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Finally looking at getting back into 40k properly after a long break and I've decided to go with Tyranids.

Don't have much to show yet, just a box of termagants all built with devourers.


Decided I want to go with a more natural looking scheme for these guys, pretty much with a pallet of browns and camo/muted greens. Still trying to decide if I'd go with brown for the skin with green for the plates or green for the skin with brown for the plates. Then for spot colours I'm thinking of pink (of course ) for more fleshy parts like tongues and maybe silver for teeth and claws I'm not quite sure on that part either. I'll just come up with it as I go along painting the first one.

Cool, look forward to seeing how they look.

Do you have an army plan, or are you just painting bugs as you go?

Good to have you back in the hobby.

It will be interesting to see your take on the Nids. Australia has some weird flora and fauna, I just did an image search for Australian bugs and got some neat hits. Might be a good source for inspiration.

I don't really have a solid army plan, been talking about it with a friend to try to work it out but haven't started list building yet. Basically I'm looking at everything unrelated to genesteallers as I don't really like them too much. These termagants will be a full unit of 30 with devourers to go along with a trygon though. I also want to run both a tyrannofex and exocrine, for a warlord it has to be a hive tyrant in my opinion, but I'm going to go with a walking one. Then probably two neurothropes and maybe some venomthropes to help protect the advancing guys. Oh also definitely needs some carnifex; probably either two fully melee ones or two screamer killers (would have been nice if they remade the old model for them instead of using the same as the current though ).

This is what I've got so far.

The right is the prototype I made up while taking notes and the left is the more finalised version I came up with as I streamlined it. Although I'm aiming more for the right than the left, I accidentally went a bit too heavy on the green on the flesh for the left one early on. Although I think slight variation would always look better for a horde unit and I guess it was a neat way to accidentally find out how I could easily get that slight variation into it without changing the overall feel. But, essentially this is more or less inspired by how I was painting Sylvaneth a while back (luckily because of them I still have 2 full cans of Rhinox Hide spray as well, which they really should release again, which ultimately is what made me decide on brown flesh and green plates). Also I didn't take notes when I was painting those dryads so I had to kind of try to figure it out again.

Making sure I take painting notes whenever I come up with a new scheme now.

Another two are done.

Looking good. Now you just need to paint a few hundred more!

Those battlefields don’t carpet themselves.

Do you have a lightbox setup? Might be worth looking into if you don’t. Shadows are very harsh on these guys. If these are just quick snaps I understand not wanting to set up the apparatus for formal shots. But good lighting helps a lot when showcasing your work.

Only need about 90 in total I think (just the gaunts though).

I was just using the old set up I'd always used which was essentially a shelf space with curved paper and some light from behind the camera (from a torch... ) but that seems to struggle with darker schemes. I'm actually looking into setting up a proper light box and just ordered a portable one to try it out.

I've been waiting on that lightbox a little bit to update this, but figure I'll just take a group pic once it does as I found out the courrier is fastway and they're notoriously bad.

Have another two termagants done.



Also got the first of the big bugs; the trygon prime.

At the moment just primed and sprayed rhynox hide. But, at this point I figured I should probably try to get some sort of list otherwise I'm probably going to have problems later on. Anyway a friend helped me put it together and that was fine for a bit, but I had one carnifex in that list and wanted to have at least two. Shuffling stuff around I realised how useful rippers are, plus they're basically free so may as well make use of them after all.

This is what I ended up with.

Instantly I was told I probably want to swap the neurothrope with old one eye so all the melee guys could be together and that way I could make that spearhead the hive fleet that gives cover. Also that the dakkafexes should probably have devourers instead of deathspitters. But I'm not sure if I'd have to paint them differently or not if they were different hives. Originally I decided to just go with kraken as it seemed alright as sort of a generic choice.

You would probably need a way to differentiate the different Hive-Fleets, or very understanding opponents.

Big fan, by the way. Tyranids were my first 'modern' army.

Love the stabby snake thing. If something was going to convince me to start bugs, it would be him.

I have no idea what makes for a decent nid list these days, but it looks like a interesting mix of stuff.

I guess they'll all be the same hive then.
Yeh the danger noodle is a great model, was pretty quick to put together.

Anyways the lightbox arrived so I quickly took a group pic of those termagants... and they're still kind of dark.

But it's better than what I was getting before I guess.

What are you using for lights? Idealy you should have at lest one on either side. In front on the mini, but mostly illuminating the sides for difuse light.

The box is nice, but good photos are like 80% light.

Hopefully someone with more tallent and less bourbon in them can give better picture advice. I mostly just stumble through myself.

It's a portable lightbox at the moment and it has 2 strips of really bright LEDs on its ceiling; one at the front and one at the back.

No lateral lights? Odd.

Here is what I use:

The side lights provide a very diffuse illumination to reduce shadows. It might just be that your nids are a very dark tone, and that the box is working correctly. Have you tried taking some pics of you other stuff? Particularly something not in earth tones? The last pic was better the the first, but still seemed dark.

I was actually looking at one fairly similar to that then went with the one I have instead.
Here's a mix of things in it.


Maybe I need to look at some side lighting.


Edit:
Messed around a bunch and I think this is probably the best I'm going to get out of it as it is now.


And after messing a bit with exposure and settings on my phone.

This is probably right on the edge of starting to wash out colours though so between these last two is probably what I'll go with.

Much better!