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Got the first of the Tyranid ships done- a trio of Kraken Drones and a trio of Vanguard Drones. The new basing method (nail stuck into a 32mm MDF circle) works excellently, and I'm not worried anymore about the larger ships bending their stands.

They look excellent.

Amazing work! You're a very skilled painter, love your style! And your nids look awesome! Did you say this is mostly washes? As in do you use airbrushing at all?

The Tyranid ships look amazing. Excellent job on the print and the paint!

Those BFG ships looks great! The Imperial ones looking really clean from just dry brushing! And the Tyranids area looking fun

Nice paintjob catbarf.

Cheers,

CB

Thanks all. Got some Escort Drones coming up next.

Glaiceana wrote:Amazing work! You're a very skilled painter, love your style! And your nids look awesome! Did you say this is mostly washes? As in do you use airbrushing at all?

On the Tyranids I use an airbrush for applying primer and varnish, but otherwise once the patterning is done it's all washes. Here's the tutorial I did a while back on the scheme- it's a lot faster than it looks once you get the hang of the dots.


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Six Escort Drones done in very little time at all. The three on the left are armed with pyro-acid batteries, while the three on the right have bio-plasma.

Now just the capital ships to go.

Lovely work on the tyranid ships, amazing paint job. Glad the new basing method has worked successfully.

Two cruisers now. I might take a short break from the Tyranids to knock out the Chaos ships (I found an effect I really like for Nurgle), then it's just the hive ship to finish out the Tyranid fleet.

I've never had any interest in BFG, but man, your fleets look excellent! The Karkinos scheme works wonderfully with the ships as well.

Oh, and did you happen to notice that the latest White Dwarf (#468) has a spotlight on Hive Fleet Leviathan? There's a converted Carnifex whose "mottled colour scheme on the skin was inspired by a coconut crab." The colours were Leviathan's purple/pink/white, but I bet it was very much inspired by your work!

 mcmattila wrote:
Oh, and did you happen to notice that the latest White Dwarf (#468) has a spotlight on Hive Fleet Leviathan? There's a converted Carnifex whose "mottled colour scheme on the skin was inspired by a coconut crab." The colours were Leviathan's purple/pink/white, but I bet it was very much inspired by your work!

Oh yeah, someone sent me a photo- that was pretty awesome to see the patterning in WD! It wasn't attributed to me, but hey, what can you do?

Anyways, I blew through my Chaos fleet in two days. It may not be very obvious in the end result, but I mottled four different shades of green across the hulls to try to add some variations in hue and tone.

They look great. Are those old plastics, or 3D printed as well?

As for the Hive Ship, one of them showed up in the recent Angels of Death or whatever the W+ BA animation is called. The front 'tusks' or whatever were the size of a SM Strike Cruiser. Thems things is huge!!!

Makes me wonder how big the mini is...

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
They look great. Are those old plastics, or 3D printed as well?

As for the Hive Ship, one of them showed up in the recent Angels of Death or whatever the W+ BA animation is called. The front 'tusks' or whatever were the size of a SM Strike Cruiser. Thems things is huge!!!

Makes me wonder how big the mini is...

Literally all the BFG stuff I've shown so far is 3D printed, aside from a little bit of scratchbuilding with plasticard to modify some of them.

And while the Hive Ship I have here might not be quite that large, it's not far off. Should have that done in a couple of days.

 catbarf wrote:

 mcmattila wrote:
Oh, and did you happen to notice that the latest White Dwarf (#468) has a spotlight on Hive Fleet Leviathan? There's a converted Carnifex whose "mottled colour scheme on the skin was inspired by a coconut crab." The colours were Leviathan's purple/pink/white, but I bet it was very much inspired by your work!

Oh yeah, someone sent me a photo- that was pretty awesome to see the patterning in WD! It wasn't attributed to me, but hey, what can you do?

Anyways, I blew through my Chaos fleet in two days. It may not be very obvious in the end result, but I mottled four different shades of green across the hulls to try to add some variations in hue and tone.

It's obvious, in the best possible way. Amazing job!

Loving all the BFG! Nurgle fleet is real solid (I daresay the 3D escorts look better than the metal sculpts I've got), but those Tyranid cruisers are particularly great. Coconut spots the size of buildings

Loving the tyranids, very similar to ones I scratchbuilt some ten years ago from glue bottles and tyranid bits. The coconut crab scheme looks excellent against the darkness of the void.

 Boss Salvage wrote:
Coconut spots the size of buildings

Funny you mention that; at first I wanted to reproduce the patterning at a smaller size to give the impression of scale, so I tried stippling the colors. I found that while this worked and looked realistic, at tabletop distance it turned that nice distinctive patterning into a blurry mess.

So, I just went back to reproducing the same patterning I use on the ground-based forces, and in retrospect I think it was the right call.

Anyways, thanks all for the kind words. The Hive Ship is delayed as I am working on my wife's Eldar fleet. She chose a somewhat tricky color scheme but I think I've got it worked out. Pics to come.

Eldar! My wife was very insistent about the scheme and picky about the colors, so this took a bit to solidify, but I'm pleased with the outcome.

The gradient is an airbrush thing, or are you just magical?

The BFG ships are coming along really well! Those Tyranid cruisers look awesome. And those Eldar are very nice

Those ships look absolutely amazing Catbarf

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
The gradient is an airbrush thing, or are you just magical?

It's an airbrush thing. And a lot of swearing and frustration at the coverage of heavily-thinned oranges and yellows. Basically just basecoated red, sprayed orange, sprayed yellow on the tips, and then two layers of a thinned wash mix to shade a bit without flattening the gradient.

Now I can get to the Hive Ship. Unfortunately it seems the LCD screen on my printer may have died already- it seems lemons are not uncommon. So while I do still have Orks to paint, I may not be able to print the Marines for a while.

 catbarf wrote:
Unfortunately it seems the LCD screen on my printer may have died already- it seems lemons are not uncommon. So while I do still have Orks to paint, I may not be able to print the Marines for a while.

It became clear this week that mine is dying too, the replacement should be here Sunday and I'll get to take that adventure

Eldar look amazing, you're really making me wish I could bust out my BFG fleet and hit the table Virginia isn't all that far away, and I am planning on being down there for the holidays .........

Also I feel you on the massive spots, I can't imagine the to-scale version would look like much.

Got the Hive Ship done, which marks Karkinos reaching 1,000pts.

^That nid fleet looks amazing!

Wow, those nids look amazing, nicely done there !

Congrats on finishing the fleet! Biggest bad looks great, spots came out particularly well (possibly because there are so many of them on so many surfaces).

Oooh. Very nice.

Wow.

Nothing else need be said.

Valete,

JohnS

Looks awesome as others have said, but I love that you have it match your ground forces as well, love how your Hive Fleet spreads across multiple game systems.

Any plans on an Epic army?