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Amazing work
Never really seen anything like it.
Kudos alone for assembling 150 small nids, even more so though for painting them all up that bloody quickly!

Also, if you ever dislike or want to remove those exocrines from your army, let me know
Keep seeing them spring up but never had the chance to snag one.

Assembled my two "Wall-E" models last night so these will be the 4 objectives for our team:



I likely won't even glue the Wall-Es on... any idea how to attach them temporarily so I can remove them later? I could try a magnet on the bottom of them and the bottom of the base, or bluetac... but I feel like any kind of putty may be hard to get off the painted base.

I've also decided that the basing is too intimidating to start in the middle of the week when I have limited time. So, I'm just going to start in on the Tervigon and Tyrant:



My wife is not a fan of the idea of the wings being purple, and doesn't think I should introduce a new, paler shade here either (I've been using a pretty limited palette). She thinks they should just be green... Any new thoughts (now that you guys have seen some other big bugs painted) on the wings?

Jackal- Thanks, but I think I'll be hanging onto them

Same color as the outside of those pods.

I'm with Gits, go for the bone color.

Personally I think purple on the wings would be really cool and stand out, but maybe to subdue it you could use the bone colour to fade it out on the edges etc.

I'm with white/bone colored wings as well. What about a magnet on the bottom of the base and bottom of the Wall-e's?

Okay, I think I can try that with the wings

But that would mean that the "struts" of the wing would need to be green, rather than bone colored. So that's okay with you?

I had been using the bone color for... well, bone up until now . But if you guys are sure, I will go with it on the wings, with green "struts"... and then blame you all if it looks horrible

You might try the bone color, washed with a diluted purple. That would tie everything together nicely.

Here's a pic for reference of why I as thinking the bone color would work better on the struts:


I have yet to find an image with bone-colored wings where bone was also used on the carapace parts of the model... don't lead me astray guys!!

For attaching the Wall_E's, maybe you could just pin them on? With a long paperclip pin t'd be pretty stable for gameplay and not too obvious on either piece. Also fast to do!

 RiTides wrote:

I had been using the bone color for... well, bone up until now . But if you guys are sure, I will go with it on the wings, with green "struts"... and then blame you all if it looks horrible

Make sure you paint what you like. Listen to too many voices, even well meaning ones, and you can end up with a camle. You know, the horse as designed by committee?

It sounds like you have an idea for what you like, you're just being swayed. Try what you want, and see how it looks.

Haha, its funny to see how tight a grip people keep on those old exocrine models
There are however 2 on ebay at the moment for £70 or so, which is tempting.

Bone struts, purple skin on the wing membrane. You've already established that purple is a fleshier part in your army.

LOVE THE WORK!!!

My suggestion is to stick with the bone struts, then use whatever fleshy color you want for the membrane. Use a dark color to start with, then hand paint on bright streaks of blue and/or green and/or red to establish veins. Then use thin layers of brighter shade of membrane color airbrushed over to blend the veins in and get an awesome veiny look.

And again - LOVE THE WORK!!!

ps - thanks for looking at my blog bud! appreciate the comments!

Good looking aliens/nids

Like the tracks

Pics with the base colors applied to the Tyrant and Tervigon are below (sorry they're a bit blurry, had to nab these with my cell phone):





Thanks for the input from everyone about the wing colors! Obviously, I ended up risking trying bone based on the initial advice here, but I think it looks good . Polonius, on that one I actually wanted to be swayed, since many of you are excellent painters... and also aren't staring at this model until you're blue in the face like I am

On that note, I have a question about the Tyrant above... I tried various colors around the purple "face", in the space between it and the carapace... green, bone, etc, but none of it looked right. I went back to all purple, and am thinking to just wash the "neck" purple to be darker than the "face" purple. Does that sound right?

Also, do the purple boils / gashes in the skin make sense? Without them, the purple face just stands out too much as the only purple on the model, I think. Next steps, washes tonight, then drybrushing the skin tomorrow!

---------------

On attaching the Wall-Es to the bases, a pin is a good idea, RZ! Unfortunately I am a pinning rookie... so I am going to give the magnets a try first, I think, before resorting to that.

I think they turned out really good RiTides (though I still think pruple would have been better on the wing membranes). Still, your instincts are serving you well, pulling the purple down into the gashes in the body is an excellent way to keep continuity in the figure.

I had a long discussion with my artist friend in-person about it... and I totally agree that purple would be best there "on paper". But, given that it's the color I have the least "range" with (and tends to look the flattest) I think with my methods I would have fallen on my face had I tried purple there .

It has ended up that green is the obvious primary color, with bone as the clear secondary color and purple/orange as detail ones. So, I am happy with it, and think it will look really good once I shade it (and I have a Lot of range with the bone color, so can darken it towards the edges of the spurs and lighten it in the center of the wings).

Thanks again for the tips guys, and yours in particular Gits, they have been very helpful! Your telling me to go ahead with the bone color was actually what helped me pull the trigger on it and not just leave them plain old green . This preserves my use of the purple for what I had originally intended it as- "internals" (internal tentacles, mouths, the Tervigon's birthing parts, etc). So, in the end there wasn't a perfect color for the wings, but I'm happy with my choice now that I finally pulled the trigger . Now to make it look good!

I think you did a great job on it RiTides. And it was really fun to watch you go through your processes of trial and error to come up with a good solution. Honored to be able to help out a little bit.

More progress, washes are now done, and I will then be drybrushing / highlighting all of the colors back up:



I will likely keep these at this state until I get the last 2 models to the same point (which will hopefully arrive today!) then drybrush / highlight them all together.

However, before I do any of that, the weather looks to be turning cold again (it might snow Tuesday!) so tomorrow is my best chance to seal the rest of the army!

I have been unhappy with the satin sealant, and had a revelation this morning: why not seal this exactly how I sealed an army I painted using a "wash only method" a few years ago? It had the same issue with needing subtle variations in color to not get dulled down. The way I got around this was by brushing on a coat of GW gloss, then hitting it with Dullcote.

So, the egg bases have volunteered to be test subjects for that method again... here they are with just the GW gloss:



I have a tiny bit of Dullcote left in a can, and am going to try hitting them lightly with that today to knock off the shine. If they remain shiney in crevices, that's actually good / no problem... but in-person they look too "candy-like" with just the gloss coat.

So, if that goes well, I'll be brushing on gloss to allllllll of the bugs that are done tonight then hitting them with Dullcote tomorrow! This also assumes my Dullcote arrives today, which it's supposed to... come on postman

One question: Do any of you use brush-on gloss? I thought I had extra pots of it, but only seem to have one, so I'll be buying more locally at lunch today... planning to just buy the current version of the GW gloss, since I really liked the old version. If there are any known issues with the new version of it, please let me know!

The big bugs look great, and I think the bone wings are fantastic.

Man, those are looking fantastic. Really jealous of what you've been able to accomplish so quickly.


I've used Vallejo brush-on gloss, and I really like it for specific applications. But I haven't used GW's.

Thanks SavageRobby... it looks to me like GW discontinued their gloss, anyway (although may just be calling it a "technical paint" now, and charging more for it...). So, I will likely go buy the Vallejo gloss and just fill my old GW gloss paint pot with it (I like the paint pot for painting on gloss, as it's faster than using the eye dropper, and I don't need gloss on a palette).

Glad you like the wing choice, Polonius

Edit: Well, scratch that, the hobby store only had GW's gloss ("Ardcoat"). I loved the oop version, will have to see how this one compares. People seem to have good things to say about both this and Vallejo's gloss, which I have one bottle of, so if I have to use different ones to get through everything it should be OK.

The only thing that has me worried a little bit is people posting about thinning the GW Ardcoat- I never did that with the old GW gloss (but maybe I should have?) so if it's the same, I won't worry... but if it's thicker I may have to do that. Thinking to just add a bit of water directly to the paint pot and mix it well (the reviews I'm seeing says water works fine) as to get through all of these I don't want to be thinning it as I go.

The big bugs arrived (Ed is still tweaking the mold, but spun it a few times to get me these in time to paint up!). I am so excited . Here's my progress so far, first basecoated then with the main colors blocked in:




I'm going to block in the main colors on the second model tonight, then touch them up (especially the edges of the bone, although the wash kind of obliterates this ) then do the wash tomorrow. That will get them to the same point as the Tervigon and Tyrant, but will likely be it before my test game Wednesday, so I'll have to finish the 4 big bugs in the latter part of this week (drybrushing / highlights, and sealing). Then, with my wife's help, I'll do the basing for the whole army on the weekend

This past weekend, I actually spent more than half of it doing the gloss step on the whole army. I did it the hard way- brushed on high gloss, then brushed on satin on the bone and orange . Don't ask me why... but I am very happy with how it looks, the matte was just too flat to go with for these slimy bugs!! I did have to go back over the recesses of the orange with a light wash, since the satin kind of lightened the recesses of it, but with that small tweak I'm very happy with the results . Pics to come when I photograph the entire army together this weekend!

Oh, and the Wall-Es are now magnetized to the bases, it worked like a charm

Woo-hoo...glad you got the goliaths in time

Sounds like you're on top of things and will have a lovely gribbly army for adepticon.

Very excited to see how these come out. They are spectacular models.

Goliaths are the way to go, glad to see he got them to you Getting way excited to see the finished army!

- Salvage

That's looking fantastic.


How big are those bases on the Goliaths?

They are the standard oval bases, so the Goliaths are around 6" tall to the top of the tentacles. Which makes them perfect stand-ins for Mawlocs

The bodies were a little "smaller" than I'd expected, but they're still plenty big enough!

They look so much better than the myrwyrm. I'm glad Ed got you hooked up