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They look amazing. White primer really seems to be helping. Maybe I should give it a try, next time I have a bunch of lightly colored models to paint.

_Tim?

Glad i could help Ifalna!

I think the best way to minimise drying time is to paint entire units at once. eg. Do a batch of 5 up to washes, then the next 5 etc. Not sure how many batches you'd need to do before the wash dries though. At least 2 i'd expect. Alternatively, putting them close to a lamp, under a light fan or hairdyer speeds drying considerably.

As to what Gitsplitta said, yes it does shine. I usually hit my lizzies stone with a layer of PVA to gloss it a bit. With the awesomeness of the liquid gold though, im not sure if it would get lost in all the shine. It has a good contrast atm.

I really like the way they look, but I think I have a few ideas to make them look a little better:

1: Tie the red in with the body a little more. The crest looks very flat (might be the pic?) and since it doesn't blend at all it sort of looks added on. Part of the issue is that the crest on the model doesn't really grow from the model, but is really sculpted to just sort of be there. You might be able to even that out a bit by tying some purple or red into their heads, to give a slightly more gradual transition and say "This is attached, thanks!" Possibly a small bluish pattern on the crest would also help.

2: The spear points probably should either be glossy or have some NMM style highlights as they said. Some paint on glossy sealer would probably do the trick, and give a nice contrast in shine to the gold.

3: The spear shafts might need a little bit of a wash, as currently they look a little flat. Might be the pic again.

4: I don't know how well the scales are getting picked out. They look pretty good, but I wonder if perhaps they couldn't stand to be a little lighter. The darker blue areas look a tad monochromatic, and thinking back to my old iguana, his scales tended to have a little more gloss and color variation. Just a thought though. Possibly thinning out the darker color before the wash so that more of the light blue peeks through.

Those are looking nice though; don't take these suggestions as severe crits! Those are just the things that pop out at me a bit.

Oh, also, south american tribes often wore various kinds of war paint, or so I have read. You might be able to mix in some different colors with some red or chalky white stripes here or there.

Thanks for the great feedback!

I can't really go all out with the obsidian as making it "shine" would be far too time consuming for models I am earning €1 each from, hah, but painting on some gloss is an awesome idea and one that is still within the 3 layers 1 wash rule for these dudes, so kudos Wehrkind, that will be used!

Vitruvian XVII, I think the gloss will be ok with the gold to be honest, the gold has had its shine taken down a couple of levels due to the purity spray so shining the obsidian should not be too over the top. The only other way I can think of avoiding the gold oxidising while retaining its shine would be to gloss varnish it too, but I like the tarnished version on these a little more. If it looks wrong I can always just purity seal it to remove the shine anyway, so lets test and see how it looks!

Tim, white all the way for these guys. It sped them up so much faster.

Wehrkind, great suggestions and I will be certaintly using them for the character standard + models, I just can't really afford to pick out the scales further on these dudes due to the layer restriction on their standard :( You are completely right that the crests look a bit flat, in reality they are blazing orange fading to blood red in the center, but it does not really seem obvious enough, so I am going to reinforce the orange colouring on the outside . Shafts will be getting a quick tidy up before the unit is finished but I kind of wanted them to look like a solid ivory coloured spear, so going further with shading might detract from the units cartoony look maybe.

The entire unit of 20 is now nearing completion, and I have started working on 10 at a time which is stopping time waste issues with drying. They are getting done much faster now and I can't see there being any time issues with completing the entire project The Dp's base FINALLY arrived this morning, so tonight he will get it added and his final shots taken, then off in the mail hopefully in the morning. I am going to continue work on the speed paint exercise Gobbo from earlier while working on the Lizardmen in order to not burn out on them. Bit of variation is needed I think. Pics up once I get home.

The colours doesn't work for me I'm afraid :/

If you are doing more than 20 taking time in between batches to work on something else is necessary. I have found for every 5-10 that are part of the army the 1-2 minis with a significantly different paint job are a god-send.

If you want to paint models fast the best thing I can suggest is using a hair dryer so you don't spend as much time waiting for paint to dry, you could try a purple wash on the red bits as well.

Rose_Mountainz, colours were decided by the owner. I think they will look nicer once their shields are on and more models in the army are completed personally. The Orange and red Salamanders will be a good contrast.

ChaoticMind, bingo. I do need a bit of variation or I will just be seeing blue for months. I have some nice models here I can work on like my little Gobbo or some whitelions, both of which are very nonblue I also have huge amounts of boxed models I really need to get my act together on. Boyfriend got me a tomb scorpion and a fireprism for my birthday which are untouched, how shameful.

itsonlyme, that works really well aye! I used some basic small lamps and the heat drastically lowered drying time which was awesome.


I had a rather lovely gift of an xbox and enslaved yesterday + I got monster hunter freedom unite on psp which I am still working through, need to make sure I get that base finished tonight before giving in to gaming temptation!

Hon your in england

I thought that might do the job I tend to do that a lot when I have batches of models to paint in a short time.

@ Dee - I thought Ifalna was Irish because of the prices for commission being in euro's

I am Irish, just having major problems with my flagging when I post from work due to the IP's being proxies/dynamic :(

May have to add from my Sig that I operate from Ireland exclusively, hehe.

I think it's possible to get your flag permanently set to a certain country

Try searching Nuts and Bolts

Also... That blue is insanely good

I actually already got it set to Ireland, but it just doesn't seem to be working. No way around it right now according to the mod that helped :(

DP all done. Will get around to altering the background to be one unchanging colour, but for now I am completely exhausted and need bed.

Edit: Screw it, altered.

That is a pretty nice base, though I keep imagining him taking one step forward and losing some toes in the fan

I hear you on the lizard fellows; it is often hard to remind oneself not to go nuts on a model that you need to make 100's of As to the poles, have you tried using multiple washes on them? I do that for my marauder horns, basing with Light Flesh, then a Sepia wash all over followed by a Devlan wash at the bottoms. Seems to work pretty well (at least no one has called foul on it yet)

Also, do me a favor when you are getting some down time and swing over and let me know what you think of the Warrior test scheme. Having inordinate amounts of trouble tying him in for some reason.

Daemon Prince looks perfect! Nice touch with the base.

Very nice Ifalna... you're probably getting tired of hearing that. The colors and forms really jump out at you! Nicely done.

Get some sleep, you've earned it.

I downloaded and tried out GIMP based on earlier suggestions, and 10 thumbs up for it. Much faster and capable of handling far more information at once than paint.net which I was being enraged by daily.

The base was a nice finisher for this guy alright, but I am still not happy with its general lumpyness and intense resistance to taking paint, even when scrubbed clean beforehand. Ended up having to keep it under a heatlamp to force it to instant dry the base coat instead of it pooling strangely, which worked in the end. Would still not be buying these again personally.

Wehrkind, I kind of want the shafts to be clean and not shaded. There is sepia around the tops and bases but its not strong enough to be really noticeable, so I am going to strenghten it and tidy up the bleached bone on them I will take a gander at the warrior now!

Sleep was great, more Lizardmen tonight though!

Ahh I see what you mean about the very light shafts.

What is the deal with the base? Is it some weird plastic or resin? I assume you primed it first, which I would think would cover that up?

Yea, sleep sounds good. I should look into that.

The base is the same make as the ones on the terminators, it is resin, but the mix used just seems really bad for modelling. It was like trying to paint on glass. Scrubbing it in washing liquid and hot water is usually fine for resin, but not this stuff. Repeated washes did nothing, and trying to prime just left whatever you used, paint or spray, in little beads of paint. It could not stick :S

The only way around it I had was to heat it so the paint dried almost as quickly as it was painted on, meaning I could get a primer layer to actually coat it :( Full of bubbles and imperfections too.

Wow, are you certain it is resin and not say bronze? I don't even know what you could do with that; a very mild acid could be used to etch it a bit and give it some grip, or some extra surfactant in your paint/primer to keep the surface tension down.

Actually, what might have worked (and I keep meaning to try on metal model) is spray it with Testors Dullcote. I have used that on models that I primed with spray paint that dried way too slick to paint/wash, and a thin layer added enough tooth that stuff worked as normal. If you get another teflon base that might do the trick.

Iffy, those lizardmen look brilliant!!! i would almost consider abandoning my 40k biasdness to collect a lizardman fantasy army! But i would be loathe to abandon the blood angels!!! Keep us up to date!!!

niallkissick wrote:Iffy, those lizardmen look brilliant!!! i would almost consider abandoning my 40k biasdness to collect a lizardman fantasy army! But i would be loathe to abandon the blood angels!!! Keep us up to date!!!

Three words: Reptiles in space

Gorn!!

OMG... I may have to try that some day...

Beautiful DP Ifalna, I started lurking this thread when he showed up and I'm happy to see him all finished up at last. That skin is really something, as is the decision to go with black fingers For the join of chest armor to body, did you do any sort of blending? My own plastic DP I fudged the sides in the building process, figure painting I'll go for a clean break too, as odd as that may be

Keep up the great work, will be watching (and reading Wehr's comments )

- Salvage

I did not mean to disappear, sorry! Have been mega busy and just could not get around to posting.

Wehrkind, good idea. I think the bases were actually cursed by some kind of geek wizard, if the spray is stickier than spray primer then I may well try that in the future.

Boss Salvage, thanks very much. I just left the join as it was and painted it to look like the armor ended. I still can't believe such a dodgy model was released without them noticing though, really :(

As for space lizards, I am pretty sure Kirk already fought one in that desert scene where he hurled the polystyrene boulder at it and it fell down far too late in reaction. With the epic old Star Trek fight music. BAH BAH BOM BOM BAH BA BA BAH BA BA and Shatner all sweaty and slightly pudgy.

I got loads more work done on the Lizards, and some more on the gobbo though I don't have shots of him at the moment. The first unit of Saurus are all done, and the Skink units are getting their last touches now. Photos of them are WIP but you get the idea. There are 20 in 2 units of 10. One units crests go from red to orange, the other from orange to red. The rest of the skinks in this army will be blue, these just count as chameleons and so have a green version of the blue scheme. I gave them blue eyes to tie them in.





And a close up of 2 skinks so you can see a bit of detail. Still need a fair bit of their knicknacks done and a little highlighting on the scales, but that is the basic idea of what they look like now
Starting on Saurus unit 2 tomorow, will have pics of the finished unit then as the ones I took tonight turned out awfully blurred due to intense Ifalna failure.

Nice work on the skin, it has a lot of depth. I like the reflective eyes as well.

qft, eyes look awesome!

Thats a lovely green as well!

I wasn't too certain on the dark green at first (expecting more yellow, paler skinks... weedy gits) but looking at those two up close they look really nice. I also think your camera hates reds and oranges and the display thereof.

I think you missed a spot on the left skink's right arm though, right around the elbow

Yep, that's some good looking reptiles. Like the subtle difference with the crests to identify units.

Oh aye there are little bits missing on a few, these were literally two I just grabbed, not perfect ones. Any missed spots will be hit in my final check before they are considered finished, its the one problem I really have with batch painting, I find I end up missing more bits than I should and have to go back and check later :(

The eyes on Skinks are great as they are huge and leave lots of room to make them look nice with not much effort I was originally going to do them red but the blue is best I think. I was a bit sceptical too about the dark green but it worked out not too shabby! I just had to keep the light underbelly really light.