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Hello all,

Thought I would put this in here since I have a few pics that I would like some opinions on and the models are kind of... not based. Beyond that, what do you all think of the paint? Is there something I should change?

This first image, does anyone know why it loaded sideways? I used Microsoft Office picture to change the orientation, crop the picture, and auto-adjust the brightness/contrast balance. To my confusion, when I accidentally uploaded the original (in the spoiler) the image was rightside up.



As for this image, the lighting seems off to me, but I just swapped out the model. This picture was taken a few minutes after the fire dragon, so is there something I am missing? I would guess that him being mostly black threw my camera's auto-balance out a whack a little bit. Does anyone know how to fix this? Should I be using a different backdrop color?



Anyway, hopefully I should be eventually getting a real lightbox, so maybe my pictures will get better...

10:1 you took the pictures with an i-phone?
For some reason most people have difficulty with these.
I use a camera.
The reaper & the first dragon look good photo-wise although they are a smidge blurred.
The painting is pretty solid too - nice job.
You can make a pretty decent lightbox using a large cardboard box - cut windows on 3 sides, cover these with tracing paper or baking paper & get some desk lamps.

Nope, used a camera.

I will admit that I do not have a tripod though, so most often I am resting the camera on the table where my faux-lightbox is set up. Some taller models I have to rest my finger on the table and then the camera on top of it, and I think that was what was going on for these two. I will see if I can find a way to make a better stable platform for the camera, although I might just need to get a new one since mine is kind of old. To be fair, finding a program that can sharpen images might help too...

Thank you! I was worried that the shading on the black would not come through in pics, and once I posted them, I started finding little odd spots that are starting to bug me. I will have to make sure I go pluck that cat hair off the dragon's gun, lol.

I too have an issue with taking pictures of darker models...in fact it works better if I don't use my lighting set-up for them. Your pics look fine so far.

 Elbows wrote:
I too have an issue with taking pictures of darker models...in fact it works better if I don't use my lighting set-up for them. Your pics look fine so far.

Interesting. I will have to try setting him up on some terrain and taking a picture of him that way.

Now I just have to go find a non-black piece of terrain...

And some Cataphractii Terminators for the Blood Angels army. Done mostly fast-painted style because there are a ton of Blood Angels to work through and they generally inspire me less than my Eldar:

Looks good. I had some of these and never got around to painting them before I sold them. I expected to like them more than I did...just never won me over. Looks like a solid paintjob.

 Elbows wrote:
Looks good. I had some of these and never got around to painting them before I sold them. I expected to like them more than I did...just never won me over. Looks like a solid paintjob.

Thank you again. I can understand how you feel. They are not particularly detailed and are kind of just "Meh" to me as well. (A lot of Betrayal at Calth has ended up feeling this way, well, besides the marines that got kitbashed into sternguard.) Their rules are pretty nice though - they get a 4+ invulnerable instead of the standard 5+, so they are a pretty good place to put volume of attack weapons imo.

So, let's see if the new camera setup is a little better.

For this round, we've got 2 terminators, who were originally dark angels and needed to be repainted badly.

Heavy Weapons Terminator

Terminator Sergeant

Lol, well it seems to show off all the mistakes I made in these models just fine, but fast painting will do that. Without the camera, a lot of the more obnoxious issues are relatively difficult to see. Either way, it looks like using the Auto setting and flash made the blur go away.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Now how does it do with a big model? Same settings but with a large contemptor dreadnought.

Hermes

Good. Looks like the flash does not make the transfers shine, which is good, and small details like his name are as legible as they are in person. All in all, good settings. Now I just need to go mess with my lighting setup to see if I can minimize the shadow thrown by the flash.

And just for fun, here are some pics of the first Imperial Knight I worked on. Still need to finish off his base. I'm probably going to use some spare wraithlord bits leftover from a wraithseer kit and sink them in the orange Martian sand basing we've decided on for them.

The greenstuff is the start of some rolling sand dune kind of details; since the base is so big, leaving it flat seems such a waste of space to me. I will probably build up some stuff around whatever wraithlord bits end up on the base as well so they look like they are partially sunken (and to cover up the fact that it will not be a full wraithlord).

Ares Lictor II

Yes, he is named for the Imperial Knight from the Taranis household that met the Emporer on his first visit to Mars (according to HH Mechanicum); note the golden handprint on his once-bad knee. The thought is that, having been touched by the Emporer, Ares Lictor was deemed important enough to attempt to recover and restore to his former glory, although so much of him was damaged that the II was added.

Made some progress on Ares Lictor II. It was fun working with greenstuff again; I was really amazed at how much wetting your tools before working with it really helps.

I'm thinking of painting up the wraithlord bits to be from Alaitoc. I know Biel-Tan would complement the color scheme a little better, but with the base being orange I am not so sure I want something that would stand out that harshly as compared to the knight. So the wraithlord will probably get covered up a bit and be pretty dirty, on top of having a relatively muted blue. Hopefully that won't contrast the orange gravel too much.


I am not sure if there are enough little ridges. I'm going for the ridges sand gets in the wind but not super big dunes. I intend to save the bigger, more impressive stuff for an Atrapos knight. Forgeworld did me a favor and screwed up which sprues were in my Skathach Wraithknight kit, so I ended up with an extra sprue with the legs and upper chest bits. It'll make for one epic killed on base model - missing peices filled in with some sculpting putty and a convenient Imperial Knight foot.

Finished off Ares Lictor II. I'll have to take some more pictures of him when I get around to it. Anyway, on to the next project.

I decided to figure out my Harlequin paint scheme - a modified Frozen Stars. I dislike the gold masks, and I intend to paint each model with a different accent color (the orange).


I'm not entirely sure what I want to do with my elites (Troupe Masters, Shadowseers, Death Jesters, and Solitaire) yet. I was thinking of either doing a bunch of nebulae or starscapes on the coats, loincloths, etc. But I also have this idea to paint up each as the representation of a different Eldar god or goddess - kind of in just the paint scheme with inclusions of particular motifs or designs (chains for Vaul, leaves and greenery for Kurnous, etc.). The biggest problem I run into with this one is that the 40k Eldar gods are not very fleshed out, so I feel like I would have to pull from a lot of odd sources for it.

Otherwise, doing the little paint scheme image gave me the motivation to start painting some Harlies, even if it was only the base coating for where the white will go.