Original Post, 25 Dec 2008: A few years back after a convention, I lost a full carry-case containing a couple hundred minis. The case had some of my favorite figs, and it seriously screwed me up regarding painting (I couldn't even pull out the paints without getting sick to my stomach). I shoved everything in a closet and just sort of hid away from the wargaming hobby. Shortly afterwards, I went back to school, so I didn't really have time for it anyways.
In the last few months, though, some stuff's gone on to sort of draw me back. First, D&D 4th Edition hasn't really kept me all that enthused, and half my gaming group moved away anyways. Then, Warhammer Online came out, and my wife and I gave it a try (we didn't play past the trial month, but it did kind of get the juices going), and finally I noticed that I had a month off of school coming up and wanted something to do besides play computer games the whole time.
So, into the closet I went, taking an inventory of what I still had (painted and unpainted), and borrowed a couple codeces to see where I stood in relation to the current rules. My Eldar army was actually complete, even way back when, and was still in pretty good shape. I'd lost a unit of Warp Spiders and all of my guardians, the latter of which puts me short on Troops selections. I've still got about a unit's worth of guardians in loose sprues, though, along with some unopened bikes and a couple squads of rangers. These'll combine with my existing two units of Dire Avengers.
Overall, though, I'm in pretty good shape as far as the Eldar go, and bringing them up to a playable spec is going to be my first goal. I've got a bit of work to do, though, for a few reasons: my Eldar were painted over something like 4 years (basically the entire 3rd edition lifecycle). For that reason, the painting in the army ranges from beginning-level to pretty decent. I pulled out my old Fire Dragons, which were pretty darn crap, and threw them into some cleaner to strip them. When they were out, I got to work preparing them.
My Eldar army is based on the old Legend of the Five Rings (card game and RPG) world, so they use (among other things) Japanese-style back-banners. I'm apparently out of the metal Clan War banners that I used to use, and decided to redo the whole army's set of banners with some paper clips and art-masking tape. I like that it'll let me be a little more flexible with them, as well as letting me do some real wear-and-tear on them instead of them being a thick piece of metal.
The next step is to prime them and paint them! We'll see how well this goes.
Here's the full unit (two exarchs because I wanted one each with/without the Firepike), a side of the unit, and the converted Fusion Gun exarch.
The squad is going to be painted in a similar manner to my "good" DA squad (and the rest of the army): bone+wash undersuit, with padding and helmet colored to match the clan/aspect (old picture):
Well, once the bloody rain stops and I can get outside to prime them, I'll start painting.
If you're OK with old pictures, I guess I'll go ahead and post some. It'll also provide a little bit of a basis for comparison with the rest of the army.
These Scorpions are going to get the same back-banner treatment, once I see how the Avengers turn out. I'm painting the Dragons' banners attached to the models, while the DA's are getting painted and THEN added to the models (since the minis are already painted). This pic shows why I need some new ones taken, too.
EDIT: I guess I might need to change the exarch's conversion, too: the Scorpion's Claw now replaces the PISTOL instead of the CHAINSWORD.
And... uh, that's it. I've got a few more pics locally, but they're either of minis that I lost, or are crap pictures that aren't really worth showing. I'll see about getting some new pictures taken tomorrow; my wife loves any excuse to pull out her awesome camera.
albinoork wrote:which clans do you plan on using as a basis for your paint scheme?
please tell us something other than Crane.
The DA's are using the Crane scheme.
**WARNING: Different Game's Fluff Ahead***
The L5R Clans are represented by each aspect, so their colors are/will be matched up that way.
Appropriately, the Scorpions and the Dragons are red/black and yellow/green/red respectively.
Dire Avengers get to be Crane Blue/White. Having master swordsmen out in front kind of demand that.
Howling Banshees, as woman warriors with big manes, are brown/orange/gold, as the Matsu of the Lions.
Shining Spears and any jetbikes get the purple/gold of the Unicorn.
Most psykers will naturally be in the Phoenix red/gold.
Finally, the guardians and all vehicles are dark blue (usually with bone accents), as the Crab.
Started painting on the Dragons over the last couple of days, but I've only gotten the main body pads done... so there's not much worth looking at at the moment. They've all been primed, basecoated with a dark fleshtone followed by bone followed by a Flesh Wash (looking similar to the undersuit on the Avengers above), with the pads mostly done in green. I'll get some pics of them in a little bit once I've done a little more work on them.
I also decided to put together a new Farseer. The two "good" farseers I have are really rather specific (one's a big C'tan conversion, probably too big for a tabletop, and the other's on a Pegasus, so he'll only get used when I use a jetbike), so I needed a general-use Farseer, one I can use when I'm playing a standard army. I need some feedback on this one, though, since I'm not really sure what I think of it, especially the pose.
The idea was to make a fairly dynamic pose, and I think I've accomplished that... but I'm not sure that it really comes across right. I've yet to decide if it actually looks "dynamic" or "squatting and taking a dump". So, commentary on that regard is totally welcome and requested.
The bit with the Marine parts on a stick is that the farseer is doing a little bit of Jedi-style "pick things up and throw them". I'm hoping that once the model is painted I can hide the support a little bit better (It'll probably remain plain black). I'm not totally tied to the idea, though, since I can easily just clip that off at the base even after it's been glued into place.
I also threw together a guide for the back-banners that the army will be wearing. Refer to the above posts for which colors go with which units; also, the end results will likely have runes that are a bit more eldar-like (flared ends to the lines, stuff like that) and less "line tool in Photoshop".
albinoork wrote:no love for the shadowlands (or yogo junzo's army if you prefer)?
The influence of the Shadowlands is primarily represented in a unit of Storm Guardians that I've got stuck somewhere between painting and assembly. The fluff is that the unit is where Eldar who have been in too close of contact with Chaos (mainly through combat) and have become a little bit mutated go to die in honorable combat rather than let themselves be fully corrupted. Mostly, though, the concept of the Shadowlands/Chaos is what the army is fighting against, so it's not really going to show up in the army.
The dragons are for all intents and purposes done. I still need to paint the rims of the bases, and I'd like some suggestions there: plain old black, or might it look better to do them in a brown, similar to the basecoat of the base? I'm essentially redoing the entire army in some manner, especially the bases so there's no need to worry about "just match the rest of the army". Also, I'm going to do some "Battle Wear" on the back-banners, things like bullet holes and pieces torn off/scorched.
I welcome any feedback on these guys, since it's the first real painting I've done in at least 3 years. Pointers as to things that I've missed, stuff like that, is great.
My next painting task is going to be 4 minis for my D&D game (surprising my sister and her husband with minis for their characters, as well as doing one for my wife and our 4th player), and painting up the backbanners for the Dire Avengers squad as posted above. Then I'm going to see what I can do with that farseer helmet...
Magc8Ball wrote:I still need to paint the rims of the bases, and I'd like some suggestions there: plain old black, or might it look better to do them in a brown, similar to the basecoat of the base?
Definitely a different and darker color than the base coat of the base. That way you'll get some nice contrast between the base rim and base and figs are more defined against the table.
The dragons have a nice 2nd ed look to them, nice and bright colors opposed to the dark and grimy current look. It suits the eldar fine. The red areas could use some additional highlighting to add definition to the shapes, but otherwise they seem nice and ready to table.
This morning I got inspired to get some work done on some marine stuff. To be honest, it was less about "marines" and more about "jonesing to do some cutting", but I'm out of Eldar I can easily chop up at the moment. So...
My "main" marine army (really an Inquisitorial army, but it uses C: SM as a base with C: DH add-ins) was last tabled sometime in the latter days of 3E... basically, a little while after the DH codex came about. I'd actually started building it as a Salamanders army, even before Daemonhunters was even known to exist, and so my squad of Terminators was a mix of Thunder Hammers, heavy flamers, and standard storm bolters. Needless to say, this squad is currently unplayable as it stands. I still have some (old) unassembled terminators lying about, though, and since I can hardly afford to go buy a box of the new ones I decided to try putting together a from-scratch "bulked out" termie.
My main goal with this guy was to give some sort of "crafted" look to the armor, partially inspired by Roman lorica segmentata armor. The fluff for the army, among other things, has it running around far from any resupply, so the techmarines are often rebuilding stuff from scratch. The secondary goal was to make sure the terminator looked good on a full 40mm base. The 3E terminators tend to look pretty weedy on the larger bases, so I had to bulk this guy out some. Finally... I finally got around to looking closely at the newer rules and discovered that Storm Shields now give their save against shooting, and are a freaking 3+ save! So, his shield needed to be bigger than the old ones.
I still need to do a little cleanup work (especially around the waist bit and probably at the bottom of the shoulders) but feedback and suggestions are definitely welcome on this guy.
Metsuri wrote:The dragons have a nice 2nd ed look to them, nice and bright colors opposed to the dark and grimy current look. It suits the eldar fine. The red areas could use some additional highlighting to add definition to the shapes, but otherwise they seem nice and ready to table.
Yeah, my wife had commented about needing to highlight the helmets some more, too. I'll have to take a stab at it.
enmitee wrote:i think putting glyphs/doodads on the armor plates would really make the armor stand out.
Good idea. I'll see if I can't dig out some purity seals or something along them, or some other sorts of honor marks. Nice thing about these guys is that they don't need a chapter symbol anywhere, so I can be a little more flexible with what I throw on them.
Arctik_Firangi wrote:The Eldar look great. Similar scheme to what I'm running in this thread: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/225758.page. The terminator is also quite cool - are you doing a whole bunch of those or is this a character?
Well, only the Dragons are actually green.
The termie is the first of eight. I just decided to put it together to see how well it might be pulled off. Now I get to build seven more... and it's going to be a pain. It probably took me about 2-3 hours or so of real time to build this one model (the shoulder plates are just a complete pain). Also, I only have three of the big halberds bits that I chopped down into hammers... I have to decide if I'm going to use different hammer bits on them, or break down and use use lightning claws. I'm not spending X dollars on the WM box I got them from, and I don't think Privateer sells parts. (EDIT: Woo, they do! Awesome.) (EDIT 2: But the shipping would be more than the parts. Good lord.)
Last week or so has been taken up with painting some minis for my D&D party (and I'll get some pics of them up sometime in the near future). I did, however, build a light box! We've got a surplus of those white Office Supply boxes from a couple moves, so I flipped one inside-out, cut some holes in it, and tossed in some posterboard and tissue paper, and it came out pretty well.
The first pics I've done with it are my now-pretty-much completed Fire Dragon squad. Thanks for the feedback on the bases, everyone; I just went with the basic black and I am happy with how they turned out. I still probably need a little bit of highlighting on the red parts of the helmets (especially the old FD's) but I'm having a hard time figuring out where to put it.
I will say one thing, though: nothing hurts the old painting ego like my wife's freaking 12 megapixel digital SLR.
In a shocking amount of productivity, I went ahead and painted up the banners for the Avengers squad, getting them consistent with the future rest of the army. I'd also previously (a few days ago) washed and drybrushed the bases, as they were previously just bare sand (as can be seen in the "before" shots way up top). I'll be doing that to all of the other minis in the army that don't require a full rebase, to make them all match the Dragons unit.
Since the last post the spring semester started up again, so I've been pretty much unable to get anything done, minis-related. This weekend, though, I had some time to do some work. In other news, my wife finally decided she wanted to take another stab at painting. She had previously started a little bit of a Chaos army, but didn't like the genericized new codex (especially the "lesser daemons" bit). I was playing the DOW2 beta at the time, and she really dug the aesthetic of the Eldar in general, but didn't want to start an Eldar army since I already play them. She asked about Dark Eldar, and I kind of explained some of the fluff and stuff, as well as the fact that the old models are hard to find and are kind of naff... but suggested that I could probably make a fun looking DE army by combining Craftworld Eldar with some Dark Elf bits. She loved the idea, and the first five "test" models are posted below.
I know that I probably need to get them to be a bit more "spiky", but that's just going to take me sitting down for a few hours with some plasticard. As I build the models (which she'll paint) we'll be deciding if she wants me to focus more on the "spiky death torture rapists" side of the Dark Eldar, or if we want to go with a more "Eldar Corsair" look.
When we went to get her some minis, though, I managed to also do some magic on our financial budgeting for the next few months, allowing me a little more money room. This let me FINALLY pick up one of the new Wraithlord models. As mentioned, my Eldar army is based on the Legend of the Five Rings card game, and the Wraithlord is specifically going to be based on/named after this guy (Hida Yakamo):
And here's the Wraithlord model WIP. I still need to add a bunch of stuff to it (most of the fiddly WL bits, for instance, and the flamers) as well as seeing if I can track down some magnets so I can throw different weapon loadouts onto him. I'm going to take to heart the discussion from this thread and be prepared to tell people that the Tetsubo (the club) isn't representing anything, and that it's just for show (except when it IS standing in for a sword). I do need to decide if I'm going to go for even more of the japanese theme, sculpting/assembling a set of oversized shoulder guards
Ooooh, those Dark Eldar look really good! Finally a good conversion that makes them look more menacing.
The Wraithlord looks pretty interesting, though a little clumsy to be swinging a club around for such an elegant model.
Just a problem with the pshycic eldar with the Space marine parts, it looks like he's disassembling the marine into pieces and killing him and falling over at the same time.
Great work. I really liked the Scorpions and the oriental feel to the Eldar. Thanks for posting you work. It definitely gets me a bit inspired to get back to painting.
Well, I'm sorry to hear about your loss, but you've certainly bounced back with a vengeance! Your models look great and you have a good style. Keep up the great work!
On a related note, is Hida Yakamo actually holding a jade tetsubo? Or did the artist just color it green for style? Cause, I mean, damn, those things are expensive (but effective!)
tzeentchling wrote:Nice tetsubo! How did you make it?
On a related note, is Hida Yakamo actually holding a jade tetsubo? Or did the artist just color it green for style? Cause, I mean, damn, those things are expensive (but effective!)
The tetsubo is a piece of metal tube with four pieces of thin plasticard glued down each side. I left a gap between the card and the lower hand primarily for proper proportions more than anything, not sure at the time if I'd put the offhand there or lower down. The studs are these tiny Japanese glass beads (that I bought years ago for a failed project, not 'cause they were Japanese) that I simply glued onto the sides.
AFAIK the character actually has a solid jade tetsubo... and, yeah, they're expensive but he's the son of a clan daimyo. Hell, his left HAND is solid jade, too, but that's a whole different story.
Last night I did a few additions to the model; nothing major, just filling in the gaps that were left by the first stage of assembly.
Out of an accident of hand placement rather than intentional design, I found that it would be impossible to put the right-side flamer on the model without it being directly in contact with the weapon's handle (making it difficult to paint). Rather than try to keep track of a flamer bit for the time it'll take me to finish this guy and prime it (which won't happen until my magnets come in the mail) I decided to try an interesting double-flamer on the other fist. It turned out to look pretty dynamic over there, and it's easy to imagine the wraithlord throwing out a fist and letting loose with the flames.
Also, I used the two minor "fins" on the sprue to cover up the holes on the back that are left by the back banners and my only using a single vane on the back. Nothing major, like I said, but it does add a bit more balance to the back of the model.
There's also a shot of the model's base in case anyone was interested.
tallmantim wrote:My only comment would be that I think a little green or scorched green static grass on the bases would help tied in with the nice green on the model.
Definitely a good idea, and one that I'll probably use as I start getting more of my models brought "up to date". Most of my existing models just had plain sand bases, and as I update their banners I've been doing a wash/drybrush on them (like the Avengers above). So, once I do that, I'll probably take your suggestion and throw some grass on them. Should help the unification of the army some for sure.
I swear, I'm going to get to painting some stuff this weekend! But in the meantime, I've (barely) started work on a Raider for my wife's Dark Eldar army (as discussed above). It's based on a Falcon, of course, and this is a very, very early WIP shot of it. The next stage is to find out how long a Raider generally is supposed to be (little help here?) so I can better size the bridge tubing, and then start building a platform for riders. I also have a pilot built together (just a Jetbike driver with a little bit of fiddly bits, he's not glued in there) and I'll get a seating area for him, and then we'll see what else we do to it.
At the moment it's a few inches longer than a Wave Serpent as pictured.
EDIT: Replaced the original pictures with two newer pics with non-glued bridge tubes in place
And the original two pics which show the angles better.
Been doing some work on the Wraithlord. I'm pretty happy with the bone color, as well as the blues (except the head) and the contrasts between the light bone, the blues, and the darker bone areas.
The head, I'm less than happy with. The idea was to create a sort of "background" set of runes that were just barely visible as a lighter blue within the foreground that I can then paint a main rune over (somewhat inspired by the unit graphic for the WL in DOW2). I might strip the head and repaint it, as it's not glued on yet, or I just might keep trying to mess with it. We'll see.
I'm pretty thrilled with how the banners look, even pre-painting, and the weapons magnetized nicely (as the pics show). I'm curious as to what folks think of the angles of them, as I skipped the ball-mounted weapon mounts and just mounted the weapons directly to the back vanes, since I prefer a more integrated look.
For the Jedi Mind trick thing, ever thought of using green stuff to make the supports look like energy, or something, maybe some extra strung between the space marine bits to more illustrate your point. If you painted it using it as a light source i think it would look amazing.
Got an O-Chem exam next Monday, so I'm not going to get any work done over the next several days, so I figured I'd at least get SOMETHING up here. I've been needing to take some additional pictures of stuff anyways, so here goes... these will serve as "before" pics on some of the minis that I'm going to do additional work on over time.
First, a better shot of the Wraithlord WIP (see notes on it up a couple posts) using the lightbox. I still think I need to work on getting my brightness up, but that'll take some time (and better lighting in the box):
My two Wave Serpents that I'll probably spend some time working on. These are old paint jobs, obviously, something I'd class as my "second tier" (after I'd gotten a handle on doing decent paint but before I got to where I feel like I'm "pretty good")... I probably don't need to strip them, but I'm going to go into them and do some highlighting and shading to add a bit more depth to the models. I will probably strip the turrets just to bring them a bit more in line with the rest of the army, as well as giving them more interesting bases (the one on the left's base broke off when I pulled it out for the picture, conveniently enough). I also need to swap out the Shuriken Cannons since they aren't defensive weapons anymore.
Finally, my Dark Reapers. I mainly need to do the bases up a little nicer (probably just a wash-and-brush job), and I'll likely replace the solid metal banners to match the paper ones I've done for my newer models. These models were the first ones that I completed in the bone base, flesh wash, paint pads something else scheme that has become the standard for my eldar, so they're sort of a "groundbreaking" unit for me. Some advice on how to distinguish the exarch's weapon as a Tempest Launcher would be welcome, though.
EDIT: Forgot one: my "Hover Wraithlord" that's probably going to be retired unless I need a really cheap Bright Lance-Only model, since I really don't feel like working on getting him up to current rules-spec. (Most likely will only be fielded if I'm playing some huge-points game with multiple force orgs.)
Thats a great Raider conversion. Mixing in Dark Eldar design with Eldar parts works really well.
Personally I always found it odd how some of the Dark Eldar vehicles looked really crude and barbaric (in an ignorant Human way) as opposed to a twisted all powerful race at the height of madness.
The wraithlord is also very well done, good dynamic pose and the banners are genius!
Had some spare time last night and this morning, so I did a bit more work on the Raider for my wife's eventual army. My goals here were to make it look a bit more like an integrated whole, to try and tie the piece together rather than just looking like a bunch of plasticard stuck together. I think it's getting there, but suggestions are definitely welcome and encouraged.
The first picture is an artificially high-contrast image showing the plates that I added to the deck, intending to resemble the upper-plate look of the Eldar parts of the ship. I had to do this one because the white-on-white just does not show up at all in the rest of the images since I was using a flash.
And the rest of the traditional angle shots of the Raider:
Dude these are looking awesome ! im loving the conversions on these eldar and that terminator oh absolutely divine !!!
if you dont mind i may have to steal that idea !
anyway can't wait to see more of these eldar
Small update: I added a couple "rails" along the inner part of the platform. It's primary intent was just to liven up that part of the model, and are designed to look like handholds for the riders to be holding on to while they're being flown around. I'm thinking I'll probably add a couple prisoners, chained up near the back, as well as a couple nominal "passengers" or helpers who will help it look a little more busy up there.
The only real thing I have left is to finish up the rider's area, and I'm kind of stumped as to what I should do back there; it's pretty darn plain under his chair, and just looks like a conversion (with visible plastic rod and stuff). *shrug*
Found some time between school work and Empire: Total War this weekend to wrap the model up for all intents and purposes. I might put together a few models to use as markers for when the "Raider" has passengers, probably magnetizing them. I'm just sad I don't get to paint it.
I finally decided to just put some fake "hydraulics" under the pilot's seat. I guess it could be described as a "stabilization platform" letting the pilot keep relatively level during hard turning and acceleration or something...
Also, once I mounted the cockpit, the original tail was completely off-center (rotated about 10 degrees clockwise), so I had to break it off and put on a new one. It turned out to be a bit of a happy accident, since I was able to trim down the leftover pieces and use it to give the tail a bit of a double-level effect.
The last week was mostly spent putting together a model for the Jungle Fighting paint contest (though there's yet to be any paint on the model), but I went ahead and did some paint work on the Wraithlord today. Here's the current state of his paint; the next step is going to get to work on the banners (trying to decide between paint and markers in a thread here.
I decided to go ahead and just paint the sashimono traditionally; the overall look of the army is made more coherent, I think, by banners that look like the units themselves may have painted them (something that they do in my craftworld's fluff); going with markers would probably have made them look too manufactured. Runes and characters should look like someone put them there IMO.
I may do some more highlighting on the characters; once I get the rest of the model painted (mainly weapons at this point, plus gems if I decide to do any) I'll see how flat it looks overall, and if adding some texture to the banners looks like it'll help I'll do that.
The edge on view of the platform however looks too thin - I would suggest something like cutting a plasticard tube and pushing it on to give a larger edge with shape - that would stop the side on view looking so thin I think.
You're making me want to actually paint all that damned Clan War stuff I've got lying around. Stop it, I've got enough to paint already and no one plays CW anymore!
Platuan4th wrote:You're making me want to actually paint all that damned Clan War stuff I've got lying around. Stop it, I've got enough to paint already and no one plays CW anymore!
You could probably make a fairly decent Bretonian footslogging or High Elf army out of them... in fact I might very well do that with all the ones I have lying about.
Platuan4th wrote:You're making me want to actually paint all that damned Clan War stuff I've got lying around. Stop it, I've got enough to paint already and no one plays CW anymore!
You could probably make a fairly decent Bretonian footslogging or High Elf army out of them... in fact I might very well do that with all the ones I have lying about.
Probably, but I'm not ripping their 25mm squares off on the off chance that I can find someone else with Clan War willing to play when I get to Colorado and that means their bases are too big for both of those armies.
So, it's been quite some time since I posted... since my last post, I got into the down-and-dirty portions of my last semester before transferring, so I took some time off of painting. Other gaming stuff also moved to the forefront. However, in the last couple of weeks I've managed to get some pretty good painting done, and this post will show off most of that stuff. There's nothing too major, just lots of models actually being finished.
First off, the Fire Dragon exarchs have been completed. Consistent with (most of) the rest of the army, their color schemes are reversed from the unit at large. I made two of them because unlike most other exarchs in my army there's a good chance that I'll swap them around from time to time. I chopped down the Firepike to make a representation of a D'breath Flamer; hope it comes across well.
Exarchs alone:
Full Unit Shots:
The Dragons are mounted on the first "piece" of a modular display base that I'm going to really start working on before too long. My plan is to make a number of "trays" of exactly the same size, and then to construct a tiered "rack" that'll hold a set number of them. In this way I'll be able to use it for any particular army configuration, and can even (in a pinch or an Armageddon game) use the rectangles as movement trays. They're just carboard with holes cut, glued on top of plasticard. The "tray" is 15cm x 10cm, and a 4-by-4 arrangement turns out to be around 2ft x 1.5ft, a pretty good size for tournaments IIRC.
I linked this squad before as an example of my previous painting (page 1, I think), but I've completed their back-banners and brought their bases up to match the rest of the army. This isn't the full squad, but a representation of the unit (2E Scorpions didn't have a ton of variation, and the banners are simple enough that seeing a few serves the purpose well enough). The the hand-held banner is just made from aluminum foil folded over, and he has a "folded up" backbanner which is currently the only model in the army that actually displays how these guys can get into or out of transports.
The Wraithlord has had his primary weapon set completed:
Aaaand a composite shot of all of the army's completed Exarchs (I have a Shining Spear exarch that's in pieces after a fall, and my Warp Spider and Swooping Hawk squads both disappeared in "the losing". :( .) The Dark Reaper unit still has the original Clan War-derived metal back-banners; I'm not sure if I'll eventually replace them (making them consistent with the rest of the army) or leaving them as-is (the Reapers, as an immobile back-line unit might use a different form of sashimono from the rest of the army, who knows.):
NEW STUFF! First, I converted the current Farseer model into a foot-slogging Autarch. The added-on chest plates really aren't that flat-looking on the model, but pain grey doesn't really photograph with much depth.
Finally, this is a model that I had started for the jungle fighting contest, but school and stuff prevented me from getting it done on time. In the end, I kind of rushed the painting so I'm not totally happy with it; I'll probably do-over the painting on the shield and warglaive to make them both fit the model a bit better. The model isn't really intended for any game system, though I suppose it'd work as a wood elf general or something... She's riding a warcat from the old Clan War minis game, her legs are from a Bretonian pegasus knight, chest is an Eldar Guardian, cloak and arms are from Dark Elf corsairs, and (I'll form) the head is a high elf archer.
I really enjoy how you built your wife's DE, that is always how i imagined them myself. Not to mention the fact that its good to see someone converting that older army.
Eldar Crabs????? That's a joke that almost writes itself.
If anything dark eldar are probably scorpion. (regular eldar would be crane) The only thing in 40k that comes close to matching crabs are probably nobz or mega nobs, they got the size and the smell.
I love the conversion work so far, and I love the l5r tie in. When I get around to my Tau army they will be the Tog'shai sept with a dragon clan theme.
I've spent the afternoon working on the Autarch, actually taking care this time to take progress shots after each major segment of painting. I'm not doing anything particularly advanced, but it's nice to see it all laid out step-by-step.
First shot is just after priming and doing up the base. It's mostly just drybrushed, though the Wraithbone bit was done with the same bone-wash-bone method that you'll see in this post:
First step is doing a Vallejo Game Color bone basecoat on all the parts that I'm expecting to not be black on the model (except the swords, which will be green). Then I put a GW Flesh Wash on most of those parts; GW Chestnut Wash went over the fusion gun.
Then I simply did another layer of VGC Bone over the parts that I actually wanted to be bone in color.
I then highlighted the black portions of the robe (Vallejo Model Color black, light grey, Game Color white blended together)
Finally, I've worked up the inner robe to a nice yellow (VGC Orange Fire and Hot Yellow). I still need to do the next highlighting layer on the robes, but I need to let the paint dry and I'm getting a headache.
Next steps are probably going to be to do up the various gems on the model, painting the swords, and deciding the following:
-What to do with the scorpion rune on the helmet (leave it the washed color, or paint it something else that'll stand out from the bone, which I'm worried that the yellow won't do);
-Do up the swords (a jade-style green, consistent with other models in the army);
-what sort of back-banners to put on this model. Exarchs get a double banner, and while I don't think this guy is going to have THREE banners (that would just be overload) I've got to figure something out that's fairly unique to make him stand out some.
Finally, I've got to figure out if I want to do some freehand rune work on the back part of the black robe, or just let it be and not risk ruining it.
After tuning up the eventual army list that I'll build for my wife's Dark Eldar, I decided to dig around the bits-box for some suitable material for an Archon. I've decided that a foot-based Archon (with a Punisher, a big two-handed weapon), with retinue, in a Raider will be the most interesting to build (for me) and to paint (for her). While digging around I found my stash of spare Banshees, including Jain Zar (the Phoenix Lord). After a flurry of "hey, I think I can make your retinue out of Banshees, want your pirates to be led by females? Here's one that I think will be awesome as the Archon!"
She said, in short: "um, yes?"
So here's the result of a few hours work digging through the box. She's a Dark Eldar Archon, with a Punisher. The Marine that she's skewering after leaping off of her Raider transport is going to be letting loose a gout of flame that I'm going to sculpt around back to merge with the lower end of the banner that I'm going to extend down... so there'll be a big flame-smoke-burning banner thing going on back there, probably with wisps of smoke wrapping around the Archon in some way.
I'm finding it very hard not to steal it for myself as an actual Jain Zar for my own Eldar, but I don't like sleeping on the couch THAT much.
All in all, I'm fairly happy with it, though I do know that I need to find some way to make her look much more "Dark Eldar" rather than "Dynamically Posed Phoenix Lord". The banner top helps, I'm sure, and I'm probably going to throw some spiky parts along the shaft of her spear, as well as off of her wrists. Unfortunately the 80's Glam Metal Hair kind of gets in the way of any sort of back-side spiky stuff (including Trophy Racks) but I might still , depending on how the rest comes out, drop some chains from the back end of the weapon or from the botton of the banner, and use that to attach some Skullz (tm) or something to.
Composite of a few angles:
Single close up:
High-tech CGI Mock-up of how I envision the flames burning to the banner:
Feedback and suggestions welcome, of course, especially in the area of making her look more "Dark Eldar" or at least "Piratical". Granted, it might just be enough for the banner to be painted in DE-style "stuff", too. We'll see.
To further the idea of a "Piratical" Eldar army led by (say) a renegade Banshee Exarch, I've decided to sacrifice my Howling Banshee models to my wife's army to serve as a retinue for the archon (shown above). I already had my painted banshees in Pine Sol because they didn't match the overall look of my repaint-in-progress army, and now they don't even really fit in with the idea for my army overall (army list wise). The Banshee helm works moderately OK visually as the Incubus helm (sonic attacks instead of the pseudo-Mandiblasters), I just needed to work in the Punisher.
So, this is the first test model for turning a bunch of Howling Banshees into Incubi. (I realize that an incubus is by definition masculine, but whatever.) Right now it's just "hey, a Howling Banshee with a two-handed weapon!", so I'm looking for some pointers on how to make them look a little more GrimDark.
Wow- Brilliant work on the Jain Zar conversion! Can't wait to see how the banner on fire looks.
As for grimdarking-up the Banshee conversions:
You could add bitz to their backs (either leftover cloaks from the Corsairs you did before, or a nasty-spiky version of Guardian back-fins).
You could modify the helms- they need tormentors anyways, so the little tube-y bitz from the Guardian sprue might work. Otherwise, GS'in over the faces completely could work, giving them an eerie blank look. Put a gem maybe an or emblem from the Corsairs on their foreheads to give the head a little focus, perhaps echoing the way Wratihlord/guard heads look.
You should probably modify both areas (back/bodyshape and face/helmet), as they are the defining features of Banshees.
Maybe your wife's army deserves it's own blog? It's such a stand-out project, and somne really cool bitz-bashing!
Took a break from Eldar to build myself a Land Raider Redeemer for my Jade Fists chapter of Marines. Seeing as I can't afford the LRC/LRR kit, I luckily had a normal Land Raider kit, practically complete, stashed in the closet for just such a situation. So I got to essentially scratch-build the front-end of a Redeemer. The flamers and grenade launchers are scratch; I had two spare dreadnaught assault cannons that I used to convert the heavy bolter.
The Jade Fists are going to be a forest/jungle-specialist army, so I wanted to build a big f-off dozer blade on the front for knocking over trees and such. I know LR's don't get them, but it will work well to serve as part of an overall Extra Armor look on the tank (which is the next part of the construction. Since the front ramp is pretty important for the whole "Assault Vehicle" part of the Land Raider, I felt it was important that the blade be able to lift up to get out of the way (while still leaving ample room for the assault cannon and grenade launchers to do their things.
The dozer blade has magnets embedded in the support rod as well as on the hull in the "up" and "down" positions to secure it in place when it's raised or lowered; the flame cannons are magnetized primarily to allow for efficient storage of the tank. The Assault Cannon is just loose right now; I don't know if it'll be needing magnets to hold it in place (or if I can just drop down a heavy weight from the bottom). The interior of the tank is sealed off; I like saving the extra interior bits for scenery and other conversions rather than trying to paint the inside that will never be seen.
Next steps are going to be constructing some extra armor on the tank, as well as probably adding some small rivets to the edges of the dozer blade.
Front view:
Left side view:
Right side view:
A view of the blade mechanism, as best as I can show. The whole deal is mostly hidden behind armor plating, so it's not easy to see... I should have taken photos prior to adding the extra bits.
wiggles wrote:I desperately want to get a good look at your wifes paintjob on those Dark Eldar.
Tell her to get a move on.
I keep trying, but she's new to the whole painting thing: it's like a 4rd priority hobby (after photography, cooking, and video gaming). That also means that her paint won't be anything extraordinary (I think she's finished maybe 4 minis in her life).
I should probably give her a deadline before I just take the bloody things, paint them myself, and use them as Harlequins.
Added extra armor-type plates to the Land Raider. My placement was mainly going for the "covering vulnerable places" style, rather than trying to just add Even More Armor to the already-AV14 LR. I also made an effort to not cover up much of the LR's pre-existing armor plate detail, since I didn't want to have to spend forever trying to add detail to flat plasticard. :\
Today's task was to get the Land Raider fully assembled with all its miscellaneous crap in place and ready to paint. The army that it's being assembled for is fully "on campaign", so I wanted the LR to have some in-the-field stuff on it, so I did up a couple tarps out of napkin paper and Elmer's Glue, added a chain to the side (for pulling down really bad trees) and added some coiled wire to the rear (which I will probably paint up as a rope or something).
The Storm Bolter and HK Missile are both magnetized. I don't have a spare Multi-Melta, but at some point I'll track one down and mag it up, to go in the same slot as the bolter most likely.
This is the last bit of update before I start painting it up... I'll probably start a separate thread over in P&M about that, since I'm going to do a forest/jungle camo scheme on it and I'm not really sure where to start as far as the pattern.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Threw a quick paint scheme idea together... I don't have an airbrush, so doing a smooth "blob" camo pattern probably isn't in the cards. Masking tape, I can do, though, which = nice clear lines like here.
High-tech CGI Mock-up of how I envision the flames burning to the banner:
Your work looks really great. My favorite thus far has to be the converted raider, really ace concept. As far as the banshee conversion, my only question/ suggestion is about the banner. If she has just jumped from a hover transport with enough force to impale a marine, knocking him from his feet, I would think it would be tightly drawn in an 'upward' direction. Your 'caught in the flamer stream' idea is really great, but the current banner ruins the active movement of the model.
Also, what kind of support system are you running? Jain Zar is a heavy model, I love the pose, but would be too afraid she would snap off in game play. Whats your secret?
As far as more DE looking, there's no reason you couldn't drill and pin a trophy rack coming through her hair (as if her hair is flowing around the staves).
Again, great work,
Luna: yeah, it's a direct translation of this webcomic which is based on the commercial you linked.
Fleck: your suggestion about the banner is noted, and I agree with it. I'll probably do some putty work on it to change the direction a little bit. As to the support system, the model is basically pinned in every possible way up through the foot of the marine into his upper leg, pinned twice through the blade that's going through his chest, the rod of the weapon is basically one long paper clip inside the plastic tube, into the hand, and that arm is pinned into the model's main body. On top of that, it's all centered over the base, with the marine grey-stuff'd to allow for the proper level.
Stubbs: yeah, the army is based on a CCG/RPG (L5R) that is itself based on feudal Japan.
Did a test painting with one of the colors I picked up for the tank, and it was a lighter green than I expected, so I needed to invert my paint plan's greens. :\
Still looks decent enough to me, I think, but feedback's welcome.
Got some additional painting done on the Land Raider over the last few days.
First, a simple priming and full-paint with some spray green (OSH generic "Forest Green"):
Then the geometric camouflage pattern. The lighter green is actually a "latex" house paint from a brand that sells small samples in 60 mL sizes (for $3.99); I'll be making a post about this find later on. The darker green is just VGC Scurf Green.
After that I covered non-camo'd parts in black for later painting, added in the metallics, and added a pseudo-aquila to the dozer blade. The next step will be highlighting the greens and painting the non-camo up. We'll see where it goes from there.
Completed the Autarch today in between working on new figures for my D&D campaign. I decided to add some striping to the robe to give it a bit more depth, and brought the swords out to match them with the rest of the army.
My next decision is whether to leave the figure as-is, or add some sort of banner to mesh it with the rest of the army. The figure itself, I think, is complex enough that slapping a couple back-banners on is only going to make it far too busy, but I'm thinking about adding a ground-based banner to help it stand out some. This is meant to be a commander, so having a large banner on-hand might be interesting.
The following image is a mock-up of how I think it would look with such a banner. The alternative is, since this mini will rarely be fielded alone, to model a retinue figure up carrying a big command flag along (for instance, I think he'll usually be fielded along with some warlocks, so something like that).
Completed the painting on the Land Raider, essentially. I might go in and fiddle with a couple details here and there (lenses, etc) but it's done. Last bit to do was highlight it and weather it, and I was worrying about how to highlight it with all the camo bits... and decided to just drybrush the whole thing with a mid-range green and followed that up with a silver metallic. IMO it gave a nice effect that brought out the edges of the armor plates as well as adding a definite "beat up" look to it (which is what I'm going to go for with this army). After that it was a simple mud-weather and it's basically done.
So, been awhile since I've done any real work, but this weekend I got an idea from looking through the gallery here. I spotted a few Rhinos converted into the Arbites' Repressor APC, and thought it might be an interesting base for a Chimera. One of my Marine armies is Daemonhunters heavy, including a squad of =I= Stormtroopers; this vehicle will be their ride. I chose to do this conversion because I have a few unfinished Rhinos, and rather than buying a Chimera kit I could simply use the stuff I already had (plus $10 for some more plasticard).
The Rhino chassis has been widened by about an inch; when I do the next batch of photos I'll take a comparison shot. I have no idea how it compares in size to a Chimera since I don't have one handly.
The most obvious part missing is the turret, and I have no real idea what I'm going to do with that yet. I will also be adding additional detail to the side armor, including a big =I=, bolts, and some additional greebles; I think I'll also need to do some extra work on the dozer blade (which unlike my Land Raider does not retract, since there's no need for it on a tank without a front door).
That is absolutely brilliant. I love the use of the Rhino's interior panel on the back end, not to mention the tiled plasticard on the top. My only concern is that it is really wide and that could lead to some game play issues. Other than that, I'll take 7 Really, another great conversion for your ever increasing list. Keep up the good work.
Figured out a good base for the turret, actually using bases: a 25mm round base fits practically perfectly in the turret hole, and I glued an inverted 40mm base onto it to serve as the foundation for the rest of the turret. Still need to add a ton of detail to the turret, as well as adding more detail to the rest of the model.
I also, as promised, took some size comparison pics... and I'm kind of shocked at how big it became. The dozer blade is responsible for most of the length increase, so I'm not too worried about that, but the width is as much as a Land Raider. Luckily this army isn't going to be a particularly serious one.
Got a few more details added to the model, including =I= stuff. Last bit before painting will be finding places to just add some random doodads, to give the model a little depth here and there. Been trying to work on a swivel-mount spotlight, but it's not really coming together at the moment. :\
Hans_posthumus wrote:Did you get a paintjob from the sliding eldar from on of the first pages?
If you mean the farseer, no I've not painted it yet. I've never quite been happy with the model, and will likely break it down for parts at some point, instead continuing to use my large C'tan conversion . Converting the Autaurch made me realize that it just doesn't look like a proper command-level Eldar, but more like a senior Storm Guardian or something.
OK, so I found out that the local game shop is holding a tourney in a couple weeks, so I decided I'll finally get around to playing some 5th Edition. That means nailing down an army list and finishing up units that are needed for that army.
That means a unit of Rangers, a unit of Jetbikes, and a Farseer that doesn't suck and that won't be confusing under the TLOS rules.
I was never really happy with the last Farseer that I posted: it didn't really look like one. It was more like a Storm Guardian sergeant or something. So I chopped off his arm (since I really DID like the spear) and dug an old farseer that I'd used for parts out of my bits box. I sort of hamfistedly threw a fresh cloak on the back to cover up some chopping work that I'd done previously to steal part of its sword, and tossed together a card/putty banner.
I still need to do some sanding work on the grey stuff, but I wanted to wait until it had cured before I do that.
Just prior to working on the Farseer, I finished up a unit of Rangers that had literally been sitting in my "to do" box for something like 5 years. I didn't spend a ton of time painting them, mostly just washes and drybrushing, so they're not the best painted models I've ever done. They're going to spend most of their playtime hiding in trees anyways, so...
I'm mainly showing them because I like the conversions, not because I'm particularly happy with the painting.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Some in-progress painting shots; first few layers are in place. Going to spend more time blending the Phoenix "rune" on his back, probably need to clean up the edges of the orange-yellow on the front ends of the robes.
Wrapped up painting the Farseer tonight. I need to get some better pictures of it with more consistent lighting; I don't think reds and oranges really come off very well with the lights I use for painting.
Assembled this tonight; will be the first of seven models. I wanted to give them a much nicer feeling of speed (similar to the DE bikes and the Jess Goodwin test model you can find somewhere around here) along with modernizing them to match the current guardians.
I also find it strangely appropriate that as I sat down to start working on these, Return of the Jedi was on TV... and the Speeder Bike Chase Scene started up.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Made a more effective banner for the bike, designed more to fit with the army as a whole, as well as being something I can easily do on all future bikes (I'd run out of the Wraithlord banner bits pretty soon).
I mostly like the bike! It's a good idea. However, it might be slightly more aerodynamic if the fins sticking off of the engines were reversed, enhancing the streamlined look. Just a thought.
Very nice! I really like the guardians with the addition of the high elf parts; it gives each guardian more personailty, and gives them more of a 'citizen army' feel that's appropriate for the non-aspect models.
Great job on the bikes too. they really need that stretching out.
tzeentchling wrote:I mostly like the bike! It's a good idea. However, it might be slightly more aerodynamic if the fins sticking off of the engines were reversed, enhancing the streamlined look. Just a thought.
Well, the forward vanes are kind of an Eldar "thing". Even the awesome prototype Jetbike that Jess Goodwin did in his spare time has the fins that way. It's certainly a good option, though, and I'm thinking of adding a lower stabilizer under the engines and if so that one'll be more traditional.
The squad is fully converted at this point, except for bases... and I need to figure out how I'm going to do up a Warlock since I apparently don't have any warlocks lying about in a box somewhere like I thought. :\ May have to actually buy one. Paint starts tomorrow night on these six.
Sorry about the width of the photos, but I didn't see enough detail on smaller sizes. Edit: whoa, I didn't know dakka automatically resized photos to prevent H-scroll. Sweet.
I've done the pass of bone-wash-bone, and have done the purples on all of the models. The freehand on the front end of the bikes is based on the Noh-mask style mon of the Moto family (one of the families in the L5R Unicorn clan, the foremost masters of cavalry in that game world). I tried to make each bike have a different, stylized version of the mask, and intentionally elongated the faces to make them a bit more Eldar-like.
Next step is to do a bit of cleanup, then to add some detail to the riders, and then to do the banners.
I'm sorry about the variance in the photos, I didn't want to dig out the light box for this and the jetbike carapaces are VERY reflective apparently, preventing me from getting any good consistent photography of the bikes. :\
Automatically Appended Next Post: Added some yellow to the carapaces to provide some much-needed depth/variety to the bikes. Tomorrow, the banners!
Again, I tried various camera settings and Photoshop fudging to make the colors look a bit more like reality.
And a closeup of a single bike so the rider's general color scheme can be viewed:
OK, time for a big photo dump. I completed the Jetbike squad, mostly (still need to add grass to the base and I forgot to paint the warlock's spear, dammit), but I took the opportunity to get some better photos of some previously completed stuff and will be showing those here as well.
First off, as mentioned, the jetbikes are complete:
Next, I took some better photos of the Farseer, Autarch and Wraithlord...
And finally, a quality composite of the Land Raider:
I went ahead and pulled out the whole bloody army as it stands and took some full army shots. Hopefully this shows that the army manages to look fairly unified through the use of the banners and common basing rather than looking like the typical Eldar "Who Crapped a Rainbow on the Table" mishmash of color. Not sure if that's accomplished, though, feedback is certainly welcome.
This is basically the army I'll be taking to a tourney on Sunday, plus/minus a few models here and there. The only things I really have left to do are:
-Paint the spear on the Bike Warlock
-Paint up a new Scatter Laser turret for one of the Wave Serpents
-Repaint the gems/holofields on the fronts of the Wave Serpents
-Make a few objective counters
-Decide if I want to hack together a banner for the Autarch or not.
The pics are all 1280 pixels wide, so if your desktop can handle it you may want to spread your browser window wide to see them at full detail.
Two full, wide-angle shots (one naturally taken one fake-panorama edited):
No new pics or anything, but my goal was successful: I won the best army award at the local tournament I was rushing to finish the army for. With the store credit I picked up a War Walker, which will be the first member of a future squad. At the moment I'm trying to visualize what I'll do to them to make them distinct (other than the usual banner work).
I'm probably going to be taking a few more days' break from any minis work, then I'm going to start a new thread focusing on stuff I'm doing for my D&D campaign and other similar minis, keeping my 40k/Sci-fi stuff separated from the more individualized fantasy-level minis. I am also in the planning stages for something extremely epic, but I need to track down the parts for it before I can start really doing anything with it.
Last night I decided to start work on the War Walker. My intention before I cut into any plastic was to create a somewhat faster-looking walker, something that's worthy of the scout move and the general grace of the Eldar. I'd thought about extending the weapon "arms" as well, to give it the look of more weapon flexibility. Browsing around various galleries of mecha and battlemechs, I remembered the Battletech Clan Omnimechs were usually fairly graceful (compared to the clunky Inner Sphere mechs), so I looked them up. Turns out that the Vulture was a fairly perfect representation of what I had mentally visualized, so I used it as the general outline for the walker.
On the whole, it's not really "based" on the Vulture, but the arm and leg layout were at least influences towards the final look. After building the arms, it turned out that the legs had become way too short (both in looks and in actual physical capability, as the arms would drag on the ground). I thus had to extend the legs by a couple of inches, which turned out to really give the walker even more of a long-legged grace that looks like something the Eldar would grow.
I need to do a few more things: file down the leg putty work to get them a little more smooth, decide what I'm going to do with the shoulders, and of course build the banner to tie it into the army as a whole. After that, I need to afford two more walkers.
Feedback and suggestions for future versions are welcome!
I like the less static pose of the wraithlord.The jet bikes are nice to and that war walker has peeked my interest.Keep up the good work,I can't wait to see what you do next.
Haven't done much minis work (other than experimentally painting a few D&D-related minis) over the last several weeks as it's gotten close to the start of the school year. I made it a point, though, last weekend, to pick up a couple kits to start up a project so that I had something specific to work on during weekends when I have time.
I've always liked the idea of a live-pilot Space Marine Dreadnaught, especially for the more dakka-pattern ones. When I finally noticed that the newer Sentinel kit had a metric ton of weapons included and better legs than the original plastic one, I decided that I had to do this conversion. I like that it's a bit more graceful looking than the standard Marine Dread (I've never liked the super-waddle look of the legs), and once I get the gun arms put together I expect it to still look like a nice big hulking machine.
If you want fluff for why they're doing something so heretical as not honoring a fallen battle brother (I just think it looks cool, sink the fluff), the company is on a sort of last-stand campaign across a planet (dropped in to examine Eldar ruins, killed the Eldar, but then an Ork fleet came in and took out their Strike Cruiser) so they had to cobble together a gun-walker after their last actual dreadnaught was lost. The planet has several heavily forested regions, so a walker is better able to pick its way through trees than heavy tanks.
Still to be done:
*gun arms, obviously (the plan is for the primary build to be a dual-Autocannon setup, with most of the other weapon options represented at some point using a combination of the dread and sentinel parts and scratch builds).
*Leg armor: I need to bulk it up a little bit below the waist to make it look more dread-like
*a cage for the pilot. I'd just use the one that came with the Sentinel, but I had to widen the cockpit quite a bit to fit a marine. *Cleanup: there's lots of visible rough edges and plain plasticard; that stuff will get greebled up and covered with other bits here and there.
Comments, feedback, etc. welcome as always.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Did the arms tonight; this'll probably be all I do until the weekend, and even that depends on how much reading/homework I get given in my first two days of school.
Found time this weekend to wrap up the first set of weapons for the Dreadnaught. Two fully scratch-built twin-linked autocannons are probably the hardest ones I'll have to convert; the other weapons I can at least base on a weapon from the dread or sentinel kits. Also still to do is the cage for the cockpit (haven't decided if I'll do it before painting or add it after I can get into the marine, paint-wise, and to add more junk to the base.
This is the full-composite of the angles; I've got bigger views of the individual angles in the gallery.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Upon further review, I'm wondering if the TL-Autocannon isn't a little too wide for the layout of the model. They look a little bit oversized for the arms that are holding them and I'm not sure that those pistons could handle the torque as it stands.
It would be non-trivial, but possible, to cut the magazines and barrels off of the central bit of plastic that's holding the embedded magnet. In doing so, I could then rotate the gun assemblies 90 degrees, with the magazines hanging directly underneath the barrels instead of sitting off to the side. It would probably balance out the model nicely, but I'm not sure how effective it would look overall. Comments and suggestions?
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ALSO: I'm trying to decide if I should:
A: split the Jade Fists off into their own blog,
B: just retitle the damn blog thread since I've finished the Eldar army and will now just be adding individual models to it occasionally,
or C: just leave it, since the name is recognized and I don't post frequently enough right now for it to matter.
Feedback welcome in that regard (as well as the usual feedback on models).
Trimmed down the Autocannons to fit the body somewhat better. Still need to add the occasional doodad to them to get them looking less like random Plasticard.
Also assembled a TLLC + ML for it; the LC is heavily modified, the missile launcher just had a magnet embedded.
Painted the Warwalker pretty much entirely today (I'd done a Flesh Wash on it previously, then it sat for a number of months). At some point I'll clean up the edge of the base and give it a proper banner to fit in with the rest of the army.
First, a size comparison with a Wraithlord, to show how much taller it is with the extended legs:
And the other views (all thumbnailed, clicky for full-size versions in the gallery):
With the release of 6th edition, my Eldar are going to have a few additions. That means my painting blog gets resurrected!
I'm just going to start off with the Voidraven bomber that I've converted. The "Dark Eldar" allies I'm going to be adding are intended to simply be another part of the Craftworld, so expanding the Razorwing into a bomber was done with parts from a scrapped Falcon tank. Painting is in progress still. Weapons are magnetized so I can either change its loadout or field it as a Razorwing (maybe calling it a "trainer") in a pinch.
I actually really like the mottled effect from using a sponge (similar to the standard Alaitoc look) so I'm considering repainting my Wave Serpents to match it.
Finished painting the Aegis Line tonight. I repurposed the "Crusaders" from the Eldar Henchman unit in my =I= army and instead turned them into Shield Generators that are analogous to the short pieces in the Aegis GW kit. The long pieces are simply clear acrylic (from a picture frame of all things) cut into the right size and covered with blue ink.
The quad-cannon combines a metal Support Platform, a 3rd edition War Walker body, and my entire remaining supply of plastic Shuriken Cannons (which means I need more if I'm going to convert my Wave Serpents over to Cannons along with creating a squadron of Dakka Vypers).
Finally got a replacement bulb for one of my photo lights, so I was able to get some pictures of recently-completed work. Larger pics are in the gallery, linked via the image.
The Voidraven Bomber:
I was pleased with the results of the sponge-paint experiment that I chose to repaint my Eldar vehicles and the new DE Raider in a similar scheme:
Finally, a better pic of the Aegis Line and the current HQ choices of the army (the Farseer and Autarch are old, the Archon is new):
When a few tickets were made available for the BAO, I decided it would be a good thing to go ahead and sign up, with the intent that it would kick my painting gear into motion, since I'd not really done anything for a while. After agonizing over an army list for awhile, I finally decided that the time had come to add a proper Jetbike Farseer to my Eldar collection.
Since I didn't really feel up to doing a full Jetbike conversion, my first plan was to use a Support Weapon Platform to make a "Hoverseer" like others have created, but the local shop was out of them. With that option gone, I realized that I should have been thinking in a totally different direction to begin with: a Venom!
I did this work this afternoon: replaced the hands of the Farseer, built the spear, assembled the Venom with more Craftworld-themed weapons and a pilot. The plan tomorrow is to add a proper banner to the spear to fit in with the rest of the army. The spear is extra-long for two reasons: the first is kind of post-facto justification, saying that he needs it that long to serve as a "lance". The real reason is so I can put a nice, big banner on it, since this model will likely serve as the army centerpiece when I'm not fielding a Wraithlord.
Airbrushing and some detail work complete. Need to do all the non-Red/Orange/Yellow parts next (green gems, etc), then will begin work on the freehand additions. Still not glued together yet, either.
Almost finished: the paintjob is done except for freehand work (runes, etc).
Automatically Appended Next Post: Farseer on Jetbike... Complete! I'm incredibly happy with this one, it definitely ranks up in the best that I've done so far, especially concerning the paintjob. In addition to the composites below there's a "Super Stack" version in the Dakka gallery that I'm totally not posting here.
New Codex? WELL THEN. Let's see what we can do with it... small update here, but it's hopefully the start of another good stretch of Eldar stuffs.
Oh, Warp Spiders are amazing! I don't like the non-poseable models, though, so let's cast up some parts and see if we can make some Guardian-based ones...
The first test model wasn't all that great, the positioning was very "meh" but I'm rather happy with the second one. The arms pose much better, the gun is in closer, so the higher-up backpack doesn't look nearly as awkward.
I do have another centerpiece model that I'm putting together, but this one is going to take a little bit of time...
I can appreciate what you mean about the warp spiders not being posable. Maybe it's just that I'm comparing them to the Warp Siders themselves, but the guardian bodies look almost too slim?
Very intrigued by the centre piece. Will be keeping a watch on this!
She's riding a warcat from the old Clan War minis game, her legs are from a Bretonian pegasus knight, chest is an Eldar Guardian, cloak and arms are from Dark Elf corsairs, and (I'll form) the head is a high elf archer.
