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Amazeing work on the vampire

Daaaaaamn, I went looking for your thread, and I´m glad I did!

I thought I had seen this stuff before, but apparently I hadn´t.

Really liking these guys, good luck with the OSL, it´s one of the techniques I´m still on the fence about, I´ve seen it done well, but too often it can ruin a model that had a perfectly good paintjob...

Subscribing to tihs one now, don´t want to lose it again.

These are fantastic. Definitely keeping an eye on this one to steal ideas. That corpse cart is shaping up really well (and with the ghoul hanging off the side I am getting a distinct feeling of "crawlers" from "The Descent" - which is excellent).

Speaking of stealing ideas, how did you paint the bronze armour? It's perfect for my high elves, so would really love some info on how you did it!

Thanks for the nice comments!

@Treadhead
The way I paint the bronze armor is like this:

* Prime black
* Drybrush Tin Bitz
* Drybrush Shining Gold (focus it on the areas that're likely to be hit with alot of light)
* Wash with Badab Black (I use to just use very thinned out Chaos black, but Badab Black does the same thing. Thinned out Chaos Black to wash consistency will give a grainier look though).
* Re-drybrush with Shining gold, focus on edges, large reflective areas.

The armor really isn't as glossy as my pics may indicate, the final effect is quite matte. My Dark Elf corsair vampire shows the most "real" effect on his left shoulderpad. Camera seems to invariably gloss up the armor as can be seen on his bracers (they look exactly the same in real life =D)

A dose of influenza and heaps of schoolwork has kept me from getting on with my painting schedule. But I did get my Varghulf back from the retailers display case so I can finally get pics of him up!
Pics soon...for realies.

Finally got pics of my Varghulf!
It had been sitting in a retailer showcase since I finished it (at the retailers) and I never got a chance to take pictures of the beast!

Varghulf:





I might be sproussing up the base abit later, but the model itself is finished!

Very nice. I too dislike the Vamp models. Now if they had come out with ones that look like yours. I would own a VC army in a heart beat.

I have the plague at the moment (swine flu) so I'm stuck at home.
As I was trying to find where I'd stashed my Dire Wolves I came across my bone giant, so I started to tinker with it.

Here are some WIP shots!


The pieces I've made so far. Remade lower jaw (with teeth incoming), one shoulderguard and the greaves.


Shoulder fitting shot


Greaves fitting shot


Blue tac assembly to check pose. Shield and sword are just stand ins at this point.

More to come as it gets made.
Oh and I found my dire wolves, shots of those soon too =D

Did some work on the giant, loads of greenstuff parts are drying now so I get to wait, best part of converting, no? =D
Helmet is very much WIP, but this is the result of loads of scrapped versions. Arms and shoulders are attached now, and I'm making the cross brace. There'll also be some that go around to the back to another loop there.




The idea is to have the shoulders studded. I still haven't decided what to do with the helmet. Perhaps put studs there too? Or somesort of spines, viking horns perhaps...I'll see. It really does need something though.
The jaw came out great though! I was most worried about it not really looking proper, but it seems to be fine!

Things are starting to look proper now.
I've decided against a sword and fitted him with a spear instead, using one of his cut off blades as the spearhead and cue tip sticks for the shaft. I'm thinking of covering it in greenstuff to give it a more interesting texture.
His shield is just the plasticard core of his shield for now, it'll get greenstuff bulked out and detailed later.


Here I was fitting the spear, checking height etc. Also seeing how the studs would come out on the shoulder. I've also finished the shoulder brace on the front of him here and fastened all the components, except for the head, together.


Drilled and pinned the spear also had to pin his shield arm due to a weak joint (it had actually broken when I was clearing away mould lines and broke again as I was messing around with it during the spear pinning). Also fastened the studs to the shoulder and sharpened them.


An attempted closeup of his jaw. I have no clue what that metal stuff is in his mouth. Isn't there when I check now =p


A closeup of the studs.


A shot of the cross brace on the back, also visible are the greave fastenings.

Next I'll propably start working on the shield and layer the spear in GS. Another tube of GS is drying now so I can make the studs on the other shoulder. Then it's helmet and bulking up his hips!
All coming together ^^

Did some work on the giant, layering his spear and shield.


Shield so far, showing the WIP rim and boss. Idea is to make planks and perhaps some battle damage once thats finished.


Showing the spear tip here. Fits snugly at the top and we can also see the top of the spear wrap here.


Spear wrap.


Giant as he looks now, head is not permanently attached yet.

Still open to suggestion as to what to do with the helmet!

maybe some layered spikes on the helm to make it look similiar to the other vamps

and any plans on what he is going to count as

@deffskullz
He'll count for 4 x skeletons in a regular skeleton unit.

While work on the giant progresses (doing his shield at the moment) there's some other things happening!

First off, I magnetized my entire army! Just took an evening and I got magnets under all my zombies, skellies and characters! The magnet material was alot easier to work with that I thought, cut away really easy and glues extremely well!

I also got around to converting a model that's been annoying me for a while, the aristocratic vampire model.



I think I got her in the 'Spearhead' box and she's just been lying around in my model case. The model looks pretty cool, it's just that her face and the extreme collar wasn't really my style. Since there's not that many armored female models in the GW range I didn't want to just discard her though. Once I'd done my two Wight King versions I started thinking about alternative Wight Kings and then about Wight Queens, since surely these ancient kings and warriors weren't doomed to an eternal sausage fest beneath their hallowed cairns! The result was this:



I took the vampire model, snipped abit off the collar and scraped off her face. Then I sliced the front part of a Skeleton Warrior skull and transplanted it. Green stuffed a headdress and after that had cured, some hair around it mimicking the style of the already present hair. The exposed 'fleshy' bits will be painted as armor, the cloth bits a faded red to tie in with the rest of my army. A cool thing is that her fingers are already really thin and boney so they don't need any conversion as the paintjob will simply give the skeletal illusion.

Its a very simple conversion but it completely saves the model for me.
Hail to the Queen baby!

On a perhaps abit unrelated note, I got an Ushabti at a sale ages back and during my magnetizing spree he turned up. A quick chop and slice later I'd given him a pretty snazzy base! I might work on him as my modelling ADD goes into full swing!



Broken statue thingy is from a LOtR boxed set I think, model is pinned through the statue into the base as can be seen here.(pinned using florist wire). I think it looks great and it was really simple. I'll fill in the side gap with some dry spackle. It'll be easy to make that look like broken stone too!

I really love the face transplant you did on that vampire, it takes a model which was a bit dorky and silly and made it really creepy and cool. Really nice idea!
I also think that it's a fun and original twist to bring in a female wight, since we see so few female undead as is.

Managed to finish off three projects.

I finished a project for a local painting competition, I'll post that once voting has finished ^^

I also finished my farmhouse terrain as well as my Wight Queen!


Here's my finished Wight Queen! I tried to give her dirty blond hair, since black hair would be so...obvious? I dunno. The conversion came out great and she'll have a place of honor in my army.







I also finished my farmhouse, including furniture and such. This is my first terrain piece =D The door, windows, shutters, chest, desk and stool is all made out of toothpicks. The barrels and grain bags are made of air hardening clay. The bed is made of spare cardboard and all the cloth around is made of jean fabric.


Also, here's all the stuff that's loose around the house, I particularly like the chest.


There's also something lurking in the rafters!

Anyways, lots of old projects getting taken care of now!
I feel like I'm in the zone!

I worked on my Grave Guard standard bearer. I've never done any freehand painting before, but I really wanted to start on making the connection between my Vampire Counts army and their fluff origins in Mousillon, Bretonnia.


I used an image of a fleur de lys from the Bretonnian army book as a reference. My own criticism has mostly to do with a slight lack of symmetry between the arms of the fleur, also that it feels abit "fat" somehow. However, once on the table and not to mention from across the board it just looks fantastic!
I started by drawing the design on a piece of paper and choosing which elements to keep on the flag. Then I selected the colors. I started by painting the flag with an even coat of Skull white. The fleur is painted with Iyanden Dark sun, Golden Yellow, Sunburst Yellow and Bad Moon Yellow with some Badab Black wash for downtoning some colors. The flag itself is just a shadow Grey drybrush over black.
I'm very happy with it and I hope I'll be able to practice on more stuff!

Hey, a lot of nice new things here! Excellent job on the Wight Lady, she´s got a really nasty vibe to her now.

The giant looks promising as well, did you get those sculpting tools, or are you using metal tools for this still?

Nice stuff overall, the hut is super detailed as well, which I support 100%!


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Oooh, flag, I forgot to comment on the flag. I was actually thinking that it looked really good, almost TOO good actually.

You could consider mucking it up a bit, you know, dirt, moisture, the terror of the graaave, all that?

Really great stuff you have made recently

I love the work on the giant

Thanks for the kind replies folks!
I'll see about weathering the flag once I get abit better at actually doing that! For the moment I justify its condition the way any good GM would: "It's magic!"

You're not gonna believe this, but I actually finished my Dire Wolves! I started them in January and then they've just been sitting around aching for some paint. I went with a Grey/white wolf scheme with really gory exposed muscle.

I keep my paint in a shallow box, big enough to fit a single paint pot standing up, but nothing ontop of that. When I'm painting I'll grab a pot out of the box and the leave it on my desk as I progress. In the end I'm left with a big pile of colors and I'm always surprised at how many colors I use! I took a picture after finishing off the wolves, these are the colors and washes I used for my Dire Wolves =D

It's about 30 total, though that's not counting any on-the-fly blends. It really doesn't "feel" like that many colors though...It just kinda happens. Anyone else have the same thing happen?

The basing is among the most extensive I've done for a set of models and it has a funny story. When I was assembling the wolves I failed to note that the sides of wolves had designated partners. There are these little numbers, so side 2 left matches side 2 right etc. I'd assembled eight wolves when I actually noticed this and then when I was checking them against a base later I saw how their legs were floating above the base and doing allsorts of weird things. I fixed it by building a base underneath them that fit, and the result was much better than I anticipated!



First off, the original finished lineup of the Dire Wolves next to the painted version ^^. There were pretty heavy moldlines across their heads and back, a kind of chasm of uglyness. So I fixed that with some green stuff. Their bases are made using some sand, broken up popsicle sticks and then Empire Militia, Zombie and Flagellant bits.

Then here is a sample of the Dire Wolves:

Doom Wolf


Dire Wolf about to chomp down on a villager

*Rip - Crunch*


Be careful when you play fetch with these


I'm kinda proud of the sign ^^

Here's a shot of the regiment:


I also magnetized them!

*Mandatory upside down shot*

All in all I'm very happy with how they turned out! I wanted to make them look different from the ones I'd seen around online, while not going too far away from something familiar. The theme for the basing was that the wolves had just crashed into a small town and started tearing up villagers and militia I think it came out great and I'm thinking of making more of this kind of basing (intentionally positioning the models this time though! xD)
There are more pics of them in the gallery under "Dire Wolves" if you can't get enough Wolf action ^^

C&C welcome as always!


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Last week I had my first Wightfest Warbands game.

My list was as follows:

Wight King -Ilkur Vorsekan- (General)
Wight Queen -Aygül Vorsekan-

Skeletons x 10

Grave Guards x 14
- Full command
- Standard of Everlasting Death

Cairn Wraiths x 3
- Tomb Banshee

Total: 603 points

My opponent was Tomb Kings. I don't have his list, but from memory he had a Tomb Prince equipped with the Collar of Shapesh in a block of skeletons with hand weapons, shield and light armor. A line of skeleton bowmen, 3 chariots and 4 light cavalry.

I placed my Tomb King and Queen in the unit of Grave Guard and deployed on them on the extreme right flank. The unit of Skeletons took the middle and the Wraiths surged up the left flank. The game was decided from deployment, my opponent is new to the game and I could see he'd get caught in his own battleline unless he was careful. In the end he'd deployed his units too tightly and was unable to manouver them sufficiently.
Game winning unit was undoubtedly the Cairn Wraiths, which he was powerless to stop.

This game pushed me into finishing off my Wightfest list. The only units left to paint were the Wraiths and Banshee. I have three OOP Wraith models and a Banshee I had painted years ago. As a kind of homage I decided not to repaint the banshee. She was one of the first models I was very proud of, having painted her ages ago when I had no clue how to do most basic painting techniques. I fixed minor details I wasn't able to do back then like teeth and minor stuff like that, otherwise she's as I painted her all those years ago. The Wightfest list only has 2 Wraiths and a Banshee, but since I was doing them anyway I did the last Wraith too ^^

Wraith 1


Wraith 2


Wraith 3

His hourglass looks weird and flat on this picture, the lighting obscures the shading on it =p

Banshee

Ah yes...the Banshee. I painted her before I even knew what drybrushing was. I handpainted those black lines in her dress. Her hair was brilliant, I didn't know how to get that 'line highlight' effect so what I did was that I painted it black, then scraped off the paint where I wanted the line highlights to be =D Brutally simple, but it worked!

That's it for now, I'm hoping to finish the Bone Giant next!
C&C always welcome.

Wow, you're really pumping out work these days. The dire wolves came out great. I really love the detail work on them, and how each wolf is unique.

Always fun to dig up old models and use them. The banshee is not bad at all, especially considering that it was one of your earliest models.

Keep up the good work! ^^

Been busy busy!

I finished a batch of zombies in a new color scheme. It's quick, dirty and I can do it in big batches pretty fast! Most important of all I find that it stands up to scrutiny as well as giving a nice overall look. A problem I've been having is the compromise between tabletop looks and close scrutiny good looks, since the two can often clash.
I got to experiment with a variety of new techniques while painting them. Realistic flame, stipled blood effects etc as well as testing how a restricted color palette can tie together a unit more closely. I chose to have alot of red in in the unit for contrast and to visually tie it in with the rest of my army.

Bring on the zombies!



The whole unit, looking pretty cohesive! Muted earthy colors for the clothing with slimey guts and bloody/rusty blades! Looks alot grittier than my green zombies, and more realistic.
Here's a sample of zombies from the horde.


Gouged out his head with some pliers, looks very nasty! The crusted, rusty blade can be seen nicely here.


Stocks zombie! Flagellant kit just never stops yielding great conversion bitz. Chain bit comes from a flagellant arm that I used for one of the zombies, the chain looked weird sticking out horizontally from a vertical arm so I cut it and it migrated here ^^


George Romero homage zombie. Ofcourse after I take the picture and upload it I notice that it's not finished. I was going to pile more dirt around him like he's really bursting out of the ground! I'll add that later.


My favorite zombie head. The large bloated eyes, slack jaws...it's awesome. This was the test model for the color scheme. Brushed on 'Ardcoat gives the guts that slimey look.


Torch-head zombie! This was actually the first time I try to paint realistic fire. Before this I painted it in some unnatural way, ghostly green, white or blue. Overall I'm very satisfied with the look, and I learned a bunch of stuff. Lots of fire reference pics up while I was painting this guy, as well as staring at a large candle =D

More pics in the gallery!

I had fun with the zombies. I chose just a few brown colors, some Shadow Grey and Blood Red and didn't allow myself any other colors for the clothing. I can easily get distracted and start seperating jackets from shirts and from cloaks and pants and boots etc...it just becomes too many colors over a regiment of figures. I used a blood effect tutorial from [/url=http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/user/profile/943.page]King Ulrik Flamebeard[/url]. It consists of taking alot of red and mixing in abit of black. In my case it was GW Blood Red and GW Chaos Black, roughly 3:1 and then watering it down to a wash consistency. Then, using a stipling brush, roughly stiple the blood mix onto the model/weapon/surface. It'll look abit off-brownish to dark red. Repeat as often as you want and you'll get a nice crusty blood effect. Finish it off with a stipling of the pure red if you want it to look partly fresh. I liked this stipling technique, it created random patterns on the skin and weapon parts that looked natural and very nasty.

Next up, the Ghoulcart.
I started on the Ghoulcart back in February/March this year. The idea was that ghouls propably follow those of necromantic inclination for more reasons than that they're awed by their power. Those who periodically raise the dead are also an excellent source for their favorite food; Corpses. To a ghoul a zombie is little but a walking food source that doesn't mind if it gets nibbled on. I can imagine packs of ghouls descending on zombies and ripping them apart, tearing off a piece and loping back to gnaw on them as they follow the undead host. A corpse cart is practically a buffet, and I can imagine the driver not appreciating his charges being eaten by some bastard ghouls!
So, the ghoulcart was born, assembled out of Blue tac!

Ghoul Cart WIP


Then it got converted more fully, based etc.


And now it's finished!








There are a few more pics of it in my gallery.
The ghoulcart really was a blast to convert and paint. I got to try out alot of new techniques here too! I was finally able to create 'verdigris' effects that I'm happy with, visible on the front end of the cart, lanterns and balefire brazier. More realistic flame and light effects, building on stuff I learned from painting the zombies as well as making some purplish ghoul skin, seperating them from both zombies and corpses (I was very pleased with that =D). What else...hmm...oh yes. I attempted to paint transparent bottles with stuff in them, which can be seen hanging on the sides of the cart. It didn't turn out exactly as I had imagined...but I thought it looked good regardless ^^
Anyways, there's alot of stuff happening on this model. I wanted it to be like a still image from a much larger scene. I like mini-narratives in large models, and I think its fun when you're rewarded for really examining something. Small stuff like the rats, faces here and there, heads dangling from underneath the cart etc. Special mention goes to the impaled ghoul that's been tied up. I actually did some research on that one, working off from old scouting knots and a mini mannequin made out of blue tac and paintbrushes. The ropes were designed to prevent him from ripping himself free of the pike that's been shoved through him.
A note on the ghouls. I'm not a fan of the current 'de-humanized' look the ghoul models have. In my opinion, what made the old ghoul models so scary was how regular they looked, aside from being so gangly and disgusting looking. Like creepy old men, that's how they looked. Remember this picture from the old VC book?

That's what ghouls are supposed to look like for me, like deranged men turned to cannibalism. I gave the ghoul models a shave, removing the large tufts of hair from their backs and all the bone piercings. You're left with some creepy and gangly humans!
I used gloss varnish on the bloody parts very sparingly, compared to my other corpse cart. Wanting to use it to lead the eye to interesting parts of the model, as opposed to slathering it all over.

I had loads of fun with this, and I'm really happy with how everything turned out.
My army is coming together nicely, I'll take some whole pictures of my army in the next few days, I was really surprised at seeing how much I actually had once it was all set up! =D

Thanks for your time, C&C as always welcome.

Good stuff, as ever! Your colour scheme seems to be evolving over time, which is cool.

These newer zombies do look "fresher" than the previous ones, and the bitz usage is good too. The flaming head puzzled me at first, I was thinking that he might have trouble refilling it without hurting himself, you know, the whole Zombie <-> Flames thing...? But it does look great.

Oh, and the ghoulcart turned out nasty as all heck! Love the effects, that would really worry me on the battlefield!

What model is that necromancer? I want one.

That "Hut Sweet Hut" makes me think of it being an Orc's hut, with the simpleness of the statement, plus I can just hear an Orc saying that in my mind. All-in-all great stuff, I've always been a big fan of the VC stuff and you definitely don't see it often enough.

That skeletal giant you've been working on looks pretty good, I think at the moment he kind of looks like he has a leather helmet like an old-school football player , so maybe some more spikes reminiscent of the grave guard would detract from that appearance. I like what you've been doing!

Shadowbrand wrote:What model is that necromancer? I want one.

It's a Dark Emissary from the 'Dark Shadows' 2001 summer campaign.
Sadly, it seems to be OOP, there were some lovely models produced for that campaign. I happened to pick up a blister pack and then he just got forgotten as I moved around a few times.

I've been looking over alternative models to use as necromancers/Vampires and I've become kinda infatuated with the Dark Elf Dreadlord.

Snip his Super-Topknot-of-doom and sculpt some hair on there and it's a pretty awesome looking vampire, with a little dragon familiar to boot! His shield might go, get replaced, whatever. I'll see once I actually have the model.

I've also got a LoTR 'Gríma' sitting on my bench, aching for some paint. I think once he's done he'll look like a sleazy, if abit small, necromancer.

(The one on the right, for you folks that've been living under a rock)

Another candidate for vampirism is the Bretonnian damsel on foot.

(The one on the right, in case I wasn't clear enough =D)

Since my army hails from Bretonnia, I don't think a spot of nationalism on the part of my vampires will hurt. All the Fleur de Lys on her is fine, since it's already a symbol I use in my army and appropriately 'Vampirized' I think she'll look great!
If you have any good suggestion for alternative vampire/necromancer models I'd love to know! The current range produced for the VC just isn't my thing =p

Painted appropriately and possibly with a touch of conversion, the Saruman model would also work well as a vampire/necromancer/general caster.

I have the other version of that dark elf dreadlord, and there is one thing you should be aware of. The hair of the topknot does come across the dragon's back wing, so you're going to have to be careful removing it (I'd suggest completely ruining the topknot itself by slowly cutting it down with clippers) and do a bit of sculpting.

It is definitely worth it, though.

A former devotee of Slaanesh, Valchian is a twisted individual.

I finished another necromancer for my army, bringing my total to three (Meaning I'm done with necromancers for awhile, which is sad since I love making 'em!). However, he's also painted in such a way that I can easily claim him as a vampire, neato!
I really like this model. You can just see how slimy this character is. Does great justice to Brad Dourif's portrayal in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings.

This is clearly the concept art for the model, which is awesome! Something about actually seeing the model alive infront of you =D

Hope you enjoy this!
I've got some more Dire Wolves in the fleshworks as well as some ghouls! They're slated after my dwarves however, so it'll be a while. I might do individual models, then I'll ofcourse post them here ^^

Your painting rocks and I can only hope that I can work with greenstuff half as well as you! Subscribed.

As soon as I finish my WoC I'm starting a VC army.

Thanks for the inspiration!

Thanks alot guys, I'm really flattered by all this...flattery!
Hope I'll find some time to raise some more of the foul undead soon. If you're hungry for updates on what I'm up to (and don't mind abit of beardy grumblyness) then my other project; "Karak'Odro Karaz" is getting abit more attention these days!

Thanks for the kind words.
I really appreciate your comments and criticisms, so please leave some if you have any!

If you can find the time could you make a tutorial on painting you zombies. I really like them!