A Little To The Left

As my Geckos are in the shop contemplating shoulder art, and the double-whammy of trying to secure an apartment and making sure our wedding is fully planned hits, I've had little time to paint recently. That said, the hour or two I have had I've devoted to trying to get my Morats started. (They were starting to leer at me from my desk...)

The hair is a straightforward painted gray and drybrushed with successive thin layers of white paint until I had the right colour depth. The skin will be slightly more muted than the studio-bright red. In my case I'm mixing some of the same purple from the pants into red and black, highlighting up to red, and then mixing in a bit of fleshtone to naturalize it.

I managed to get my hands on some fluorescent green and yellow, which will be used for anywhere these guys are supposed to glow. That'll come into play more on the heavy infantry than the light, but I shall try to find at least somewhere for each, to keep them consistent across the board.

Armour colour will be a glossy black, highlighting up to teal on the edges: I want to make it seem as though their armour is not made of a composite material humans know too well, if at all. So far the heavy armour sections are done in a metal colour, but I may put a few odd washes and glazes on it to affect how it appears. (The purple fatigues will be very muted by the time I'm done with the painting; right now they're just base-coated!)

The one thing I can't decide on is gun colour. I don't want to paint them the same colour as the armour, and don't want to make them look cheaply constructed, but everything I think up so far doesn't work for me. Hopefully by the time the rest are done, I'll have inspiration for them!

Mini Madness Update

Well, work is kicking my butt, and that plus being sick has meant I haven't gotten a lot of time painting. That said, I have an open call to all helpful readers of this blog: I am trying to collect ideas for 'bomber art' for my Geckos. I want their shoulderpads decorated in a very non-military fashion.

For examples, I am so far looking at WWII bomber art, Terran Marines armour art, and anything along those lines. I don't just want it to be 'seductive woman' type things, though I'm not against it.

That said, I can show you what I have managed to get done since the sickness passed. (Yay for strep throat)

My Geckos now have pilot names! I figure much in the same way that planes have the pilot's name painted on the side, it'd be neat to do something similar with these models.

Sankuru is the name of one of the longest rivers in the Congo region, and "Mwene" is a name meaning "Prince" (at least as far as Wikipedia tells me) - I wanted to have my characters named in an African style, for reasons of Nomad fluff and making an army in at least one game that isn't 90% "white" soldiers. I figured the orbital elevator mentioned in the Nomad fluff that is supposed to have been in Africa would have caused a lot of issues with people from that area, and didn't want to pick the name of a person actually alive. (I first thought about picking famous resistance fighters or soldiers, but didn't want to get into politics with models!)

It was fun picking the typeface online (a 'face called Planet Kosmos btw) and then painting it carefully in so it'd fit with the lines.

My paint consistency was so low even my airbrush would have complained, but I had to make sure it wouldn't dry on the brush! I had lots of water standing by to soak the brush out as well afterwards.

Next up for them is cleaning up glowy bits, deciding where, if anywhere else I put the painted lines, and then adding caution and warning indicators (like all good military craft have).