Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

so this project almost went in the trash. i built it about three months ago out of plasticard, greenstuff, sculpty and some left over carnifex bits. the wings were a real pain to tent out of plasticard. i had to cut paper versions of the individual pieces to figure out the fit. then made plastic versions and then heated them on low in the oven till they were malleable. what a trial that was to get all the edges to fit. then after weeks of work the whole thing was finally ready to paint. i have finished my nids army using the dip technique and i discovered to my horror that the dip does NOT work well when used over large mostly flat surface like the wings. AAARRRGH. huge drips and streaks visable everywhere. it looked so bad that i almost tossed this out four or five times. it got dropped, chipped, broken and stuffed into a drawer for the last month or two. then yesterday i was procrastinating on Calculus and i pulled it out and reassembled it with some superglue and then gave it a real paint job. i was able to simulate the dip technique fairly well with inks. so here it is. the nearly trashed flyrant. hope yall enjoy.

I like it! Its kinda like a giant flying ant or termite. The bottom legs are pretty interesting, I imagine it swooping down and snagging a rhino or something.

Its different but thats cool. It reminds me of Ghidra or some of those old Japanese monster movies.

"Ho! Flyrant is attacking the City! Run!"

Nice sculpting on the body- I assume you GS'ed that?

I do have to agree that the bottom legs are... interesting. They're pretty out of proportion with the rest of the fig, and the revered joints don't quite work. It sort of mars an otherwise great conversion. Switching them (which would flip them back to the way they were originally sculpted) would look a lot less awkward.

Other than that, great work. You did do a good job of inking the wings, especially over earlier work. Nice.

appreciate the commentary and critique.
the very back pair of legs are definitely a departure from the norn (cant resist the norn queen pun, sorry), but if figure talons facing the front would work like sickles when it swept over the battlefield. also better to impale food for the hive mind with.
the body is actually made a majority of tinfoil wrapped around a bunch of twisted up coat hanger and wire. then i covered the whole mess with scultpy and baked it for 15 min in the oven. below are a couple of pics, one of the very beginning of the flyrant before it ever emerged from its birthing membrane, and the other is of a finished trygon/red terror. the try/terror only took a matter of a few hours to finish and paint. much easier and more scucsessful than the tyrant.

forgive my ignorance but what is the "dip technique"? i would assume that it's actually dipping the model in paint, but wouldn't that make it very blobby?

to answer your question, the dip is a easy method for painting figures fairly fast and it produces a good appearance and varnishes the figure at the same time.
you need minwax polyshades tudor satin finish. 8oz is enough to finish an entire army. for figures like the one pictured above painting them takes about 20 minutes from start to finish.
i play hive fleet kracken so to begin with i prime the figures white, and then overcoat them with bleached bone spraypaint. once the whole mess is dried i do all of the plates and exposed chiten in strait blood red, teeth are skull white, and the eyes are yellow. for added detail on some of the larger bugs like the tyrant and the fex i take chestnut ink and a very fine brush and i make thin leangthwise lines on the plates to simulate striation in the chiten, fibers reinforcing the armor and the like.
then once its all dried i take it outside to avoid nasty vapor and using a disposable craft brush with fairly good quality soft bristle i paint the minwax over the entire model. work fast and dont apply to much to areas with big flat areas or the dip will gather and make blobs and drips. dont brush to much on one spot on the mini or i have found that repeated strokes and the chemical action of the dip can remove layers of the paint underneath.
if you do a whole batch of models try to spend less than a minute on each one, spreading the dip over them. brush more on areas where you want more shading. at first you will think... oh my god... ive ruined it. but in five minutes or so the dip will have gathered in the recessed areas enough to provide quite a nice level of shading. if you keep a pot of mineral spirits near by you can use a brush dipped in mineral spirits to spread out unfortunate drips that form in unwanted places like on the tip of claws and over eyes etc., as long as you get to them within about five minutes.
this is a great way to paint a lot of minis fast. it works well with figures that are meant to have a little shine to them like nids and plague marines etc because they should look a little slimy etc. use lighter colors than the ones you want the finished product to have because the dip tones things down a bit. practice on spare bits and look around the net. you will find whole sites devoted to this tech. have fun.

You have to use the Trygon in our next Apoc game.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

That Trygon is awesome on a tail. Nice work.

I have mixed feelings about the hind limbs, but those spots turned out GREAT! They make it look slightly more real in my opinion

jfrazell wrote:It reminds me of Ghidra or some of those old Japanese monster movies.

"Ho! Flyrant is attacking the City! Run!"

It's GHIDORAH, thank you very much... sheesh... All these decades smashing Tokyo and they still get my name wrong. If it's any easier, you can just refer to me as "Monster Zero."



Ghidorah

Well if it helps I can make the "enter Ghidorah" monster soundtrack...