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All kinds of awesome congrats on a great conversion and fantastic paint job. Good call snakebyte on the back pack colours too

this is looking really really nice! She ties in with the squad perfectly! really nice work! I am especially impressed with the face! I think faces and especially eyes and the impression you can give with them are really tough to make look good and right! *

Once again really great work.

Wow. That looks brilliant man. I was a bit unsure of her on the side close-up shots, but on the near and far (with Incubi) shots, "Sara the Harmonculus" (it's already started) looks absolutely amazing.
I completely agree with the blue on the arms and the dark red 'leather' really works well with the blue. Honestly, it's just an amazing job all round man.
I think she may be amongst your best DE yet, which is saying something!

Can someone tell me how to make that blue colour using GW paints?

There's a colour chart in the articles section of Dakka that can match non-GW paints to GW paints.

This one infact:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Paint_Range_Compatibility_Chart

Looking really rather good, and nicely tied in with the incubi.

grrr

It's really, really cool that this project has gotten such a good response ! I'll say again that all the positive feedback is really appreciated and is a huge motivator!

@JohnnoM: I've been experimenting with different paint combinations to try and match the Tamiya coral blue spray I use to base coat the miniatures. So far what I've found works the best is approximately 4/5 Vallejo Game Color Electric Blue with 1/5 Citadel Scorpion Green and just a tiny bit of Citadel Skull White. Hope that helps!

@Just Dave & Ovion: First time I've seen that chart, I've bookmarked it as a useful reference!

And now for a short digression into gaming stories:

There was a "campaign day" at the local FLGS today, really just an excuse to play some games with a loose storyline, and I tried Sara and the Incubi out for the first time. I'd say their first outing was success overall with a total kill count of 29 marines over three games. I got tabled against Space Wolves the second game but the Incubi still managed to cut down 9 Grey Hunters and wounded Arjac Rockfist.

But overall my "Unit of the Day" award has to go to my big squad of Beasts (4 Beastmasters, 8 Khymerae, 4 Razorwing Flocks and Baron Sathonyx) who were dead set on munching their way through multiple squads throughout the day. The shining moment has to be the unit shrugging off a heavy flamer and heavy psycannon attack by a Dreadknight and then going on to beat it in combat! On an unrelated note, "Worst Unit of the Game" had to go to my opponent's Vindicare Assassin who over a five turn game managed to miss three shots, and only succeed in stunning and then immobilizing a Ravager. On the other hand, he was really good at ducking since I couldn't get him to fail a cover save!

Amazing work, as always.

Congrats on the kills

Hey Jon when are you next in Fun Atelier?
I'm around atm with nothing to do
I might pop in tomorrow morning to mid afternoon

Amazing! wonderful finish and good fluff. the OSL on the little pouches is extra beautiful! i love her. Congrats on the kill count.

Haha, I agree with you completely about beast squads. They can get a bit hard to control past a certain size, but they just eat everything, shrugging off the worst of wounds. I think they're the best unit in the codex.

Your haemonculus looks perfect.

Loving the female Haemonculus. Looks stylish and unique.

@CalasTyphon216: Sent you a PM with my availability for this week.

@Foxtale: I think I'll need to paint up some more Flying Rippers since the magic number of Razorwing Swarms seems to be four to each Beast Pack. I've been running two and they just don't soak enough hits from small arms fire.

Beautiful job on sara! very inspirational, especially as i'm hunting for alternate models suitable for Haemonculus! :-) so thanks dude! love everything you have done so far! very cohesive and well executed! a very striking force you have managed to produce!

Nerdfest09

She looks fantastic! Really quite shocking how quick you put out these models- I'm sure there is alot of hard work involved!

Mechanicum Jon wrote:@Foxtale: I think I'll need to paint up some more Flying Rippers since the magic number of Razorwing Swarms seems to be four to each Beast Pack. I've been running two and they just don't soak enough hits from small arms fire.

I guess it depends on who you're playing against, but I usually run six to eight with five beastmasters, and flesh out the rest with 10 khymerae. The rending destroys everything, even when I have to roll 6s to wound.

Now that I've painted Sara and her Incubi, I'm finding myself short on available Raiders. Although I generally like the way the standard Raider looks, if I were to nitpick one thing I'd say that the single sail is a bit lacking in visual impact. Several people have done dual-sailed raiders and I've wanted to try out the conversion for a while myself. A particular early inspiration was the Eldar Addict Blog:

http://eldaraddict.blogspot.com/2011/02/venom-mark-ii-airbrushing-dark-eldar.html

I've managed to pull off the conversion in a way that gives the mast a slightly more streamlined look, with the help of a spare "mast" bit. Although I'll admit that I couldn't wait to get home from work today because I had left the conversion halfway done, covered in drying putty, hoping everything was lined up correctly, and worried that I had blown it and would have to hunt though bitz sites for another mast bit. Fortunately it turned out to be job's a good 'un when I got home and I just needed to do some sanding to finish it up.

I couldn't wait to see how the Raider looked so it's just held together with Blu-Tack right now:



Really quite pleased with how tidy it looks for a first effort!

I like it a lot, actually. It changes the profile of the raider just enough to make it interesting, but not so much that it wouldn't fit. I think I might have to give it a try myself.

prime12357 wrote:I do believe that the phrase is "Holy F*ck!" The incubi really look great all together.

Just Dave wrote:What's next?

Indeed. I can't wait to see what comes up.

Which fire emblem is that one? My generals could never use swords, probably because they would have ended up being uber-defense paladins.

Anyway, this blog is fantastic. I really love how well the blue shines through all the 'muck and grime'. I try to do the same thing with my chaos marines, but I just get lazy and wash the heck out of them, which isn't the best. Great work.

Another fire emblem fan It's Amelia from Sacred Stones. The generals get the full weapon triangle, and with her stats, it's just a little ridiculous.

It's Saturday, December 17th, 2011, and you're reading Mechanicum Jon's Dark Eldar, a blog about painting and modeling and a little bit more. The reading time for this post is 20 seconds. (Shameless ripoff of the Fear the Boot intro, since that's what I'm listening to right now! )

Over the course of painting and assembling a bunch of Raider hulls (four Raiders and three Ravagers to be exact), I've developed a relatively workable and low stress method of getting Raider hulls from the sprue to the tabletop. I thought it might be interesting for people if I posted a few more in progress shots to show how I went about it.

So here's how I start. I've actually found it easiest to begin by spraying most of the parts separately before gluing anything together. The exception being the parting making up the large "keel" section (brown piece in the upper left), since all those pieces are the same color. I spray the thusters (small parts in the bottom middle) separately from the "keel" because I find it hard to get a brush in once their glued. The base plate (upper right) is sprayed in two halves with just a bit of masking tape to cover one half once I'm done with it. The only other notable bit is the Dark Lance, which I do separately from the gun shield for east of painting. I've cut slots into the peg holes of the gun shield to let me slide the Dark Lance in once it's painted.

A lot of this is minor stuff but it's worked well for me. Drop me a comment if this series seems useful!

...seems useful

Yes! It does

Very interesting - definitely would like to see more!

Jon, your entire army is amazing and very inspiring. The Dark Eldar are going to be my next project and you've encouraged me to look for a color scheme far beyond GW's standard "black with neon highlights." Keep up the good work.

Now for the next couple stages of the Raider's paint job:

Before I do any assembly, I paint and weather all the bronze parts. The process is very straightforward.

1. Basecoat in Calthan Brown.
2. Paint two layers of Dwarf Bronze.
3. Wash with diluted Vallejo Turquoise.

At this point I also do some of the paint chipping effects on the blue part of the Raider floorplate (the large and flat piece left of the sails in the photo) since this will be hard to get at later (not yet done in photo). Anyone who wants to play spot the difference look for the Raider piece I've accidentally left out of the photo.



I then glue together the main hull assembly.

Now come the runes. I'd recommend spraying the Raider with a layer of varnish at this stage so that if you make any mistakes on the runes you can just rub them off. But I've gotten confident (or lazy and impatient ) enough to skip that step. I just make sure to cover up any rough spots with paint chips during that upcoming step. I'd say that in my FLGS the number one question I get asked is how I paint the runes. Unfortunately, I have to tell people that there's no special method. Like most freehand it's mostly patience and practice. I'm actually fairly rubbish at freehand, have terrible handwriting and found Chinese calligraphy lessons incredibly fruitless as a child, so I tend to paint the runes in a very piecemeal fashion. I build the runes up by first lightly brushing in the general centerlines of the stokes and then gradually broaden them out, smoothing the lines out as I go.

I have been tempted to ask my grandmother who is an excellent Chinese calligrapher and painter to help with them. She could probably do each in a few minutes with a few bold strokes!







That's it for today's tutorial. Next up: paint chipping.

@prime12357 & Arakasi: The encouragement is much appreciated!

@Phaeron:

Jon, your entire army is amazing and very inspiring. The Dark Eldar are going to be my next project and you've encouraged me to look for a color scheme far beyond GW's standard "black with neon highlights." Keep up the good work.

Thanks! The standard GW scheme actually turned me off the Dark Eldar models until I saw them done up in some other colors and fell in love with them. The "Tron" colors make them look a bit too "plasticky" and toy-like.

Everything on this blog is amazing.

Jon, you really are a constant source of inspiration for my own Dark Eldar, an embodiment of the lofty heights that I will aspire too, but likely never reach

Just keep posting, it's all awesome

The picture below presents the Raider once the paint chipping effect has been applied. Although the Raider's hull has been assembled in the picture, I'd actually recommend doing the paint chips first before assembly because some parts can be hard to reach otherwise. The paint chips are applied with a small piece of foam (actually a piece of pluck foam out of a Sabol Army Transport tray), a piece of firm sponge would probably also work fine. The key is to keep the chips fairly random and not to overdo the effect. I use a toothpick to scratch off some of the chips where I've dabbed them on a bit to uniformly or heavily. The color is Adeptus Battlegrey mixed with black.



@Warboss Gutrip: Post some pics of your stuff!

You might remember that fellow Dakka user CalasTyphon216 who's in Hong Kong for the Christmas Holidays asked me for a game earlier in this thread. We finally managed to match schedules and have got a game set for this Friday. So now I've got more motivation to get this Raider up and flying (but probably sans crew) by then! Here's the highlighting stage completed on the Raider. The highlight color is Skull White plus a tiny dot of Vallejo Electric Blue. The technique is also nothing fancy, just run your chosen brush along all the edges. I find that the Citadel Standard Brush is a good compromise between holding enough paint and being small enough to reach into the tighter corners. Neatness helps but isn't too big a deal since the upcoming weathering stage will cover up a multitude of sins.