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A bit of history first: as all the members of this board can attest to, gamer ADD is a terrible thing. As a result, I have an embarassingly small quantity of my collection painted. I've made enormous inroads in the last year in reducing the quantity of unbuilt models, but this has only heightened the lack of paint on models. With a nascent Warmachine League established out in the middle of nowhere where I live - no time like the present to get cracking with the paintbrushes!

Why CYGNAR: We wanted a good mix of factions in our group. As I already had models for each faction, I let the others pick and I ended up fighting for the Cygnus by default... I wasn't a huge fan of Cygnar's playstyle at first, but those guys are growing on me...

DISCLAIMERS:

I am an extremely slow painter. As a result, I'm shooting for tabletop quality on all of these. The extremely reduced palete is a concious choice - there will be little to no gold in this army. While criticism and suggestions are welcomed, please keep in mind that I'm trying to keep the painting time on these to a minimum.

The box-set models were quickly blitz painted over the course of a week, as I ran a demo day to kick off our Warmachine group and wanted to have fully painted faction boxes for each main faction. I failed in this respect as the Ironclad is a 70% WIP (not shown) and the Lancer was missing his shield. Poor Styker definitely needs some work on his sword, but as is, he's good enough for the table.

I came onto Dakka for some inspiration for infantry schemes once the battlebox was completed (kind of). The similarities in scheme to METSURI's Cygnar is a happy coincidence as it has given me insights into how the models look with a similar scheme... what can I say, great minds think alike.

Commander Coleman Styker. Poor bugger is really focus strapped - and his feat is hard to time - but he's a solid warcaster and I haven't turned to anyone else yet. Now that I look at his photo, I realize just how gakky his sword looks all blown up like that. I swear he looks ok on the tabletop.




My trusty Lancer warjack.



This guy was terribad in the MK1. Giving him powerful shot really kicked it up a notch. On top of that, making him 4 points really ups his utility as I can give him to Jr without any guilt if she dies. Unfortunately, he is kind of a focus hog and while he does everything ok, he doesn't do anything well. Only mod on this was changing the angle on his head, as his stock pose is nonsensically awkward.



Speaking of Jr... here she is.



These guys are a pain to paint. They have too many details and took forever. I'm not looking forward to the day when I'll have to paint Trenchers. Luckily, I don't own any yet, so that day is in the future. What I do have to contend with is a second unit of these guys and their UA.



Sword Knights. I've seen players complain that they've been nerfed a lot, but they are Cygnar's cheapest infantry and have a ton of good abilities. Loss of swordmaster hurts, but all in all, I don't see it as a huge show stopper. These were a pleasure to paint... though the scheme I ended up with hasn't done me any favours in the speed department. I think the Sgt needs another highlight.

Things learned so far:

1. Kommando Khaki doesn't cover worth GAK on black.
2. Kommando Khaki + Khemri Brown makes it cover 10+x more awesome
3. Foundation paints immediately dry on your brush. As you are painting. They taste terrible.

Current goal: 25 points painted

On the bench:
3x Sword Knights to complete squad
1x Stormsmith Stormcaller
1x WIP Ironclad

keezus wrote:The similarities in scheme to METSURI's Cygnar is a happy coincidence as it has given me insights into how the models look with a similar scheme... what can I say, great minds think alike.

Nice to see another Cygnar painter on the Dakka, especially with the great taste in color selection

These all look good, the infantry especially is looking great. The trenchers are as much pain to paint as you anticipate, I almost gave up on them and still have 3 more to paint for maxed squad. The long gunners are breeze compared to them. I see that you left the ceremonial blades of the swordknights, I thought them to be too flimsy and left them off. You don't seem to be such a slow painter when compared to my total of 16 finished figs this year.

Have you tried vallejo's equivalent to kommando khaki? It covers great over black, even though it is a bit on the thick side from the pot, but you must be thinning the paints to get such nice even coats with the foundation paints.

Awaiting for more of these to appear for our viewing pleasure.

That's a lovely scheme and well done. I've been looking into warmachine myself but am torn since I like the cyg infantry but the khador jacks.

Nice painting! I always loved the cygnar range.

This is perhaps the best Cyg paint scheme that I've seen. Well done!!

Very nice scheme and very well executed. Keep up the good work.

Sexy. Can't wait to see more!

It has been an eventful week, topped off by a long weekend. As a result, there was lots of sleeping being done, with hobbying inbetween. First off, I must appologize for the shoddiness of the photos. For whatever reason, the balcony of my apartment was a wasp heavy zone this afternoon - and in my haste to not spend any more quality time with them than possible, I botched most of the pictures I took...

Update: The sword knights got done.


In their bleary glory. I was trying to photo them without macro to get the whole squad in focus. It appears I was only partially successful.


The stormsmith got done. He's a bit lighter coloured IRL. I tried adjusting for the overcast day by adjusting the white balance and increasing the exposure time, but I still might have bodged it, considering that I was in a rush.

REINFORCEMENTS HAVE ARRIVED...


The good news is that the plastic parts do fit on the metals. Kind of. Apparently the PP plastic can be shaped somewhat using the hot water trick. I was lazy and greenstuffed the poorly fitting piece onto the right arm.

The bad news is that the plastic kit looks nothing like the classics. IMO, the narrowness of the new Cygnar chassis makes the new jacks look sleeker, but weaker than the old ones. Their incredibly dainty hands are problematic, as the old ones wrapped fully around their weapons, but the plastic ones barely grip past 1/2 way around. Terrible. The new heads are signifigantly smaller than the old metals, and the socket joint doesn't alow any out of the box posability without the use of greenstuff. I was hoping to convert the chassis into Old Rowdy, but I think it will probably end up as a Defender MKII.

Pulled my stormguard out of storage and assembled one squad of them. The second squad had a mispack. Unfortunately, they were bought so long ago, I don't have the original packaging and had been storing them in a ziplock bag... Will fix when I get a chance to put in a PP bits order. While they are fine looking models once assembled, I am having trouble adpating the paint scheme to them. Furthermore, they are so oddly shaped that they will positively NOT fit easiliy into the 1" sabol trays where the rest of my Cygnar live. Even the 2.5" trays don't seem to house them easily. Any suggestions to future storage would be appreciated.

Assembled a classic defender.

Next on the workbench:

Ironclad: Complete paintjob
Cyclone: Requires priming
Defender: Requires priming
Stormguard: Requires basing
Black 13th: Requires cleanup and assembly

I also got Sloan, but her terribad pose requires some thinking before I hack her up. Even after fixing her silly gun problem (both how she holds it, AND the gun itself), the posing of her neck and legs are extremly unnatural. I saw a nice conversion of her on the interwebs where someone had swapped her head for the ordic pistoller's head. It is a good swap.

Nice work on the cyclone conversion. The pics of painted figs are bit too dark to make out details, but the swordknights look great as a unit. The stormsmith seems a lack contrast, might be just the picture but he seem flat.

The stormguard are a bit of a pain to store, mine are still unassembled and waiting for primer but the problems are already visible.

I'm waiting for pics of your heavy jacks.

It has been a hot week. Ended up just assembling models. Finshed the second unit of Stormguard less the mispacked trooper. Assembled Sloan. General consensus is that the stock model is pants. Here it is for reference...



Her crazy gun pose aside - careful analysis of the model before cutting (prep for surgery) indicated that the stock pose is very awkward - and NOTHING like Walton's art, which shows her standing solidly with both feet planted. It is not so evident from the studio photo, but she has her hips swiveled to her right, and her left foot is pointed 30 degrees from the front, and on tip-toe. The sway of her coat indicates that there is a bend in her left leg. On top of this, her head is pushed by her neck due to the placement of the boiler. There are a lot of conversions out there that show her aiming her gun, but I wanted something a bit different. There is also another convesion out there which used the ordic pistoller's head in place of Sloan's. It is a great conversion, but I was too lazy to invest in a head swap - even though I'm not overly fond of Sloan's stock head, nor the positioning of her neck.



Here's the conversion from the front. (Blow-ups in the gallery are much less muddy than these thumbnails)



Here she is from the back. You can clearly see how her left leg is bent. Other than the obvious gun arm repose, there were a few minor details changed. I cut off her left foot and positioned it closer to 80 degrees from her front as I view this to be a more stable stance, given the silliness of the tip-toe foot. The runic suppresor on her gun was WAY over the top, so I replaced it with a suppressor from a lowly LASGUN. The trickiests part of the whole exercise was carefully cutting her forearm away from her gun and salvaging her elbow from her right arm. Not the greatest conversion, but I think it looks compositionally better than the stock pose.

Nothing new painted yet, but I wanted to get this posted before I primed Sloan.

Looking very nice, very realistic. On the unconverted model, the gun looks so heavy, and the way she holds it is so awkward. Kudos for making it cool!!!!

Its been a slow week without much progress. A business trip lost me 3 days of hobbying and the weekend was taken up by the start of belated Blasted Heath goodness. Here's the stuff complete for the last week:



Ironclad



Defender

I definitely need to change up my indoor photo setup. I'm going to try having a second light source next time. The dark spots in the pictures really show my lack of photography skill. I'll try and include better pictures when I'm able to do a "family shot". These next few photos clearly show the sizing issues with hands and feet the Cygnar plastic kit has: On the upside, PP frontdesk told me that they have no current plans to discontinue the classic metal jacks.





To round out this post, here's my proposed scheme for storm knights (guards and blades)

I think it needs a little more contrast in it.

Munch Munch! wrote:I think it needs a little more contrast in it.

i agree they look phenomenal and I am over joyed to see more Warmachine stuff popping up on dakka BUT your paint scheme is very monochrome and feels a bit unfinished on some of your models, perhaps some highlighting or fading techniques on them will give them the right amount of pop so they feel complete.

@Zhetsuken: Where is the problem most prominent in your estimation? Which models in particular? The vast expanses of metal, or the mostly featureless khaki?

I'm struggling a bit with how to further highlight the khaki as I don't want to take highlights much past kommando khaki (which is fairly light already). The vast expanses of metal are kind of a time-saver for me, as I've been painting all areas that are rivet covered mostly in metal, as I'm having enough trouble with the khaki without having to go paint tons of fiddly small plates covered in rivets.

personally i like the monochromeness (is that a word? it is now) of your work. have you considered any weathering/ chipping/ dirtying up of your models, this could break up the large flat areas

azekio wrote:personally i like the monochromeness (is that a word? it is now) of your work. have you considered any weathering/ chipping/ dirtying up of your models, this could break up the large flat areas

I like the term "reduced palette" myself. Good idea on the battle damage. I was thinking about trying that but my initial priority is finishing more models (so I can justify buying more models!!!). I was looking at Grey Death's "sponged" battle damage technique. I've got another Lancer in the works. I may try it on that 'jack.