Bot War Painting Challenge 2021 – Atlanticans Rising
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About the Project
2021 Bot War painting challenge. To paint for 30 minutes daily for 20 consecutive days, completing at least 5 models during that time. This year, its the rise of the Atlanticans!
Related Game: Bot War
Related Company: Traders Galaxy
Related Genre: Science Fiction
This Project is Completed
2021
Welcome to the start of my 2021 Bot War painting challenge project blog.
This is a painting challenge for the Bot War tabletop miniatures game by Traders Galaxy
As with last year’s project this challenge is being run over on the Bot War Miniatures Game Facebook group by Anthony and his mod team (shout to Aidan for all the bookkeeping!) as a way to get the community together and help promote the game in the run up to the release of the new Bot War 2 Turbo Edition starter set (which looks fantastic).
This year its a little different as its only running for 20 days instead of 30 but this makes sure it is nicely timed to end with the preorder for the new edition and also some lucky folks will be receiving their preorder copies of the recent Trashers faction, me being in the UK though I sadly won’t get mine in time, but they will be a fun reward to receive at the end of this.
So what am I going to be painting?
With the forthcoming release of the new starter set, I figured it was about time I tackled some of the my unpainted factions from the 2nd edition starter set, The Atlanticans.
This also presents for me a great opportunity to also face a hobby nemesis – painting yellow!
The target for the challenge is to complete a minimum of 5 models, and as there are 6 Atlanticans in the starter set I knew I would safely achieve that, but to push it a bit more I decided to grab a few extra bots from my backlog and a UK stockist to make sure I had enough for a decent force to take to the table.
And, just like with painting challenge 2020 I just had to include one of the Bot War combiners as a centrepiece and capstone for the project, Leviathan!
Disclaimer
PLEASE NOTE
I am in no way sponsored or affiliated with Bot War or Traders Galaxy, I am just a fan of the game, the miniatures, and universe Anthony has created, its the miniatures range I have always wanted so I’m happy to share my enjoyment of them where I can and hopefully see this game grow and grow.
Feeling inspired
It came from the deep
For me understanding the background of a faction really helps to garner inspiration and work out how to approach a painting project.
This is a little introduction to the Atlantican faction, the original antagonists in the Bot War, there’s a huge amount of background being produced for the game’s alternative universe that can be found on the Trader’s Galaxy website including short stories and a comic series, as well as regular content drops on the Facebook group:
“Atlantica is a secret city submerged deep in the Atlantic Ocean. It is not a human city but a city of Mer people. Atlantica is essentially a feudal society ruled by a royal class. At the top of this system is King Gills. King Gills is a technological genius having an understanding of technology bordering on the supernatural. Only two things rival King Gills’ intelligence – his ambition and insatiable lust for power.
Far beneath the ocean, King Gills’ and his mermen legions laboured to bring forth warmachines and armies with which to conqueror the surface or the earth. However combined Valiant and Democracy forces forced him back to the depths. Unable to match the versatility and brute force in close quarters of the allied forces King Gills’ bided his time. Then a meteor fell from space and landed right in the Atlantic. This meteor was a ship containing a sentient being much more technologically advanced than King Gills’ could even have imagined. It was like nothing on planet earth and King Gills’ moved quickly to study this creature and learn all he could. It wasn’t long before the Kings’ intellect fully understood all there was to know about this new technology. He rebuilt the sentient being, a bot called Omen, who in turned pledged service to the Kings’ conquest as repayment for his new life and body. The King then created from scratch a lieutenant, to support his warriors in battle. He named this new bot Stingray. In addition, by studying Omen, the King was able to create a new deadly weapon called the magnetic disruption gun.
Now with bots by his side and new technologically advanced weaponry King Gills is ready to challenge the surface once again……”
There is a longer piece of background narrative on the website which delves into the factions motivations and intent.
Day 1...
Got to start somewhere
And we’re off, this is the start and I’ll be honest, it already took me longer than planned. The models are lovely and crisply detailed, and everything went together really easily. The resin kits come in a lot fewer parts than the original metal designs, so these were a doddle to get assembled compared to the Builders from my project last year (only the big boy here got pinned).
I’ve left the bases off for now as I’m still not sure how I want to do them, and I find it easier using corks or hobby crocodile clips to hold the feet so you can twist the model in all directions whilst priming to get into all the nooks and crannies.
The priming was done with a black Stynelrez base, and a lateral spray with Vallejo Mecha Ivory. I went with ivory instead of white as I wanted a slightly warmer starting point as I know I’ll be hitting these with yellow imminently. In fact I had a quick go seeing how Citadel’s Iyanden Yellow Contrast paint looked over the ivory through the airbrush. I’m not sure if I will do the rest in it yet, I’ll let it all dry and check back tomorrow.
Day 1 done.
Day 2...
Oh hello yellow
Day 2 started much earlier than I started painting. Working from home sharing my hobby desk with my office desk at many points throughout the day I found myself looking at the Iyanden Yellow coast I gave one of the bots (Moray) yesterday, not quite sure if it’s the direction I wanted to go in or not. I wanted to give Contrast paints a go to see how yellow would turn out. This was very much an experiment as my previous uses of contrast have been to tint metals, or help to glaze alien skin tones, rather than create a solid basecoat to then build on from.
I also had Nazdreg Yellow Contrast paint to try, so the next bot up, Stingray, got a brush painted coat. Neither of these two coats may make it past the weekend, and could well get a dunk in some good ol Biostrip 20, but I wanted to see how both the colours and applications compare.
So I will see how these compare in the morning and make my decision from there.
I do know that the yellow will be glazed up to a desaturated highlight to add contrast and value definition, but it’s fun to experiment at this stage.
Day 3...
Metal metal metal
So day 3 has fallen on a weekend, nice, I get a decent amount of painting time, don’t have to rush about or do a full day’s work, I can just plan and attack.
Today I wanted to get some more foundations layed to build upon for the week ahead. After playing about with yellows yesterday and still not happy I decided to do something different. In a way I feel I have wasted 2 days on the yellow, in reality it’s only a small step and one I can easily rectify in the coming week. Instead of pushing on with them, I put Moray and Stingray to one side and picked up Neptune.
One of the other techniques I wanted to use during this challenge was applying filters over metals. This was a technique I had attempted previously on 54mm Goblin, and I have been enjoying watching a streamer friend JanuineVision use the technique again recently on the GW Crimson Court Vampires. He has done a great little video on the technique as well on his YouTube channel, which I re-watched during the week.
To start this process I needed a TMM base, so grabbed a Vallejo Metal Air triad and set to work, starting with a thin base layer of 71.073 Black Metal
With the black metal base dry I started to layer up using Gun Metal, leaving Black Metal in the recesses and making sure all of the primer had been coated (it was a thin Black Metal basecoat after all).
Once the Gun Metal had dried I hit all of the high points with Chrome to really get that shiny finish. I then went back with more Gun Metal and Black Metal to reinforce the contrast between the high middle shadow points.
My final bit of work on this model today was to mix some Liquitex Carbon Black ink into some Black Metal, and then using a very fine brush painted in some of the line details on the thighs and greaves, and push the shadow points underneath or separating armour points.
This will be left to cure, and I will consider which colour filter I want to apply over the top tomorrow.
Day 4...
Yellow no more
Unfortunately my experience with the yellow contrast paints didn’t work out as planned, so they took a little bath in some Biostrip 20. The 2 different shades of yellow didn’t sit well with me, so instead of spending too much longer trying to work out a better way to balance them out I stripped them back. I do have a plan for them, but for now it’s back to unprimed resin for those 2.
It’s worth noting that Biostrip 20 is great for metal models, but it can have different effects on other resins. I have tried it before on citadel plastic and on Kingdom death plastic, but on these original grey resin bots I found they started to become a bit soft, so I was cautious to not leave them soaking too long (20 minutes), and washed them off using a stiff brush before resoaking for a further time. It’s better to repeat the process than to ruin a model by leaving it too long in the bio-bath.
After a good wash with clean water these will be ready for a new primer coat.
Neptune gets his colour
But at least I could progress Neptune today. Over the metal basecoat I applied with my airbrush a coat of dark angel green contrast paint from below, 5hrn a mix of Dark Angel green and a little Akhelian Green to make a nice teal green. That went over the mid and from above.
A final highlight from directly above was applied using a lovely mix of Vallejo Metallic Air chrome with Akhelian green mixed into it. One of the issues I found from my initial coats were that the top highlights were light enough, so this lustred metallic teal made everything shine in the right way, it’s just a right pain to photograph.
Day 5...
1/4 of the way through
And about 5% of the task complete. Really need to step it up a gear. The yellow debacle knocked me back but I do still have a plan. Today though its pushing on with Neptune.
Wanting to really make progress with Neptune I decided to help the overall vision and block in some more colours. Painting the under-armour joints and limbs with P3 Iron Hull Grey gives me a solid (opaque) starting point for these parts which I can then go onto edge highlight tomorrow. The dark grey works well to separate out the armour sections and hold up well to blacklining. Plus if I make a mistake with blacklining the opacity of the P3 paints means it’s an easy remedy.
The next bit of colour blocking was to start to add the green gold trim, giving it a powerful look.
This was achieved by using a transparent yellow (Monument Pro-acryl In this instance) directly over the metallic basecoat of the amour pieces. This mix of the teal and yellow created a green gold that I would associate with a nautical scheme. This took a few coats due to the transparency of the paint and yellows generally poor coverage, and I will continue with more coats tomorrow. But I have started to introduce a warm tone to the gold using P3 Blazing Ink mixed into the transparent yellow.
After brushing some of the orange yellow mix on I wanted to leave things to dry so gave some parts a quick blackline with watered down carbon black ink. I didn’t want a harsh black at this point, just enough to lift some parts from each other, so the ink was diluted quite considerably.
30 minutes done.
15 days to go
Day 6...
Neptune done
Tonight I wrapped up Neptune to a finished point. I could do so much more to push him further, but the timing constraints and need to get some other models finished meant I had to get him out of the queue.
I spent a little longer than I should on him, maybe an hour over the 30 minute mark but I wanted to add in some more highlights for the trim and general armour. Whilst I really like the effect of the tinted green metal armour its actually really difficult to correct any mistakes, and as I’m rushing there have been mistakes, lots of them, more than I’d be happy with usually, but I don’t have time to go back and redo things (you know like stripping minis).
It has also been really hot in my office today, after a full day of work in there and the sun beaming in i just wanted to get today out of the way. I had several goals to do tick off to call it finished:
- Highlight the grey armour
- Highlight the yellow trim
- Try to tidy bits of the green armour
To highlight the P3 Ironhull grey I got out my classic Reaper MSP Foggy grey as and painted edges and highlights, I like this grey as its cool and bright.
For the yellow trim I went over it with scale75 hykey yellow this is a great icey yellow that works well in NMM schemes as an alternative to vallejo ice yellow, I used it to pick out lateral highlight points on curves, sharp edges, and the points on the spikes.
For the green armour I used Scale75 Surfer Orc Green. Whilst this removed the effect of the tinted metal, it gave a nice enough highlight colour that worked well with the rest of the scheme, and being from the scale75 fantasy & game range it has a slightly satin finish so isn’t as matte as some other paints. The Hykey yellow is also from the same fantasy and game range so I hope the two will play nicely as highlights.
And with that, Neptune is into the done pile ready to get a base once all other models are finished. I like to leave the bases until the end as I can cheat a little and use the base colours to bring cohesion to the whole unit, and use complimentary colours to generate interest, and this is easiest when I know what all the models actually look like.
So that’s it for today.
One down, many, many more to go.
Day 7...
A solid core
Time to work on pushing up the numbers. One of the big leaps you can make when doing a challenge like this is to break the project up into smaller mini sprints and hammer out some batch painting.
Step forward Aegon, Thermal, Nami, and Nebulous. These 4 bots are the Mud Warriors, the grunt core of the Atlantican force in the starter set, combining both ranged and close support roles. Together with Octo (who I don’t yet own) these 4 bots combine to form the mighty Leviathan.
My goal for tonight was give these 4 their 3-paint metal coats so that I can break out the airbrush tomorrow for the top coats, and then have Friday and half of the weekend to edge highlight and detail them to completion. All being well that will be 10 days down and 5 bots down, with 4 + Leviathan for the final half of the challenge. I’m on the back foot, but I know I can do it using the weekends to be able to dig deep for big gains.
This is the same workup as I used for Neptune, a thinned black metal base coat to cover the primer and seep into the recesses, a gun metal layer over the top to block in most of the colour for the metal parts, and then highlights and edges in chrome. I’m not too worried about the joints that will be painted grey later so ignored those for now to reduce the number of paint layers going into them.
I use a synthetic brush when working with metallics, and have been enjoying the Broken Toad Fugazi for this sort of work. I find I’m more aggressive with the synthetics compared to kolinsky sable and end up stipple and smudging the paint with the Fugazis to almost buff the colours into each other – a rough buff blend so to speak.
Back in the queue
For the last of today’s painting progress I re-primed Stingray and Moray to get then ready for the weekend.
Exactly as before, prior to their biostrip 20 bath, I gave them a Badger Stynelrez Black prime with the airbrush, then once it was dry (it was very hot in the south of the UK this evening) I went over with Vallejo Mecha Primer Ivory coat.
And that’s Day 7 wrapped up. Setting myself up nicely for the next few days and the coming weekend.
One week down!
Day 8...
Marching onward
Taking the metallic basecoats of yesterday, I used the same technique as Neptune and applied Citadel Contrast paints over the top to tint the base, remove some of the lustre, and provide a nice looking nautical scheme of greens and blues.
Using a similar mix as I used for Neptune, I decided to add some more turquoise into the mix using Terradon Turquoise mixed with some Apothecary White. Applying the mixes from different angles, and the turquoise white mix from above created a slightly colour shift iridescent effect.
Continuing the batch painting session on these 4 bots, I swapped out my needle in my airbrush for a 0.2 and dropped the psi to 40, and set about applying the contrast mixes.
To finish off today’s session I went in with P3 Ironhull Grey to paint up the limb joints with a nice opaque layer. This is my classic look for bots, like they’re all wearing the same inner frame under all of that outer armour.
It also provides a nice contrast to rest of the armour which can be a good way to highlight interest in the armoured parts and also provide a cohesive look to the force.
This will be highlighted and blackline tomorrow (hopefully) and then I can add some colour to trim details weapons.
Day 9...
A little splash of colour
A quick update today, I was pressed for time due to “life” but managed to get a bit of colour added in the form of Monument Hobbies pro-acryl transparent yellow onto some detail parts, and get the grey parts edged.
Both will need touching up to neaten, and the yellow especially will need many more layers to give a solid base to then work up like Neptune.
Anyway, that’s it for today, I know tomorrow may be another quick session, but Sunday will be very productive!
Day 10...
Halfway point
These bots certainly don’t have as much detail as Neptune, but that’s not surprising as he is a “character”, I say that loosely as each of the characters is named, but it’s clear in its design that Neptune is a bit more special than these 4. Anyway, I still wanted to bring out the details on these bots starting with the tyres that are on each arm and leg. Their alt-mode takes the form of a 6-wheeled artillery vehicle, so the tyres needed to be picked out as they would be prominent on that mode and are key characteristic for these bots.
Secret Weapon do a lovely set in their acrylic range for doing tyres and rubber hosing. Starting with a basecoat of Tyre Black (which is a sort of bluey coal black) this is painted over the whole tyre. Over that I then applied Rubber which is a blue-grey to the main tread parts leaving the recesses in tyre black. A highlight of Rubber Highlight was then used on the edges and to help single out each of the tread points.
This same workup was used on the piping that runs down each side of the chest piece.
To finish off the tyres I used a thinned down mix of Army Painter Dark Tone, which I mixed with Instar Paints Water+ to reduce the strength of the Dark Tone and help it to run onto crevices as well as glaze the rubber workup to improve colour harmony.
The final piece for today was to go back and work up the yellow details. This was achieved by using several layers of Pro-acryl transparent yellow and then mixing in Pro-acryl golden yellow to increase opacity, painting upwards with this mix so that my brush left more pigment at the top of the detail and concentrating the yellow there.
This is a fragile step so will take a few more coats. I will leave it to dry overnight and then go again tomorrow. These bots will be finished tomorrow, I just need to finish the weapons, black line, edge the armour, and paint some other little details. I’ve injured my ankle so that will be a good excuse to keep my foot up and paint.
Day 11...
5 down, 4 to go
I’ll be honest, I spent a bit more than 30 minutes today painting. But I needed to have a solid painting session for a number of reasons, including the fact that I still have a lot of Bots to do and 11 days in and I only have one finished (that isn’t even based).
Yellow... We meet again
Continuing where I left off yesterday I began by mixing in P3 Blazing Orange to my Pro-acryl yellow to crate a warming glaze that I could apply to the yellow parts, drawing my brush down and lifting off towards the bottom of the detail. This ensures that pigment is concentrated at the last contact point, as this is a more orange colour than before it creates some good volume.
A few glazes of this mix, and then some straight transparent yellow to help blend, and these details were ready for a highlight. This was achieved using Scale75 Hykey Yellow. This is a lovely icy yellow which is great in proper NMM workups and worked equally well here. You can see on the shield of Nami, where the orange and icy yellow are more obvious. Again some thin glazes of transparent yellow help to bring these colours together.
Painting in the eye lenses I used some Kimera Colors magenta (that I had decanted and mixed with some flow improver for a previous airbrush project), and pro-acryl Magenta. You can see how different these two paints are in their saturation. The Kimera made a good base in the eye sockets, and then the Pro-acryl was used for the detail.
Edging to the end
The final thing to do was edge all of the green armour. This was a long part of the painting session and also the most fiddly, having to paint under a hot lamp with a thin brush meant my paint was drying too quickly, but thinning it too much made it difficult to get saturation and thin lines. It’s not the cleanest finish but I’m happy with the results. The edge paint used was the scale75 fantasy & games Surfer Orc Green, the same as Neptune. This does compliment the green well and give the bots that nice Tron-like 80s pop.
As always, there’s always something left to do, weapons, this was a quick coat of Scale75 Alchemy Emerald green, this was also used on Neptune as its essentially a green tinted chrome and worked well to show metal in keeping with the nautical theme.
5 down, 5 to go.
Day 12...
Top brass
The next bots I will be focusing on are Kamen and the air warriors Moray & Stingray. The plan for these bits will be similar to the others, a TMM starting point, contrast glaze over the top and then edge highlight for pop.
The original art for Kamen is very similar to what I have done already, so I will try to work my scheme in where I can. The Air Warriors though are originally yellow, and seeing as I hate yellow and my first attempt failed, I will approach this slightly differently.
Starting off with the basecoat, I added a little Vallejo Metal Air Gold into the Black Metal to have a slightly warmer starting point.
For the next layer I again added gold, this time mixed into the Gun Metal and worked this over the whole model but eying to leave some of the basecoat in the recesses.
Finally I used straight Vallejo Air Metal brass for the final layer. My reason for this is it should give a solid yellow starting point to work up from without turning too green (that’s the plan anyway, this is all experimental)
For Kamen I choose to leave some of the parts without brass to add some variety to the character. Like Neptune he has a lot of extra detail so introducing some variety at this point may help during the next phase as well.
…. If not there’s always the Biostrip
To finish off I gave each model a wash with a very thinned down Umbra ink from Liquitex. This was used to harmonise the metals, add more warmth, and also preshade some of the recesses where armour joints meet.
Day 13...
Final week
Air brushing the Air Warriors was the order of the day. I had a plan in mind but needed to make sure it would work. I had two options, yellow or turquoise, and this decision would dictate the rest of the project…. And if it went wrong I would have made a horrendous gamble.
With that in mind I did 2 things today, firstly I grabbed a test model I had laying around to experiment with, the second was to order more models as backup ??
Experimenting
Grabbing a bit of old plastic model leftover from a previous kit bash (pic at the end) I painted it up roughly the same as the air warriors with a similar TMM base and brass finish.
Over this I used my airbrush to spray 2 Citadel Contrast colours on different sections, Iyanden Yellow on one and Aethematic Blue on the other. Depending how these worked out would help me decide the final scheme for the Air Warriors. I sprayed the yellow first and liked the result, it was a nice warm gold, with the hint of the metallic underneath, but as soon as I sprayed the the blue I loved the result, over the top of the brass it created a lovely green colour which would look great with the rest of the army, similar to them, but different to signify the different type of unit.
With the Aethematic Blue chosen I set to work with the airbrush to lightly spray a couple of thin coats over the bots, trying to make sure it didn’t pool as the brass underlayer was significantly brighter it was less forgiving then the chrome/gunmetal workup I had done previously.
This looked awesome, especially on Kamen which you can see in the following gallery.
The final thing I wanted to do today was to block in some of the grey parts to help break up the bot’s armour and help me to visualise where I would then place the yellow spot colour details. This was done the same as before using a decent opaque coast if P3 Ironhull Grey. Unlike the mud warriors there was significantly less “joint” armour on the Air Warriors, so this was mostly in deep elbow/knee recesses, the face plates, waists, and fingers.
Tomorrow I will start the yellow details, but for now I’m very happy with my progress and the experiment. The bonus is I will also be getting some Atlantican reinforcements in the next couple of days to round out this force for a battle.
Day 14...
Getting the foundations down
Not a huge amount of progress tonight, nothing radical or experimental, just laying the foundations for the next couple of days.
Painting yellow details onto Stingray and Moray needed a few coats to get going. Working both Pro-acryl Golden Yellow and P3 Blazing Ink into the Transparent Yellow over several coats took a fair bit of time. I wanted to concentrate on getting these 2 worked up so I can then give Kamen a bit more attention at the weekend.
The other element I worked on was blacklining. This was achieved by mixing Liquitex Carbon Black ink with Instar Water+ in a 1:3 amount. It shows just how strong the ink is, but the water+ really helped it to flow into the recesses, and as it wasn’t a heavy mix I could easily use a clean brush to lift off or blend in any excess I didn’t want.
Tomorrow I can start to highlight.
Day 15...
7 bots down, 5 days to go
With the foundations layed yesterday today I was able to take the yellow through to its conclusion, working in glazes of blazing ink from P3 into shade, and Scale75 Hykey Yellow to the highlight. To match in with the other bots the Hykey yellow became a dominant hue desaturating the golden yellow and softening the overall look.
Edge highlights for the main armour was again completed with Scale75 Surfer Orc Green, whilst not the best match for the golden tinged green, it helped to bring cohesion with the other bots. Maybe I will switch it up for Kamen, perhaps mixing it with Hykey Yellow could be a possibility.
The grey joints and details like fingers and faces were picked out in Reaper MSP Foggy Grey, and then helped to harmonise and shade with some water+ thinned Dark Tone from Army Painter.
Finally the weapons were given a quick coat of Scale75 Emerald Alchemy before also getting a shade of Dark Tone to quickly increase contrast.
Only thing left to do other than base them is to paint the eye lenses which I will do tomorrow.
For now these bits are done, meaning 7 are completed with only Kamen and Leviathan to finish. 5 days to go.
Day 16...
Kamen coming along
Today I finished up the final details of Stingray and Moray, painting the eyes and adding some more contrast points to weapons with some thinned down Army Painter Dark Tone.
The eye lenses were first painted in Pro-acryl purple, slightly larger than the eye detail to create a bit of surrounding glow, the detail was then painted on wyih Pro-acryl Magenta, and for a little highlight Scale75 Hykey Yellow was mixed into the magenta.
For Kamen, I began to block in the yellow details, with the Pro-acryl and P3 mix as normal. I may have gone a little overboard in picking out these areas, hopefully they won’t look to garish when I add the highlight and shade glazes tomorrow.
I also blacklined a number of details to help make the pop out from the main model. I actually did this before starting the yellow to try and reduce the amount of repainting I have to do when touching up areas. I could have been more careful, but time was not on my side today and I had to make a solid start to be in for a chance to finish him tomorrow, and get Leviathan done as well in the remaining days. Its going to be close