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The Scarab Eldar's first Fire Prism is now complete.  More pics can be found here. It is brutally hard to photograph red, but this is close.  Comments welcome and appreciated as usual.    I'd also love to know what you think of the site I made (an Aperture Weblog) and anything on it.

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Thanks for looking.

Scarab: You have to use HTML. I think there's a stickied guide in this forum.

EDit: Ok, Scarab got it.

Thanks Malf! I think I corrected it. Look better now?

Very nice.  I love the white contrast.  All very smooth with nice weathering detail. 

Nothing I could do would ever make those pics look better.

I hate you.

It looks like its made of some sort of otherworldly material.

Superb job!

Its been a looooooong time since I have seen any scarab eldar.

I have to say that I am very surprised to see you moving away from your blue theme.

I love you now <3

Very nice work mate! 5 stars!

I think moving away from the blue theme is a combination of variety and sanity

Hey guys, thanks! Nice to be back.

Regarding the scheme, good point. I should explain that the blue is still key to the army, but nearly every model has some red stones or the like. The army colors are blue/yellow(gold)/red at 120 degrees from one another on the color wheel (plus white and black). This model is more like my HQ/Banshee. I am in the midst of a major expansion and a few schemes I have in mind are Warp Spiders: Red and black with a little white; Swooping Hawks: white and light blue with a little black; Vyper: probably split down the middle with light and dark blue; Fire Dragons: dark red like this tank; a second Fire Prism: might be the same, might be a little different from this one. At the end of the day, I hope it provides some visual variety while tying all in together.

I really really like the free-hand swirly details on the prism's crystal I took a browse through your website, and the similar detail on the big death-spinner-like turret thing on that skimmer body (looks like forgeworld) also caught my eye!

Any chance we could get some close-up pics on those details?

This paintjob makes me sick....

as a parrot. Very nice job, excellent choice of colours. Can you tell me how you got that red (if you use Vallejo paints can you give me rough equivalents with Citadel if appropriate).

Mr. B, thanks for taking the time to look at the site. Here are the requested close-ups, a little too close to comfort, if you ask me, but you asked.





Orlanth, I am trying to learn to use Vallejo now, but it is basically scab red, red gore, blood red painted in reverse order in thin coats. Check out the WIPs on the site linked in my first post in this thread to learn more about that.

Well, it looks great.

What's crazy, tho, is that it seems to look great without much highlighting. The Scarab theme, the way the white interacts with it, that's great. That alone makes it really stand out. If you keep that theme through a whole army, it'd be excellent.

In the closeup, tho, it looks a bit flat. It seems like the panel lines could be shaded more, and some highlights could be put around some of the panels. There's a look of depth to the paint, I'm not sure what you were going for (streaks of grime from fast flying?), and I'm not really sure how it's all working, but it does have an interesting look to it. I think you can keep that and still have some highlighting on the panel edges. It's super easy and looks great on Falcons.

I checked out your link as well: The Wave Serpents are incredible. The paint scheme you're using, the way it all flows together is really unique, really visionary. Great bases too. The Wave Serpent is so fantastic, I feel like you missed a chance by doing the engines and underside blue. I think the Falcon "chassis" really looks great with a contrast there.

Do you design race car decals for a living or something? You see the surfaces and panel lines on vehicles really well.

Thanks! I agree that the red looks rather flat in the photos. For some reason red seems to be a very hard color to photograph with proper contrast, I note the same thing with cars. The models actualy has a lighter red on the edges of the panel and washes in the recesses. It's not as dramatic as the highlighting on the blue vehicles, however.

I was trying to create a sense of travel in the model and studied some airplane weathering before doing this. I used black ink for streaks, but I also went back with the original color in a very thinned down form and went along one side of the streak to give it more dimension. Not sure why, but it works.

Maybe my next tanks will have a contrasting underside. Migs keeps pushing for white, which I agree would look great, but it takes so much time to do decent looking white and I don't want to spend and eternity on the underside of a vehicle.

I do not design race decals, but I am a huge car enthusiast (especially Italian cars), so that probably has an impact and aesthetic. It's hard for me to weather vehicles because I spend so much time keeping my own clean!

Nice detailing on the Nightspinner guns. I'm not so sold on those wavy tadpole things on the Prism--spermcannon FTW?

The light weathering effects do add a certain something.

Holy crap, your entire army is just awesome, well done!

Thanks guys. It's been a lot of fun.

gj

Since Tacobake has bumped the thread anyway, I'll take this opportunity to mention more should be coming in late October or November. I guess I will need to post some WIPs as well to keep with the forum. In the meantime I am working in Tomb Kings and some campaign models, which will show up in the modeling forum painted one of these days.

I made some strides on the first "jetbike." I spent most of the time trying to figure out how to approach mounting the weapon to the warhawk. The underside has some really rather nice feet that get in the way. The top has some vines growing on it and some poorly sculpted feathers where the wings join, so I decided to mount the weapon on top. I cleaned the stuff off the top and then went hunting for a mounting means. I wanted something that was fairly sleek and would also let the hawk move. My bits box proved not up to the challenge, but I did find my Nightwing (the picture is not mine - Forgeworld's) and was intrigued by how the shuriken cannons mount on the front in raised pods that conceal the base of the weapon:



I sculpted a flexible support layer onto the back of the hawk. When the medium is hardened, I built this kind of pod structure onto it. I also add the straps that will go under the body and hold the whole thing together.

This evening I have been cranking on putting the pieces together for one of my Hawks. I have mocked one up, first with the thinner shuri-cannon pod and then with the wider T-L shuri-catapult pod.

I am proud of the symmetry and the overall shape of the pods. The back covering came out decent with some folds in places, but I am afraid it gets rather lost in the grey. Self critiques: the pods would ideally be sleeker and finer looking. I am hoping that when they are mounted flush with the backing that they will look better in this regard.

I still need to do something about where the straps meet the backing material. Not quite sure what yet. I have some little targeter do-dads that come on the Guardian sprues that I was thinking of adding, but it makes it a little cludgy.

Comments welcome.

Whoaness. Didn't expect this at all ^_^. Really cool and different idea you're going with here. I dig it.

A simple attachment chunk for the strap might do just fine, giving you detail and function. Gems could do well here too, though they might look out of place. Well...here >.>:

I agree on the attachment chunk and whoaness right back at you on the sketch. It conveys the feel well and show the attachement works. Good job! I assume you can see from the pics I did a gem on the pod. I like the gem addition to the backing. I'll give that a go.

I like the armored wing plates as well. Looks sharp. However what is missing from the pics and therefor your sketch is that the backing is more organic looking - like a thick tarp or something and less of a plate. as a result, the plates would not mesh as well onto the model as in the sketch. Whew... I just rationalized myself out of a whole lot of work!

Serious thanks for the helpful comments and cool sketch!

Really when I envisioned the armor plates, I figured they could be sculpted directly onto the model using GS. At least that was my original idea when I was sketching them. But you know my experience with GS is absolutely zero, so I'm not sure the viability of it for this project. I figured that you could smooth out the GS on top of the wing sections shown and sculpt in any and all detailing.

Yeah, that's what I thought you were thinking. It's doable, but also a lot of work - I have to do 6 of these, though I will at least cast the pods. The less fresh sculpting I have to do on each, the better.

Looking good scarab!  I take it those eagle things are going to be the jetbikes?

Thanks. Yep, Jetbikes. You know, hiding them behind cover is going to be harder than with the regular ones, methinks.

Damn, my mold compound has hardened up and I had to order more and wait for it to arrive. I'll post a little how-to when it gets here.