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Well, as one commission recedes into the background, a fresh one is all ready to pick up!

This is a substantial Tyranids army that I'm splitting between myself and a couple of Freelancers, which the client has asked to be painted in a colour scheme like that of Privateer Press's studio colour scheme for the Legion of Everblight.

Anyway, here're some of the models we'll see painted over the next 4-6 weeks:

Deathleaper


Trygon Prime


Mawloc


Stealers


Zoanthropes


Hormagaunts with Feshborers


The Gaunts are out with Freelancer Gareth, who's the only other member of my team with his own airbrush, as far as I know, but here's the first half of the stealer brood:



These aren't quite finished, as I still have to add some grass tufts and snow effect. I'm going to be using a recipe for the snow that I got here, so I'll be ordering some Woodland Scenics water effects from Maelstrom in the next day or so, but I'll do all of that at the end.

R.

I do like the colour scheme, I think it to be a wise choice by your client.

Stealer squad finished:



Tomorrow, I aim to get started on the Zoanthropes and to start and finish the Broodlord.

@infilTRAITOR - I confess, I had my doubts, but I reckon they look pretty spiffing.

R.

Taking some requirements from the client to include the pink shading from the Everblight scheme, I present today's output: the Broodlord!



R.

Today, I managed to finish one of the two Zoanthropes. I made good progress on the other one, but I was stymied a little by the news that my wife and I might be receiving our first foster placement today, and had to rush out to buy a bunch of additional bits and pieces.

Still, here we go:



R.

Everblight Nids? I like, and nice bases too. Is that as far as the black carapace pieces are going? Looks like way minimal highlighting going on (which I dig), but the back veins on the zoey in particular have some details I'd think would be worth picking out (the gribbly muscle bits). Maybe it's a price level deal?

Anyway, thanks for sharing PO

- Salvage

looking good, subscribed

Good question, Salvage. The best I can say is that the highlighting on the armour plates hasn't come out in this photo.

There is some detail beneath the armour plates that's not visible in this picture, but nothing worth speaking of. I might sharpen the highlights across the army later.

R.

Zoanthrope Number 2:



And Deathleaper:



I tried to get a "de-cloaking" effect going on on the Deathleaper. Let me know if you think it worked.

R.

Excellent 'Nids man. De-cloaking leaper looks good to me. Subscribed.

I like that Deathleaper subtle colours but well put into play!

WIP shot of the Mawloc:



The idea is that he and the Trygon Prime should be done by the end of Friday, but right now I'm aiming to get them both done by the end of Thursday, so I can make a decent start on the Tervigon on Friday.

R.

Finished the Mawloc!



I've made a start on the Trygon and will finish him tomorrow if I possibly can.

R.

These are cool, subbed for sure!

Your work on the carapace is much clearer in these next batch of minis, not sure if it's a photo thing or you amped them up IRL (or I just missed it the first time ) ... Regardless, looking very solid, still digging that scheme

- Salvage

Almost finished the Trygon Prime today!



I think tomorrow will be spent finishing this chap, then touching up the other models I've already "finished" to address any outstanding issues, areas that need improvement or just bits I've forgotten...

R.

I thought you'd all appreciate a shot of the Tervigon once I'd done the airbrushing, so you can see how the creature looks with the Chapterhouse Studios conversion kit installed:



R.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Finished the Trygon Prime!



R.

Here's the Mycetic Spore WIP:



This is entirely subject to the client's approval. There are, of course, a number of commercial "alien seed pod" models out there and if I can find one I'd recommend to the client, we might go with that instead (and I'll eBay this one). It's made, of course, from a coconut shell.

I happened to run a coconut shy for a church event a few weeks ago and as we were giving prizes instead of coconuts, there were a few broken coconuts unwanted at the end of the day. I brought one home, put the meat into some macaroons and cleaned up the shell. I had to use sandpaper on the exterior to get all the hairs and rough surface removed (mostly - obviously a little texture is good).

Incidentally, if anyone has a recommendation of a commercial "alien seed pod" design, please let me know.

Also, the lash whip and ripper tentacles will be built up on the wires you can see (as well as crawling along the ground), but the client wants a stinger salvo on this model, too. Does anyone have a constructive suggestion on how to model such a weapon on this design?

R.

, this is one of mine, it is made from a toy and this is just the shell. i will look to see if i can find the product but i got mine from sainsburys and tesco so i would check there in the toy section. other people have used these and the link below is too a army profile that has epic ones in it.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Hive_Fleet_Kukulan

its about half way down the page and you will know it when you see it.

hope this helps

Is that the "Monster Egg" hollow toy thing that Beasts of War featured?

R.

maybe i am not too sure but it could be. they work fine and the plastic is durable

Plasma Hatcher eggs by any chance?

Megabloks iirc....

Finished the Tervigon:







R.

Finished six out of twelve of the Termagants with devourers:



I wanted to finish more than this today, but got distracted by a number of other issues. So tomorrow I have to do better: I need to finish the next six of these and airbrush the Hive Guard and get started on painting their base colours.

Incidentally, yes, their bases aren't done. I ran out of Adeptus Battlegrey yesterday and have some more on its way.

R.

Second half of the squad is done!



...except for the bases. But, on the plus side, I've now got the Water Effects and will be trying out the snow recipe tomorrow. In other news, expect to see more water appearing on my bases in the near future...

R.

So with a huge effort I got the Hive Guard finished yesterday:





I can't say I'm completely happy with these.  For a start, neither the metal nor resin models (there are two of the former and three of the latter - see if you can spot them!) were satisfactory.  The metal ones are horribly imbalanced, even with my having added extra weighting to the bases.  The resin ones all have significant casting flaws.  The freelancer who assembled them did his best to cover these up and fix them, but some only became obvious once painted, some were inaccessible to the hobby knife without damaging the rest of the model and some were simply impossible to fix (like the missing end on the tongue of one of the models).

With this starting point of hostility towards the minis, I never really engaged with the painting and feel like I rushed bits and skipped over parts that should have been done better.  For now, I'm content to have done 99% of everything that needs doing (including the snow - more on that in a moment), but think I'll be coming back to these once I've finished the Hive Tyrant.

Ah yes, the snow.

As you can see, I've added snow effects to the bases.  Now, either I didn't follow the recipe correctly (entirely possible) or its' not as good as I was led to believe.  It has to be said that measuring out 5 parts of the Water Effects next to 5 parts of water and baking powder was very difficult because the Water Effects from Woodland Scenics are really goopy.  Plus, when I mixed it all up, the mixture became highly aerated - that is, it was full of bubbles.  These bubbles were impossible to get out of the mixture once applied to the base and, when the mixture dried, it was still obviously bubbly.  It looked like the Tyranids were fighting their way through the ruins of a cybergothic launderette.  A second application fixed the problem but, by that point, the mixture was starting to set in the pot.  Also, the finished effect wasn't anything like as "wet" looking as I was after.  Still, as I have to varnish all of these at the end, that might not be a huge problem, as I can go back an gloss varnish the snow for a wet look.

All the same, not so happy.  I'll be playing with the mixture for the next round of applications to see if I can do better.

R.

Honestly mate they don't look too bad in the pics

Hive Tyrant!



He's been finished for a while, but I've been swamped and not had the time to sit down and do the image editing for a while. Should be able to snatch a little time back over the next few days, but it's all a bit unpredictable, right now.

Just got the Mycetic Spore still to finished!

R

Nearly finished, now.

Here's the finished Mycetic Spore:



I'm just waiting on a big Termagant brood that's being painted by a colleague and the whole lot'll be done.

R.

Phew!

A bit of a marathon paint was required to get these finished.  I had someone else working on this enormous 24-Termagant brood, but he had some home problems and so sent them back to me half done.  So I put the headphones on, wound up the podcast backlog (now down to 73 episodes of my favourite 'casts) and settled down to paint.

Here's the first 12:



And here's the second:



And that's the lot!  Who wants an army shot, then?

R.