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My second tyranid model, my first being Sarri. This served as an experiment for me, and It does show some improvement. However, I used WAY to much Shader, and I dont even think Imperial Primer is shader, is it?
The hooves still need work, but the chitin color I think I've nailed. Use some Drakenhof nightshade for shading on it, and it'll look perfect. Oh, and this one has a base.
I wont be updating every model, because that would be pointless. I will post any figures I think show notable improvement over the others though.
Any suggestions, I could really use them.

You plan on naming all you Nids? Good luck. lol
Maybe you should go the George Foreman route and name them all George.

Let me start with photography. Take pics of the models in front of a solid clear background. Try NOT to use a white background because that fools the camera into thinking it's sunny and it closes the aperture making the model dark. Refrain from using flash. Flashes are horrible when showing detailed work on small miniatures. Wait until mid afternoon when it's nice and bright.

Now for the model. I like your colors. My first model I ever painted was a Nid from the 4th edition Battle for Macragge starter set, and I used the exact same color scheme. I would say that you have a solid painting foundation, but you need most improvement on is clean up/touch ups.

Let's begin with the base, you should either paint the rim brown to give it uniformity or paint it black to frame the model.

I'm not crazy about the hooves color. I think they stand out too much and don't blend in with the rest of the colors. I would use black or dark grey instead.

There's no clear division on the body, it's one solid mass of red. You need to paint the joints a different color. You can either go darker or lighter to show soft flesh.

You need to take care to paint the teeth, right now you can't even see them because they blend in with the face. Also, you should change the tongue color for the same reason. You can do, pink, purple or green.

Red is a very difficult color to pull off right. You need to do several thin coats. You can see some of the black still showing underneath the red. Several thin coats is the way to go here. Same for the blue. you can see black underneath.

Do several thin coats of the blue, then do the edges in a lighter shade of blue. You'll essentially start at the edge and paint your way in, creating a 'streak' effect. You can see that on the picture below.



I like to look at pro painted pictures of models before and during painting so I can see all the small little details that I might have missed otherwise.

Like I said, you have a solid foundation, you just need to focus on the clean up. Do a search for "Tyranid dip" on Google, it might be an option for you.

Thanks for the suggestions! I made the tongue a different shade of red, but Green or purple would probably look better. As for all the black spots, while some of it probably is un-painted areas, most of it is because I used way to much of a black shader that probably wasn't meant to be shader. I'll probably paint the details (The little slits on the arms, the elbow things, that kinda stuff) either Blue to go with the Chitin color, or a lighter shade of red.
Also, I'm working with a very limited set of paints for now, none of them bought for a tyranid army (Well one, Blood For The Blood god, but thats for Hormagaunts and other bladed things). So I have a bunch of shades of brown, a few red, some space wolf/marine colors, and two whites. Not much to work with.

I said it in your first Tyranid model showcase, you need to do those teeth. It doesn't look like a threatening creature without its teeth done.

I tried to do the teeth, but they turned out horribly. You can still see some of the white where I covered over them. It would work much better with a closed mouth, as on this ones head the teeth are way to small for me to get with any of my brushes.
Oh, and its kinda hard to see under all the shade, but I did do they eyes. Just a blank white for now because do Tyranids even have pupils?

 lav25gunner wrote:


Let me start with photography. Take pics of the models in front of a solid clear background. Try NOT to use a white background because that fools the camera into thinking it's sunny and it closes the aperture making the model dark. Refrain from using flash. Flashes are horrible when showing detailed work on small miniatures. Wait until mid afternoon when it's nice and bright.

I would also add don't position the model in front of the two main colours you used to paint it!

That Imperial Primer is actually "primer" to paint straight onto plastic so water-based paint can stick. It is oil based and it is not meant to be an ink or shader in anyway.

Teeth are super-easy. Just drybrush them bro. Don't sit there trying to paint each one individually, just get a bit of white on the brush, wipe a lot off, and gently caress his grill, the teeth will start to show up individually and look awesome.

CAPTAIN AMERICOGAUNT!!!! TO THE RESCUE!!!!!