Hey guys, thanks for stopping by! So I have caught IG fever big time! I've had my Vostroyans for a quite a while now, and although I'm satisfied with how they look, I can't channel any hobby energy into anything but guard, because I'm so overwhelmingly excited for the new guard book.

So I decided that I would just retouch my models, a unit at a time. I painted the infantry long before GW had released the citadel washes. Those washes are such a fantastic tool to have in my paint box, that I was eager to use them to soften up my blends and to overhaul the gold and silver. Also, I was quite inspired by Bigred from BoLS's snow basing tutorial

Here's a pic of the models I am starting with. The distance and the quality is lacking (snapped these with my iphone), but I just wanted to give you all an idea of what I'm starting with. It is basically 3 minimum sized infantry platoons and a command platoon with lots of heavy weapons.



I love me some tanks. I have way more points in armor than infantry. Even though those Vostroyan models are so gorgeous. I won't need to do as much work on the tanks but I plan to update them as well, with snow packed on the roof (in the right spots). I'm also inspired to do some more weathering to them, using techniques like crushed pastels.

Here is a picture of my armor. If you can't tell from a glance, it is a tank company, a baneblade, three basilisks, three chimeras, three hellhounds and a trio of multi-laser sentinels. Can you tell I like apocalypse?



I plan to work feverishly up until May 2nd. I'll primarily be updating these models but I will also be painting some new units, especially when more rules rumors come in. I'll be taking some kind of guard army to the Vegas GT, so hopefully I'll keep this blog alive until around September '09

I hope this blog keeps my excitement and productivity high. I'm also hoping to get all sorts of great ideas from all of you guys. I may be updating my table to a realm of battle gameboard, and I'll need a plan to make it snow covered and remain storable. I also have no idea where snow would gather on a tank. I'm not a lifelong tread-head so my book collection about WWII tanks is pretty limited. So if anyone would like to tell me about some resources or link me pictures that would rule.

Oh and I've been busy already. I have pictures to share that I will post very shortly.

Thanks again for participating!

Here is my first shot. I re-coated all of the gold and used gryphonne sepia and little bit of devlan mud on shining gold with burnished gold highlights, rather than the old fashioned chestnut ink. I like how much softer and more brushed rather than polished the washes make metals. Makes them look antique. I decided to bring my burgundy up to red. I like the color burgundy better in real life, but table top distances of tiny models just require a little more pop. Subtlety doesn't often get as enjoyed as it could be at a tourney or at a table for a friendly game. So I opted for more 'zazz. Other than that it is the same as it was before, oh and I can't rave enough about the snow technique I learned. I know its probably an old classic, but somehow it had eluded my bag of tricks. The fact that you can add the texture to any part of the model is just so fun. Getting some of the snow on his boots, and on his hat (i love how his hat is sagging like that, why couldn't it be the weight of the snow pulling it down like that?)

I like the infantry dude and the tanks but the photo's a bit blurry so i dunno wat the basilisks or what i think are sentinel look like.

There is a three-way tie for my favorite vostroyan model. It is between the senior officer with the "hidden power fist" and bird-like bionic leg, the sniper model standing on ruined city terrain and this one...



I basically did the same upgrade that i did for the test model, and had fun tucking some snow into the nook at the top of the flagpole.

A side note, i don't really understand why this guy has a half jacket. If you haven't seen the models rear yet, the other half of his jacket is not hanging behind him. It's literally a 'one-sleeve' jacket. Still love this sculpt! The 'archangel michael' knock-off gives them a very russian orthodox feel.

I thought I'd add a chevek to the ranks. Even though he's an outsider this commissar has proven that he can hold his rahzvod




He's not quite finished yet. although I'm not sure what he needs other than his bolt pistol getting highlighted a bit. Please feel free to suggest some things I can do to him.

At first I thought that having snow gathered on his hat and epaulets would just be outlandish. But a good friend and gaming groupmate insisted I at least try it. I think its really characterful.

If you haven't put this character model next to other models then you might not know that the bolt pistol is head high. He looks great slid next to an officer, with the muzzle nestled behind his ear. I can envision this guy just standing like that for long minutes in order to 'dissuade' any hasty retreat orders being issued.

In order to compete with the attention that pack of space marine casualties is getting I thought I'd include my own casualties. Plus I got to have way more fun with snow than i would have with a regular model.

I'll be using these as objectives for tourneys.





These were FUN!!!

The blood didn't look right until i stole a technique from a gaming groupmate. The trick is to splash some very watered down Iyanden Darksun around the blood pool. Makes it look pretty disgusting.

Destructo-Dids wrote:I like the infantry dude and the tanks but the photo's a bit blurry so i dunno wat the basilisks or what i think are sentinel look like.

Yeah, sorry about the poor quality of the 'before' pics. I just included them to give everyone an idea of the project's 'scope'.

Thanks for the compliment. I think you'll be seeing the sentinels soon, as I can't wait to get them updated!

Shep wrote:

I feel sorry for this guy.

Nice work, I feel I should redo my guard since I got the washes, but looking at them all kills me.

I love them, its so nice to sell fully painted guard armies! The close up "fresh" ones look fab!

Keep it up

Looks great, Shep! I have to say, the pictures don't do them justice - we'll work on the technique a bit (I have picked up a couple of tricks that will work nicely.)

I love the snow casualties - they look better than I even thought they would. One suggestion (and I haven't seen them in person) would be to use a bit of scab red where the blood would be thickest to add a bit of depth (the warm blood melting away the snow, if you will).

Prepare yourself for the coming of the World Eaters - they are definitely getting the snow treatment to fit on your home table.

Wow! Great job! I especially like the fact that you put extra attention to detail with the placement of snow on models (head, shoulders, boots, coats) They look great

Your casualty model is nicely messy!

Wow, loving the objective markers. And the infantry. and the snoweffect. And the characters.

could we get a sharper picture on the armour, and shots of the squads?

Always nice to see a fully painted guard army, especially when it's done as well as yours.

Could we get some close-ups of the tanks as well?

Ooh! I wouldn't like to cross whatever got hold of the dead guardsman. Anyway those are some nicely painted minis, my favourite is definitely the one with the standard, that's some quality shading you got going on there.

First off... wow thank you guys for all the kind words. I got too many requests to see the armor up close. So I very quickly threw them in my tent, I didn't have my macro on so Somnicide please stuff your picture quality notes in a sack (Som is a RL friend, I'm just teasing him)

I'm not incredibly proud of the paint job on them. As I update them with the new refurbishing I'll probably remove the 'before' batch. I am very happy at the volume of painted tanks I have though.

Ok, I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to do to them other than some crushed pastel concrete dust effects and adding some snow (I'm especially looking forward to add dirty snow into the tracks). I'm seriously considering mixing a slightly lighter color to put over their base color. (Right now it is straight Rotting Flesh with some very light bestial brown drybrushing). I REALLY like the Vostroyan baneblade's color that GW painted. Here is a crappy pic that I hastily located of the tank I'm talking about. If you have the apocalypse book, its the baneblade they used in the first battle report. How should I go about getting to that color? If anyone has any thoughts I'd LOVE to hear them. I'd really like to hit it out of the park with those leman russes. I want to be ready to field 9 of them in my 1750 army!

Here's the team captain "Deathclock"


Here are is the tank company... I'd really like to make these guys awesome. Suggestions ahoy!





Here's my artillery...


My only IG forgeworld models, the Hellhounds. That tank on the back looks like a big target.


My chimeras. I need some more. Maybe if I wait until May, they won't be as necessary. I probably will wait. Got a lot of other things to work on.


And finally, the sentinels. Apparently these sentinels are like the Sasquatch... You can't get a clear picture of them. I'll be retouching them soon, since I like them so much, then I'll set a macro and take a pic one at a time.


Thanks again! Hoping to get the command squad finished by adding the senior officer the master vox and a medic. Hopefully after Sprue Posse's weekly paint night on wednesday I'll have another pic to post!

That banner is quite awesome.

The other day one of the owners of my FLGS casually mentioned that he was painting over 400 Vostroyans. I thought I was hallucinating, but I just confirmed it from someone else. Friggin' nut.

Great Vostroyans, Shep! I can't wait to see them all pop up to the standard of your latest retouch (they looked awesome to begin with, don't get me wrong).
The fact that all of the steps you're doing to get the newly touched-up look are "gravy" steps (the fun ones vs. the dreaded base-coating stages) and that you're working toward a new codex release both seem like excellent sources of inspiration. (And the fact that you're P&M blogging them might just inspire me to stop lurking and do a bit of posting here myself. )

As for the armor... the crushed pastels are going to work great along with the snow effect. Mixing a little bit of powdered pastel into your snow mix in a few spots should be fun too.
That said, I think all of your tanks were painted before the citadel washes came out, so it would probably be worth testing them first as a quick, no-hassle weathering/shading technique.

I've got several good WWII tread-head books I can loan you to give you some ideas for dirt, grime, snow, damage, etc..
Also, one thing that was really popular in snow environments was to white-wash tanks with whatever white, paint-like substance the tank crew could get its hands on. The original paint was never completely covered, but the wash broke up the silhouette to make the tanks a little less obvious. Your Vossy tanks are already pretty light-colored, so this might not be the trick... but it's just a thought.

And, I don't know how into tank stowage you are... but you might find it fun to add a bit to your tank company.

Now, if only I can get my green-skins done and up to your standard so we can duke it out when your codex is released...

Very cool.

Love the comissar with the snow on his coat.

Works very well.

great looking army, and wow you have a lot of tanks, all painted too!

Just wrapped up another 'paint night' at my place. Pretty full house tonight. Everyone was really productive, a bunch of us are fired up about our projects. I might even get Gitsmack to start a plog. He has some amazing ork stuff in the works. I'd love it if he shared it with you guys.

I was super productive! I finished my command squad and I'm pretty happy with it. Here it is...




I was battling with the senior officer for a while. His sash was many different colors tonight. I settled on him matching the sash color of his banner bearer buddy. The model needed some lighter colors around the center of the model to break up all that gold brown and red. I also ended up kicking his mo' up to skull white. I loved doing both the master vox and the medic. I hope they are playable when the 'dex hits.

Gitsmack gave me so many tips on tank updating. I'll tell you more about it later when I post my test pics of the WIP leman russ. I'm stoked on that as well.

Big thanks to Sprue Posse for making paint night such an awesome source of motivation, inspiration and consternation!

I mentioned that GitSmack had given me some seriously useful tips to sprucing up my tanks for this repaint. Well here are a before and after shot of the side of one tank




Having the tank already painted up to the level it is, is going to make this upgrade seriosuly fast and easy. I started by applying liberal amounts of Devlan Mud over all the areas that were previously covered by chestnut ink. Once that dried I began drybrushing Dheneb Stone in circular motions across the whole tank. After i got it lightened to the point where I thought it was matching that apocalypse baneblade i referenced earlier, I went for some different weathering techniques.

I started with the a sponge full of scorched brown and smashed that on a couple of places. I made that weathering 3D by painting dheneb stone right out of the pot as a highlight to the bottom of the brown spots. Then I took some crushed pastels a chocolate brown and a black, and applied them lightly to all of those gear looking things, into the cracks between panels and as a seperation between the red stripe and the whitewashed tank.

Lastly, I added the snow in the areas i thought it might collect. I'll probably finish this tank up tonight, but I wanted to put this WIP up to see if i could get any comments about it.

How do you guys feel about it? Does it need something else? Have I overdone it with any of the techniques?

Thanks!

I really like what you have going on here. I will be buying a forgeworld hellhound here soon, so don't be surprised if I steal a few ideas from you. Love the flame wash on the front of the tanks. Great work. Keep it up. I am also partial to the casualty.

Sha1emade wrote:I really like what you have going on here. I will be buying a forgeworld hellhound here soon, so don't be surprised if I steal a few ideas from you. Love the flame wash on the front of the tanks. Great work. Keep it up. I am also partial to the casualty.

Thanks I have to give tons of credit for the flame burns on the hellhounds to WolfLordKejl. Whenever i said "Really? THAT dark?" he was there with a maniacal grin and a nod.

Looks great. I can't wait to see the whole thing complete and in action on the table.

Hey man..that new color for the tanks looks AWESOME. Excellent work!

Gotta say it again. Well done, Shep! The tank looks fantastic... in person and in photos.
I can't wait to see what you do with the tracks and other steel bits to tie it in with the richness of the gold, red and deneb, while keeping it oily, sooty and gritty. Used universe? Yes, please.

By next paint-night, I half expect you to be done with your Baneblade.

Kudos.

Almost finished with my first tank repaint. I'd call it finished but in taking a picture of it I saw a few details that I forgot to retouch. Well enough yapping... here it is.





What do you guys think? Too much snow? Not enough? I think I need to get in there and dirty those treads up a bunch.

Since my models are on a black and grey sand base, I was wondering what colors to use to muck up those tracks. Thanks for any ideas.

The whitewash is looking great.

What you can do is to have a couple places where it's worn through / washed off and you can see the original paint underneath.

Maybe have some tanks that got lighter / lesser amounts of whitewash to work with.

Great looking IG! I got my unpainted command squad looking over my shoulder saying, "See! We look great painted! GET TO WORK!"

I think youre doing the right thing. The lighter color on the tank looks a lot better if you ask me. Well done. Superb looking snow by the way.

lookin sweet dude

JohnHwangDD wrote:The whitewash is looking great.

What you can do is to have a couple places where it's worn through / washed off and you can see the original paint underneath.

Maybe have some tanks that got lighter / lesser amounts of whitewash to work with.

Ooh, that is a great suggestion. I'm painting the other two russes in this squad tonight and tomorrow, I'll experiment with that and see how it looks at this scale. Thanks!

Great log of your work lately. Love the look of your army.

Re: the weathering. Everything looks awesome, but I think the snow is a little overdone. Maybe keep less of it and higher up the model on future tank repaints?

Some of the explanations of weathering that you did I didn't really understand, but it looks fantastic.

- Blackbone

Yeah, historically, whitewash was field-applied.

So you wouldn't have nice, even factory-spray coverage.

You'd have the results of a couple guys working with a bucket and a broom...

Great work, man. I really like what you're doing with your armor. The color change and weathering are subtle, but they change the overall look of your Russ in a really good way. Call me crazy, but your tank looks heavier and more substantial with the new paint...
It does look like the new color is the factory paint instead of white-wash, but the old paint is just visible enough to give the new color a depth that wouldn't be there otherwise so I don't really miss the white-wash effect .

One thing I can't wait to see is how you muck the tracks.

Oh, If you're looking for more work, I just thought of something else that might be fun to add (along with stowage): air identification markings. You don't want your own Thunderbolt tank-hunters accidentally hitting your armor on a strafing run.

Another Sprue Posse paint night... another update. It was another productive one. I managed to knock out two more leman russes, so now I have one heavy support slot painted

I also had a thread going about cold weather ogryns and for the last couple days I have been sculpting a bomber jacket for one, a section at a time.

Well I didn't go to be until 2am but I managed to finish the test ogryn and my three tanks, and managed to get pics as well.. albeit I've taken better pics in my lifetime

here they are....





I'm not a great sculptor... I'm learning by doing kinda... but I'm optimistic about how he will turn out when painted. I went a little quick on the tanks, and I'll need to touch them up before i hit a tourney, but they are done enough to move on.

What do you guys think?

Everything is looking really good. I absolutely love the updates to the tanks! Really awesome stuff but I think they could use a bit more weathering. It's really just my personal preference for heavily chipped paint and stuff on tanks, especially for IG. Either way they look great as is. I would maybe recommend a little more snow build up on the tops of the track guards, but otherwise I think you have a good amount that's not overdone.

I'm not sure about the Ogryn yet. The sculpting is good, but I'm not sure I like the bomber jacket. Long coats would be cooler, IMO. Oh, and give the Ogryns mustaches!

Very cool bomber jacket! As you say, you are learning as you go along, and I'm sure you'll get the hang of it REALLY quickly. I love the use of the aquilla as the zipper pull!

Love the bomber/tanker jacket on the Ogryn - looks very thematic against the rest of the tanks.

The Ogryn looks great... BUT... if it's zipped up, shouldn't the zipper pull be a bit higher up... like towards the neck?

Because if it's some future, high-tech zipper... I'm really not sure an Ogryn could figure it out

Fantastic work so far on everything!

Looking good Shep.
The bomber jacket works, agree the Ogryns should have mo's - would tie them in nicely with the regular troopers.
Probably best to stay away from giving them furry hats thou. Might be too comical...

cheers

ZamboniKnight wrote:The Ogryn looks great... BUT... if it's zipped up, shouldn't the zipper pull be a bit higher up... like towards the neck?

Because if it's some future, high-tech zipper... I'm really not sure an Ogryn could figure it out

Fantastic work so far on everything!

I knew this was coming

military jackets zip both upwards and downwards.

Plus, the guy that puts the jacket on the dumb ogryn just jumps up and grabs the zipper and pulls it down.

and also, i spaced on it while sculpting (I'm not supposed to admit that)

Thanks for the compliment! I might be slacking on painting vossies to paint this guy up tonight.... I'm dying to see how much of the imperfection of my sculpting can be covered up by a decent paint job.

Hey guys, I put some paint on that ogryn conversion. I am about 70% through my painting stages and it got late so I stopped. I need to smooth out the blends and add another highlight stage to the pants and to his face. Theres a little bit of cleaning up I have to do as well...

This models pretty much my 'proof of concept' as Somnicide would say. I won't do anything more to it for the time being. It was a fun little thing to do, and now I know exactly what I'll do if it turns out ogryn need to be in my list. Until I see rules for them, I won't invest any more time and money.

But I am pretty happy with how it looks at this stage of completion. I can see where I need to get better at sculpting... but for my first major project using green stuff... I don't think its all that bad.




thanks for looking

Even if this hadn't been your first big green-stuff project, that jacket sculpt turned out great. I love the way you attached the shoulder plate to the jacket... nice bit of detail there.

The contrast between the color of the jacket and pants is a nice touch. If you want another little bit of highlighting on the jacket, you might try some Tau Sept Ochre or Deneb Stone mixed into the Scorched Brown around the elbows and seams and such... places where the big guy ran into or rubbed against something. I used to have a brown leather jacket and, after years of use, the brown finish wore to a yellowish color in spots. Just a thought.

Keep up the furious pace... I can't wait to see what you'll be working on next.

Exellent work,now go crush all in the name of mankind!!!

Love the Ogryn, you really captured the feel of the Vostroyans, can't wait to see more.

So whats up nexed for your army?

Deff Dread red Edition wrote:So whats up nexed for your army?

I need to get an infantry squad done. I'm really hoping to be able to finish one by the end of our wednesday paint night. I'm particularly looking forward to working with my 65mm heavy weapons bases. They've already got a bunch of city rubble on them, and getting the snow on there is just gonna be fun.

awesome, awesome army. You inspire me to touch up my IG tanks.....and buy more of em!

Great ogryn jacket! It looks fantastic, very original too!

You're slowing inspiring me to repaint my tanks...although staying up till 2am wouldn't be nice.

Keep painting...you can reward yourself with a shadowsword!

Keep up the good work you have inspired me to create a Tallarn army,Wouldn't tallarn ogryns look awesome?

The green stuff looks AMAZING. Absolutely killer.

I must remember to mine this thread for ideas when I have my Valhallans up to platoon strength for your snow techniques.

Update inbound....

Another paint night has come and gone... there was so much activity this week. People were going back and forth with ideas and asking for paint tips, building cool conversions and painting like madmen. I already can't wait till next wednesday.

Anyway, got my first infantry squad done. It might need a little bit more love before I go to a tourney but I'm ready to move on to more infantry and more projects. here there are...





It took a full night and then another hour to get them through the upgrades... I think if I work efficiently, I could get 10 done in a night after I get home from work... that will leave me with plenty of time to do some side projects for guard, like my brand new tank company commander.

I have decided that I really want to do this as a black commissar tank. The red stripes will be in the same places, but instead of off-white, it'll be dark grey highlights over black. Gitsmack will provide me with the details of how to make a tank look 'black' while still having depth, and wear and tear. He has a great dark grey tank that I'll use as inspiration.

With the rest of my paint night time, I built the tank...






I have a question for you guys.... I'll ask forgeworld too... but do you all know if this Commissar tank commander will fit in the smaller cupola of the stygies vanquisher turret that I have on my tank?


Thanks a bunch for stopping by...

Love the inf squad, but the work on the jacket looks excellent - the texture came across ace.

That is a great idea, having the ammo loader on th eheavy weapon squad removeable. I wish I had not glued all of mine down so that I could blatantly copy you!

I dunno about the stygies version, but I have the other vanquisher turret and it fits a metal pointing tank commander no problem. Hope that helps. Good build job on the Russ!

Hey Shep, did you finish up that Commissar tank after I left?

Can you explain how you made the loader removable from the HW base.

Somnicide wrote:Hey Shep, did you finish up that Commissar tank after I left?

Yes.


I have already seen a few things after a nights sleep that I am going to change. The ring around the barrl will likely end up black or red. Some of the weathering techniques I used on the other tanks will be appearing. I'm just not liking my idea of 'fresh paint job'. But he is still just for fun and apocalypse, being my 10th leman russ and all.

Ghost in the Darkness wrote:Can you explain how you made the loader removable from the HW base.

Yes.



I started by basing the loader seperately on its own 25mm base. Then I took the blank 65mm base and set the assembled gunner and the loaders base approximately where I thought they would go. At this stage I did a little planning on what the 'scene' would be, based on my extra cities of death bits I had lying around.

After I had dry fit everything, I moved everything off of the big base except the loader. I then mixed some green stuff up.. about as much as 2x of the samller dice we all use. I rolled it into a sausage, and then bent that sausage around the 25mm base of the loader. Once the circle was formed, I carefully pulled the 25mm base out.. (I used some nose grease as a releasing agent)

From that point on, I used a sculpting tool to turn the doughnut shaped greenstuff shape into a volcano looking crater. At first I would need to add more green stuff to make the incline of the volcano pretty flat, so it didn't look like a hill, but as I did this more and more, I got better at judging how much GS to use.

I wish I had some WIP pics to better illustrate, but I've already done it 33 times, and don't anticipate needing many more heavy weapons. I hope that description sufficed.


I think I'm going to knock out some more tanks this week. I've been enjoying painting the russes, and will likely finish off three more by end of paint night next week. Maybe if I get really motivated I can get 6 done, now that I really know the drill. Then I can proudly display my tank company

thanks for reading guys.

Thanks for sharing this tip on the loaders Shep!

I've been thinking about how to approach this with my guard since the current dex publishing. Haven't thought a simple and working solution. This should do the trick.

That commissar Russ is looking excellent! I hope you're happy with the new codex, it should give plenty of vanquisher opportunities!

awesome dead guy

Hey Shep... great work on the Commisar tank! I agree that a black or red look on the barrel end would probably be cool (and more intimidating), but the overall look of the tank is already pretty darn good. I can see it sitting towards the back of your tank formation, threatening any tank crew that might think of backing off the line.

Keep up the awesome output and you'll have an apocalypse sized force repainted in time for the guard codex release.

I do the exact same thing for my heavy weapons! Lookin good, what washes do you use on your metals?

ph34r wrote:I do the exact same thing for my heavy weapons! Lookin good, what washes do you use on your metals?

Thanks... for the golds, I'm using a glaze of gryphonne sepia, followed by a very controlled shading with devlan mud.

For the boltgun metal, good old badab black.

Nice - I really like what you did with the removable loader on the HB base. I'd thought about doing that with my Tanith Heavy Weapons, but never got around to doing it. I'm glad to see how well it works!

Shep:

Where do you go (or how do you do) the snow effect? It is sharp as all get out, and I'd like to do something similar with my Valhallans.

bryantsbears wrote:Shep:

Where do you go (or how do you do) the snow effect? It is sharp as all get out, and I'd like to do something similar with my Valhallans.

I used Bigred from BoLS's snow basing tutorial, although I changed the formula around as I went along. Its not a real exact mix, and you'll figure out what works best for you as you repeat it over and over.

Knocked out another squad.


Not much to say. Just going to keep doing this until I have tons of IG ready to go. Honestly, this fresh deluge of rumors has me massively distracted. I think next week I'll add a command squad for these two infantry squads to make a platoon and then I'll switch back to tank painting for a week.

thanks for stopping by.

Looking good, Shep. Sorry I couldn't make it last night - I hope to have an update in the next day or so - nothing exciting, but at least most everything is black now.

Shep wrote:

I started by basing the loader seperately on its own 25mm base. Then I took the blank 65mm base and set the assembled gunner and the loaders base approximately where I thought they would go. At this stage I did a little planning on what the 'scene' would be, based on my extra cities of death bits I had lying around.

After I had dry fit everything, I moved everything off of the big base except the loader. I then mixed some green stuff up.. about as much as 2x of the samller dice we all use. I rolled it into a sausage, and then bent that sausage around the 25mm base of the loader. Once the circle was formed, I carefully pulled the 25mm base out.. (I used some nose grease as a releasing agent)

From that point on, I used a sculpting tool to turn the doughnut shaped greenstuff shape into a volcano looking crater. At first I would need to add more green stuff to make the incline of the volcano pretty flat, so it didn't look like a hill, but as I did this more and more, I got better at judging how much GS to use.

I wish I had some WIP pics to better illustrate, but I've already done it 33 times, and don't anticipate needing many more heavy weapons. I hope that description sufficed.


I think I'm going to knock out some more tanks this week. I've been enjoying painting the russes, and will likely finish off three more by end of paint night next week. Maybe if I get really motivated I can get 6 done, now that I really know the drill. Then I can proudly display my tank company

thanks for reading guys.

I just finished putting together a Heavy Weapons Model for my Chaos Rnegades army, and took some photos of my progress following Shep's guidance above:

Sans Spotter:

i'm not a fan of the vostroyan models but i like what you've done with them. nice conversions and paint jobs! i especially like the bomber pilot ogryn!

I like the look of massed tanks - it'd be nice to get a better pic of yours. I quite like the trio shot of the russes.

Now that this thread has been risen from the dead...any more updates? I too have been neglecting my army repaint duties. But I would love to see a shot of all your tanks!!

I'm back. I'm in the middle of a tale of three gamers campaign. its got me painting a bunch of tau, which has been fun, but has taken about 80% of my hobby time.

I got a little bit ahead of the dealine this week so I knocked out 3 lascannon teams... here they are.



This pic is entirely uninspired. Paint night ended a little alte and I was zonked, so i threw them in the tent, took one shot and then went to bed. These guys will probably become veterans and join with one of my troop configurations. I really like this set up as one way to run IG troops in the new codex.


10x veterans, 3x meltaguns, 1x lascannon 115
chimera 55

10x veterans, 3x meltaguns, 1x lascannon 115
chimera 55

10x veterans, 3x meltaguns, 1x lascannon 115
chimera 55

So I'm going to be painting towards that. I've got the 9 meltaguns half painted, I'll bring them up to the new scheme this week and next, and then I'll update my three chimeras to boot.

Now that I basically know almost all the stuff in the new codex, it's giving me a lot more direction on what to paint. So i hope to keep this thread active with updates more often now. Thanks for resurrecting the thread, and my interest btw. I'll get some cool looking chimeras up here soon And maybe I'll paint my forgeworld manticore too

man all this stuff looks great!

Shep this is a great project! How did I miss this before.

I have always been a huge fan of the Vostroyan sculpts. Can you still order these from GW? I hope so!

The Ogryn with the leather jacket is wonderful, really characterful and a vast improvement.

One suggestion though if you'd like to add to the snow effects on the tanks. I myself have tried lots of different ways of doing snow recently on my 1:48 diorama and I found that one of the easiest and most realisitic is to use the hairspray method. I see you already have some large lumps of snow on the tanks which is great but if you'd like some light snow fall or snow splatter on the tracks etc why not spray the model with hairspray, sprinkle some bi-carbonate of soda in a natural pattern, then spray again with hairspray to seal?

If you scatter the bi-carbonate of soda from a height lightly onto the surface you can get some really realistic and natural looking snow fall effects. Don't forget that as well as heavy snow thats formed on fenders and the hull you would also get some loose fresh snow splashing up the sides of the tank whilst driving.

Great stuff once again.

Gundam-Mecha wrote:Shep this is a great project! How did I miss this before.

I have always been a huge fan of the Vostroyan sculpts. Can you still order these from GW? I hope so!

The Ogryn with the leather jacket is wonderful, really characterful and a vast improvement.

One suggestion though if you'd like to add to the snow effects on the tanks. I myself have tried lots of different ways of doing snow recently on my 1:48 diorama and I found that one of the easiest and most realisitic is to use the hairspray method. I see you already have some large lumps of snow on the tanks which is great but if you'd like some light snow fall or snow splatter on the tracks etc why not spray the model with hairspray, sprinkle some bi-carbonate of soda in a natural pattern, then spray again with hairspray to seal?

If you scatter the bi-carbonate of soda from a height lightly onto the surface you can get some really realistic and natural looking snow fall effects. Don't forget that as well as heavy snow thats formed on fenders and the hull you would also get some loose fresh snow splashing up the sides of the tank whilst driving.

Great stuff once again.

Very cool. Trying that tonight on some chimeras, thanks for the tip I'm always looking for a couple more snow techniques!

Any pics of your snowy chimera's?

See them in action at - http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/235737.page

Loving the whole army!

I recently started a vostroyan army and I've gotton some great ideas from you!

Thanks a bunch!

Hey Shep

Just pitching in to show my support - really nicely painted army! I too am a Vostroyan fan, and know they can be difficult to keep attention as they can't be factory-line painted like some other IG regiments I'm currently torn over how to portray my Vostroyans - either as veterans in Chimeras (as you are doing), or using them as standard Guardsmen. If I use them as vets, I lose out on the combined squad tactics, commissars etc...

Anyway, my query is what colours did you use on the Ogryn trousers? Thought it looked like Deneb or Khaki...

One month later...does that count as thread necromancy??

But I hope it doesn't, cos I like this thread!!

Tanks Gorman and S.J.

I believe what you guys just gave me is known in the business as...

A kick in the pants....

How about I start this up again. I've beent weaking and tuning my tourney list, and I have painted 3 chimeras to about 90%

I'll get the final weathering and snow on them this week and then put them up, along with a plasma russ I have painted...

What will follow is a lot of vehicles since my current list is pretty mechanized...

But we've got some vendettas in the works and some inquisitional allies as well.

Thanks for the encouragement.

Paint,paint quickly!!!!

So many tanks very nice!

With the new IG codex everyone's building IG
even me

I agree with most of the above posts. These new paint jobs look great. Although, I don't think there was anything really wrong with the old ones, except the tanks sort of looked like they were sitting in some imperial basement for 20K years, leaching rust in a damp puddle. But that's the aesthetic effect of the old scheme, nothing against the execution of the old paint jobs.
I think it's funny that you're re-painting a vostroyan army - i hadn't even heard of them until I got back into the hobby about 6 mos. ago - you're already giving them a whole new paint scheme!

anyway - I digress. Looks excellent. Keep us all posted w/fresh pics.

For over two months I was distracted. I did a build and battle campaign with tau, and did a lot of playtesting to figure out how I'm going to play my tourney vostroyans, but I've finally gotten productive again. I've got my HQ and troops painted. And now I'm waiting on the new hellhound kit to make me a bunch of devildogs, and one more forgewolrd manticore to finish the 1750. I also can't wait for planetstrike, where it looks like foot IG will be excellent as defenders.

Anyway, I've got the troops and HQ to show you.

The company command squad


and the three veteran units




They aren't the best pictures. I took them last night pretty late, I just wanted to restart this threads heartbeat. It might be a couple weeks before I get something up again. It will likely be 3 manticores.

I'm a little stumped on the manticore. Specifically how to paint the missiles. Now that you've all seen what I'm going for on the tanks, I'd LOVE to hear some ideas on how to paint the missiles. On the one hand I can see them being factory produced, so totally indistinct from any other strike eagle missile. But on the other hand vostroya i a factorum world, and maybe they church up their missiles a little bit more. Any and every discussion on manticore painting would be lovely.

Thanks for reading.

Good to see you restart the thread.

Hope to see more soon,I like what you have done thus far.

Sorry I have no real tips or ideas on how to paint the manticore.

@Shep: How do you do your snow?

white paint on area to be snowed.

Then I mix baking soda, white glue and a little bit of water together.

I have done it so much that I just eyeball it. But I'd say the ratios are 6:2:1. It's rough, you can be a little off and its fine. Consistency should be like cake frosting.

Apply to area painted white and a little bit beyond the white panted area.

That's it.

Thanks!

These guys look awesome. The Vostroyans are certainly some of the more inspired Guard models, and really feel like they fit with crumbling far-future setting that comes across in the codexes and in Dark Heresy books. They have a real returning to weird... baroque? stylings about them.

Your stuff looks really great.

If you want to tart up the missiles, I can see the manufactorum workers putting purity seals and hymnals of explodification on the sides of their mighty works

love the hymnals of explodification!

I love these guards!

Very nice job on the tanks, the Red/cream looks ace! Jealous...

This army makes me want to play IG.

Wow, great stuff so far, for the missles I would make them a dark metalic, with the dark red, and golden trim, with soot smudges, after all it is from an industrial hiveworld. Maybe add a preacher to the tank to give it the "Churchy feel" you are looking for. But keep up the good work!

loveing the tanks youve got , im starting a mechanised infantry for a vostroyans army