close combat ability to speak of, there's little purpose to having him only brandish the sword, when the gun (and armour) is so much the reason you take one!

On this shoulder, you can also see a Chinese-styled design, surrounding a cleaned up (not neon green) Yu Jing logo.

The opposite shoulder had the Guijia logo, more neat designs, and also shows what few markings there are (For example, the unit number, and a pilot's mark on the small shoulderpad.

The base was custom-lasered to look like a Chinese carved pattern, all aglow with science fiction tech. The Seraph corpse is treated cleanly, since it may be a wreck, but since it's fresh, it's not going to have rusted or gotten all chipped by wear. The sword was my first attempt airbrushing with tape to cover half, and seemed to work out reasonably well. The hilt is a very impractical gold-leaf design, but hey; only the most flashy for the Emperor of Yu Jing!

The sword follows much the same pattern as the armour, replacing Prussian Blue (70965) and Light Turquoise (70840) followed by white.

I'm eager to find out what the next project will be, in the meantime I've been relaxing with Team Yankee conversions and another weird project or two I'll show off soon!

Infowar Contest Entry

As I work towards completing the next of my quarterly Mayacast painting contests, I figured I ought to upload my previous entry!

I tried to figure out a pairing that I had not previously done, and didn't want to group-paint with other folks (such as the Mobile Brigada hacker). I of course had just finished painting my Interventors at the time, and so they would not count for the project.

Then I realized I possessed the only two hackers allowed by Ariadna! Who better to paint up as a pair of hackers than the only two? (Especially since they're both pigtailed redheads, for some reason.)

Shown here interrupted in their attempt to hack into an Aleph base, the two hackers are intended to be aiming at a target off-diorama.

I went for a very basic, traditional look on their guns and gear, trying to make it look industrially hard-wearing. Since they're both hackers either mercenary or working for the most tech-limited faction, they wouldn't have fancy delicate comm gear that would smash the first time it was looked at funny.

Other than that, it was spot colours here and there to accentuate the look of the pair, and a slightly different means of painting the fiery red hair on each, so they didn't entirely look like twins. The base is made from laser-cut acrylic, glued together and lightly airbrushed, with the screen likewise made of fluorescent orange acrylic painted with white.

You can also see I have painted Isobel MacGregor's pants using the stereotypical "Canadian Plaid" - I will be making my USAriadna models into CANAriadnans, and so this will help fit the theme.

The hardest part about painting this pair was trying to make Isobel's face look right. The casting of the model has it incredibly flat - like someone squished her face with cling wrap. I had to reference the official paintscheme a few times to make sure I was sectioning off the face right, and ended up doing the equivalent of a makeup job to ensure the face felt right.

Eventually they'll be plucked off this diorama and based individually for gaming, but for now it makes for an interesting display-case-piece!