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So from now on my Eldar project is going to live here.

This army is my attempt to paint a top quality tournie army for myself. Therefore I am going strait GW on this for the most part with minor variations and creations as I go.

So first up is my first ever falcon. And some other pics that have already been up in the other painting forum.

...

double post oops...

Nice minis. I'm disturbed by the presence of a studded leather bracelet in close proximity to lots of theological books, and I'm pretty sure I'd be disturbed by the text on the postit if I could read it all, but the painting is good.

Your shading and blending the red is beautiful, I am truly jealous.

Darrian

Theological books because I am in Seminary (or Grad School for ministers to those not understanding in the lingo), cuff because I was a punk rocker kid growing up and that is still something I wear even though I have mellowed and the post it note is stuff from counseling class and even more that no one really needed to know is that the photo next to the post it is my lovely wife when we were in high school.

Wonderful models, truly in awe of this paintjob.

The vehicle is just stunning.

How did you tint the falcon's canopy to that green color? It looks great, as if backlit by lots of indicator and display lights!

Its actually a bit of an illusion. I painted the whole inside green and tried to OSL the pilot/gunners so that they reflected a green control pannel. Then I painted the little targeting triagle on the canopy green and did a little reflection just around the edges of the glass. So the plastic itself is not green it just appears to be.

that last statement makes your work even cooler

I'm really impressed by your reds, as a fellow saim-hann player I have been thinking of redoing many of my models (I painted some of them more than 8 years ago) but reds have always been a headache with me.

Did you start with black primer? It looks like you might have gone:

Black Primer -> Scab Red/Red Gore -> Blood Red
then highlight with blazing orange/blood red in a 1:1?

Very interested to know, red is hard to get right and you did a great job without making them look like they're fresh of the showroom floor.

zmc wrote:

Black Primer -> Scab Red/Red Gore -> Blood Red
then highlight with blazing orange/blood red in a 1:1?

Yeah so far so good: Black Primer -> 2 coats of scab ->freshen surfaces with red gore -> then gore + blood red mix to develop shapes -> then first high light of blood red -> and the last highlight is blazing orange and get this dwarf skin - It adds just the right amount of mellowness? to the color to pop just as I want it to.

Oh and thanks ZMC for the spear tips (pun not intended at first). Any advise on how to make really nice bike banners? I want them to be nice and professional looking.

I developed my banners in photoshop using this process:

Required Materials: PVA Glue, Water, Disposable Cup or other suitable liquid container, Q-tips, Printer, Suitable graphics suite, and a Hairdryer

1) Determine the overall length of banner that you want to have on each type of model (infantry bikers, warlock bikers, character bikers, etc) Then once you have that sketch out how long of a taper you want I generally find that keeping the length of the banner no longer than 1.5-2 times it's height is a good guideline in general.

2) In photoshop (any graphics program will work, I just use photoshop because I am familiar with it) you're going to want to make your banner and conjoin it to a mirror image of itself so it looks roughly like this: <|>

3) At this point you have two options:
3a) Draw the graphics you want on the banner in the painting program itself.
3b) Simply get the banner shape itself and then freehand the image after you've completed step 4

4) Ever play with Papier-mâché? Good, because that's the general principle here. Since we're using regular ol' printing paper it's generally going to need a bit of stiffening and while we're at it we can even add the illusion of motion by clever positioning of the banner (waverliness to use a technical term)
4a) Print out your banner templates, then cut them out.
4b) Make a mixture of 2:1 or 3:1 (water:pva glue) and get your banner templates nice and wet with the stuff

5) After you've wetted your banner templates up I usually set them on a wetted piece of cloth or paper towel from the kitchen so that the pva mixture can set up a bit.
5a) As you notice your templates beginning to get a bit of stiffness to them do a test wrap around one of the bike's banner poles, if it's looking like a good fit to you then do another quick dip in the mixture removing any excess (You're aiming for a wet sheen to the template) then wrap it around the pole aiming to get a good match up of the contours of the template itself.

6) It's at this point that we whip out the handy dandy hair dryer to speed up the process, moving the dryer slowly but evenly over the length of the banner. By applying pressure after the two pieces have begun to stick together we can work in the appearance of that waverliness we mentioned earlier.

7) You can keep the Q-tips nearby with the PVA mixture to apply more PVA as necessary to get the desired motion effect. PVA will generally dry clear if diluted well enough.


That about sums it up, it takes a bit of practice but it's cheap and easy. Should your banners every be damaged or you decide to redo them it's a simple matter of wetting the pva glue again and a little bit of clever work with an exacto and they're off!

I like the bases.

ZMC thats so awesome it needs to be an article.

If I ever get situated with one of these confusticated new picture taking devices that can send the pictures over the interweb I might make one. I never would have learned how to do it myself if it weren't for an old geezer saim-hann player I ran into years ago who was using RT era harlequin jetbikers.

I hope it works out for you as well as it has worked out for me over the years, I've used the technique on a few different banners for many different game systems. Let me know how yours turn out!

zmc wrote:If I ever get situated with one of these confusticated new picture taking devices that can send the pictures over the interweb I might make one. I never would have learned how to do it myself if it weren't for an old geezer saim-hann player I ran into years ago who was using RT era harlequin jetbikers.

I hope it works out for you as well as it has worked out for me over the years, I've used the technique on a few different banners for many different game systems. Let me know how yours turn out!

I think I'm going to give this a try on my Eldar jetbikes when I get home. Thanks for the tip.

Jezrael, your models look awesome!