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I've enjoyed the sculpting, modelling, and casting. I'm more interested in the sculpting and casting

I second sA when I say "Painting please".

I think once you have that test model finished all manner of additional wonderful ideas will fill that head of yours and we'll reap the rewards by getting to see it all laid out here online.

Cheers
Dave

Great work throughout this project. I'm really enjoying seeing how you handle this.

After your little bit of colour software wizardry earlier in this thread I would like to see how that actually translates when it comes to picking up a paintbrush. Therefore my vote is for continuing painting the trooper.

I think more people follow a thread than actually write something, I personally like the sculpting or scratch building.

I'm ok with anything you choose to do as its all sweet looking. I would really like more modeling though.

Sweet painted models I see all day here, on warseer and on B&C, but these sweet modelling jobs I dont get to see that much, keep it up with the modelling

(But I want to see it all painted i a not too far future ;P)

Just chiming in as a follower of this since you seem to think you might be shouting to the void. I love all the work you've done here, as I'm in the process of building my own guard army. Its very inspirational, if a little daunting as my own skills are no match for yours. I'm very interested in the sculpting/modeling portions of this (the original putty work on the troopers got me following this, and the level of detail you put on the basilisk cannon was amazing), but like others apparently I'm also wanting to see how it translates to the painting stage. So really, I'll be reading no matter what you post, which isn't really a helpful answer I guess, so for something more concrete I'd vouch for anything involving work back on the infantry for a change of pace, painting or modeling on them.

Ok the results across the various boards this log is syndicated too are the following: -

Painting : 24
Sculpting : 14
Modeling : 12

So the people have spoken and I will be getting my brushes out tonight!

Woo!

I like watching painting logs. It encourages me to paint, to continually raise my game.

I'm looking forward to this!

sA

If we are going to discuss painting, I first need to show the equipment that I use for the task: -



I have a number of disposable palettes (actually my daughters clean them for pocket money) and as I am working with the shading for a basecoat I will us have 4-5 colours in the paintwells and occasionally mixes in between them. As the basecoat is Iyanden Darksun, I will be shading it with Snakebite Leather, Bestial Brown and for highlights Bleached Bone, these colours are visible already sitting in the paintwells, they have been watered down to the consistency of milk with a 50:50 mixture of Windsor & Newton Flow Improver and Water. I generally prefer to use multiple translucent layers of paint for shading, on the basis that I can always add another thin layer of paint, but its very hard to remove a thicker obscuring layer.

The paint brushes are a size 0 and size 000 made by Windsor & Newton and are from the Series 7 brush range. There is little to say about these brushes apart from the fact they could quite possibly the best miniature painting brushes in the world. I cannot speak highly enough of them, and can honestly say when I started to use them that my painting skill improved by at least 10-15%. If you don't have them, get them!

There is a lint free cloth in the picture which I use for removing excess paint from my brushes.

Finally there is a large NY Starbucks mug (a present) which I use for my water, which I try and change frequently.

More details as we look at some images of the test Steel Legion Trooper, please bear in mind that these images are 2-3 times larger than the figure in real life and as such you will see details normally not seen by eyes in real life: -



These first two images show the results of shading the bottom of the coat, and ONLY the coat, nothing else has been done.

I started by applying the very thin coat of Bestial Brown into the recesses around the coat below the belt, around the various items on the belt and in the depths of the folds. I tend to work in small areas of no more than 1cm square, once the paint has has been lightly applied into the correct location, I switch to the other brush which I hold in my mouth and is already wet with water and use this to feather the edge of the paint I just applied and blend it down into the other colour. Feathering involves using the wet brush to spread the still wet just applied paint and thin it out so there is no definable edge. Because of the shadows cast by the arms/gun and belt items, its hard to see, but there is a dark shade around the belt / belt items.

Next moving further down the coat I applied Snakebite leather and feathered it both above to the bestial brown and down towards the basecoat. This creates a subtle shading above the midway line.



Once these two subtle shades are applied, I use a very subtle "filter" of Iyanden Darksun (10:1 water to paint) to shade the Bestial brown & Snakebite Leather and make them more cohesive. A "Filter" is a very watered down paint, which exists to tone the colours underneath it towards the desired colour, often hard to see, but a useful tool none the less.

Next around the lower edge of the coat and on any raised areas (knees, folds, etc) a very thin layer of bleached bone is applied, and feathered as above.

This shading creates a subtle range of "darkened" basecoat, rising to a "lightened" basecoat. It is important at this point to realise we are actually making a decision, with this subtle shading little will be visible at the 2-3ft viewing distance of a wargaming table. Were we to compare it to a "high contrast" paint scheme which will appear just fine at 2-3ft, our figure will appear quite flat. However if viewed closely at less than 1ft or photographed, the shading will be more realistic, and not as "cartoon"-like as the high contrast paint schemes. Basically you cannot have it both ways, and to be honest I don't like high contrast paint schemes, so therefore I go for a more subtle scheme.



Next another "filter" layer or two are added to move the thin bleached bone layers into the same colour range of the basecoat.

Finally thin lines of bleached bone are added to the tips of each raised area to finish off.

Boots next ... although tomorrow I will be a little busy, going swimming followed by a trip to see Angels & Demons

Very impressive, not to mention ambitious. Are you planning to keep this quality for all models in the army?

Filters, yes! I use a lot of these sorts of techniques, it's very nice to see them used with someone else. I think he's looking great so far, very close to both the art and the original models.

sA

Not much progress today, however I have got most of the belt items painted, one of the gloves, and the ammo packs on the torso. In addition almost all the other basic block colours are in place.



On a satisfied note, I am pleased with how the Aquila buttons turned out





The leather items were Scorched brown basecoat, with Bestial brown & Snakebite leather highlights. The same basic techniques I used yesterday were applied again today, blending / feathering all the various shades.

For the blanket I used Wargames Foundry's Charcoal Black, highlighted with the Charcoal black (light), Wargames Foundry do a set of compatible shades as a pack of three, this one being shading for black. Further lightening of the colour was achieved with Bleached bone mixed with the Charcoal black (light), I used Bleached bone to keep a subtle hint of brown throughout most of the figure, where skull white would have had a harsher, less compatible effect. To tie all the colours together, I used a filter made from the base charcoal black.

The simple metallics on the dagger, were done with Boltgun Metal, Chainmail, and finished off with a badab black wash, to dull some of the shine.

The helmet is a mix of Knarloc green & Chaos black, very dark but hopefully will lighten somewhat later.

Hi, im really impressed by your work here, it nearly goes far enough to be called art, ive been browsing these threads for a bit now, but i decided to register just so that i can comment on this thread, i hope that you soon get some pics up of a whole squad of steel legion,
i have one question for you. are you going to do anything special with your chimeras? i think you could probably make them really good,

Oohhhh and btw, if you still have that huge pile of cadians you can always ship them to me, my armys looking a bit sparse currently.

Late last night when I should have been modelling I was watching a movie instead "Der Untergang" (released in the UK as "Descent"), very interesting movie, slightly depressing but compelling watching.

Anyway, I only did a small amount of work last night, on the hatches and forward weapons of the medusa: -



Firstly as can be seen on the hatch on your right, I filed down the hatch to a reasonable thickness, which allowed the hinges to engage properly and not look incorrect as the one on the left shows. I then added some handles, to keep the style the same as the hatches supplied with the Medusa. The handles themselves are 1mm thick plasticard, with 0.5mm wire at the joint, quite a quick detail to do, and helps keep styling the same across the model.

After that I started work on the forward weapon, I wished it to be swappable in a similar way to the main weapon, so the first consideration was to create a location to put a magnet in. So first I needed to choose a magnet, the 3mm x 2mm depth, seemed the ideal choice. To support the 2mm depth I needed to add some plasticard to the open panel, I glued three pieces of 1mm plasticard together and let them set solid. After which, I glued the plate to the inside of the Hull, filling the weapon hole. Once this had set I proceeded to drill in successive sizes from 1mm - 2mm - 2.5mm - 3mm in the center (roughly) of the plasticard in the hole. The reasons for multiple drilling was to ease the pressure on the plate, if it had been drilled immediately with a 3mm drill it would have tore from its position due to the torque of the drilling. This way the hole was increase in size gently and stayed glued (less material to remove at each stage). I stopped and checked regularly to ensure the magnet would be about 0.1mm above the surface of the plasticard: -



On a side note both of the small rectangular hatches have been filed down in that picture, and as can be seen they look good with the hinges now.

Once the magnet was in place, I placed a blob of wet paint onto it, and pressed the gun into place. The paint marked on the rear of the gun where the hole for the magnet should be drilled. Using the same procedure as above, I drilled till I had a deeper 3mm hole. Then I put a magnet in place on top of the magnet in the plasticard, Then I applied some super glue to the magnet, and finally push the bolter down on top of it. Leaving it for a couple of minutes and then pulling them apart, I was left with a perfect fit.



Finally I repeated the process I used for the heavy bolter for the flamer, and once finished I cleaned up the magnet in the plasticard as it had dried paint on it.



@ Lt. Scourge : I will be doing some work with the Chimera, got a few ideas to play with, the cadians will be staying happily in my army vault thank you very much

This project continues to amaze!

Great work and lovely painting. I like the work and detailing on the tank also.

I like the way you've used magnets, something i have never thought off, the tank your making looks great,
anyway, about my last post, it was worth a shot.

Thanks guys, its always encouraging to get comments

The flamer disappoints me though, it looks so old style. I have a plan to change it I think, more tonight if I can find the parts I need!

BrotherArgos wrote:Late last night when I should have been modelling I was watching a movie instead "Der Untergang" (released in the UK as "Descent"), very interesting movie, slightly depressing but compelling watching.

The film was released as Downfall in the UK. And it is superb.

More excellent work, thanks for sharing.

The flamer does look a bit of, maybe get a dreadnoughts one, i dunno.

After spending some time this evening looking at the flamer, I came to the conclusion it definitely needed to be "Updated". The Steel Legions are at least middle tech for a 40k IG army, not as high tech as Elysians mind you, but certainly they exceed the Death Korps, and at least equal the Cadians. This can be seen with their Portable Las Cannons and very cool looking missile launchers (almost more RPG looking).

With that in mind I set about upgrading the plug and play heaver flamer I had made yesterday, the core section of the flamer looked fine, it was just the nozzles that looked so old fashioned. So with a quick snip of the clippers, I removed the nozzles. Now a replacement had sprung to mind earlier, from the Catachan or Cadian command sprue, there is a new Heavy Flamer, so after couple of minutes rummaging, I managed to find one and started cutting carefully through the three feed pipes. Once I had finished I needed to find a way to join the old Heavy flamer body with the new Heavy Flamer Nozzle.

Obviously pinning would be important to keep everything straight, and given the dimensions involved I went for 0.5mm wire and drill, after some careful drilling we ended up here: -



If you look carefully in the picture above, you can see the thin wire extending from both sections, ready to be superglued. Here is the result after gluing: -



Something wasn't quite right, I could not put my finger on it at first, so I compared the old and new Flamers: -



Then I realised, in real life and 40k there is almost always a joining collar of some sort when a pipe joins onto something. Well some 0.25mm thick x 0.5mm wide plasticard strip soon gave me the collars I neeeded. One word of caution, pre curl the plasticard first with your fingernail to make the job easier, and be prepared to do the middle one last, with only partial strips of plasticard as there is not enough room to go all round the middle pipe once the other two are done.



It seemed to add that final part and "finish" it for me, although I must say this is one of those times where using green stuff instead of plasticard would most probably have been faster.

For me the final result was much closer to what I wanted for my Steel Legion, although I realised that I would need to reproduce the result many times when doing my Chimera and other vehicles.

Kick ass stuff man! Very inspirational! Keep up the good work.

I definitely like what you did to make a more modern flamer for your Hybrid. Very good idea. And Downfall was that one with Hitler and his bunker, right? Good movie. Anyway, keep up the excellent work, I'm really digging your many talents.

Nice work. I look forward to seeing the finished article!

Very nice, so your putting flamers on your chimera. fair enough, any other ideas? and when are you going to finish more minis? i really want to see a squad up and running.

I totally agree about the flamers, great work upgrading it to the more modern style it really suits the overall look of the tank much better.

This blog just keeps getting better and better. Kudos!

ah, the greatness of custom plastics

SonsOfLoki wrote:ah, the greatness of custom plastics

Consider your sentiments echoed