Hobby exploits 2020 and onward

You can easily see on this blog when I started work latest batch of my Combined Army models – way back in December I built them and did some airbrush work. I still have 4 more to finish, but these two are done.

The method is basically the same as with Q-Drone.

Gwailos with spitfire:

And king of any Onyx list in N3, now outshined by one Norkias (too lazy to check spelling of his name – Umbra Samaritan character dude).

Still to go: Mentor, E-Drone, 2x Tinbots from Overdrone box.

I redid Mr Goro. The one I did previously looked really bad (see for yourselves somewhere below).

However, when painting that hideous one I had a revelation – he somehow brings the ghost twins from Matrix 2 to mind. Fast forward to last week, I reprinted the dude and painted him white (whith oils), he just dried yesterday.

I received my first batch of Defiance on last Friday of January. After checking inventory quickly (my copy had all the figures it should have) I put the boxes away, intimidated by the volume of work ahead of me.

The first decision I had to make was what bases to use. The box has over 40 miniatures (second wave will double that), most of them foes from Combined Army. My standard basing scheme for that faction doesn’t lend itself neither for boarding action type of scenarios nor for those played in alien jungle. On top pf that most of the minis in that faction has some weird hooves instead of feet which can make pining rather hard not to mention putting them on uneven surface.

My internal deliberations were cut short by @joshtogo who created inspiring sets of bases for his minis from the same game (see here: https://www.beastsofwar.com/project/1503825/). Looking at his glorious bases I created my own, mimicking his to an extent.

The hero bases are made from OpenLock spaceship floors from one of @2nd Dynasty spaceships.

The ones I plan to use with the Shasvasti are done in similar way from some 3d printable terrain inspired by art of H.R. Giger kickstarted couple of years ago.

Here are some prototypes:

Painting is very basic:

Hero bases: light grey basecoat, stipple any brawn and red you have, glaze pale blue grey over it, drybrush with white (over details, not entirety of the base), edge highlight with white. Yellowish parts: orange brown edge highlighted with moon yellow.

Badies bases: light grey base coat, white drybrush, blue and violet filters, white drybrush again, black wash.

I had to split my photos into two posts due to project system limitations.

This is Kamikaze Orphan, she was real pain to print and the final result appears to be too big, compared with other minis from the same range. I wanted to use her alongside similarly equipped ninja from Infinity’s Operation Red Veil, but she seems to massive, maybe one of those days I’ll find strength to scale her down and print again, which hopefully would make finding right bases possible.

That being said the model is cool, and painting it was entertaining.

And lastly, another MartialArtist by Kev White. This ninja was part of my cyberpunk diorama, but recently got replaced by the translucent Kamikaze Orphan (see one of the previous posts). I didn’t do much with her, just added a highlight here and there and put her on a base.

After I healed my neck, I decided to cut my pile of started but not finished models.

I usually have 10-20 minis in various stages of “prepared/unpainted”. I use them to test colours, train some techniques or just as warm up when I don’t feel like painting anything in particular.

This week I finished three of them. First two are very old (2006-2009?) Martial Artists from Kev White. They bear his characteristic style all over their limbs – their palms and feet are caricatirally large and thus I didn’t pay much attention to them. I focused on their white outfits, those were painted with oils.

Next is Lucy M from Unit 9 Patereon. With her I mainly paid attention to her face, I’m quite pleased with the result there, what doesn’t work is the fact that highlight on the face and on the rest of her body (including hair) are done in opposing directions… cost of painting one mini over multiple painting sessions.

I haven’t done much painting lately, I had awful neck pain for over a week. But, since we had a couple of warmer days around here, I managed to print something, and took a cool photo, I guess.

So what you see above is my old book nook, but instead of HF ninja, I put a Kamikaze Orphan from Unit 9 printed in translucent resin to convey idea of thermos-optical camouflage of the ninja of the future.

Recently I tried to tweak one of my medicore acrylics paintjobs with some oils. I had some Chrome Yellow Hue and Titanium white from W&N Artists Colours range on my pallet and decided to try them out on a finished paintjob.

I took my recently finished Daoying Hacker (https://www.beastsofwar.com/project-entry/1593694/) which was not highlighted enoughand, and simply smeared the oil yellow where I thought highlights should be. It took me 10 maybe 15 min to do whole model (she’s rather tiny) and effects are rather good.

Compare them yourselves.

Both photos were taken in natural light, however, white balance is a bit different on each of them (see colour of the backdrop), in real life I think difference is more spectacular, but even on the photos I think it looks better.

This mini is kind of a mem-lord. He looks very cool, he’s well sculpted and from the fluff perspective he’s ultimate badass. And yet I don’t know anyone who’d actually field him or at least tried. Also Internet’s opinion is rather unified against Umbra Legates even after N4 changes. It’s not that his stats are garbage or anything but for his points you can have so much more in Onyx or combined army that he is simply redundant.

The mini came to me in Onyx Army Box, and was painted only after 3 or 4 years later…

The reds and shadows on his face were done with acrylics. Rest is oils.