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So, Finished building stuff for the first round of painting. Casey's Law; I am not quite sure what you mean, it is just a highlight that uses a different colour in a lighter tone instead of a lighter tone of the same colour.

So, quickly realising that my command squad needed decent ranged weapons and lo and behold the little buggers could all (well beside the standardbearer) nick Volkite Chargers from the armory and start irradiating the countryside. Also, so could the Preator. Even better! range is a tad short at 15'' but the S6 Ap5 Assault2 and failed saves prompt a further save (possibly 2 kills from one shot) well makes up for it. Around here the glaring problem reared it's head; no Volkite charger weapon packs avalible yet. Boooo! Well suck it then, I don't want your stupid rayguns anyway forge world.. *grumble grumble*

So again, Conversion Time it was! Luckily I had some sniper rifles ambling around the bitz-box up to no good. Some cutting and glueing later they had a new existence as perfectly usable Proton Accelerator Carbines. (trademarked)

This one is the Preator armed with a freshly stamped carbine, sword and pistol.






Here we have the ''standard bearer'', without banner. There will be no banner. it's silly to mark out command elements like that.. so easy to find. Anyway he has a nifty plasma pistol and a very large knife that will be recognisable as a powerweapon once the paint has settled on him.






Here we have the entire squad and it's guns, guns, guns as you can see. Turned out quite nicely. Bases are still a work in progress though.




Contemptors, sooo lovely.. and such a pain in the ass to assemble! I think the next one will have a more dynamic pose than this one who had to settle with the olde 'advancing and lining up a shot'-look. a bit boring but it works.






Well, that's all for now. Need to go buy some more basecoat so I can start painting these ones.

Is the brass etch grill stuff from a FW sheet?

The Contemptor Dread's going to be awesome when painted. Haven't seen one done up in the AL scheme.

It's from GW's urban basing kit I belive, I relived it from a friend who didn't want it.
What do you guys think of the carbines? Fail or win?

AWESOME! OMG I can not wait to see this painted!

The carbines are wicked man. Wonderful job.

Love the carbine marine... reminds me of one of my sternguard.

Contemptor is just spiff STC... going to be a really enjoyable project I'd bet.

Ah so good! I love a great load of unpainted pics from you! it means that you have to paint them :-) and that's where the magic happens! that contemptor is going to very popular with about a million nerds watching your blog! and yes they are the biggest pita to assemble! trying to position them and glue with super glue is horrible, I glued my fingers together then pulled them aprt and glued them to the coffee table which then ate into the varnish and ruined it!

Those are going to rock!

Sorry my last question wasn't very clear, what i was wondering was: If you were going to use the technique with different highlight colours, oranges for example, would you also change the blues underneath?

Ah, then I understand.

Colour-coordination is your friend in that case, the basic premise is always to fade one colour into another and that means that they can't be too contrasting. For example using an orange base and highlighting it into a bright green would be disastrous to say the least.

In my case I am using a dark blue (necron abyss) as my lightest tone of blue. The breaking colour is Snot Green. the first broad highlight is made from a 70:30 mix of blue and green, a secondary 40:60 mix is used for the second followed by an extreme highlight of pure Snot Green.
the green is then mixed with a small amount of white for the last extreme highlight and is applied restrictively.

The key is using complimenting colours that are not too clashing with each other. Also to use a dark undertone and not let the main colour be too bright.

Black is the easiest because it can be combined with almost any colour but at the same time the hardest to blend from because it will result in a slightly crystalline look if done properly but, as always with black, will result in disaster and apocalypse if you miss the mark.
This is an example of how it can be done, this exarch model is taken from black through hawk turqouise to white in the manner described above and was painted a few years ago by me as an experiment with the style.

Great post STC... going to have to try this myself.

Looks really good indeed...

Though my OCD just cannot get my eyes off that mould line :(

Once you see it it cannot be unseen!

I know! So annoying!

Thanks very much, dude!

If i'm going to try it with another colour i'll use a black base and see how it works out!

I think the Alpha legion colours might see there way onto my 'Nids next year if you don't mind?

Steal away!

By the way, STC, where do you get the basing materials for your urban basing?

 STC_LogisEngine wrote:
Steal away!

What a guy!

Plasticard and tubes are from the Galeforce 9 sets, slate, sand and etched brass if from GW's basingsets. Skulls and stuff from my bitzbox.

 STC_LogisEngine wrote:

Plasticard and tubes are from the Galeforce 9 sets, slate, sand and etched brass if from GW's basingsets. Skulls and stuff from my bitzbox.

Thank you!

@STC- I just wanted to say I was very impressed with your modeling and painting. So impressed, I used your AL CPT as the basis for a project with a very talented commission studio. Hope you're not offended. Thanks for posting your amazing stuff.

Tidy little blog matey liking the contemptor looking good cant wait for mine to arrive whats the main issue with assembly is it balance?

So the trick to get the lizardy chameleon look is to paint them a nice deep blue and then give them somewhat electric green highlights?

I've just never been quite sure how to do this scheme outside of airbrushing.

Chronepsis: Cheers mate, it's completely ok to steal ideas and colours from my work. Being a source of inspiration is after all the highest praise one can get. If you do something based on my work then feel free to post it here to show it off.

ArchaonSon: The biggest issue with the contemptor is ironically enough the extreme posability of the model, not stability. Contact surfaces are exelent and I saw no need to resort to pinning the thing. I highly reccomend buying some blue-tac or equivalent to try out poses before glue is applied. maybe a pen to draw lines so you can recreate the pose once the adhesion-mass has been removed. My biggest advice is not to rush things, take your time with it and think things over otherwise there's a risk that you'll botch the whole thing horribly. I almost did.

Lucre: Mmmm.. it's a bit more complex than that, you still have to blend the blue into the green. I'll give you my recipie with pics.


Paint armor with Necron Abyss over a black undercoat and metal areas boltgun metal, codex grey on the armor joints.




Give the whole model a black wash, badab black, water and chaos black.. whatever you have. I prefer Badab black but I guess Nuln oil works just as fine if not better.




Roughly highlight the armor with necron abyss, don't overbrush or line but - HIGHLIGHT- ie. look how the light falls on the model under a strong lightsource and use that as a reference where light and shade shuld be.





Mix Necron Abyss and Snot Green 70:30 with some water, this mix needs to be a bit thinner than what you normally use and highlight with broad strokes. Then repeat with a 40:60 mix.




Highlight with Snot green.




Mix Skull white and snot green 70:30 and apply the extreme highlight. Then repeat with a 50:50 mix applied with extreme moderation are the end result will be too bright. Then Give it a protective shell f dullcoat or whatever matte varnish you use and you are done.









Hope this will help you.

Impressive.

Looks painfully simple as you describe it... I, however, fear I'd struggle much more than that, would I try it !!

(the thought of an AL squad has been nagging at my thoughts ever since I read "Legion" lol)

The best part about this paint scheme is that if you perform it perfectly, the helmet automatically turns white!

Thanks for the Tutorial, I might try it on one of my smaller minis as a test.

Thank you! that was great to see step by step like that! very helpful if i ever need to paint some AL myself (now all I need is an excuse!!) end result looks amazing :-)

Excuse? How about I call off the Operative keeping ''an eye'' on you for a week or two, how's that for an incentive?

Sounds good to me! I will breathe a bit easier now! and maybe buy some charadon granite to appease you?

Great tut STC... very well done & such a stunning result too.