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!

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!

Icestorm Alguaciles and More

It's funny how the sense of scale and numbers change based on the game system. Back when I was painting 40k, 10 models would be the standard, with 30 being high-end. Painting a single mini was a luxury reserved for commanders and special characters!

Comparatively, Flames of War often sees one painting a hundred infantry in a go (even if they're far smaller) and anywhere from 4-10 tanks let's say at a shot.

Then there's Infinity. So often even getting a box set you cap out at 4 models of a certain type. Sure you may paint 6 overall in a starter set, but it's rare you'd be painting them all at once.

Surprisingly, painting 10 Alguaciles took me a long time! That said, they're done, based, decorated, and ready to see a field. This is all 6 I got from the Operation: Icestorm boxes, plus the four from the SWC box.

First up is the cornrows variant. I am not certain why my camera's blurring. I suspect a dirty lens... Anyway: dark skinned one is given a nice fiery hairset for contrast, and the other is one of my rare 'white' models. You can see a simple arms swap for the male pair gives an interesting look with minimal putty work.

Originally, the one would have just red hair, but I realized it made him look like Ganon, and that's not entirely the look I want.

I've also streamlined my Nomad painting a bit: black guns rather than green, and boots in black as well. The green boots wasn't enough contrast with the pale armour, and really felt forced. I'll reserve my drab green for when I do the USAriadna!

Next up is the other hairstyle. Here you can see again the mundane black guns, and swapped arms from before. The first guy appropriately looks to be aiming down the sight (and has a nice central American brown colour) and the other, thanks to an inadvertent realization of what his face looks like, is pulling a mid-90s frosted tips JT look.

As you can see here, as one sights down his gun like a good Alguacile, the other looks to be saying "Really? You're fighting us? You know we're the Nomads right?" - It's just such a perfect condescending smirk that I had to keep it as visible and highlighted as possible.

Next up are the female Alguacile pair. I converted the pose on one so she's leaning slightly around a corner to get a shot off, and the other's kept in the classical 'totally not a lieutenant' pose. Their hair is likewise nice and bright, with one converted to have short hair sloping around to jaw-length from left to right.

Next up is the first of the SWC pair. the LGL model is very dark skinned, with a funky red flair. I initially thought about theming the hair colours after Hunger Games-like Capitol madness, and decided to pull it in a bit for Corregidor, and go all out for Bakunin when/if I start assembling loads of them.

Next up are the rocket launcher guy (very kindly put in a cool position) and the HMG. For the first, the same brown Central American look is set off with a nice bright Blue Jays blue (go Toronto!). HMG-girl also has blue hair tassels, but black hair. I got a kind of Chun Li vibe off her, and so attempted to make her look more Asian-themed. Perhaps a former Yu Jing 'citizen' who managed to slip cordons and join the Nomad nation!

Well, that's that: 10 Alguaciles based, painted, and ready to play. I also finally managed to get a paintscheme for my Daktari I didn't entirely hate, so I can field the traditional doctor/engi pair.

Her stuffed animal matches her haircolour, and the face is a kind of Indian brown, with glowing blue (augmented) eyes. Her uniform is a lot paler. I decided for Corregidor, I'll do a bit more red than usual, Tunguska will be primarily black, and Bakunin will have more white, with the bone colour with more or less prevalence depending. This will be good for suggesting Corregidor's aggression, Tunguska's sneakiness, and Bakunin's "all varieties in one", as well as tying together well with the Nomad symbol's three in one.

With that down, it's on to the Mobile Brigada, which have been varnished just today, and await photographing, and then all the Tunguska-like elements of Icestorm and beyond!

Geckos Done, Based, and Photographed!

Not that they're going to be a surprise to anyone, what with my in-progress reports, but I finally finished off the Geckos! I'm using bases I custom-printed for the task, with nice front/back arc indicators.

First up is the Mk.12, known as "Huntress" - I decided to keep the glossy look, so even though it obscures a bit of detail in the photos, it really adds a nice bit of shine when you see them in person. You can see on the pictures where I added decals: Two on the Mk.12 itself, (Caution warnings to keep people away from the magazine ejector and shell ports!) Plus, a large warning label behind the head to denote the various important things that are there.

On the back, a few decals denoting what I figure are the Zero-G movement packs. No matter what exact method they're supposed to use to move around, you can guarantee they'll involve things you don't want to be close to without significant protection!

Next up is the very actively posed Combi Rifle Gecko. His decals are much the same. You can also sort of see on the images how unobtrusive the front/back indicators are: Visible enough to be clearly identified in game, but not distracting when displayed.

In this shot, you can see both a clear view of the caution warnings on the massive Combi Rifles, and see the tiny caution warning at the head of the Chain Colt. Especially for a gun like that I assume they'd have warning avoidance indicators!

Also, I'm gradually refining my NMM-with-metallics painting methods. It's easier on models like this that are supposed to be all bright and shiny and well kept. (I dislike the look of rust on Infinity models: I assume they must have figured out some means of keeping them rust-free that far into the future!)

Final shot for this post: A very-close-up shot of the inner leg. I have a large set of warnings there, since that's where the pilot needs to get in. Stuff like where to hold, what to avoid, how not to lose an arm... Only on one leg, but matched on them both. Now I just can't wait to field them in a battle!

You may also be able to notice what the next post will be, hopefully not as delayed as this one: Alguaciles! I've been painting like mad this summer, trying to get Icestorm stuff finished, in part to play with it, and in part to justify getting more models >.>...

Look for that soon!

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...

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.

Not So Camouflaged Update

After great deliberation and much consideration, I stripped the paint from my Geckos and started again. As much as I liked the camouflage look on the infantry, for the TAGs it just didn't quite feel right. (Also, the paint came out fuzzy on the feet for some annoying reason, and that just can't be let go!)

Eventually what I figured was unlike the line infantry, who want to not be readily seen, the Geckos can't really hide, so instead they're trying to draw fire to help keep the nearby infantry safe. Also, in boarding actions, being a large terrifying blazing red behemoth could help when a poor defender hears the ominous thumping preceding its bursting around the corner, weapons blazing!

That said, images time!

So far they're entirely red. At some point I'll decide which plates (if any) will become other colours, and how to pattern them. These lads were airbrushed, with proper Vallejo Air paints, and I'm getting more used to using an airbrush for detailed work, not just coating or basic highlighting. I'm certainly nowhere near an expert yet, but I can at least come up with something competent looking!

Ah, the forest of bitz. Even more than the main body of the tag, these parts make me happy I'm going the red route. The bright shiny red shoulder pads alone make it worth the effort.

Next up is careful highlighting of edges, and determining if (and by how far) to highlight brighter than red. If you're not careful, the red starts looking either orange or pink.

I also have finished Tomcats photos, I'll probably do a post with them this Sunday.

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).

Wildcats, Hellcats, and Prowlers; Oh My!

I have finally gotten the first 'wave' of my Infinity painting done! Ten models ready to be matte coated and based as soon as I can get good weather and some spare time to do it. In the meanwhile, pictures for all!

Pay no attention to the background...

I struggled for a while on how to do their symbols. The entire reason for this paintscheme is that it makes more sense for a military unit to be drab than bright red. That is contrasted by the fact that the Nomads primary colour is red. (Also known as the least camouflaging colour you can pick next to "dayglo"!)

I did a photoshop mockup of where I'd put the symbols in each case, and toyed with them until I found a setup I didn't dislike. First I'll show the easier ones to solve, then on to the harder choices.

The Prowler was one of the first models I painted (and one of the first I bought: Such an awesome pose.) He's the test-case for drab, and other than his pistol's grip, is remarkably subtle compared to some of the other schemes I've seen of him. The symbols for him seemed pretty straightforward; Nomad on the left shoulder, Bakunin on the right, so any enemy that spots him will see the "national" pride, whereas his allies will know where he came from.

Next up were the Hellcats. Being troops that scream in from a dropship on jets of antigrav (?), I was less concerned about 'stealth', which is why their shoulderpads have a nice distinctive Corregidor and Nomad icon. The back of their burners have squad identifiers (3-1, 3-2, 3-3) in case I ever have to distinguish them quickly stats-wise.

Ahh the Wildcats. After much debating, I decided to use that random circular patch on their right shoulder to be the Nomad symbol location, and put Corregidor's icon beside it. Their unit identifiers (4-1, 4-2, 4-3) were likewise done in low-vis beside it, with a kind of sci-fi font styling. Since I didn't want big obvious indicators on their leading shoulder, I decided to do an imitation QR code on each. I figure any Nomad helmet and HUD unit will know to read the codes to indicate "Nomad", and perhaps even name, rank, and branch of service. This way you don't lose your IFF even if you're hit with electric countermeasures (just hopefully your allies haven't been as well), and no enemies will be immediately able to identify.

I did struggle with this at first, because though they are line troopers, it's implied in the fluff they're often called upon to do shipboard combat. I figure in such situations, with cramped corridors, and a race against the clock and overwhelming odds, it's more important to whip around a corner and recognize an ally. Also, camouflage in an enemy ship would be difficult to guess ahead of time. Eventually I went more subtle because it kept the theme more consistent.

Also note the Wildcat's random disks at the front of the armour. Again, since Corregidor is often called upon to engage in zero-g or hostile spaceborn environments, having on-suit lamps that aren't attached to a gun or hand-held would be incredibly useful. I figure they're suit lamps (off when in daylight, of course) and perhaps that left-forearm device is as well.

Thus is my war against glowy armour on stealth units going strong! Since these photos I gave a dark, dark cyan wash to the helmet visors to make them richer, and to the gems to help settle the layers in.

Soon, pics of the Reverend Custodier, Zondbots, Intruder, Alguacile... I wonder if I'll have them all done by the time Icestorm shows up!