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Greetings, I finally finished my very first unit and figured I'd start a P&M blog to celebrate. I'm new to this hobby so I went with a theme that would be fairly simple to do, but still look professional. I chose to go with a snow themed tau army which gives me a lot of clean white panels to mess up while I practice "painting in the lines" with the blues and such I'm using for other parts of the models. The army will be fairly monochromatic, running on shades of blue, but there are a few bright colors thrown in to pop the monotany of monochrome. I do have a suprise twist I dont think many new comers try from what I've seen and heard, but I wont spoil that just yet.

The fluff... As no one plays 40k anywhere near the city I live in, I'm mainly going for a hobbyist/fluff kind of army that will still be playable should I run into another army some day. My army revolves around the fluff in the Tau codex and isn't anything hard written, it's just a flighty idea I had and ran with. Esentially my army is lead by a "rogue" ethereal and upstart Shas'el who have been charged with apprehending Farsight and bring him to council. The army is comprised primarily of infantry(gunline) with some missile and stealth support.
Now for the pictures...

The Ice Warriors - snow themed fire warriors and kroot. I'm a little dissapointed the snow doesnt really do much more than make the bases fuzzy. Tips would be appreciated for a more "chunky" snowbase. The shas'ui shoulder pad is tipped in Necron Abyss, the same color I'm using for the cloth.



The Shasel - I tried some basic "tweaking" by buiding a greenstuff rock base (it's suppose to look like shale or slate) and having him walking to the edge of it.


What are those wires you ask...? Oh... he has a secret
Huzzah, shiney blue rocket jets!


One of my WIP anglerfish


What's that you say? Why did I say "angler"fish?
Perhaps this is why...



A few pictures of the angler in the dark that I thought looked kinda cool



Thanks for looking, I'm painting at a pretty leisurely pace so I wouldn't expect any updates 'too' soon, but I'll try to keep you all in mind when I finish something new.
Have a nice day

The lighting inside the tank is great I love lighting in models but its not something I've ever done myself.

Regarding the battlesuit is there anyway you can hide or incorperate those wires into the stand/base at all? At the moment it looks a little odd.

For future suits why not drill out the legs and run it up inside the legs to the torso?

I'd tried that but it was hell enough fitting everything into what's left of the body. I hadn't even considered online warhammer communities when I was making it or I'd have taken pictures of what I had to do to get all the crap inside it. I'm happy with how they are now, though I had thought about running them through the leg as you suggested, and given the complications I ran into with the backpack I decided against it. If I had done anything other than the snowblind theme I came up with I would've hid them in a tree or something, but all they have to work with are snow and rocks, and a big oddly shapen piece of shale poking up to the battlesuits waste might look even more odd than the wires. With the guns on they arent as distracting, I just didnt equip them as I ran out of primer halfway through my last batch of stuff. I've currently got half white, half grey devilfish engines, battlesuit gear, and other bits and pieces.

edit: I should note that my wife brought up a good point when she mentioned the wires are a fun way to show off the lighting. Someone comes over and says, why does that battlesuit have wires sticking out of it?
Here let me show you.
Oh, cool.

Thank you for the pretty pictures bobert ^-^v

Brilliant lighting effects inside the tank!

I think the models could use a little work though... they need a tertiary colour (I'm thinking red)..

Some nice work here.

Cheers,

Jack.

Ummm.... How about modelling jets of smoke coming out of the backpack engines? You could cover the wires with some kind of plume maybe if you wanted?

The positioning is just about right by the look of it.

That could also lead to some really cool flying or landing poses too on future figures?

Although your wife does have a point!

I love the lighting as well, you should go play some night-time missions in the dark sometime with that!

Awesome LEDS!

Finished a test stealthsuit. The fenris grey dried a little lighted than I'd hoped, but It's keeping well with my blue monochrome. Rather poor painting job I'm thinking, but it's my first model other than a fire warrior so I can't beat myself up too much. I'm having some trouble getting the highlights to show, and I tried some very minor glow effects. Not the professional ambient stuff, just a lighter basecoat of ice blue in the 'cracks' I thought looked like it might make sense for a blue shine to come through. All and all I'm not putting it up for any contests any time soon, but I'm not too ashamed to say, yes I painted this one.




One with a firewarrior to indicate the army colorscheme.

And finally, one last funny shot where, judging by his stance, the stealthsuit operator may have been scared by the camera's flash accidentally going off. (He also looks a little scared of the FW in the shot above... I hope he's a little more stalwart in battle...)

Oh man, they are totally pimped! The snow on the bases shouldn't worry you too much as snow is snow. I love snow.

Don't be ashamed of your minis, they work out very nicely!! The bluish "glow" are quite nice actually...

Of course, a good point to your wife (they're always more down-to-earth than us uh ?!)

And great job with the lights, it's perfect for a highly technological army such as the Tau...

Keep us posted!

If you'd really like a more shapely snow effect, try using sand with various size grains. I have a Valhallan Imperial Guard Army all done up in snow and just used that. Put sand on, paint it with the lightest blue (i forget the color now but i think it was the space wolves one, that light sky blue thing) then dry brush some skull white over the top. Gives some depth to the snow plus a little bit of color as well.

Finished a kroot. I have to say, updating this blog thing really gives me more of a drive to finish models, so thanks for that. My first kroot came out a little sloppy. I originally had a green crest, but changed to white. I had a really nice woodgrain effect on the rifle stock, but changed it to a green wood and kind of messed it up. Still trying to come up with a good symbol for the shoulder pad which will incorporate the sept color. I'm happy with this one as a test goes and think the next will turn out better.

I like your scheme, it's very "simple" but it works extremely well on the fw. If I may make a suggestion, if you want some better highlights on the stealth suit, try hardlining some of the corners with grey, just a really thin stripe mind you. Just my humble opinion, looks really good though!

The models look beautiful!
As for the Snow bases, try putting sand on them first then the snow, I've done that to a few of my models and it came out pretty good.

Disjointed

Crest's looking real good... Simple but efficient!

nice, crisp colour scheme. and electronic lights! shiny...

For your first army, I am liking very much that you are thinking outside of the box.

So... I'm gonna make some changes to the main post I think. I'm going to keep the blog updated with growing pictures. I'll replace each pic with however many painted models of that unit I have. Ie: if you scroll up you'll notice the kroot unit now contains 2 models instead of the original "one". Speaking of which. I finished my second kroot and am much happier with the result. I made a few small changes and noticed some things I missed on the first kroot. For instance, the second has two fewer stars(as in a "star" on a horse head), I've left the smaller spines on the main body white rather than the blue staging done on the crest, and I noticed and painted his crest doodads. The woodgrain on the rifle stock worked a little better this time around. I also determined what my kroot's symbol will be. You'll notice it on the new kroot's shoulder pad. Anyone care to take a guess as to what the symbol on the shoulder represents? Should be pretty easy, but here's a hint. There 'will' be a kroot shaper in the group, and the shoulder symbol ought to compliment that well.

Will the shaper be called Krilin the Kroot?!?

Nope, here's another hint though. This symbol is also associated with any army that has ever been fielded in 40k.

The "Shaper of Dice Luck" then?!?

Bingo! got it. You need 6's for the save the shaper confers, and dice would be associated with any army. So yep, the 6 points represent a roll of six

Lol....

I like you ingenuity, good sir.

Been a little while, but I finished my shas'el. Took a whole bunch of pictures. I hope it's not overkill. I was essentially using him to practice various techniques. There's some color blending, a lens flare, highlighting metalics, your basic stuff. He's also got some leds crammed into his jet pack which was not an easy task by any means, so I still haven't made any effort to hide the wires. I dont think they distract too much. The guns are magnetized. I made a shale rock base with some snow on it that houses the batteries for the lights, the resisters and wiring is coiled up in the front part of the chest. Comments are much appreciated, thanks.







Overall I'm fairly happy with it, though I now see I need to touchup the markings on the end of the airburst.

Easy fix for the wires, just paint them the same dark blue that you've got the mechanical parts and they will be much less noticeable.

I'm assuming there are coin batteries in the base here. You might also get around it by using the battery as an actual part of the model that attaches with a magnet. Like this guy for warmachine stuff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oO89i3w_y0&feature=channel_page

Fiberoptics are another fun route for LEDs. It'll never be as bright as the direct end of the LED shining out, but it would certainly be easier to get the helmet and chest lights going.

Absolutely love the colour scheme and LEDs, very nicely done. You should give them some strobe lights so they can be raver Tau

You're stuff is pretty freakin' sweet, for xenos scum...

Tip on snow: create a realistic base to sprinkle the snow on... start with your regular small ballast, greenstuff, or whatnot, and then either drybrush white over the top or sprinkle on some of the snow flock and call it a wrap.

How about doing tracks? Take a bit of greenstuff and cover a base you are going to use. Press in a foot of the model you are going to put on the base, and pull it back out. Then sprinkle/paint your snow effects on. Voila! A footprint in the snow.

Either way, bang up job. For your first army, you are totally rockin out.

This is pimp. Love it.