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Magc8Ball wrote:

Platuan4th wrote:You're making me want to actually paint all that damned Clan War stuff I've got lying around. Stop it, I've got enough to paint already and no one plays CW anymore!

You could probably make a fairly decent Bretonian footslogging or High Elf army out of them... in fact I might very well do that with all the ones I have lying about.

Probably, but I'm not ripping their 25mm squares off on the off chance that I can find someone else with Clan War willing to play when I get to Colorado and that means their bases are too big for both of those armies.

So, it's been quite some time since I posted... since my last post, I got into the down-and-dirty portions of my last semester before transferring, so I took some time off of painting. Other gaming stuff also moved to the forefront. However, in the last couple of weeks I've managed to get some pretty good painting done, and this post will show off most of that stuff. There's nothing too major, just lots of models actually being finished.

First off, the Fire Dragon exarchs have been completed. Consistent with (most of) the rest of the army, their color schemes are reversed from the unit at large. I made two of them because unlike most other exarchs in my army there's a good chance that I'll swap them around from time to time. I chopped down the Firepike to make a representation of a D'breath Flamer; hope it comes across well.

Exarchs alone:




Full Unit Shots:




The Dragons are mounted on the first "piece" of a modular display base that I'm going to really start working on before too long. My plan is to make a number of "trays" of exactly the same size, and then to construct a tiered "rack" that'll hold a set number of them. In this way I'll be able to use it for any particular army configuration, and can even (in a pinch or an Armageddon game) use the rectangles as movement trays. They're just carboard with holes cut, glued on top of plasticard. The "tray" is 15cm x 10cm, and a 4-by-4 arrangement turns out to be around 2ft x 1.5ft, a pretty good size for tournaments IIRC.


I linked this squad before as an example of my previous painting (page 1, I think), but I've completed their back-banners and brought their bases up to match the rest of the army. This isn't the full squad, but a representation of the unit (2E Scorpions didn't have a ton of variation, and the banners are simple enough that seeing a few serves the purpose well enough). The the hand-held banner is just made from aluminum foil folded over, and he has a "folded up" backbanner which is currently the only model in the army that actually displays how these guys can get into or out of transports.






The Wraithlord has had his primary weapon set completed:


Aaaand a composite shot of all of the army's completed Exarchs (I have a Shining Spear exarch that's in pieces after a fall, and my Warp Spider and Swooping Hawk squads both disappeared in "the losing". :( .) The Dark Reaper unit still has the original Clan War-derived metal back-banners; I'm not sure if I'll eventually replace them (making them consistent with the rest of the army) or leaving them as-is (the Reapers, as an immobile back-line unit might use a different form of sashimono from the rest of the army, who knows.):


NEW STUFF!
First, I converted the current Farseer model into a foot-slogging Autarch. The added-on chest plates really aren't that flat-looking on the model, but pain grey doesn't really photograph with much depth.


Finally, this is a model that I had started for the jungle fighting contest, but school and stuff prevented me from getting it done on time. In the end, I kind of rushed the painting so I'm not totally happy with it; I'll probably do-over the painting on the shield and warglaive to make them both fit the model a bit better. The model isn't really intended for any game system, though I suppose it'd work as a wood elf general or something... She's riding a warcat from the old Clan War minis game, her legs are from a Bretonian pegasus knight, chest is an Eldar Guardian, cloak and arms are from Dark Elf corsairs, and (I'll form) the head is a high elf archer.

Yes, it's a Night Elf Huntress!

I really enjoy how you built your wife's DE, that is always how i imagined them myself. Not to mention the fact that its good to see someone converting that older army.

Eldar Crabs????? That's a joke that almost writes itself.

If anything dark eldar are probably scorpion. (regular eldar would be crane) The only thing in 40k that comes close to matching crabs are probably nobz or mega nobs, they got the size and the smell.

I love the conversion work so far, and I love the l5r tie in. When I get around to my Tau army they will be the Tog'shai sept with a dragon clan theme.

I've spent the afternoon working on the Autarch, actually taking care this time to take progress shots after each major segment of painting. I'm not doing anything particularly advanced, but it's nice to see it all laid out step-by-step.

First shot is just after priming and doing up the base. It's mostly just drybrushed, though the Wraithbone bit was done with the same bone-wash-bone method that you'll see in this post:


First step is doing a Vallejo Game Color bone basecoat on all the parts that I'm expecting to not be black on the model (except the swords, which will be green). Then I put a GW Flesh Wash on most of those parts; GW Chestnut Wash went over the fusion gun.




Then I simply did another layer of VGC Bone over the parts that I actually wanted to be bone in color.


I then highlighted the black portions of the robe (Vallejo Model Color black, light grey, Game Color white blended together)


Finally, I've worked up the inner robe to a nice yellow (VGC Orange Fire and Hot Yellow). I still need to do the next highlighting layer on the robes, but I need to let the paint dry and I'm getting a headache.


Next steps are probably going to be to do up the various gems on the model, painting the swords, and deciding the following:
-What to do with the scorpion rune on the helmet (leave it the washed color, or paint it something else that'll stand out from the bone, which I'm worried that the yellow won't do);
-Do up the swords (a jade-style green, consistent with other models in the army);
-what sort of back-banners to put on this model. Exarchs get a double banner, and while I don't think this guy is going to have THREE banners (that would just be overload) I've got to figure something out that's fairly unique to make him stand out some.

Finally, I've got to figure out if I want to do some freehand rune work on the back part of the black robe, or just let it be and not risk ruining it.

That farseer conversion looks great! I really like it.

After tuning up the eventual army list that I'll build for my wife's Dark Eldar, I decided to dig around the bits-box for some suitable material for an Archon. I've decided that a foot-based Archon (with a Punisher, a big two-handed weapon), with retinue, in a Raider will be the most interesting to build (for me) and to paint (for her). While digging around I found my stash of spare Banshees, including Jain Zar (the Phoenix Lord). After a flurry of "hey, I think I can make your retinue out of Banshees, want your pirates to be led by females? Here's one that I think will be awesome as the Archon!"

She said, in short: "um, yes?"

So here's the result of a few hours work digging through the box. She's a Dark Eldar Archon, with a Punisher. The Marine that she's skewering after leaping off of her Raider transport is going to be letting loose a gout of flame that I'm going to sculpt around back to merge with the lower end of the banner that I'm going to extend down... so there'll be a big flame-smoke-burning banner thing going on back there, probably with wisps of smoke wrapping around the Archon in some way.

I'm finding it very hard not to steal it for myself as an actual Jain Zar for my own Eldar, but I don't like sleeping on the couch THAT much.

All in all, I'm fairly happy with it, though I do know that I need to find some way to make her look much more "Dark Eldar" rather than "Dynamically Posed Phoenix Lord". The banner top helps, I'm sure, and I'm probably going to throw some spiky parts along the shaft of her spear, as well as off of her wrists. Unfortunately the 80's Glam Metal Hair kind of gets in the way of any sort of back-side spiky stuff (including Trophy Racks) but I might still , depending on how the rest comes out, drop some chains from the back end of the weapon or from the botton of the banner, and use that to attach some Skullz (tm) or something to.

Composite of a few angles:


Single close up:


High-tech CGI Mock-up of how I envision the flames burning to the banner:


Feedback and suggestions welcome, of course, especially in the area of making her look more "Dark Eldar" or at least "Piratical". Granted, it might just be enough for the banner to be painted in DE-style "stuff", too. We'll see.

Loving this army so much I'm uninspired by my own Eldar

To further the idea of a "Piratical" Eldar army led by (say) a renegade Banshee Exarch, I've decided to sacrifice my Howling Banshee models to my wife's army to serve as a retinue for the archon (shown above). I already had my painted banshees in Pine Sol because they didn't match the overall look of my repaint-in-progress army, and now they don't even really fit in with the idea for my army overall (army list wise). The Banshee helm works moderately OK visually as the Incubus helm (sonic attacks instead of the pseudo-Mandiblasters), I just needed to work in the Punisher.

So, this is the first test model for turning a bunch of Howling Banshees into Incubi. (I realize that an incubus is by definition masculine, but whatever.) Right now it's just "hey, a Howling Banshee with a two-handed weapon!", so I'm looking for some pointers on how to make them look a little more GrimDark.

Wow- Brilliant work on the Jain Zar conversion! Can't wait to see how the banner on fire looks.

As for grimdarking-up the Banshee conversions:

You could add bitz to their backs (either leftover cloaks from the Corsairs you did before, or a nasty-spiky version of Guardian back-fins).

You could modify the helms- they need tormentors anyways, so the little tube-y bitz from the Guardian sprue might work. Otherwise, GS'in over the faces completely could work, giving them an eerie blank look. Put a gem maybe an or emblem from the Corsairs on their foreheads to give the head a little focus, perhaps echoing the way Wratihlord/guard heads look.

You should probably modify both areas (back/bodyshape and face/helmet), as they are the defining features of Banshees.

Maybe your wife's army deserves it's own blog? It's such a stand-out project, and somne really cool bitz-bashing!

So what if Incubus denotes a male?
Call them Succubi

Took a break from Eldar to build myself a Land Raider Redeemer for my Jade Fists chapter of Marines. Seeing as I can't afford the LRC/LRR kit, I luckily had a normal Land Raider kit, practically complete, stashed in the closet for just such a situation. So I got to essentially scratch-build the front-end of a Redeemer. The flamers and grenade launchers are scratch; I had two spare dreadnaught assault cannons that I used to convert the heavy bolter.

The Jade Fists are going to be a forest/jungle-specialist army, so I wanted to build a big f-off dozer blade on the front for knocking over trees and such. I know LR's don't get them, but it will work well to serve as part of an overall Extra Armor look on the tank (which is the next part of the construction. Since the front ramp is pretty important for the whole "Assault Vehicle" part of the Land Raider, I felt it was important that the blade be able to lift up to get out of the way (while still leaving ample room for the assault cannon and grenade launchers to do their things.

The dozer blade has magnets embedded in the support rod as well as on the hull in the "up" and "down" positions to secure it in place when it's raised or lowered; the flame cannons are magnetized primarily to allow for efficient storage of the tank. The Assault Cannon is just loose right now; I don't know if it'll be needing magnets to hold it in place (or if I can just drop down a heavy weight from the bottom). The interior of the tank is sealed off; I like saving the extra interior bits for scenery and other conversions rather than trying to paint the inside that will never be seen.

Next steps are going to be constructing some extra armor on the tank, as well as probably adding some small rivets to the edges of the dozer blade.

Front view:


Left side view:


Right side view:


A view of the blade mechanism, as best as I can show. The whole deal is mostly hidden behind armor plating, so it's not easy to see... I should have taken photos prior to adding the extra bits.

Your conversions are all excellent.

Don't be offended by this, but I desperately want to get a good look at your wifes....







































...paintjob on those Dark Eldar.

Tell her to get a move on.

wiggles wrote:I desperately want to get a good look at your wifes paintjob on those Dark Eldar.

Tell her to get a move on.

I keep trying, but she's new to the whole painting thing: it's like a 4rd priority hobby (after photography, cooking, and video gaming). That also means that her paint won't be anything extraordinary (I think she's finished maybe 4 minis in her life).

I should probably give her a deadline before I just take the bloody things, paint them myself, and use them as Harlequins.

Added extra armor-type plates to the Land Raider. My placement was mainly going for the "covering vulnerable places" style, rather than trying to just add Even More Armor to the already-AV14 LR. I also made an effort to not cover up much of the LR's pre-existing armor plate detail, since I didn't want to have to spend forever trying to add detail to flat plasticard. :\

Front-Left




Front view:


Right-rear:


Full rear:

Today's task was to get the Land Raider fully assembled with all its miscellaneous crap in place and ready to paint. The army that it's being assembled for is fully "on campaign", so I wanted the LR to have some in-the-field stuff on it, so I did up a couple tarps out of napkin paper and Elmer's Glue, added a chain to the side (for pulling down really bad trees) and added some coiled wire to the rear (which I will probably paint up as a rope or something).

The Storm Bolter and HK Missile are both magnetized. I don't have a spare Multi-Melta, but at some point I'll track one down and mag it up, to go in the same slot as the bolter most likely.

This is the last bit of update before I start painting it up... I'll probably start a separate thread over in P&M about that, since I'm going to do a forest/jungle camo scheme on it and I'm not really sure where to start as far as the pattern.










Automatically Appended Next Post:
Threw a quick paint scheme idea together... I don't have an airbrush, so doing a smooth "blob" camo pattern probably isn't in the cards. Masking tape, I can do, though, which = nice clear lines like here.

@Magc8Ball , is your avatar related to this?

Magc8Ball wrote:

Composite of a few angles:


High-tech CGI Mock-up of how I envision the flames burning to the banner:

Your work looks really great. My favorite thus far has to be the converted raider, really ace concept. As far as the banshee conversion, my only question/ suggestion is about the banner. If she has just jumped from a hover transport with enough force to impale a marine, knocking him from his feet, I would think it would be tightly drawn in an 'upward' direction. Your 'caught in the flamer stream' idea is really great, but the current banner ruins the active movement of the model.
Also, what kind of support system are you running? Jain Zar is a heavy model, I love the pose, but would be too afraid she would snap off in game play. Whats your secret?
As far as more DE looking, there's no reason you couldn't drill and pin a trophy rack coming through her hair (as if her hair is flowing around the staves).
Again, great work,

@LunaHound That video is awesome! Thank you for putting it on here other wise I would of gone on through life without it.

@Magc8Ball You may of said this earlier but are those back banners on the Eldar inspired by asian medievil culture?

Luna: yeah, it's a direct translation of this webcomic which is based on the commercial you linked.

Fleck: your suggestion about the banner is noted, and I agree with it. I'll probably do some putty work on it to change the direction a little bit. As to the support system, the model is basically pinned in every possible way up through the foot of the marine into his upper leg, pinned twice through the blade that's going through his chest, the rod of the weapon is basically one long paper clip inside the plastic tube, into the hand, and that arm is pinned into the model's main body. On top of that, it's all centered over the base, with the marine grey-stuff'd to allow for the proper level.

Stubbs: yeah, the army is based on a CCG/RPG (L5R) that is itself based on feudal Japan.

LunaHound wrote:@Magc8Ball , is your avatar related to this?

LOL that is great! Yeah the models are looking great too! The LR --> LRR was a clever conversion!

Did a test painting with one of the colors I picked up for the tank, and it was a lighter green than I expected, so I needed to invert my paint plan's greens. :\



Still looks decent enough to me, I think, but feedback's welcome.

Got some additional painting done on the Land Raider over the last few days.

First, a simple priming and full-paint with some spray green (OSH generic "Forest Green"):


Then the geometric camouflage pattern. The lighter green is actually a "latex" house paint from a brand that sells small samples in 60 mL sizes (for $3.99); I'll be making a post about this find later on. The darker green is just VGC Scurf Green.


After that I covered non-camo'd parts in black for later painting, added in the metallics, and added a pseudo-aquila to the dozer blade. The next step will be highlighting the greens and painting the non-camo up. We'll see where it goes from there.

I like the camo scheme and the pimped out Land Raider - great work!

;-)

Completed the Autarch today in between working on new figures for my D&D campaign. I decided to add some striping to the robe to give it a bit more depth, and brought the swords out to match them with the rest of the army.


(Gallery Version)

My next decision is whether to leave the figure as-is, or add some sort of banner to mesh it with the rest of the army. The figure itself, I think, is complex enough that slapping a couple back-banners on is only going to make it far too busy, but I'm thinking about adding a ground-based banner to help it stand out some. This is meant to be a commander, so having a large banner on-hand might be interesting.

The following image is a mock-up of how I think it would look with such a banner. The alternative is, since this mini will rarely be fielded alone, to model a retinue figure up carrying a big command flag along (for instance, I think he'll usually be fielded along with some warlocks, so something like that).



Feedback and suggestions always welcome.

Completed the painting on the Land Raider, essentially. I might go in and fiddle with a couple details here and there (lenses, etc) but it's done. Last bit to do was highlight it and weather it, and I was worrying about how to highlight it with all the camo bits... and decided to just drybrush the whole thing with a mid-range green and followed that up with a silver metallic. IMO it gave a nice effect that brought out the edges of the armor plates as well as adding a definite "beat up" look to it (which is what I'm going to go for with this army). After that it was a simple mud-weather and it's basically done.


(Gallery Image)

Full size images for a near-360 tour:

Autarch and the LR both look sweet. The tank looks nice in cammo!

So, been awhile since I've done any real work, but this weekend I got an idea from looking through the gallery here. I spotted a few Rhinos converted into the Arbites' Repressor APC, and thought it might be an interesting base for a Chimera. One of my Marine armies is Daemonhunters heavy, including a squad of =I= Stormtroopers; this vehicle will be their ride. I chose to do this conversion because I have a few unfinished Rhinos, and rather than buying a Chimera kit I could simply use the stuff I already had (plus $10 for some more plasticard).

The Rhino chassis has been widened by about an inch; when I do the next batch of photos I'll take a comparison shot. I have no idea how it compares in size to a Chimera since I don't have one handly.

The most obvious part missing is the turret, and I have no real idea what I'm going to do with that yet. I will also be adding additional detail to the side armor, including a big =I=, bolts, and some additional greebles; I think I'll also need to do some extra work on the dozer blade (which unlike my Land Raider does not retract, since there's no need for it on a tank without a front door).

Feedback and suggestions are of course welcome.

That is absolutely brilliant. I love the use of the Rhino's interior panel on the back end, not to mention the tiled plasticard on the top. My only concern is that it is really wide and that could lead to some game play issues. Other than that, I'll take 7 Really, another great conversion for your ever increasing list. Keep up the good work.

Figured out a good base for the turret, actually using bases: a 25mm round base fits practically perfectly in the turret hole, and I glued an inverted 40mm base onto it to serve as the foundation for the rest of the turret. Still need to add a ton of detail to the turret, as well as adding more detail to the rest of the model.

I also, as promised, took some size comparison pics... and I'm kind of shocked at how big it became. The dozer blade is responsible for most of the length increase, so I'm not too worried about that, but the width is as much as a Land Raider. Luckily this army isn't going to be a particularly serious one.

WIP pics with the turret:




Size comp pics: