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Last week I achieved something I have been wanting to achieve for years, getting a miniature on CMON's Top Last 7 Days -gallery. Some of you may have been checking out my NMM Blood Drinkers thread.
I decided that with this milestone complete, I can now chillax, lay back and just have fun. Originally when I started miniatures a little over a month ago ( again ) I wanted to do Dark Angels, because I love everything about them. However, a dude in our group was already maining them and I didn't want to mirror. When painting my Blood Drinkers, I felt that the army wasn't my own in a sense, as I wasn't playing the chapter I wanted. This could be seen from the fact I changed their chapter multiple times. Then a friend of mine said he could buy the DV box in half with me: I said f**k it, too many good reasons to make the Dark Angels and decided to do just that, and to use the dipping method.



I did this Tactical Squad in a day. Basically just painted the colours ( the green comes from the basecoat spray ) and did some little metal coloured battledamage. I use a thinned down polyurethane varnish intended for furniture, called Liberon Bistrot. The shade is called "Walnut." Basically you could easily do a hundred of these a week, and still get a finish that looks better than your average tabletop model. The dude maining Dark Angels aswell doesn't mind, and now we can have some epic 2v2 matches with us playing the Unforgiven. Win win.

Awesome and fast work!

Thanks mate! I've always loved the dipping method, I've done 4 armies with it before. Aslong as you use a few essential tricks and guidelines you can make your army look really good on the table, with miniscule effort.

Yup, lovely clean work.

I never understood how people can get such good results in such a short time. I need weeks to finish a full squad... good and clean work... especially for a one day of work.

Even if your technique is simple the results speak for themselves. Better then 90% of the table quality you see here at dakka.

Good work!

OK joke is on me. help me out here.. Dipping method

Dude, very awesome! I am super jealous. That said, what is this dipping method? I've heard of it, but never have looked into it.

 jreilly89 wrote:
Dude, very awesome! I am super jealous. That said, what is this dipping method? I've heard of it, but never have looked into it.

you base coat your mini with the colors you desire then "dip" it into wood stain or army painter quick shade. Though i have found taking a cheep throw away brush from wal mart and brushing it on works better.

If you can keep paint lines clean the results can be amazing for the time you spent painting.

I have a small guardians of the covenant DA army that i spent about 15 mins of painting on each marine.
No, they will not win best painted. But i got a 1,250 point army painted in a week counting the 2 days i left the army painter dry.

My Sternguard who also function as Company Veterans are now ready:



The white helmets needed retouching afterwards, but that I knew beforehand. I chose red with the loinclothes as it functions better with dip. I like how they turned out. Took me 2 evenings. Thanks everyone for the comments. This is basically always asked when I post dipped miniatures, and I'll gladly share my own technique and some important pointers regarding dipping.

First off, how I created the marines:

1. Spray with green
2. Apply metal colour, red, bone, white and other colours. Simple flat coat. Make sure the paint is in its own respective area, this is hard to fix looking good after dipping.
3. Dip, let dry aslong as the can says it has to.
4. Paint over possible poolings with slightly darkened previously mentioned colors, as dip darkens everything a bit. Retouch colors that don't go well with dip ( white for example. )
5. Spray with matt varnish.

General guidelines for dipping:

-Use Army Painter Quickshade ( I recommend the medium tone ) or Liberon Bistrot Walnut -shade. It's a furniture polyurethane varnish. If using this, thin it down 10%. Don't thin Army Painter ( it's a readymade product just for this method. )

-When choosing the colour theme for your army, favour earthly tones. Stay away from very light tones ( light blue, white, light yellow and the like ) except for small surfaces. The lighter the colour, the easier the pooling of the dip becomes visible, and the miniature will look bad. Greens, reds, browns, grays, metals work great with dip.

-Despite called dipping ( traditionally you actually dip the miniature inside the can, then shake the excess off ) the best method is by applying the dip with a brush. This allows you to control the pooling as you go and you can push the dip around the surface for around 5 minutes before it gets too dry ( Liberon atleast. ) Don't go too heavy on the dip.

-Don't be discouraged if the miniature looks wonky after the dip. The true look is only revealed after you apply the matt spray varnish!

Really excellent stuff! Very vibrant colours.

Thanks.

Predator Annihilator


Turret is magnetized. Damage here and there, some rust. Dust and sand fading towards the bottom. Wing shapes on the roof next to the turret. Dipping vehicles is often way more difficult than infantry, as there are large surfaces. But with a large brush and patience it can be done. In a way I'm sad - it took me a day to paint, and it doesn't look massively worse than the Blood Drinkers Land Raider I painted with NMM, which took me 4 weeks. The time spent/outcome ratio with dipping is indeed massively great.

Jeezus. There is no point to be made against your models.. They are fabulous. The time I spent with the results I achieve.. its jarring.

Phenomenal work, mate.

I just wish the lighting in you pictures was just a little brighter.

Thank you guys. Here's a Librarian:



I think he is the second Psyker I have ever owned... during my 13 years of Warhammer 40K.

SM AD Chapter Master:


Same blueprint. Some chinks and wear here and there, dust/mud on the lower parts of the bike, burnt exhausts. There's a painted wing symbol attached to the one in the gas tank on the other side, and another on the front fender on the right ( which has taken a glancing hit. ) I made an ornamented rearguard/shield from the shoulderplate of a Centurion, by first filing, cutting and sanding the old fender to fit said piece. Other bits are from a Drop Pod, Sternguard and Grey Knights.

Now dip and black do nothing for eachother, and I don't switch painting techniques within armies. Hence my army won't have any black bikes. Now there's a fluff element to this miniature which will explain this choice. The Dark Angels largely abide to Guillimans book aside from the 1st and 2nd companies. The 6th company ( see knee pad ) is where the marines train the use of bikes, and is the most likely seed of Ravenwing ( which is described as the ultimate elite strikeforce of the Imperium, the kind you don't just join by sitting on the saddle and saying "I'm ready!" ) This guy is perhaps the 6th company master responsible for riding out with the potential Ravenwing aspirants for their last battles, and making the final judgement on whether the marine is finally ready to ascend into the Ravenwing, or if he needs to go back and train more. Perhaps the book on the front fender is a list of recruits trained by him into the 2nd company... or perhaps it's just a list of Daemonprinces and vehicles he has personally smashed to bits.

In game the miniature works as a standard Smashbane.

Excellent. Truly excellent.
I love the backplate you added to the rear wheel.
ONE minor fluffgripe:
He seems to be wearing MK8 armour with a ultramarine-style-feather-thingy on it's head. I don't think the Unforgiven would use such a new model of armour, not battle tested yet. But that's really just nitpicking

Excellent!

Thanks guys. You're probably right about the powerarmour, but ah well.

The first Bike Squad is now finished. The so called noob bikers of the 6th company training to enter the Ravenwing ( and occasionally doubling as a Command Squad ) who infact don't look like noobs at all.



Posing with the Chapter Master in the last pic, who now also sports red bolters ( which I totally forgot about earlier. ) Used the same principles on these as with him, some dust and chinks, blackened exhaust etcetra.

As I'm a biker myself, these guys are close to my heart, and I love the fact they are rocking the 7th edition. As a sidenote, here's my first bike build from around 5 years ago ( I've owned 7 other bikes since, lol ): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnicdF0PZFw

I love you models but you need to upgrade your photo setup! You're pictures are coming out really dark. How are you lighting your photos?

Thanks. On my colour calibrated ( spyder ) screen they look fine. After you mentioned this before I also checked them on my friends laptop and my girlfriends PC and they looked okay on it. The background is black though so that might add to it. Are you sure your screens brightness and gamma values are set correctly, and that no sunlight is shining onto your display? Some displays also have issues with brightness depending on which angle you look at them from, usually above causing increased brightness, from below causing dark.

Sure they aren't the brightest pics around, but they look fine on the displays I've checked. It's also an atmospheric factor of not photographing them very bright. Pretty common sight in CMON. This is the Dark Angels -thread man. I use one or two movable lights on the sides depending on the miniature, and one ( basic houselight in the ceiling ) above. I set the lightning by looking at values in Photoshop -not by eyeview, as this ensures the result isn't display/eyesight affected, but instead data. Darkest parts near black, lightest parts near white.

As a sidenote, here is a website for calibrating your display incase you cannot afford/have a spyder. The results probably aren't as good but it's better than factory settings if done right:

http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

Fair enough, my end is most likely part of the problem. I spend a lot time on Dakka using a work computer with a monitor that is nowhere near the quality of my personal gaming rig.

I photograph my models in a darkened room using my light box with a sheet of white paper in front of frame in front of the subject to help reduce shadows. What kind of camera do you use?

I've been using "baking paper" -whatever the actual correct english word is to blur and weaken the directional lighting. The camera is my gf's, a Sony pocket digi and it's pretty bad for this purpose. I used to own a system camera and know the difference is massive.

I'll brighten up some of the pics a bit and update them in their respective spots in the thread shortly, altough on the displays I checked they still convey the look of my minis atleast decently, if not perfectly.

Edit: Done. Any brighter and the black background will become grainy ( already kinda does now. )

WTF dude... Stop making me feel bad about my stuff already!!!

 Josey4u wrote:
WTF dude... Stop making me feel bad about my stuff already!!!

I don't think your stuff looks bad at all, checked it out. Thanks, if that's the correct thing to say.

thanks man. I have to say your squads look AMAZING

Stormtalon:



Once again completely hand painted, no airbrush used. Might even be the first/only dipped Stormtalon?

This took me 2 evenings. I started by creating some battledamage using a modeling drill with a grinding tip on it ( left engine, right wing, the front etc. ) The window also has a carved crack on it ( barely visible on the lowermost picture. ) Other than that there's painted battledamage, chinks, some different shades of rust and dust ( especially in the landing gear, lower parts of the missile launchers as they would be close to the ground on takeoff/landing. ) Blackened the engines rear parts. I'm pretty happy with it, in scale to the effort it turned out nice. I got the battledamaged look that I wanted, and to me atleast it looks like a machine, not a toy ( which is an issue with the model itself commonly. )

There's a Vindicator shell and a traitor of god-knows-what Legion on the ground, reaching for the culprit in his last breath. Probably got some assaultcannon goodness for himself, better start repenting. Kill tally on the right engine.

And yeah, it's not black for the reasons explained earlier. Hope you enjoy anyways.

I like the green, very rich. Your tail fin is on backwards though.

Cheers for pointing that out. That was a quick fix, luckily. Need to take a new picture tomorrow morning ( I'll update it on the original post. )

But damn... the normally assembled tail fin looks kinda dumb now that I'm looking at it. Yet I'm too picky to be satisfied with the flaps being backwards and making no sense.