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Hi, this is heartserenade and welcome to my P&M blog! This blog will be focused on the creation of my army, the Knights of Antioch. They’re based on the Knights Templar and I’m going full-throttle on the crusader theme. If you’re an art history or iconography nut, you’ll see the references on the emblems, symbols and even the art style used on the freehand murals and paintings.

But first, we’ll start with the new additional units in my army, the assault terminators. You might be familiar with this photo:





It’s in the front page! Huzzah! I still feel overwhelmed and pleasantly surprised that I won, especially when seeing that my competition is really pretty darn good. In this first post I’ll discuss the process of coming up with said diorama and the thoughts behind it.

First off, I want the diorama to tell a story. I also want them to look like they’re really fighting—it’s a duel after all. So… to the bits box!
After a bit of searching, I realized five things:

1) Most of my bits are SM-based. No surprise there since I’m collecting a Space Marine army after all.

2) My other miniatures are mostly from the D&D minis game. We use it for well, D&D games (DMed by yours truly). When I was newer to the collectible miniature scene I thought they were the bee’s knees. Now I can see that they’re mostly terrible sculpts except for the bigger ones. And with commissions and work, I don’t think one month is enough to paint dragons (even though that would be awesome!)

3) I have some random statues I was planning on using for terrain. I didn’t know they were Harry Potter chess pieces when I bought them for cheap (Php 20 each, roughly half a dollar) from a street vendor. I just thought they were awesome. Now that I think about it, they’re either cheap Chinese fakes or factory defects: they have few damages here and there and the queen lights up at random.

4) I recently bought a box of assault terminators. Tried out some poses and even without greenstuffing, one can achieve really dynamic and interesting poses. I do wonder why a few people don’t try to model their assault termies more than the “we’re standing and holding weapons as straight as possible” pose.
5) My army is mostly unpainted, so painting these assault termies would kill two birds in one stone! Now I should trying to assemble stuff with blutac and see how it goes. FORTH! And fear no darkness!





I got some coasters we don’t use and that became the base of the diorama. The bishop piece was meant to give me an option if I changed my mind and use it instead. My friend told me the queen looks better and well, judgemental, so I didn’t change it.

Interesting tidbit: the original concept was to make it a chess-inspired duel. One figure was supposed to be colored in white, the other black and the floor will be checkered marble. Title would be “Stalemate” or some chess-related term (“Two Knights Game” is a close second, “Knight’s Gambit” is third). So I looked up some marble tutorials online and came up with this:





Not bad, I said to myself. I’m like a magician now, I turn wood into marble! Genius! (Yes, that's my leg)

I showed it to a friend and she pointed out that a) it was on the wrong scale (It would look normal for human-sized people but the marbly effect would be lost on 28mm tall men) and b) it doesn’t look too marble-y. Grumbling like the grumbler that I am, I tried to come up with another solution for the checkered floor. After repriming, I painted small veins, divided the floor into small boxes and cut up some cardboard painted like black marble for the black tiles. I tried it out without gluing and it kinda looked like this:





It’s not good to view it up close because you’ll see the brush strokes but from a distance (that would look great on a 800x 1000 jpeg) it looks fantastic. I left it for a while and worked on the models.

One thing I didn’t like with the Assault Terminators kit is the storm shields—they look too small for heavily-armored super soldiers. So with BT bits and some plasticard I made my own shields just like how I did it with my HQ and added battle damage. Too bad it didn’t show on the final diorama photo.





I painted up the supposedly white piece first (the bald guy. I named him Alphonse) to see how he matches with the base. White and a splash of red and black are the colors of my chapter, and I would want to use him in my army too so I used those colors. Of course they are knights templar, so aside from the St. George’s Cross on the left shoulder pad I also added a Maltese-like Cross on the left leg. (You can also see the unpainted second figure on the blurry background)





Same friend from before pointed out that he lacks white color on him to justify he’s a white piece, and he kinda looked like a superhero with red boots.

Again, she made sense. Sadly.

And I need to paint those darn boke-fied scouts.





Thinking for a solution for that, I attached the hammer and shield and wondered how much more white would I need. I did some scripture scribbles on the black parts of the thigh armor and the right shoulderpad. Then I debated what color to use for the power weapon, or to just make it metallic-colored. What won me over the blue color is that I’m using mostly warm colors on the figure and a splash of a cool color would provide contrast. Blue it is!





One thing I considered is should I use OSL? I opted not to since most likely it would be a “day” shot for the final photo, and any light source from the said hammer would look unnatural with a strong daylight. I made it look electric-y since, well, it's a thunderhammer. Duh. AND I CAN'T PAINT THUNDER BECAUSE IT'S A SOUND!

Anyway...





What I did with the superhero feet is divide the red and add some white. It broke down the huge red parts quite nicely, and made it look heraldic and knightly. Hark! How nicely it looketh! At least in my eyes.

I’ll continue this after doing some more commissioned painting and the rest of the TH/SS squad. Thanks for reading!

Nice to see a blog about/including the winning entry, even though i really shouldnt, i'll admit it got my vote. look forward to more black templars.

I thought your entry was the only one to really capture the essence of a duel, you had put effort into dynamic posing and making the outcome unclear: The two keystones of a good duel diorama.

Btw might i suggest a name change for the blog? I would suggest 'How to win the Dakka Painting Competition' i know it's slightly Obnoxious but it will guarantee more traffic.

That sounds too pompous, even for me.

I just changed inserted "Winning Entry" on the title. I guess that's enough.

Also, in the future I would also be adding commissioned stuff in here, and some terrain pieces I made. This blog will be random! Random, I tell you~!

Also, thank you for the praise! I really did try to make it look dynamic, and added the statue for contrast in order to highlight the uh, dynamism. Is dynamism a word? Oh my Lord, it is, according to spellchecker! My point is, they won't look as dynamic without the stoic statue in the background.

So you finally carried out your threats of starting a blog!

You already know what I think about your entry (awesome!), and I really want to see what else is produced on your desk!

Count me as subscribed!

Well I was thinking of doing a blog ever since I joined for the purpose of informing my clients what's happening with their precious miniatures (Sorry h0r0 and yuber for your delayed minis!). What prevented me is my other freelance, non-miniature related works and I lack a good quality camera... and the skills to go with it.

And seeing that I'm friends with professional photographers (and even work under some from time to time), my pride wouldn't allow it! It wouldn't.

Until I realize that pride is only for lions.








Typing up the next post. Stay tuned!

Ooooh, the Dakka admin gave me a GIF to put on my sig! Shiny. Now I have to adjust my banner for it. I also made a temporary button for my folio which includes both my works related to the hobby and other illustrations, drawings and paintings.

Temporary because it’s ugly, and it lacks at least 2 pixels to align with the main banner. I’ll fix that later on.

Anyway, took the suggestion of changing the title to generate more traffic. Let me just say that no, I don’t think I’m the bee’s knees and I’m still far from the skill level I’d like to be in and I always get a little sad when I see works that are vastly superior to mine, and there are lots of said work here on Dakka. I wish I don’t come out as a bragger or anything.

So getting back to my diorama, since the first model is done and the base is semi-done, I put them together to get a glimpse of the final look. And… I was not happy. First off, with the extremely detailed base it stole the attention away from the model. The base is supposed to support the model composition-wise, not steal attention from it. So even if I spent hours reading marble tutorials and spent more hours trying to mimic them, I have to let it go.

Reprime ALL the stuff!

I opted for a desert-y base (they’re templars, after all. Crusading in the desert fits them like a bowtie fits on Matt Smith.), so with some wall putty, sand and pebbles I turned it into a bit of arid landscape. I decided to add some ruined, partially buried stone bricks to break the monotonous surface, plus it ties them in with the statue, which I made with the same color as the bricks. The bricks were made using normal white Styrofoam, and covered it with wall putty for texture. Also slathered wall putty on some parts of the oval statue “base” to further tie in the statue with the rest of the base. I don’t want it to look like I just dropped it in the middle and call it a day.

Mrs. Statue was given a slightly warm grey. I also watched a bit of Kingdom of Heaven for reference and saw that the walls of Jerusalem in the film had black stuff on them and they’re not just yellow. I tried emulating those, but failed. Still, it looked decent and realistic enough, although it wasn’t the effect I was looking for. Sigh.
Blurry photos are blurry. Also, FLASH! Photographers, please don’t judge me.



You can see here the imperfections on the left hip side of the queen. And if you're observant enough you'll notice that she only got 8 fingers. I think she had an accident with her sword or something.



Oh wow, product placement! Grumbacher, you helped me survive my art student days. Thank you.



Aaaaand more photos plus a sneak preview of my messy messy messy room/studio.















Oh wow... I can see my toe on the left side!

Ugh. You can see my inexperience with camera with the changing colors. DON'T JUDGE ME I DON'T KNOW WHAT WHITE BALANCE IS. AND NO I'M NOT FAT STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT.


And now I placed the model with the base. The model is standing out but at the same time it doesn’t look out of place. Which is the trick: you want it to stand out because it is the focal point but not stand out too much that would make the piece disjointed.



At this moment my thought was “Guess I’m really scrapping the chess idea. Sigh. It’s okay, it sounded pretentious anyway.”

Haha you've got a cool writing style, it makes me laugh
Anyway, its really cool to see how you did all of this!
And a bit of advice: The white balance in your photos is different from image to image.... how'd you do it? lol, kiddin. What camera do you use? My mom and dad are photographers (and I also take crappy photos, see my blog) but after some time I eventually learned about white balance
I'd say take your cam, search for the WB button and put it on "Sunlight", "Cloudy" or whatever appys, thats all there is to it.

It's my sister's camera. Will grab it from her when I see her. I really should buy a camera of my own.

I loved your minis when I first saw them, and even more now!

@capitansolstice

Thanks! Hopefully you'll love them more as I get better with this painting schmainting. I believe I still have a long way to go.

Anyway, still no photos of Edward (the beefeater moustache guy) since I forgot to retrieve it from my friend who took the photos. DAGGUMIT. I think I'm getting old, forgetting stuff like this. For now, I'll just give you an adorable cat.




At the moment I have two dreadnoughts and five TWC figures I need to paint for commission. I also have another 33 tac marines to paint, 15 scouts, 3 TH/SS termies, and a Landspeeder Storm, all basecoated and ready to be painted when I find the time. Oh sweet lord that's a lot, and when it comes to my miniatures I paint ever so slowly. I've been thinking of investing on an airbrush for a long time now so that I can do quick jobs but I dunno... I mean I can see the appeal of airbrushed models but sometimes they look too, uh, airbrushed (for lack of a better word). Aside from the time-saving it doesn't really appeal to me, so maybe I'll use an airbrush in the future for general basecoating but I would still prefer to do blending by hand.


I used my gift certificate from miniwargaming today! YAAAAAAAAAAAY! At first I was like, whoaaa shipping for $75?!? It's really hard to live in the Philippines...

Thankfully I found a solution and sent it to a friend who lives in the US. He'll come back in May and I can wait patientlyyyyyy. Just a heads up: I ordered a Garden of Morr and a regiment of zombies from Mantic Games. Prepare for a horror-themed terrain in the near future!





LOOK AT THAT CAT! LOOK AT IT! IT'S TOO ADORABLE TO LIVE!

Adorable cat is adorable.


EDIT: I DUB THEE MITTENZ!

It was a very deserving winner and I am enjoying watching your efforts leading up to the final entry - keep it up!

Damn you and your adorable cat! I had to look at it for over two minutes with a big stupid smile on my face until I could flee its grasp!

@Norn King Yeah. Cat screams "Mittens" all over.

@Arakasi Oh, glad you think so! I'm really impressed with your work and truthfully I wouldn't be surprised if you won the competition.

Okay, still no camera and no photos. I've spent my breaks from painting commission works with staring longingly at Mantic zombie photos.



THAT is insane. I wish I can make a diorama of the same caliber as that in the future. So far my OSLs are just Oh. SLs and my freehand is still not on the level where I can confidently say that my miniature painting is on par with my non-miniature paintings and works.

Would anyone know how to make good LED tutorials? I'm not good with electronics and I would like to learn something like that, and make something like this with my Gardenn of Morr and my zombies:



And a Doctor Who spoilercetion reference:




Since there's still no photos, I would talk about my army (in which those two termies are a part of) in the next post, from its conception and inspirtation to what I have now. Cheers!


Edit: Would anyone know what would the zombies be a good counts-as in a 40k army? Orks (but they have no guns or weapons)?

That first diorama is awesome
I would say zombies would be good as IG conscripts

Hey I didn't realise you were Filipino when I voted!

Congrats on the win!

The Great and Powerful Chickeny-Chicken

@manoknok Hi, yes. I play at The Bunker for the past few years but I rarely show up. Mostly I just paint at home and I rarely play.

Anyway guys, sorry for the lack of updates. It's Holy Week, and Philippines being a 90% Catholic country, every establishment is closed so I can't do anything but sit at home. I've had a pretty busy week last week, I just got a commission to make prosthetic props for medical training. I guess it's modelling related, in a way? They want reusable ones hat are not messy. Haven't tackled a project like this before, so it's kinda scary. What's more scary is the list of stuff they want:

1) Burned face
2) Knocked-out eye
3) Open fracture (arm)
4) Open fracture (leg)
5) Abdominal evisceration
6) Gunshot wound
7) Impaled object
8) Avulsion (leg)
9) Ear-cheek-jaw laceration (dangling ear)

That's... pretty brutal. Pretty brutal indeed. It would right in a 40k setting. Anyway, I hate making false promises but updates will be up soon when the dust settles down!

Honestly I would like to see your props... kind of gross, but cool to see how real they look!

At long last, an update! Before we talk about the continuation of diorama, I think it would be best first to discuss my army background and the inspiration behind it.



First thing you need to know about me: I’m a competitive person. Once in my life I played competitively in M:tG tournaments and did well: I Top 8ed 3 major tournaments, including a Regional tournament and a National Qualifiers tournament, and even entered the Nationals (sadly, I didn’t fare so well there). I’m also known for using budget decks and cards that are, while competitive, are not often used in the “mainstream”.

This translates to 40k as me wanting to have a list that has a chance at winning tournaments but is still fairly unique. This is why I chose C: SM (good, but not considered top tier competitive) and a build that would make it better in a competitive environment (Vulkan).

“But wait heartserenade!” you might say, my hypothetical reader, “You’re nothing but a WAAC player!” Well, yes I am competitive but you should also know that a) I want my army to make sense fluffwise and b) I DM a lot (meaning all) of my gaming group’s DnD games, meaning I do enjoy writing background for all things fictional under the sun. Another thing about me is that I have a minor in art history and, being the art history geek that I am, I want to apply it to my miniatures.

Yes, I’m greedy. I WANT BOTH FLUFF AND POWER MWUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! FEAR ME, HYPOTHETICAL PERSON! FEAR MEEEEE~

…er, anyway. One thing I noticed about Space Marines is the abundance of flat surfaces: perfect for heraldry, and Space Marines fit the knights in space quite well (hello Black Templars), but of course I don’t want to play a chapter I didn’t create on my own (goodbye Black Templars). The templar (real ones, not the black ones) do intrigue me, though, and it will provide me a cohesive color for my army rather than the hodge-podge multicolour heraldry of a lot of knights that we’ll describe as “Bretonnia-y”.

So I went full on with the templar theme: off-white colors on red with smatterings of black and metal would be the overall colors. Religious iconography would be abundant. To justify the amount of meltas and flamers fluffwise, I liked the idea of a renegade chapter still loyal to the Emperor, but are considered heretics by their peers (much like the original templar who are accused of being heretics at one point in their history). A lot of them are burned at the stakes, and now symbolically they embraced that fire to commemorate their fallen brothers, and turn those same fires on their enemies.

With no Imperial support, this chapter would have a hard time reinforcing their numbers or maintaining their equipment. So this translates to the miniatures as being extremely weathered and damaged. I guess the first Rhino I painted illustrates all of the ideas of my chapter quite nicely:





More pics:





That, my friends, is the Rhino named Ignis et Flammae (Fire and Flames. DRAGONFORCE REFERENCE OMG). Contrary to popular belief the artwork on the hatch is NOT the Virgin Mary: if you read the writing at both sides of it it says “Sancta Caterina da Siena”, or St. Catherine of Siena. She’s the patron saint of fire prevention, so you see the prevalent theme? Interesting fact: this Rhino has never been blown up by a melta or flamer/heavy flamer shot. Ever. I also added flames at the sides of the tank to emphasize te “yeah, we have a love/hate relationship with fire” theme, although it is mostly unseen or unnoticed after I weathered the tracks.

The freehand drawings and symbols are a mixture of both medieval and Byzantine art, all with religious leanings. I tried going for full medieval at first, but after researching I found out that representational medieval art is, well, crappy. If I ever copy them I would look like I can’t draw or paint well. Google Bayeux Tapestry if you don’t believe me. So for the saints, I added the touch of Byzantine. Artistic license, baby.

The marine on the storm bolter also serves as a preview for my foot marines: the cross of St. George on their left shoulder (insignia of all templars) and his family’s heraldry on the right.

You can also see that it’s pretty bad in terms of cleanliness, highlighting the lack of support from the Imperium.


Do take note: this is the first vehicle I built, and I had loads of modelling errors on this one. Thankfully, they go unnoticed because of the freehand.

Next update: my first tactical squad, converting an AoBR dread and coming up with a chapter name!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Capitansolstice wrote:Honestly I would like to see your props... kind of gross, but cool to see how real they look!

Unfortunately, the client wants it to be reusable and doesn't care much for the realism as long as it represents it well. We're also given a deadline and it's coming up soon, so we don't have a lot of time to make it as realistic at possible. I will still put up photos of it here, though!

Wow, thats a nice army background summary! And the rhino looks great!

I love themed armies. If there is no good background story, the army has no appeal imo.

I'm very much looking forward to seeing the rest of that force!

good intro HS

A follow-up on my army’s history!

I had an idea for my army… but I still don’t have the models. During this time I was heavily borrowing miniatures from my gaming group to get the gist of playing. I even entered a 500 point tournament, and I won the “Best Newbie” prize, and it got me my first tactical squad! Although my record wasn’t really that impressive: 2 major wins, 1 minor loss and 1 draw. Still, a prize is a prize!

This was during the time when I didn’t know I should thin my paints or clean mold lines or drill gun barrels, as you can see with these photos:





As you can see, I had fun with assembling my first ever GW miniatures that I went with non-conventional poses. I thought they were good back then, but now… let’s just say I have stripped these models with isopropyl alcohol (my stripping agent of choice) and reposed them. I even did a head swap on the MM guy I got from a trade.

Interesting fact: these minis are primed in black. It made painting them 500% harder.

I did like the color scheme though and I kept it on my present tac squads. I also decided to reverse the color scheme on my sage, making him red with off-white highlights, so that it's easier to spot him on the battlefield. Again, I kept this on my newer models, as can be seen on my new sarge:




Oh my. I DID improve. Thankfully.


So I had a few games under my belt, but still lacking sorely in the number of miniatures department. A good friend of mine got sick of his AoBR dread and gave it to me, and my eyes shone with wonder and friendship that would make a brony blush. We dubbed this dreadnought as friendship dread.

During these times I fancied doing a dreadnought heavy army with a MotF. I was thinking of taking at least four dreadnoughts, and since I’m doing a Catholic-based chapter I thought it would be neat to base them on the four evangelists. St. Mark has always been represented as a lion, so I took it from there and made this:




Some detail shots:






Again, I didn’t thin my paints too much, I basecoated in black and didn’t drill the barrels and cleaned the mold lines, but for me this dreadnought is still perfect. It represents my first conversion piece and freehand, and I must say it’s not bad at all. The front sarcophagus was replaced by a spare tac marine body and head from my tac squad box, and the lion feet were taken from one of my poor Dreamblade minis. The hand and sword was taken from a cheap plastic toy knight I specifically bought to convert the dreadnought. I added plasma pistol parts on the storm bolter to make it look heavy flamer-y (I kinda failed on that regard but like I said, I wouldn’t change this dreadnought not one bit for nostalgia’s sake). The pattern on the arms I copied from one Forgeworld dreadnought photo. Then I bombarded it with iconography, namely the Chi-Rho and the Alpha and omega on the right arm, the modified Jerusalem cross on the banner and lots of crosses on the left CCW. On its top I painted a lion head for its heraldry and wrote In Hoc Signo Vinces (“In this sign, you will conquer”), a phrase alluding to the battle Constantine won by supposedly painting crosses on his army’s shields, and afterwards securing Christendom to the Roman Empire. The base was littered with chopped up Dreamblade minis to represent ruined statues.

FRIENDSHIP DREEEEEAAAAAAAD~

Great post. This reminds me soooo much of myself.
I also used some "unconventional" poses on my first ever ork boys, I also didn't thin my paints even slightly and I also ALWAYS prime black, even though the mini is going to be very bright (zombies anyone )

Also, I wont ever even think about redoing my first (horrible looking) orks, as they were made in sweden at chrismas (my brithday was a few weeks before) and I get that stong, nostalgic feeling when I look at them.

Edit:

Forgot: All my Orks are paintet with my mates colors, which he let me use and waste for free. He tried to teach me some basic technices, but I sadly ignored him..... anyway, since the models were "painted with a gift", I cant and wont stip them off!

Nostalgia ftw!

Hi people, and sorry for the necro!

For those still interested in following my work, I've made a new thread here: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/498061.page#5134570

I've mostly stopped playing 40k and concentrate now on Infinity. I'll still be updating you guys with my old army every now and then but I won't be updating this thread anymore and everything goes on the new thread.

Cheers!