(Rocking chair creaks menacingly)

So, after clearing up the red after the wash, I needed to decide on the color pattern; Yep, I painted all red for later repaint parts in other colors,I just wanted to see the mini full red before.
To have a rough idea, I loaded the mech model from Thingiverse in Paint 3D, and then remained undecided and painted over the mini anyways.

The overall plan was mainly red with either grey or black details, weapons and somewhat the inner parts of the mech, the grey little part showed more the "Vega" character, but at the end I settled with black.





Im not quite happy with the pics so far, I guess my phone's camera is just bad, it gets too many reflections and the red is not exactly like this. If anyone has any suggestion, is more than welcome.


I wanted to make my own offshoot Legion of Vega unit, with a background round up-wait sit back down I didnt finish rambling

-They are soldiers from Vega, who have been monitored and reported as still quite loyal to Kurita and with a semblance of willingness to fight.
-After some covert tests on the field, they are assigned to an extremely difficult/suicide mission.|
-The operation is all staged, and the recruit/recruits will inevitably lose, and fall unconscious as their assigned mechs are rigged.
-They are taken for recovery to an undisclosed medbay in the system, where they get a body scan.
-When awake and after recovery, they get a debriefing, where they are offered a chance to regain honor and truly serve the dragon again. Shall they accept, the Dragon guarantees coverage for life for their families, and their names exonerated so their relatives can live in honor.
-What they have to do, is die. They will commit seppuku, be declared officially dead and all their records closed.
-In their own seppuku ceremony, they will be wearing their assigned ceremonial vest, that is designed thanks to the body scan to only leave the blade penetrate in a really precise area of the abdomen where organ injury is minimal. The blade is also designed to not allow to enter a certain distance. They will be knocked unconscious (again) instead of their heads being cut.
-The funeral will be performed, with themselves present as the deceased. Their death is officially processed, families informed and recording of the military funeral sent, names cleaned and lifetime support for their families given, as promised.
-The recruits get a sterilization procedure, as the dead cannot bring life.
-When all is said and done, and the recruit is ready to join the unit, they are faced with a final decision - In the port there are actually two dropships: one with the red dragon and black background of the new unit, the other a regular dropship that can take them to a working facility somewhere in the rasalhage republic. They get these two options told by one of the agents of Funakoshi, the current top head of the unit.If they leave to Rasalhage, no consequences will fall on their families.This is all true, they have the option to remain dead and just disappear, with their families losing nothing. Funakoshi wants to be sure that all who join do so by their own will. No recruit has chosen to leave for Rasalhage so far.

-The recruits get karpa koi tattoos on their backs, and their true deaths represent the passing to the gate of the koi, where they become true dragons.

-The colour pattern is red with black details, as they recovered some of their honor, but its still tainted; so they resemble a Sword of Light, but not fully. Their honor will be fully restored on their true death, in which a full military funeral is performed.


Yes, Ive read Lone Wolf and Cub, why do you ask? Im sure this idea is totally original and no one ever thought of a Legion of the Dead before, right?

Rocking chair still rocking


So after finishing color blocking the red chassis, I was confronted with a decision: Do I go for cool lighting or warm lighting? Im used to do warm lighting on red (using oranges) but now that I have the cool red triad set, I felt that a cool red lighting would look nice.

So, I tried one type of light in one leg, and the other in the other, to see the difference. Although I liked the cool lighting, I liked more the warm option (it looks better in real lifew):



And I made an oopsie! For the warm light I used Lava Orange (WF), when I should have used Burning Ore (WF) , that is somewhat the equivalent of the old grognard days Blazing Orange (C) (Troll Slayer Orange (C) for the youngsters). Just got confused with the namings, I had my suspicions that it was too bright while I was applying it.Nothing that cannot be fixed.

So so far, both legs have been given the Burning Ore (WF) treatment. More to come!

Tried as well some methods to make better pictures, but quite not on it yet. Now Im using Adobe Lightroom in the phone instead of the regular camera, and is an improvement but I think I need to difuse a bit the light before making the pics.

Not much to ramble, done the 3rd and then the edge lights on the model:


3rd Light Burning Ore [WF]


Edge highlight Lava Orange [WF]



And then, next step was to apply Diluted Red Tone Wash [WF] - (50% Wash 50% Wash Medium) to the whole chassis. This unifies the layers and tones down all the orange a bit.
Being honest, I used to do this with Baal Red (the wash, not the current contrast paint), and I was a bit concerned about what would happen using the WF wash, but hey, lets trust the process.
And I can say that Im very happy with the wash, and had nothing to be concerned about. Unfortunately the pictures are not really showing the effect:





As said in the TL DR section, I normally follow it up with a reapply of the edge highlight, but never painted a mini with so many panels and I have the intuition that it will be too much, as there will be too much orange again. This is just my impression though, maybe when I have more minis under my belt I can give it a try.

And about the pictures, I just ordered a couple cheap desk lamps to use a light source, and see if that helps, as obviously with the leds Ive got Im not getting anywhere. Oh look, at the end I did ramble!