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And now I've finally completed the whole brood- I am quite happy with how these turned out, aside from a mishap with the bases.

On about half of them I painstakingly carved out holes in the bases, and built up green stuff on the underside to create pools. After I finished painting, I filled these small pools with water effects- specifically Envirotex Lite, a two-part epoxy resin, to avoid the shrinkage and durability problems of acrylic water effects.

Well, it turns out that capillary action is really strong, and the nice little pools of water crept up into thin layers of shiny goop spread across the surface of the base. It seems the stuff is really better suited for deeper areas with more of a defined border between 'land' and 'water'.

Fortunately, since it was still tacky, I was able to dump some sand on them and turn the water features into just more sand. Unfortunately, after painting this sand there's still a little bit of weirdness where it meets the already-painted sand. Oh well, live and learn. Not sure if I'll try water effects again on a larger base, or just stick to sand, rocks, and seaweed as the main basing elements.

Thanks for taking the time to do the excellent tutorial. Those Tyranids are looking very, very good. I love your stuff, keep it up.

-Rids

That coconut crab scheme kicks ass! I might have to steal it, if I ever get to painting 'nids..

A stunning brood of intergalactic stabby space bugs!

Now for the whole army!

I love 'em, so adorably vicious.

After assembling these Warriors, I started painting on Friday night, finishing the carapace patterning. Saturday afternoon I did all the washes and basing, and then this morning (Sunday) I did the last details and they were done. All in all not too much work.

I'm still learning as I go. The bases look a little sparse, as I followed the same pattern as the Hormagaunts, but they have a lot more surface area to cover. I'm still experimenting with water effects to find a result I like, and I think a combination of more rocks and water effects should break up the sand. I have another two unassembled Warriors to add to this brood, so with those I can add what these lack.

I'm also still getting the hang of the wash mix. On these I did an equal parts mix of Soft Tone, Light Tone, Quickshade Wash Mixing Medium, and water. It produces a better gradient effect than the prior mix, but it flows so well that I have to keep wicking away excess until it fully dries, else it pools. In a couple of places, that's exactly what happened, particularly on the magnetized weapons which I had to paint at weird angles.

On that note, because the weapons are all magnetized, this is the first time I've painted a large number of magnetized pieces separately. I stuck them to a small strip of sheet steel, but I'm thinking that's an inadequate solution, because it made many of the parts hard to get to. On the next batch I might use putty to affix magnets to toothpicks or something, and then I should be able to manipulate each individually rather than painting on the strip.

Still- I'm happy with how they turned out, and I now feel confident about how this scheme extrapolates to larger models.

Very cool addition to your 'nids. They look stunning. Perhaps one of the best patterns I've seen.

Yessssss I've been looking forward to seeing you bring this paint scheme to other Tyranid beasties, might look even better on these warriors due to having more of the spotted carapace patches. Coming back to this thread, I've also grown quite fond of the black blades and may give that a shot on some Bloodletters I'm eternally working on.

Thank you both! I've got a Malanthrope up next and am excited to start on that, and I may have found a water effects technique that works at this small scale, so should be more coming soon.

This is turning into easily one of my favorite Tyranid army schemes.

No way you just need a few objectives with coconut trees on them, and the mysetic pods being large coconuts(okay the first not the last).

This is a Golden Daemon artist

I know I'm a bit late, but those dots are amazing!

Malanthrope! With water effects! Water effects which took three days to clear up, eventually involving use of a food dehydrator to accelerate the process.

I didn't like how the model comes with a flying stand that gets in the way of its silhouette. With the tail still touching the ground, it looks superfluous, but really it's there for structural support.

So I took another approach. Since I've been pinning all the Tyranids so far to their bases, I figured I might as well drill as far up the tail of the Malanthrope as possible, and just pin it. So, the paperclip that secures it to the base goes all the way up to where the tail starts to bend forwards. There's a tiny bit of wobble to the mini, but it feels sufficiently secure, and I can't imagine it's any more likely to break now than with that fragile little flying stand peg.

Yea man, that's legit I like how dark the carapace gets on the back spine and spires, adds even more weight to the larger critters as opposed to the lighter, smaller ones. Good call on the flight stand too, always felt that was a weird / bad choice on FW's part.

EDIT: Those pink exposed bits down the tail, so good.

Gorgeous, the pink is really a nice accent to the color scheme.

WOW! The more you do with this scheme, the more I love it. I can't believe it looks that good and you can bang them out that fast. Very impressive.

-Rids

The effect looks brilliant on the warriors, but it's absolutely gorgeous on the malanthrope.

It almost takes on a comic/cartoony look on the big beasties. It's quite an interesting result.

Termagants are finished. With these guys I think I've gotten the hang of water effects, so intend to use a lot more water going forward.

One thing I'm really focusing on for on this project is basing. In addition to all the little details like the starfish and seaweed, I really wanted to make the models look like they were interacting with the terrain, and the way bases are usually totally flat bugged me. To that end, every base has something that affects verticality. About a quarter of the bases have rocks, a quarter have water (in depressions cut out from the bases, so that the top of the base is sand level), a quarter have both water and rocks, and the last quarter have neither. Then about half the bases, including all the ones that have neither water nor rocks, have putty built up to make mounds and gentle hills. The end result is that none of the bases are perfectly flat, so when I then pin the models, there's some natural variation in height. Coupled with adjusting the poses, I think it adds a dynamism that hordes often lack.

Since I got the water effect working here, without the capillary action problems I ran into on the Hormagaunts, I'll definitely be using it more going forward. I'm actually using the thick, gel-like 'water effects' from Woodland Scenics, not the thin 'still water' typically used for water. The water effects doesn't shrink nearly as much when it dries, stays where it's put, creates a nice surface texture, and allows me to build up effects at the same time. I just applied globs of it with a brush, then smoothed it out.

As always, more lessons learned:
-Trying to build up a solid coat of white with primer is really tough. From now on I'll be doing two quick shots of Stynylrez to get some tooth, then airbrush on white paint to get full coverage.
-Because I built up a solid coat of white with primer, the surface was a little toothier than on previous models, and so the all-over washes didn't produce as strong of a shading/highlighting effect.
-Anything that fills in the texture of the sand- like, say, white paint to cover up where a wash spilled over from the model- dramatically affects how the sand looks after it is washed. I think painting the bases separately from the models might be the way to go.
-A food dehydrator is excellent for helping to dry water effects more quickly, or fully cure varnish so that I can safely handle the models. It likely would have taken 2-3 days for the water effects to clear up, but in the dehydrator set to 50C, it only took six hours.
-It's safe to matte varnish the water effects, as applying a layer of gloss afterwards clears it back up. I like to have a model completely done before I varnish, so this helps.







All C&C appreciated! Next up on my list is a Carnifex.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And while I'm here, one month of progress collected:



On the to-do list, in anticipated order of completion:
-Carnifex #1
-2 Warriors, 1 Tyranid Prime
-Tyrannofex
-Termagant Brood #2
-Carnifex #2

Which all comes to 1000pts, and then we'll see where I go from there.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And now, looking at the photos, I realize that I forgot to paint the eyes on the Fleshborers. Whoops. Doing that now.

Oh man, they look even better in a group.
Nice details on the bases. They really bring some more life to the models and make them stand out even more.

Looking forward to see more big nids!

Really beautiful. Great sense of realism in the scheme. Also distinct, unique and - as you showed - practical and paintable.

-Rids

Thank you both! If you're looking forward to big 'Nids, you're in luck. I don't often do WIP photos, but I figured I'd take a shot of what I'm gearing up for right now.

I had a lot of trouble painting the arms for the Warriors, as I had treated them the same as the magnetized Leman Russ bits. Which is to say, I stuck them all to a long strip of sheet steel, and painted them on that.

Well, that works fine for gun barrels, but the geometry of the Warrior arms made it really awkward to get all the angles, and I ended up having to carefully hold them with my fingers while painting.

Surprisingly, despite the plethora of tutorials on magnetizing minis, there's a real lack of documentation on how people actually hold the bits for painting. So I'm trying something new- I've stuck paperclip sections into pieces of cork, stuck the bits to the paperclips with their magnets, then used a tiny dab of superglue to hold them in place. When I'm done painting, I'll break the paperclips off, then gently file off the superglue residue and paint.



I've also started priming, and the new method seems to be working much better. I did two light passes with Stynylrez for tooth, and with just one layer of VMA White I've got pretty good coverage. Another layer, maybe two for some bits, and I should be good to go.

Oh yeah, and you may notice the pair of Tervigon claws. I figured those plus the larger pair of scything talons would make for a great Old One Eye. The only bits from the Carnifex kit I'm not painting in this batch are the heavy venom cannon, stranglethorn cannon, and deathspitters, as I don't anticipate using them much- my 1000pt list right now contains Old One Eye and a Stone-Crusher (currently on the way from Forge World), but I'll have all the painted bits needed to sub in a crushing claw + devourer 'Fex or a Screamer-Killer for one or both.

So you make the crab

Finally, i honestly can't wait to see the finished stuff.

Man, talk about a delay- around the time of my last post I started coming down ill, and ended up being out of commission for basically the last three weeks.

I'm feeling better now, though, and resolved to get the Carnifex finished. I'm very pleased with how it turned out. In particular, and this is a minor thing but it's something I really wanted to get right, I really like how the splash effect turned out in the water. It gives the model a nice sense of weight.









The only parts from the kit that I didn't magnetize are the adrenal gland/toxin sacs (never had WYSIWYG complaints on those), the Thornback spikes (too fiddly), and the Heavy Venom Cannon, Stranglethorn Cannon, and Deathspitters, as I am not particularly keen to run gunline Carnifexes.

Since I've already gone to the trouble of magnetizing and painting all these bits, I could just assemble and paint the torso of my other Carnifex and have enough bits to fully equip it. But I've got the Forge World Stone-Crusher Carnifex conversion bits sitting here in a back, so I'm going to be doing those.

The current to-do list remains:
-12 more Termagants
-Tyrannofex
-Second Carnifex
-2 more Warriors and a Prime

Haven't decided which I'll tackle next.

So this is the first crabnifex?
I adore it.

Crab claws! Always fun.

Brilliant, and impressive to magnetize out your carnifexes. I love the stronecrusher claws, excited to see those in action, especially with the crab theme

Just, wow!
The fex is looking freaking good.
The base turned out well and I really like the splash effect.

Glad that you are feeling better.

I’ll say it again: this stuff is brilliant. The paint scheme works equally well on the little critters and big beasts. The splas effect on the base looks perfectly done. Great idea.

-Rids

Two more Warriors! I also painted up a bunch more magnetized weapons (not pictured), including all the stuff I need for a Prime.

The Prime itself, armless and just primed white, is sitting on my desk. When I get the chance I intend to record the painting process and make a video tutorial out of it.

Tyranid Prime is done. I did record the painting process, so I'll be seeing if I can make a usable tutorial out of it over the next couple of weeks.

At this point I've completed enough models to build the Armies on Parade board I have in mind, but I think I might push myself to get my second Carnifex done in the next couple of weeks, as I feel it will really add to the presence of the swarm on the board.