Colour Test for Citi-Def

Citi-Def are the National Guard of Mega-City One, a cross between an organised Peoples Militia and gun-toting lunatics with access to high-grade firepower. They're often portrayed as the halpless cannon-fodder of whatever crisis is engulfing the city at the time. Naturally I wanted a daft, cartoony scheme for them, which would be unique to their particular Hab-Block. This guy is the test figure for my Cit-Def force (although they'd also be good for Necromunda or the like), a resolute defender of Howard Overman Block. 

I should be able to production-line these guys through once i'm happy with them, as they're not that complex a figure, and after that I expect to go back to my Blood Ravens. I'm actually quite close to a half-way decent 1500 point force, although if -as the rumours indicate - the StormBrick becomes available to Vanilla Marines, I'll have to get myself one, just for the fun of painting it. 

Quick 'n' Dirty Orks

So, as I think I've mentioned previously, my eldest has a growing Orky Horde and whilst he's happy splodging paint around on them I've nicked a few to paint up myself. Now other than messing about with some of the AoBR Boyz way back when I started painting again.

So I've swiped some Burna Boyz, and gone for a quick approach that is fast and understates a lot of the detail. Because the thing that I've noticed is that Ork figures are covered in straps and furs and stuff, which can make them look very cool, but I can also imagine that it will get quite frustrating for a novice as it hugely multiplies the number of passes they need to make on it. So for these guys, sod that, and I've tried to keep the colour blocks simple and aim for a "straight to the tabletop" look.

This means - body colour is blue, leather gloves and boots are brown, and the metal work is tin bitz. Where its on the outside of the model (ie front and centre to the eye) I've added highlighting and detail work, but really what I want to do it give them back to him and say "this is what you should be aiming at" without them being so detailed he'll be defeated before he starts. I want to encourage the idea that if you just get the paint "between the lines" as it where you can do a lot with a simple basecoat - wash - highlight. I can save the fancier stuff for my Blood Ravens! ;-)

So they look like this:

All Your Bases...

So I've been having more fun with powders, this time on the basing work I've done on my Terminators. I will probably stick up some long shots of the completed figures at some point, but my toy of the moment is definitely the weathering powders, and they are great on basing material. All my Blood Ravens have so far have been based on a sort of rocky, deserty gravel material, and the larger bases for the Terminators just meant a little more details. This time it's rocks and the odd hit of grass tufts, to give the effect of a marginal scrubland, and powders have been used to blend the rocks and the lower legs of the marines in to the surface.

Anyway, here they are:

Oh the weather outside is frightful...

One of the things I've been meaning to have a play with for a while is Weathering Powders. They come highly recommended by all sorts of people, and look like a fun and different way to achieve a "look" on a model. My chosen victim was the Leman Russ I got for xmas, which got a good lot of work done on it last weekend and then again on Wednesday night when i was in on my own.

It's important to note that this is really, really messy. I spread a lot of newspaper to do this own, but even so it went all over my hands, clothes and so on, so be warned! But lets let the pictures do the talking!

We started here - painting done and a bunch of normal scratch/dent weathering applied, as well as some wash to darken down the recesses in the tracks and around the hull plates.

Rust! Actually i think this is slightly over-applied on the tracks but it's a lovely effect overall. I think i was expecting to be able to spread it around more easily from the initial application site, but I quickly learned that i got effects from dabbing the brush around rather than using it like a "normal" paint application. 

And then a mix of soot and dark earth scattered around the place. I should probably do a sides-shot (though you can see the Chimera hull in the background) so show it's heavier around the base. I was expecting it to be heavier still, actually, hence the less-subtle-than-it-could-be scratches on the plow that i expected to be more heavily obfuscated.

that said, i've falled slightly in love with weathering powders - they're a ton of fun to apply, have a really nice effect and I'm off to try them on a couple of figures next...

Power Swords, Redux

Right, so with a bit of time on my hands last night I've had another play with some power swords.

First up, the Imperial Guard officer:

I wanted to see what a green sword would look like, and a many of the "sabre" like swords i've seen done well have a sort of secondary glow around the curved areas, which is what i'm going for here. It's a little inelegant, and works better if you squint, but i think it gets the shape and general effect.

After that, I went back to Captain Firey-Sword and, inspired by some work over at Smurfs in Space, redid him.

This turned out a little better, i think, and certainly more elegant than the previous effort. I've tried to maintain a bit of fluidity to the effect by "feathering" the colours along the leading and trailing edges of the blade.

Overall i think i may be getting past my fear of Power Sword effects, don't you think?

Fun with Power Swords

One of the techniques I see around the place that makes me most intimidated by other peoples abilities is the effects on Power Weapons. Loads of models use them, and there seems to be lots of ways of doing them, but they're such a striking effect when done well that at the same time "feels" very hard to get right. I've had a few stabs at it (so it to speak) so in lieu of any actual painting content I thought I'd share. 

My first attempt was my Imperial Guard officer. Well, I say "first attempt" but i mean "first attempt that still exists on a model". Its pretty basic, just some layered colour moving up to the edge of the blade.

This is actually the third of fourth covering of paint on this guy's sword, which can't do it's edge any favours in a fight. Anyway, heartened by this I got confident for the Lord Commissar, read some online tutorials, and managed what I think is a pretty good Lightning Effect. 

But the general look of a full blade still eludes me. When I finally bullet and redid my AoBR Marine Captain, I wanted to do something interesting on his sword, and after some mucking about ended up with a firey effect like this: 

I think its a pretty good blended fire effect, but I'm still not sure it's wholly appropriate for a Power Sword effect, which should be more "glowey" and less like it's actually just on fire. So this weekend I've been messing about with the Termies consigned to the paint test bin, and the best effort so far is this guy: 

Which I rather like. Not sure about the colour; it's a little cold but the technique may not be at the level of a lot of work you see around the place but I'm confident enough in it to stick up a picture on the internet, so that's progress! 

The blue arm, by the way, is me practicing to get a blue-grey colour for a Librarian - more in line with the scheme used in Dawn of War over the brighter blue you often see. 

Space Marine Paint Tests

So, the "stars" of the 40k universe are clearly the Space Marines. They're big, they're shouty, they have ridiculously big guns and even bigger shoulderpads, and from a painters point of view probaby get the lions share of "love" in terms of variety and fun figures. When I was restarting I forked out for the Assault on Black Reach set, because it comes with a load of (uncustomisable) figures that I could practice with. And indeed I did; some were OK, some i made a right hash of. More importantly they were all Ultramarines, who are terribly, terribly dull.

So if I want to paint up some more SM stuff, I need to settle on a chapter, or more importantly, settle on a colour scheme that it fun to work on and looks good, as it's not like these guys are going to see a lot of action, and even if they are, I play for fun, not min-maxing whatever rule is broken at the moment. So all the Ultras went in a big bath of paint stripper (Fairy Power Spray, to be precise) and came out clean and new, ready for me to repaint in some novelty colours.

I should emphasis that as paint tests, these are a little rough around the edges.