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I like the stabby cutty. Consider it pinched for GK Paladins...

No problem... interesting thing in your sig... what is that?

Love the Vanguard Vet Gits!
wondered where BLACKHAND's Wings went... The Mantis Pose is coming back!
weety, your mugs are epic! wish i could afford one, ill have to start saving my pennies

Insane! in only the best way you can do it! love the pose and the conversion! looks excellent, I can imagine him just touching down and leaping forward into the fray!, a very nice model Gits, a whole squad of them will be amazing and very nice to see! and of course, i can't wait to see him painted up :-)


Nerdfest09

Just a quick question gits, and I'm sorry if it's been asked already, but those wings on the Assault chappy.....any thoughts on making them look see throu? Maybe mirrored to catch the light?

Could be a great advantage in combat if it's particularly sunny? I only ask because although I've only read up to page 121(!) you seem to be incorporating an awful lot of insect like touches to these dudes.

On the blog, great work so far, have been really enjoying reading all the thought process that you have put into this project. Eagerly awaiting the next instalment!

Gits, bud, sorry I've been away from dakka since, I'm trying to spend my free "day" time at the beach or pool. So, to catch up, Devs look awesome! The script on their purity seals and parchments really make them pop. That's all micron pen, right? Or did you start painting the script?
Sorry to hear about your luck at the local tourny. But, I agree with some of the others, your army looks too good. I enjoy the fluff lists over the WAAC lists anyday. GMS marine looks absolutley menacing! The pose is really animated and makes him just look stunning. Quite excited to see you paint him up!

Revenent Reiko wrote:Love the Vanguard Vet Gits!
wondered where BLACKHAND's Wings went... The Mantis Pose is coming back!
weety, your mugs are epic! wish i could afford one, ill have to start saving my pennies

Thanks Reiko, and you're right... weety's mugs are epic!

nerdfest09 wrote:Insane! in only the best way you can do it! love the pose and the conversion! looks excellent, I can imagine him just touching down and leaping forward into the fray!, a very nice model Gits, a whole squad of them will be amazing and very nice to see! and of course, i can't wait to see him painted up :-)

Yes, me too. And I'm reserving one special touch for them which will only be for my personal vanguard models. So keep your eyes peeled when I finally get to do more of my own things.

sarpedons-right-hand wrote:Just a quick question gits, and I'm sorry if it's been asked already, but those wings on the Assault chappy.....any thoughts on making them look see throu? Maybe mirrored to catch the light?

Could be a great advantage in combat if it's particularly sunny? I only ask because although I've only read up to page 121(!) you seem to be incorporating an awful lot of insect like touches to these dudes.

On the blog, great work so far, have been really enjoying reading all the thought process that you have put into this project. Eagerly awaiting the next instalment!

Thanks sarpendons! If you have a suggestion for making them see through... I'm all ears. I don't think I could paint anything remotely like that, so they'd have to be cut out of clear plastic I suppose with the extra bits added on to each wing. That's a lot of work. You're quite right... very realistic, just not sure if it's possible with my skills such as they are. Thanks for your comments on the blog too. Glad to know it can still entertain. Stop by anytime and feel free to pitch in your ideas. Love to hear what other people think (and as you read through the blog you'll see that this really is a group project).

Moltar wrote:Gits, bud, sorry I've been away from dakka since, I'm trying to spend my free "day" time at the beach or pool. So, to catch up, Devs look awesome! The script on their purity seals and parchments really make them pop. That's all micron pen, right? Or did you start painting the script?
Sorry to hear about your luck at the local tourny. But, I agree with some of the others, your army looks too good. I enjoy the fluff lists over the WAAC lists anyday. GMS marine looks absolutley menacing! The pose is really animated and makes him just look stunning. Quite excited to see you paint him up!

Script is micron pen, the other panels and such are painted. Well, I'm kind of stuck with them as they are... though I will slowly be adding units that should help take care of some of the issues in the current list. It dawned on my that my Badab War MW list was never designed to stand on it's own... it was designed to be part of a team at Adepticon, thus it has always had some glaring weaknesses. Scaling it up to 1850 just made those weaknesses all the more obvious. I will eventually get them sorted... I hope anyway.

And here's progress on the vanguard. Green airbrushing is done & it's been lined w/ thrakka in the crevices. I have no idea how I'm going to paint the wings... have to ponder that a bit.


OH, and if you actually went and checked out my pic in the Mini of the Month competition... you might go ahead and vote on it (in the gallery, not in the competition)... been a while since I had anything in the public eye and I'd appreciate the feedback & support. - Thanks!

I'd paint them like your gems, but with a white, instead of a black, base color

So i go to google and type in painting mantis wings in the search to see if i could find somethin to help you out and i see several of your MWs lol

Interesting idea BBL.

@polari: That's pretty funny. :-) I've got some ideas but I'm going to let them bounce around in my head until tomorrow.

Hmmm... I found these... pretty cool

o.o awesome if you can make ur mw look like that i will be impressed

Gitsplitta wrote:

sarpedons-right-hand wrote:Just a quick question gits, and I'm sorry if it's been asked already, but those wings on the Assault chappy.....any thoughts on making them look see throu? Maybe mirrored to catch the light?

Could be a great advantage in combat if it's particularly sunny? I only ask because although I've only read up to page 121(!) you seem to be incorporating an awful lot of insect like touches to these dudes.

On the blog, great work so far, have been really enjoying reading all the thought process that you have put into this project. Eagerly awaiting the next instalment!

Thanks sarpendons! If you have a suggestion for making them see through... I'm all ears. I don't think I could paint anything remotely like that, so they'd have to be cut out of clear plastic I suppose with the extra bits added on to each wing. That's a lot of work. You're quite right... very realistic, just not sure if it's possible with my skills such as they are. Thanks for your comments on the blog too. Glad to know it can still entertain. Stop by anytime and feel free to pitch in your ideas. Love to hear what other people think (and as you read through the blog you'll see that this really is a group project).

To answer the clear wing question, I did look at trying to pour the wings out of clear resin but it takes an age to harden with such small amounts and in a thin mould like that. Resin hardens faster when there is larger amount in the mould, like say a SM bike wheel hardens faster than a helmet for instance, and the clear resin would probably take a day or two before I could pull it. This would have meant Git would still be waiting for his first batch of wings! not to mention that the clear resin is almost impossible to knock the bubbles out of and they look terrible.

The best way to do it in my opinion is to get sheet of clear acrylic plastic and have it laser etched by someone, this would allow you to do some pretty fine details as well and using different colours of acrylic would have some cool effects.

So I did think about clear wings but I just wasn't set up to do it Besides with Git's painting skills I think they should come up pretty damn nice

If you do want clear wings. Have a chat with the Warmill guys. They are on here and do amazing clear acrylic bases, swords and other things.

Pretty suire if you give them a PM with what you want they could help.

I appreciate everyone's suggestions, and I did think about the Warmill guys as this sub-topic evolved over the last day, but it's too late for that. I'll keep what I have. Had I been aware of them 6 months ago, I probably would have approached them, but I like what Blackhand cooked up & will do my best to make them look decent the old fashioned way. Brushes & paint.

A white undercoat, green/purple/blue washes on parts of the wings and then a gloss varnish might make the wings look more bug like?

Then again, they are part of the armour, so green works too

I'm thinking of keeping them green from the back, as a mantis' wing covers are green (if body is green). It's the underside view that I was thinking about doing something fancy with.

I may experiment with some of my spare sets.

Hi, My suggestion for for the wings would be, to keep the wings green for the most part then draw on a wing design in bold yellow lines or lighter green/white line or something. To make it look like they have had this design painted or printedl or stenciled on like car decals.

This way you are not trying to receate something complicated and it is also going to look quite real in a way.

Just an aside... in the Mini of the Month Competition... my melta vent is in a 3-way tie for second place! I'm pretty pleased about that... the other two models are quite nice so I'm in really good company.

Congrats on the Melta-Vet, when does voting end? (ive already voted but i want to know when the results are out)

Cant help you with the wings im afraid, but i have faith in you that it will come out great (*gush gush* )

Actually what I'm most pleased about so far is that he's gone together fairly quickly. I'd like to get to the point where I'm not spending two weeks building and painting each figure... nice as the results are it gets kind of old after a while. One day to build, one day & the greens are done. We'll see what kind of progress I can make in the next session... but if I can do a scratch-build like this in a week or less, I'll be pretty happy.

TBH, i think you would have gotten to that stage before now if it werent for the fact that you do such disparate projects all at the same time if that makes sense?(not that i think what you are doing is wrong of cors).

True... even while working on the vanguard I'm also working on my son's Land Raider... that's kind of my life I guess. But your right, going in 6 different directions at the same time does not do a lot for improving efficiency.

As i said, its not a bad thing that you have many things on at once, its a really good way to keep yourself motivated/interested (God knows i have to keep switching between topics for revision so my brain doesnt completely switch off). But yeah, its not great for efficiency, which is a shame (although you are improving!).

Hows the LR coming along btw?
EDIT: nm, ill post on the DE thread

The vanguard vet. looks great.
If I may chime in about the painting of the wings: You could try an air brush fade/blenddy thing-similar to what some folks do on power weapons. I reckon that if you used blue and a silvery white, it could look like the wings in those two insect photos. If, like you said, you paint the outer face green; the model would be very striking, with a very different sort of look from the front and from the back.
Great work in general. I love following your progress.

@Reiko: That's true. I got awfully sick of my Mantis Warriors when I was doing nothing but painting them for Adepticon. Now I'm doing both earas of MW, nids, necrons and the occasional Doom Eagle... much more interesting!

@ctown: Thank you! You've got the right of it... at least that's where my mind is heading. I also thought about doing Coyotebrakes vein idea but rather than making them look like a stencil, do them in a very delicate shade of grey, just enough so you can see there's something going on but not enough to dominate the underside of the wing.

I presume you've seen this thread?

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/359778.page

If you're looking for Anything that you want to be remotely clear, id go to them! I think they could make some super cool mantis wings...

That new assault mantis looks great!!!

Lucky him!!

Effeciency gave me 2 bulging disks. Stick with diversity Gitz.

Nice crazy flying Mantis ther Git they are going to look excellent in a squad!