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 JoshInJapan wrote:
Remember when every model got a name? I used to know the names of every Eldar pirate model. Now, they're all just "Dude with lasgun" and "Dude with mohawk and melta-gun." Anyway, the theme is Age Before Beauty, and these guys are all old and not particularly beautiful. Also, soft, slighty greasy-feeling lead, so it's a good thing I'm in the habit of washing my hands a lot these days...

I do remember those days. Although I traded or sold all the Eldar that were named.

Good luck in the Banshee Scream.

Cheers,

CB

Nice Dredd minis, makes me want to redo my own...
In a Judge's eyes everyone is a perp...

Captain Brown wrote:

 JoshInJapan wrote:
Remember when every model got a name? I used to know the names of every Eldar pirate model. Now, they're all just "Dude with lasgun" and "Dude with mohawk and melta-gun." Anyway, the theme is Age Before Beauty, and these guys are all old and not particularly beautiful. Also, soft, slighty greasy-feeling lead, so it's a good thing I'm in the habit of washing my hands a lot these days...

I do remember those days. Although I traded or sold all the Eldar that were named.

Good luck in the Banshee Scream.

Cheers,

CB

I have inherited the Hoarder gene from my dad, although he collects cars rather than minis, so I still have pretty much all of my old lead Eldar. A few years back, I sold off a few, including the keybard-player musician, and regret doing so to this day. I plan to keep the rest until I am physically unable to paint, at which point I will lie die and embrace my own death, much like Aragorn.

Guardling wrote:Nice Dredd minis, makes me want to redo my own...
In a Judge's eyes everyone is a perp...

I wish I had kept the few Dredd minis I once had (see above).

Normally, I don't post WIP photos, because my process is so sloppy, but here are the banshees to date:


The effect I'm going for on the armor is not precisely Grimdark, but I am trying to avoid the clean lines I usually use with Eldar models. I tried mixing up my own Burgundy for the body suits, with middling results. I considered doing the loincloths in either blue or green to contrast with the burgundy and off-white, but my initial experiments were unbearably garish. Instead, I'll be doing them in a cool white, with darker blue-greay for the straps and holsters, and reserve the contrasting colors for their weapons.

I'll be honest, I love this. I am not always sold on super-clean Eldar; I think this is much more powerful and threatening. Classic Banshees remain some of my favourite models, and looking forward to the finished article. What colour are the manes going to be? Right now, I rather like the black.

Sounds like a good plan. They are looking sweet so far.

Love the Eldar! Always good to see some hobby experimentation

Thanks for sharing

Having this much more subdued look is definitely working well. Excited to see them developing, especially the blades.

I know there is a lot of "the Eldar range is soooo old and is in need of an update" but there are few models in the range that I find really needed a spruce up. I think most of the aspects really hold up well.

inmygravenimage wrote:I'll be honest, I love this. I am not always sold on super-clean Eldar; I think this is much more powerful and threatening. Classic Banshees remain some of my favourite models, and looking forward to the finished article. What colour are the manes going to be? Right now, I rather like the black.

Thanks! Pretty much every Jes Goodwin Eldar sculpt can hold its own against anything that came later. I'm still undecided about the hair/manes-- you may be right that black would be a good choice.

youwashock wrote:Sounds like a good plan. They are looking sweet so far.

Thanks. I'm a couple more painting sessions away from completion, hopefully I won't screw anything up.

IGtR= wrote:Love the Eldar! Always good to see some hobby experimentation

Thanks for sharing

Thanks for commenting. These models have been a lot of fun to revisit.

Viterbi wrote:Having this much more subdued look is definitely working well. Excited to see them developing, especially the blades.

I've just begun working on the sword blades. I hope I can get them to look like power weapons!

Archer wrote:I know there is a lot of "the Eldar range is soooo old and is in need of an update" but there are few models in the range that I find really needed a spruce up. I think most of the aspects really hold up well.

Agreed. These sculpts really stand head and shoulders over a lot of other things from the same period.

Slow down Josh, I am falling too far behind.

Black manes to contrast the while all the way. Also the classic scheme for these space elves.

Cheers,

CB

 Captain Brown wrote:
Slow down Josh, I am falling too far behind.

Black manes to contrast the while all the way. Also the classic scheme for these space elves.

Cheers,

CB

Sorry, Cap'n, I got carried away:










I thought I was finished, but looking at the zoomed-in gallery photos reveals a lot of little flaws that I can't unsee. I'm going to set them aside for a bit, and come back with fresh eyes and (hopefully) some better photos.

They have turned out lovely! The blades are all really good, but the Exarch's axe is stellar.

They look superb, great job. Ignore superb zoom, it's evil

Yeah they are really, really good. Would take pride of place in anyone's Eldar army. The blades are exceptional, really make it all pop.

youwashock wrote:They have turned out lovely! The blades are all really good, but the Exarch's axe is stellar.

In an ironic reversal, the axe looks better in photos than in real life, but I think I can do a little more work to get it right.

inmygravenimage wrote:They look superb, great job. Ignore superb zoom, it's evil

I agree, but in this case it has allowed me to find a few places that need touching up.

Archer wrote:Yeah they are really, really good. Would take pride of place in anyone's Eldar army. The blades are exceptional, really make it all pop.

Thanks. Overall, I'm pretty pleased, but they need a little more spot work before I call them finished.

I can only echo what they the others have already said: very nice work Josh! It's great seeing some of the original pieces painted up the way the best of them would have been done 'back in the day'. The blades of the weapons are excellent!

Seriously brilliant work bud.

Wonderful work! Brought the best out of those classics

Exalted the Banshees Josh, they are beautiful.

Cheers,

CB

Thanks for your kind words, everyone. I really enjoyed the trip down memory lane, while at the same time remembering why I don't enjoy paining units as much as individual models, like this guy:


Although his tab says "Army," he was released as Space-Dout Sam way back in 1988 (according to SoL). Above I wrote that I enjoyed painting this guy, but that's only half true. He is pretty well sculpted from the front and back, but on the sides (where the two halves of the mold would have joined), the detail is kind of blobby and indistinct. On the plus side, working on his armor gave me what I think will be a pretty good recipe for NMM gold.

Digging through my backlog looking for something to paint for the March Painting Challenge, I came across some resin scatter scenery I got with my Mars Attacks! kickstarter. One can always use more scatter terrain, so I cranked these things out:






I'm planning to try a game of Last Days over the weekend, so these things will come in handy.

Finally, for the Painting Challenge, I decided on these Martian Marines:


and have even made some progress on them:



Working on them reminded me why I prefer a black basecoat over white. To whit; having to go back and meticulously undercoat all the dark brown while trying not to ruin the blues. Ah, well, live and learn.

Great progress, love the scatter. Mantic are about to rerelease all the urban stuff so I may have to invest

The scatter terrain is spectacular. Would really trick up a battlefield.

inmygravenimage wrote:Great progress, love the scatter. Mantic are about to rerelease all the urban stuff so I may have to invest

Thanks. I really like the Terrain Crate stuff, but it's too expensive to get it shipped over here.

Archer wrote:The scatter terrain is spectacular. Would really trick up a battlefield.

Thanks. I'm looking forward to actually using this stuff some time soon.

The Martian Marines are finished:








I tried to play up the shininess/reflectivity you see in illustrations, and came pretty close. Painting these guys reminded me why I always prime in black-- it took a lot of time going back and lining everything so as to not have patches of white here and there, and that stage just isn't very fun.

I reckon these guys will see action in Deadzone as Mazon Labs troops. They'll fit the theme of science weirdos mutating and experimenting just to see what will happen. Next up: some Project:Z survivors for use in Last Days.

The Martians are incredible- the colors are absolutely perfect!

Ark-ak-ak!

 Meer_Cat wrote:
The Martians are incredible- the colors are absolutely perfect!

Ark-ak-ak!

Thanks! I really like the Mars Attacks! models, and now kind of wish I had gotten more when they were still available. There's an online retailer here that still has the core box, and I may end up getting that just for more models and terrain.

Wow - You've really nailed it there, Josh! As M_C said, the colours are incredible, especially the blue of the suits.

They look excellent, I did the Martian team for DB and getting those colours right is damn tricky. Excellent brains, too.

Amazing work and a very different kind of Space Marine The color for their "brain-faces" is spot-on.

Slinky wrote:Wow - You've really nailed it there, Josh! As M_C said, the colours are incredible, especially the blue of the suits.

inmygravenimage wrote:They look excellent, I did the Martian team for DB and getting those colours right is damn tricky. Excellent brains, too.

Viterbi wrote:Amazing work and a very different kind of Space Marine The color for their "brain-faces" is spot-on.

Thanks, all. I did these guys according to a tutorial I found when the game was new. The blue was pretty simple-- just a turquoise followed by a heavy glaze made from a Vallejo paint that separated and refuses to turn back into paint.

I got the first three Project Z survivors finished:





The first guy was inspired by Dennis Rodman, the second is in a forest ranger uniform, and the third (with his suit and sunglasses) pretty much had to be a Man In Black. All of these models and pretty tiny, possibly true-25mm scale, but they'll fit in pretty well with the Mars Attacks! survivors. The kit is far less versatile than I'd imagined-- each body come with one or maybe two sets of arms, and they can't really be mixed-and-matched. That said, ten men, ten women, and either four or six gangbangers will give me more than enough to play, and anyway I'll not be building a whole army of these dudes.

I also finished a crashed cop car that I got with Mars Attacks! all those years ago:





It appears to be a resin casting of a toy car that someone smashed up. It'll git in well with the street scenery I already have, as well as adding potential complications in Last Days. Finally, here's a group shot:


Next up: more survivors!