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!

Iguana post more often, really I do!

Well, it's been a while! I swear I've been painting and all, I just keep forgetting to post or to photograph!

This is a bit an older post, but I finally re-found the photos for this and have decided to put them online at long last:

This is my entry from Q2 into the Mayacast Contest, the ever-awesome Infinity Nomad Iguana TAG.

Starting out, I decided to go with a more Central-American theme with this TAG, having done Africa with the two Geckos. The TAG's pilot is named Yupanki, which is a famous warrior/military leader, and translates roughly to "With Honour". It's been painted to stay consistent with the Geckos in colour scheme, except for that ominous and I'm sure in no way relevant right hand paint!

You may also notice the TAG is converted! I wasn't a fan of the angry point, so I decided to shift the pose to be a broad-shape shooting stance. With the belt feed HMG, it looked more dramatic that way.

Here you can see a more top-to-bottom pose for the TAG. I have the same safety warnings across the guy as with the Geckos, and while I considered a bunch of integrated black and white striping, I felt the full red just felt more in keeping with how I've been painting my TAGs so far.

The tail, from behind: this tail was annoying to paint. It's a lot of segments, and I primarily airbrushed it. You can also see the warning labels on the ammo hopper, and in general my non-metallic-metal styled metallic painting. It keeps it shiny IRL, and still has a nice light-to-dark.

The markings on the side of the leg and the shoulder pads are, in Mayan and Aztec writings, essentially translated are "Death Lizard" (on the shoulderpad in this case) and "Storm Lord/Chief" - I figure this pilot, with the honour of fighting in a full Iguana, has quite a bit of ego to him!

The colours are personal artistic license, but as with the Geckos, I want to make my TAGs look as much as possible like they've been decorated by crews with a great love for machines, and a bit less a love of military regulation. No idea what I'll do for the Salamander once it gets resculpted!

Upcoming should be the Van Zant from the most recent contest, as well as (hopefully) some of the other wild things I've been working on. I'll also try to limit the amount of downtime between posts, and actually get my butt back in gear painting and not just assembling and buying!

As always, happy painting!

Staging an Intervention

With the Create Your Fate contest over, I'm able to return to more just-for-me pursuits, and so I have decided to show off my Interventors!

These two are the supreme hackers in the Human Sphere. Not necessarily scary combatants, but with a Hacking Device Plus, and Fast Pandas (shown soon) they are able to make any tech-advanced enemy quake.

They are both dark skinned, a practice I am refining. The one has a bright flame-coloured yellow-orange hair to contrast their mostly black appearance.

I figure Interventors are about as pure Tunguska as one can get, hence their almost exclusively black outfits. The slinky armour is highlighted a bit heavier to seem perhaps grey, and just to provide some contrast, their shoulderpads and gunbelts are Nomad Red, with white featured on their gloves.

Their outfits of course scream "TRON", so I had to decorate the one's personality disc glowing blue, and that led the charge for them to glow blue from a few places. This time it's not an ODD or Thermoptic Camo, but perhaps sensors, HUDs, or indicators that they're not meant to rush in to the front line!

Last but not least, the FastPandas! The photos are slightly oversaturated, but it's really tough to balance the light so their bright white bits and dark black bits both show! I decided to slightly differentiate them, in part by accident, and gave one spats (He's the dapper gent) and both were carefully posed to seem as agressive as a non-combatant plump robo-panda can be!

That finishes all the models I've had painted recently, leaving only a super-fun project to go before I need to start taking all kinds of new pictures to put up! I've decided that as I paint my newest attempt to win a Mayacast Masterglass, I will set to work converting a PHR force so the mechs feel a bit more appropriately dynamic than just "I am here, I am a mech." Sadly, not much I'll be able to do about their infantry.

Enjoy!

A Whisper on the Board

Well, I've been busy the last while! There's been a lot of things happening on my end creatively, but very little that would work its way around to an interesting blog post. That said, I have managed to make time for more photos!

Next up from Icestorm are the Spektrs. They're infiltration specialists, equipped in O:IS with combi-rifles and blades, though also able to take boarding shotguns (very scary) and mines. Their true advantage in the game though is Thermoptic Camo, or camouflage that renders them invisible from both the chromatic spectrum, and the infra-red. (They never say whether or not it helps with UV, but who knows!) If you want an idea of what this is like, Ghost in the Shell makes great use of it.

In-game, they're stealthy units that aren't ninja. They're far better at range than close-quarters combat, but boy will they be a nuisance for your opponent to take care of.

Coming from Tunguska like the Grenzers, I had to go with a similar moody scheme. The default scheme puts a lot of white on them, which to me just means really obvious head target as soon as the camo goes down. I went again with a more muted red, a shiny black, and despite my protestations against elsewhere, glowy bits. In this case, my assumption is the glow is the TO Camo device's output.

They again are somewhat boring in paintscheme, but I'd much rather have them somewhat boring but logical, rather than crazy colours and silly as a result. I figure Nomads, especially Tunguskans, are no-nonsense sorts. You can see I've even done a black blade except for the razor cutting edge for the one to the right.

Also visible here is my conversion of a Spektr with Sniper Rifle. I've pulled the other arm set from the Grenzer, kept the shoulderpads, and, thanks to a wonderfully adaptable body pose, made the second Spektr look like he's leaning into a shot. Possibly over a building parapet, possibly around a corner... The head realignment went easier than the arm adjustments, and saves me from having to use the Jethro Tull Sniper (the old Spektr) which is a pose that gets more bizarre the more you look at it!

We're coming to the end of what I have finished painting shortly! I guess I'll have to pull out the brushes and paint soon, get some more finished off. In the meantime, enjoy and keep painting!

Grenzers

Continuing on the theme of Icestorm models I've finally photographed, we have the Grenzers!

The one on the left wields the default sniper rifle, all lefty-style, while the one on the right brandishes a weapons combination I doubt CB will be quick to put out in box or blister: The Combi-Rifle.

The paintscheme for this pair was relatively close to their 'official' scheme, with my usual blue glow, really highlighted with a bunch of black clothing. The black itself is mostly an edge highlight method, and the red is the same as on the Alguaciles, to make it a bit muted. While they end up kind of looking uniform black, the blue and red elements help break up that feel, and why shouldn't they be black? They're snipers that sit on a rooftop!

I'm also trying out a theme overall across the Nomads: Anything Corregidor is themed with more red elements, anything Tunguska is given more black, and anything Bakunin gets more white. The drab tan will be used on any frontline mooks heavily, and placed where I feel it'll fit the scheme well.

In case you're wondering, the other set of arms is taken from the Spektr, and it's a testament to how well the poses are set that even with an arm swap from a Spektr, the pose still works! The flowing cape is cool looking, with enough detail lines on it that you can decide to paint it in a wide variety of ways.

Next time I'll have Spektrs, but in the meantime happy holidays and keep gaming!

Mobile Brigada

After a long hiatus, I finally have photos of my Mobile Brigada. Currently, they have a gloss coat on them, but I may overlay that with a matte varnish, at least on the armour. I like them shiny, but I'm not certain I like them quite so shiny.

First up is the converted Mobile Brigada with Combi-Rifle. For the sake of Ice Storm, he has this weapon for most of the time, so I figured I might as well convert him with one. It's also convenient that there's a profile of this with tinbot, who I'll have fun converting in a little while.

His look, since the red-paint blog post, now has select white shin guards, a unique number (which I intend to carry across the entire cluster of them), and white detailing on either shoulder pad, as well as on the mask. There's multiple layers of faceplate, and I wanted to make each one distinct. The gun's a basic matte black, and the glowy vents are my usual light turquoise over white. Much like the Geckos, my figuring is the Mobile Brigada are meant to take heat from enemies, letting lighter armed infantry get away with minimal shots, so they're bright red, rather than a typical combat-subtle drab.

Next up is the converted Multi-Rifle armed Brigada. I didn't want to just do same pose different weapon, so this guy's been converted to actually be holding his gun. It was an interesting conversion to make, and was done before the box was announced with an HMG pose almost identical. The shoulderpads' insignia is the usual Nomad symbol, combined with the one for Corregidor. The upper right arm is scratch-built in essence, attempting to mimic the armour plating already there, and the head reposition was remarkably easy, needing minimal puttying.

Those guys aside, let's talk for a second about the new Mobile Brigada box...

(Taken from the Corvus Belli store page)

First, I love the look of the HMG and Boarding Shotgun versions. Very aggressive, very combat-but-not-shooting.

Then there's the female models. I don't mind the Missile Launcher's pose, but why. Why are there boob-plates? They're so ineffective, and unlike light armour, where you could argue they need to not be massively clunky, heavy armour has no similar problems!

That, and why is the hacker variant directing traffic? Why is she armed with a pistol? I think this could have been a time for CB to make really interesting combat-pose models, distinctively female without boobplates, and a hacker who is first and foremost a heavy infantry with a big scary gun, and a hacker second. I would love for them to take more influence from Ghost in the Shell, and less from Minority Report!

Also, final issue, and this is a big one, for the Mobile Brigada hacker: she doesn't have a backpack. Somehow, unlike every single other MB soldier, she has no power plant, no heavier weapon I guess, and if you ask CB, they can't even send one as a backup. Heck, they couldn't even send a fourth in the box and let me decide whether I want it or not. We've seen such an increasing standard from Corvus Belli over the last while, and this seems a step back in an annoying way.

Anyway, next time I shall have Grenzers or Spektrs, (or both, I guess) almost rounding out the Icestorm adventure!

Gecko Shoulders Completed!

After the difficulty of creating the Escher shoulder, the remaining three actually went fairly smoothly and quickly! I haven't had time to upload them, but they each took maybe a few hours of effort.

On the same TAG as the Escher shoulder, I did a roughly-transcribed starfield, as though someone was using a thick brush and not too concerned with borders. I gave it a slight highlight from black to grey, then added a nice simple starpattern.

Then, in the same way one usually paints flat panels (highlighting from dark) we have the TAG's name (Space Gecko) and an adorable gecko in 1950s style imagined spacesuit! (Including helmet sheen!)

Next up was the name shoulder pad for my other TAG, which I decided to call "Huntress" - This is a fairly straightforward idea, which I decided to do because I figure at least one TAG had to have the under-dressed female painted on. In this case, a warrior woman holding a shield spearing a tiger (perhaps the Yu Jing tiger?)

Highlighted as with the gecko; the tiger's a mix of orange and brown, the skin tone is leather brown mixed with gradually increasing layers of pale fleshtone from Vallejo. The shield as you can see will be the Nomad icon.
 

And here it is finished! I decided to go wild on hair, (they are Nomads after all) and painting tigers to not look like weird orange wolves is hard! I contemplated covering her up in a trailing sheet or toga-like wrap of some sort, but decided it was more honest to just go for it.

For the final shoulder I decided to go a slightly different direction. After trying for a while to look up African art styles, I realized a lot of them either don't lend themselves well to shoulder painting, or have become incredibly overdone. (Much like the 'random Japanese/Chinese characters tattoo'.)

To that end, I decided to switch to the other major Terrestrial influence on Nomad culture; Central America!

I did some image searches for Mexican and similar art styles, and decided to try to imitate a gecko done up in that kind of pattern.

I don't really have progress photos because the interior painting went kind of fast, but behold, a Mexican styled gecko! With this shoulder painted, and all four coated in varnish to make sure I don't mess up their painting down the line, I finally got to assemble the geckos, so they don't look really silly with stubby little arms and massive legs! Now it's time for clean-up painting, tweaking highlights, and then applying decals. They will probably be put on the back burner for a bit with my Morats as I attempt to custom-make transparent bases for my Infinity stuff.

Up next, in all likelihood, Trollbloods! (Because I am good at focusing on a single game...)

Gecko Escher Madness

Well, gradually things are calming down, and I'm actually getting painting time!

To that end, I finally motivated myself to get done something I'd been staring down for some time and trying to work up the nerve to start.

I speak, of course, of the Gecko shoulderpads.

First up is the Combi-Rifle off-shoulder: I decided to do a neat Gecko/Lizard themed pattern on one that may be familiar to some folks, namely:

(From Wikipedia)

Escher's an artist I love looking at, and I had to recreate it if I could. I don't know the size of the original, but I suspect it was larger than the Gecko!

Sorry for the blurriness; cell camera fun...

The process remains, I suspect, the same: Carefully dot thinned black paint in a hex formation, after which I connected the dots with thin traced lines. This allows me to rough out where the gecko limbs need to be, and how I need to line them up.

Next came a rough initial paint of the geckos. At this stage there are still a few flaws, and the paint isn't too thick, but it gives me an idea of what I need to sort out, where things will go, etc.

The return of real camera!

A second coat followed the first, cleaning up all the lines, thickening the paint, and getting rid of the remnants of the hex grid on the solid-red geckos.

And then it was time for a lot of washes, re-highlights, and cleanups! There's a painted gradation from the left side to right side, since the gun will be held directly into the air. (The eyes have been cleaned up since these photos were taken.)

As a final step, the whole shoulderpad was hit with a coat of gloss to seal it in. I'll probably go over it with a matte finish afterwards, but for now I want to make darn sure it's not going to get chipped or marred!

It was a fun if mind-bending paint, trying to remember where various limbs should go, making sure the paints were thin enough, trying to follow the lines properly. It ends up looking good though! I did have a friend ask why I wasn't doing an entire tag in this pattern, and... I think I'd just snap if I had to fit this pattern around legs and hands!

Next up is the Huntress shoulderpad, which is about half done so far. I've finally settled on all four shoulder designs, so they should be along in good order!

And now, back to painting...

Pre-Wedding Update: Geckos, Morats, Artwork!

With my wedding about a week away, I'm sure I'll have _loads_ of painting time shortly. That said, there's some stuff I've managed to get work done on in the interim.

Morat skin! It's a bit glossy at the moment, but it's been highlighted from a purplish colour up through red to dark fleshtone. It adds a vibrancy to the skin, and prevents it from suffering a pinkish fade.

The faces on these two is a bit more limited in visibility than...

...the Huntress! Here you can see a lot of skin painting, because she's got a lot exposed. I am amazed at the amount of detail sculpted into this dangerous woman. You can see all kinds of minor muscle clusters around her ribs, as well as more realistic folds where her body twists. With this much skin you can see how the red seems to glow!

And if not, here's a nice close-up of her to get the idea. Again, I'm not certain I like the level of gloss, but since I'll be layering over with varnish coats, it'll not really hold through. It was interesting trying to highlight skin so it looks natural, but in a colour no normal skin is!

But wait, there's more...

I have been sketching for a few days trying to figure out what I would do for Gecko shoulderpads. I have one or two I know I want to paint on, but I need to pick the "Named" shoulderpads.

I themed this off nose art from bombers, which will hopefully explain the mix of weird/random, and 'sexualized' sketches (if you can make out the tiny doodles)

This is typically how I decide my freehand before actually applying it. A lot of sketching to try to figure out how detailed I'll need to go, and to get an idea of what it'll look like in the end.

Soon, I hope, I'll have after-pics of awesome Gecko shoulderpads! After here meaning after painting, after moving, and after wedding...

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).

Geckos Nearly Done

Well, despite the madness of the holidays, I've still managed to get some painting done! The Morats have been getting some armour painting, though I'm not certain how I'll paint the main plates. More importantly, I've made forward progress on the Geckos!

I love how, with no TAG arms, they look so stumpy!

First up is the main bodies. I've been carefully washing with agrax into the cracks, and even more carefully drybrushing white and edge highlighting to get the sharp redness.

Put 'em up... you wanna go?

It's been hard getting just the right amount of highlight. As much as his paintscheme is awesome, the main Infinity painter I feel does his models too pink, not enough red. To that end I've been trying to carefully only highlight with white, and if it goes too strong, I cover it in red and try again. I'm also trying to make the armour not look metallic red, which can be a challenge.

Now I need to determine where, if any, to depict white stripes and alternate colour plates. I may do the pilot's arm bands, torso, and chestplate in black, as well as certain elements of the helmet and legs in white. I also purchased a Gundam decal sheet so I can do a lot of appropriately accurate "Caution" warnings and arrows, since every real military vehicle has loads of those just in case. I'll have to consider where on the TAG warrants such a warning!

The metal bits are done in my favourite NMM-with-metallics method, going right from almost-black to mithril silver. I've decided to go a bit brighter than I normally would for military troops, because these are TAGs driven by pilots who know they're going to be spotted, might as well be flashy!

After I decide where all the proper military elements will go, I shall also be adding pilot art. (Think bomber art circa WWII.) I need to decide what style to do though: I can't just go scantily clad women for both! I'll likely pull inspiration from said bombers, and also any Starcraft Terran Marines I can find; they often have neat elements of the sort.

Tomcats Coming Along

An updated paint post at long last!

I finally managed to get decent enough lighting to take pictures, and was advanced enough in my painting that I felt it was even worth taking pictures. Without more delay, behold the Badger Squad of the Tomcat regiment!

First up the Heavy Weapons guy, and the Engineer, getting close to finished...

...followed by the Doctor (and sneaking in the side, a Clockmaker).

I've painted the black parts of their armour now, and the red is washed to be as bright as I want it for them. Similarly, the pale armour is painted, with its usual limited brightness scheme (matte armour saves lives!) Since photographing I've managed to paint the 'gems', and will soon be doing final touch-ups, and symbols.

The helmet pattern was decided somewhat by accident; I didn't want the entire helmet to be drab, and when I painted the first stripe and noticed how the pattern went, I decided that the stylistic paint and black band would both help imply that they can see through their helmet, and break up the surfaces (justifying the three layers).

I'm really happy with how they've turned out so far, I'm just hoping I won't mess them up at a later stage...

As you can see here, the doctor's chest pad needs a bit more blending on the black to pull the layers together. I went with a brighter scheme for the Tomcats because unlike the other Corregidor units, these folks are first and foremost a rescue team. There's a reason most first responder outfits are bright and noticeable, and so that carries through to their uniforms. Their backpacks, belts, and pouches are still the utilitarian colour I'm using across the force, figuring like any military, they're going to save on material costs if they can, where they can.

Like the doctor, so the engineer: utilitarian garb, bright emergency fatigues, and some kind of strange device in her hand (presumably to analyze or repair) that I'll have to make look distinctive.

Here's the one Tomcat in the cluster that doesn't muck about with 'healing' or 'helping': This guy's all damage. Combi-rifle (the new version is so much more practical looking) and a portable missile launcher up and ready to go. He's going to be a nightmare to fix to his base, but he looks pretty damn cool.

No real update on the Zondcat that goes with them just yet, I've been focusing too much on the infantry to deal with the mass of red she requires.