Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I really, really like the posing on that figure. posing is one of, if not the, most important factors in taking a conversion from good to great. Very dynamic and I love the classic Daemonette claw.

That's awesome dude, so 90s.

Thanks, I can't take credit for the posing, though I agree that Dave did a great job on this guy - and yes, it's a very '90's miniature. I need to work my way through all those '90's special characters that have been sitting around for all these years.

The whole time I was reading your update I had an old 'Onyx' hiphop track in my head 'I'm so 90's' so 90's..........models cool though :-)

Heh, thanks Nerdy.



Today's model is the Reaper Bones Hydra, from their first Kickstarter. This model is one that I started about 14 months ago. I wanted it to work decently both as a display model as well as a wargaming piece. I used a few pieces of slate, carefully placed, including a nice sized piece in order to elevate the model - both literally and figuratively. During the process of painting this model and the time that it spent sitting on my desk waiting for some attention, I noticed that the heads of this Bones hydra tend to get a bit lost amongst one another.



These first two photographs serve well to illustrate a couple of things about how Games Workshop/Citadel paint and pose their multi-headed models. Workshop seem to either carefully split the heads, avoiding having any in almost-identical side-by-side poses as the two rear ones on the Bones model are. With other models, such as Archaon, GW design their models specifically to have the heads painted in different colours or styles - which again helps them to stand out from one another. Which isn't to say that this sculpt, by Sandra Garrity is a bad one. Just that the way that the model is posed compared to other, more recent models which are sculpted perhaps it's fair to say - with the finished, painted product more in mind became apparent. I think simply changing the pose of either the middle rear or middle left head head/neck would elevate this model further.



I've been painting for a long time now, and I've been able to turn out things to a nice standard for a lot of that time. I was commission painting when I was 16, and at 18 I won Best Figure and Best 40k figure at Cancon. (Before they gave trophies, unfortunately - assuming that they do now? I got a pair of certificates which are well lost at this point.) While that's all well and good, what it really means is that as a painter I hit my plateau pretty early, and improving further from there has been a long, slow process.



Since I started blogging again as a way to share my models and motivate me to paint more, I've also been trying to improve and add new skills to my bow. Part of that is risk-taking and experimenting with new methods, materials and techniques. I have more than one of these models, since Bones 1 was in the days I went quite heavy on Kickstarters. Knowing that I had another one up my sleeve allowed me the freedom to try something I probably would not ordinarily have tried - that is instead of painting the Hydra in a shade of green, or even a turquoise/teal that fits my overall Dark Elf scheme, I went for what I wanted to be more naturalistic browns. I also played around with my airbrush (which I am awful with!) to try and achieve some nice looking gradients. While that actually worked(!), I felt that the rather deep scales sculpted onto this model demanded more contrast since the airbrushing was so smooth and the sculpted scales didn't stand out at all.


A Dark Elf provides a comparison for our scale shot.

My (attempted) solution - which in my opinion didn't work well - and is the reason that the model then spent a year (or two?) sitting on my desk unfinished until recently was to try a mix of Minitaire's Airbrush Paints - specifically, their Ghost Tints. I've used them before, though never on a model this size. Now coming to the model for the first time and seeing it finished in these pics, it might look fine to the reader. But you know when you have a picture in your head about how you'd like something to look? Now imagine that, and imagine it coming along nicely, and then imagine it all coming undone once it dries. Now if I'd gone for Oil Washes, I probably could have removed it all due to the way that oil paints dry much more slowly and can still be removed and cleaned up with spirits.

I think the base worked out well, but in the end, the model fell short of what I'd envisioned for it. Could I go back and try to fix it up and redo elements of the model? Sure, but at the same time, I have another one to paint that would be a better use of my time than repainting this one, and my enthusiasm for this particular model waned to the point where it literally sat in front of me for over a year before I made myself finish it off. Sometimes you've just got to call something good enough for what it is, and call it done. In the end, the model looks decent and perfectly fine for a wargaming model.

In gaming terms, the model will have a home in the Pan-Elven army to start with (using the Dark Elf/Twilight Kin list), and eventually find a home with the Mythological Greek Army.

Hail Hydra! I love that model!

Mythological Greek Army? Oh yeah the Spartans. I'm planning on one of those when Mythic Battles Pantheon finally drops. The Hydra looks good and naturalistic to me a "sciency" dinosaur book illustrationr rather than a kiddy one.....

Thanks ZS!

Yeah, I was going for a more natural look rather than a typical bright Warhammer dragon/monster look. I only got about 70% of what I'd pictured, but maybe what I pictured didn't work well with this particular sculpt.

The Mythological Greeks are kind of back-burner army, (and yes, a huge bump when Mythic arrives) and I need to get more actual Greeks finished, but this is what I have so far - aside from the Hydra:

That army is going to look brilliant all arrayed and ready for war

So brilliant, satisfying to look at.

Love those Greeks, I get a Harryhausen vibe from the skeletons. they are going to look stunning as an army... is it for KoW?

Yep, originally I was going to patchwork them together from whichever army lists for KoW, but now I'll patchwork them together from whichever army lists plus the KoW Historical Ancient Greeks list.

So I sold my Imperial Fists and bought everything I needed to do a full Minotaurs army now. so would you mind just dialing in a little more of yours so I can get inspired again! :-)

Will do, Nerdy. I've just got a few other Powered Armour chaps started long ago that I need to get out of the way first...

Yes, believe it or not, these rather weedy little fellows were originally sold as Orc Champions. From the old WHFB days when command group blisters included a Standard, Musician, Champion and a Leader. From the 1988 catalogue, who we have here are two of #13 Champion and #14 Champion. They were obviously sculpted by Kev Adams once he had started to hit his stride with the consistent Warhammer Orc style that pretty much continues to this day. The days of experimentation with really weird concepts were now over. Not counting what they did with squigs for everything in 2nd Edition 40k, at least…



The interesting thing (possibly the only interesting thing) about these sculpts is that they share a “base” model with the troopers from the RTB02 Space Ork Raiders boxed set, which was the first ever Space Ork boxed set for 40k, also released in 1988.





I painted the duplicates of #13 with slightly different coloured gear, and different shields. I do intend to use several different styles to paint my orcs’ green skin over time, and a more coherent plan would have had me hold off painting one of them now to do later with a different shade of green, but frankly there are so many of these figures to do, that doing near-identical figures in pair or trios is simply much more efficient in getting me to actually start and finish the models. As in, I’m great at starting models, but not quite as good at finishing them off. The more complex something becomes, the longer it lingers on the desk – and regular readers will have seen how often I write about figures that got started months, years or even more than a decade ago before being finished. I don’t need to add to that particular pile more than I already do…





Now that they’re done, they’ll be dropped into the small but slowly-growing “unit” of old-school orcs that I have, and be used in KoW, AoS or whatever else I happen to be playing that needs some less-imposing orcs.

Nifty. I have always liked this era of orcs and gobbos. I wish I had more (or rather, any) of them.

Identical models is a plus if you're trying to build units or armies.

I love the one with the teeth!

I was thinking the 2 with clubs looked familiar, wasn't sure why until I scrolled down - I've painted loads of "space orks" recently...

I really love the board/grain effect you get on the back of shields, an area nearly no-one else ever bothers to paint at all

At some point in the past when reading the 3rd edition Codex Battlezone: Cityfight and Codex: Catachans, I became taken with the idea of making some cool looking booby traps for 40k. I know it was around the era of the Battle for Macragge and when we were living in the rental at Carlisle.







Anyway, I got inspired, and got started. Then later I got distracted. Then we had to move, and like so much, this stuff got boxed up again for years. When we moved in here, they came out again, but got lost in the shuffle until a few weeks ago, when I spied them on the desk and had one of those “just finish those fething things” moments, so I bumped them to the front of the queue and did just that.







The idea behind both of these models is that explosives have been placed behind an object, and a servo-skull has been programmed to watch and wait until the enemy is close enough, and then detonate, probably annihilating itself in the process. Another glorious sacrifice to the God-Emperor.



These make a nice 40k-accompaniment to the Minefield that I sorted out a couple of years ago. I guess I can also get some use out of them if I ever manage to get back into Necromunda/Inq28munda/Shadow War Armageddon. Honestly, I can’t remember the rules for this sort of thing, so I imagine I’d probably need another 4-6 of them to work as “counters” to allow some of them to be actual booby traps and some to be dummies. If I have to make some more, I certainly hope I can get the damned things done a hell of a lot faster!

Leaving aside the long road to completion, these are some nifty little items to throw on the table.

Nice idea with booby traps.

EDC

That is a very nice idea, well executed could be very thematic in Necromunda or Shadow War indeed.

Some nice ideas for Shadow War here, Azazelx

Picked up my 2 copies yesterday and let me tell you, the buildings in that kit are awesome .

I spy a German handgrenade case.

Very cool ideas and execution Az! great models :-)

Thank you guys (and good spot, Brook!)

Shadow War is a bit of a sore point right now. I'd planned to pick up 2 copies this week and possibly a third or fourth etc down the line, but we got royally screwed there! I'm hoping that they reissue it, but in the meantime I'll probably pick up an *ahem* digital copy of the rules because I'm pretty pissed off with how they handled it when I wanted to throw money at them. I like to buy the actual books and boxed sets, so it's annoying.

Having said all that, I'll probably do a few more of these. I just need to think of ways to make them look interesting and unique. How many do you need to use as counters in these things? I've forgotten.

And now for some models - Another small post in my slow burn Viking project. Just a pair of axemen today.



These guys are essentially a pair of the guys that we use to fill out units. Nothing terrible nor anything special about them. Armed with axes and shields, the most noteworthy thing on them is the halved shield on the one. Sometime ago, I read something about how Vikings and others of the period would paint the designs on their shields in a way that the lines of the paintwork were “off” from the lines of the actual planks of wood that were used to create their shields. This in turn meant that enemies would not know where to aim blows on a shield to be able to split it – as that would be bad for your defence.



Similarly, this pair have no emblems or knotwork on their shields – just plain halving and quartering. Some guys have to have the plain shields so the more fancy ones stand out, and that’s the job of these fellows. Similarly, their clothing is mostly in muted earth tones, and even the red shirt is a deep, earthy. browny red. (yeah, I know reds would have been much more pale, but hey!)

Those booby trap terrain pieces are excellent and I really like the idea of the little servo skulls watching and waiting.

I like the vikings as well, and the info you shared about why they painted the shields the way they did makes sense and is a cool bit of trivia.

Cheers.

At work a while back we discussed something similar about the prehistoric habit of having dress metal shields and real working wood and leather shields. Saw a saxon shield boss recently with a triskelion worked into it beautiful bronze detail.

Wow loads of lovely stuff since I last took a look! I particularly like the hydra, very earthy looking.

Love the booby traps. The Servoskulls really make them cool and tell a neat little story at the same time.