Tau Piranha: COMPLETED

OK, so after some wailing an gnashing of teeth I pretty much just sucked it up and went back to the Piranha, and finished it off as best I could. I think it's fine overall, but I still feel slightly annoyed with not being able to realise the original plan. Also, you don't half get bored of painting drones quickly.

Anyway, pics after the cut.

Back to the Drawing Board...

So, this is the Piranha as it stood yesterday with the main colour areas blocked out. As you can see, I've gone for a large amount of white (currently grey here) so as not to overwhelm the model with the Electric Blue look. and i was pretty happy with it.

And last night I got some time to work on building up the white areas and the bloody thing looks dreadful. It may be the quality of the paint, as i try to run down my GW paints before opening my newer Vallejo set, but more i think its the technique - painting light grey and then layering up to white works great for small areas on battlesuits and helmets but here it just emphasises the grey and the whole thing looks, well, tatty.

blah.

so, new plan - bring on a heavier blue on the wings, keep the white striping on the hull and and add white stripe markings on the wings. We'll have to see how that goes, but i'm pretty disgruntled with it at the moment!

Painting Table Update May 2012

Well, its that time again when I run out of immediate projects and cast around for what to do next. Since finishing up my second XV8 i've been back to the one i painted up last year and re-emphasised it's highlights so it matches with its newer, shinier comrade. It's not as good a job, I'm afraid, after a bit of a fight with the paint-mixing-process but still an improvement, and as ever, I've probably learned more from the mess than if it had just worked out OK.

Now with Blur-O-Vision! The really observant will note that I've also swapped his shoulder gun for a Missile Pod to keep him consistent.

Anyway, this leaves me without anything actually built up to paint, but this morning I picked up a parcel from the mail containing both a Tau Piranha and a set of Ork Killa Kans to reinforce my sons horde. The former is to try out the blue-and-white scheme on a vehicle frame, in case I want to stick with Tau, and the out of the latter I'll probably swipe at least one of the Kans for my own amusement as I've not really had a go at anything Orky yet.

After that, well taking a break from Blood Ravens has been fun, but I may be heading back to those bad boys again...possibly for a Force Commander and Command Squad.

Tau XV8 Crisis Suit COMPLETED

Right then, done.

Bit of a change of style on this guy, actually. With the Marines I've been painting I've gone for deliberately muted highlights; enough to bring out the detail but nothing to strong, with the intent to give them a worn, slightly tired effect to represent the old, but well-cared-for equipment they possess. The Tau, well the Tau are something else. On top of the aforementioned chopping and reposing his arms (which i think looks really good on the finished model!) I've gone for a different paint style - much stronger highlights shading in an attempt to replicate a slightly cel-shaded look that fits the Tau's clearly anime-inspired designs. It's not perfect, and a little rough in places, but on the whole I think its a good fit and as I do more Tau I'll stick to this design.

Pictures after the cut.

WIP: Drone-ing On

After having fun painting up the base, the main body of my re-posed XV8 is slowly receiving base-coats and mid tones. Currently he looks something like this...

...which is to say slightly like a blue clown suit. The legs and feet have a solid mid-tone on them now, the chest needs another pass to solidify the colour and the rest just has the dark blue base on. It's not terribly exciting at the moment, but if nothing else i think this brings out the pose a little more than the earlier "all black" shot.

What I have achieved is finishing his drones. These have a lot more dark blue on them, as when I have a stab at a full-on Tau Vehicle in this scheme I expect I will want it to be darker overall, as the light blue/white may be slightly too bright.  So here they are:

Any Tau army must swarm with these little guys, I have six already!

First Base

Some months back an article on the always excellent From the Warp talked about painting bases first on a model, not last. Now I've always treat bases as a little bit of an afterthought - sure they need to look good, and I've always tried to make sure the figure is blended into the setting and it looks like I've made some effort there, but it's never been a focus for me. With this XV8 I wanted it to have a more interesting base, so as you can see from the previous post its striding over a load of Imperial Rubble.

Now I'm not sure that the base comes out well on the earlier pictures, but taking after Ron's suggestion I thought it may be worth tackling it first, especially the plate elements where I wanted to do a fair but of dry-brushing to get the metal effect I wanted. So a couple of hours work later, the base is mostly done, and looks like this:

I'm quite pleased with it, but comments, as ever, appreciated.

Baby's First Conversion

I like the Tau, for all they've not had a new Codex since forever, and their kit line needs a revamp, and from reading around the web, they're a bit of a forgotten army at the moment all around. I played them a lot in Dawn of War, which is what got me back into 40k a few years back, and whilst I've not painted much Tau since getting the painting bug I've done some Fire Warriors and a solitary XV8 in a nice electric-blue-and-white scheme. I especially like the XV8 family, but my big frustration with them is that the figure itself look stocky and a bit gormless, compared to how dynamic the battlesuits are supposed to be in comparison to their Imperial counterparts.

Now, the other thing I've not done yet is any sort of conversion work, so my desires all sort of rolled together. After hacksawing part of a finger, and getting blood all over the kitchen, I have a reposed XV8 ready to go. I'm quite pleased with him, even I've not actually changed that much.

On trying to create the right look

After reshuffling of the bookcases, my figures now have a home up on some display shelves - the ones worthy of display, at least - and its let me take stock of the three small yet increasing forces I'm building up. One of the things that I'm keen to do is to keep a separate "look" for each of these armies, other then simply a colour scheme choice. This is probably best emphasised by looking at the three "walker" platforms I have so far got finished.

Left to Right: Blood Raven Dreadnought, IG Sentinel, Tau XV8

One of the advantages of being a short-attention-span afflicted dabbler is that you end up trying different things as I'm not frantically trying to paint an army for tabletop use. So each of these three guys has a slightly different effect on them, which I think is moderately successful. The XV8 was painted to be ultra "clean" - I spend pass after pass on him smoothing out the colours as best I can and whilst his legs are dirtied up to put him the base, the rest of him has no wearing or chips or scoring to maintain that high-tech look I always picture the Tau having.

The Sentinel is pretty much the opposite - I don't see IG machines getting a lot of time in the body shop and much like their crews I think they get kept in the field pretty much until they fall apart. So the Sentinel is chipped and worn and streaked with dirt and oil; quite by chance I found that dry-brushing back over the unit stripe on it's "cheek" makes it look like the paint is wearing off back to the basecoat, and generally the poor bugger looks like he needs a rest.

Finally the Dread is sort of half-way between the two - the colour is built up of multiple thin layers from the edge inwards, so the flat sections of the hull are noticably darker in the middle even before I added the edge highlights. Its left him looking slightly worn and old without being covered in chips and scratches, as broadly speaking I suspect Marine gear is much better looked after than its IG equivalents.

And these chaps are the equivalent Infantry, with the same general principles in mind. Note the Guardian's Lasgun being the "wrong" colour for his urban camo, as fluff-wise I'm not sure the Munitorium is up to reissuing a whole regiment's weapons on re-deployment, whereas again the Fire Warrior is all nicely colour co-ordinated.

It does make me think that the next big skill I need is better photography though...

Crisis, What Crisis?

After a lot of fiddling with colour schemes I finished the Electric Tau scheme XV8. The original plan had a lot of Dark Blue, with the Electic-and-White only used for things like the shoulders and bits of the chest plate. Big problem - it looked rubbish. So back to the drawing board I decided to stick with a Ice Blue Base and improvise around it. And you know, I rather like it.

Forever with Electric Tau

I'm still a little unsure of the Tau's placement in the 40k fluff - clean, superadvanced Anime aliens don't quite gel into the Grand Gothic Insanity of 40k, although at least they aren't the Necrons. On the other hand, clean superadvanced Anime Aliens do make for some lovely models, and I couldn't resist some Fire Warriors. I was going to paint them with white armour but the Electric Blue seems to work a lot better.

This guy is supposed to be chucking some sort of Grenade, but it really, really looks like he's just playing Air Guitar on his Rifle...

  

No squad would be complete without a Shas'Ui, who at least makes the effort to fit in with the traditions of the 40k universe by refusing to wear a hat, so that you know he's harder than everyone else

And finally, this is the whole happy squad.