Chaos Warriors for D&D

 Back again after another pause.  I decided to work on some more D&D characters to resharpen the painting skills after the break.

This time the character is an animated suit of armor that is under the control of our wizard and is part of our little band.  We decided her name is Tiffani and she is a gentle giant.  I was commissioned to create a model for her, and so I decided that her plate would look incredibly fierce and intimidating to further the comedic juxtaposition to her personality (she also doesn't speak, so we only get a sense through actions).

I immediately thought of Chaos Chosen Warriors from Warhammer Fantasy (now called Age of Sigmar.. I dunno).  I had fun with it.

I actually worked on 3 concepts.  One with contrast paint, and the other two with different paint schemes.  I was going off some of the examples from the box which looked really good.

I'm not sure which one will be picked as the finalist, but I think there are two strong contenders.

I think the red one is my favorite.  The theme was red and brass and I was really happy with how it turned out, and I also liked the helm.  The practice with red cloaks was a great learning experience.  Red is still really tricky to work with, both Vallejo and Citadel paints are very thin and watery in the middle red hues.

The blue one also turned out pretty great, it kind of had a frost theme going.  I started the armor edging with Vallejo Natural Steel which is quite dark and has a blue tint.  It was a bit too dark and didn't pop visually at a distance, so I went over it again with Vallejo Silver.  The lines are a bit thick on the shield, but it looks pretty good at table top distance.

The contrast model was neglected.  I think contrast is amazing for cloaks, fir, and fabric, which I think is pretty well established.  For the armor, it was tricky getting the black/gray the right shade uniformly, and I'm not sure how to go about highlighting and adding detail/matching color.  So it only took a quarter of the time to do and still came out pretty good, but it doesn't have the same level of detail as the others.  But the fir and cloak look great.  This is definitely the way to go for a horde army of beasts/skin etc (orks, skaven, bugs, etc).

I also painted them disassembled and it worked really well.

DA GOFF ROKKAZ

After a bit of a break for the holidays I took a detour from my WIP chaplain and captain.  I still have to post the D&D models that I finished for everyone in the main campaign that we play, but, our group decided to give the primary DM a bit of a break and do a one-shot.  For this one we allowed any race/class combination and we had some wild ones.

For me, I pretty quickly arrived on a half-orc bard, but with a twist.

I started my 40k collecting in the early 90s as a 9-10 year old.  While it was possible to order from the GW catalogue (and I did this eventually) I wasn't really aware of this at first.  And growing up in the west coast of the United States, there weren't any GW shops nearby (at that time).  So, I was limited to the few blister packs available at Book World and the few hobby stores in my area.  Not a great selection.  But, while I wasn't immediately finding the Space Marines that I was looking for, I did find something that would later become a gem.  Some of my first models were also some of the first that I primed - a series of Orks.  The thinking was to practice and it was good thinking.  Among that first set, however, were 3 that I new I wasn't ready to paint yet, and so they sat primed an waiting for ~30 years.

While back then I felt I couldn't do them justice, now I felt I was ready.  So with just a few weeks before a hard deadline for a wacky one shot D&D run I set out to paint my 3 Ork GOFF ROKKAZ.

(On page 79 of the 1990 Citadel Miniatures catalogue we have the 'GOFF ROK BAND' designed by Kev Adams, so we have an official name, and more importantly something to search for).  I wanted to see some examples of how others had painted them.  While I wanted them to be colorful, I also didn't want to go overboard and have them be too busy and/or look like harlequins instead of Orks.  Also, I wanted them to look like a unified band but still have individual style.  My searches found a few examples, less than I thought, but luckily I found a good one: https://sho3box.com/2014/01/15/goff-rokkerz/

Sho3box did exceptional work with his paint job so I decided to follow it, but with my own twist.  First, because I had a tight deadline, I was going to use contrast paint.  I had 3 colors of green - Creed Camo, Ork Flesh, and Militarum Green, so I decided that each one would have his own skin tone.  I went with the red pants, since red is a good compliment to the green, and then black and metals just like Sho3box.  My other changes were to go with white sneekers, a flame mohawk, more conventional metalic axes, and teeth grillz on 'Ziggy'.  (I stuck with Sho3box's names, except for the front-ork who I call 'Slaaaaash.')

DA GOFF ROKKAZ

SLAAAAASH

ZIGGY

MOSHA

I think they turned out pretty well given the time constraint I had.  Sho3box definitely takes them to the next level with the highlights though, so maybe I'll go back and add more, I didn't have quite the time for that this go around.  In my photos, the models tend to look a bit flatter than they do in person due to the overexposure to get the white background.  The D&D group loved my 'thunder bard' and the band mates (who made a brief appearance as an illusion)  I hope my character 'goes on tour' again sometime.

PS:

I recently discovered the ultimate versions of the GOFF ROKKAZ painted by Louise Sugden (@savage_ork_guy) - These are amazing and I wish I had found them before I painted mine to try and use some of the ideas, but also I probably would have been discouraged from even trying because these are so good.  :)

Chappy 'n Cappy (WIP)

The assault terminators were actually practice for my Terminator Chaplain which is now in progress.  Since I'll be doing a few new things with gold and bronze, I decided to do a classic Mk. 7 Ultramarine Captain simultaneously to test.

Chappy 'n Cappy

Note to self: brushing on Dullcote can ruin a paint job

I think I knew this and then forgot it, so I'm going to immortalize it here to remember (the point of this anyhow).

I was brushing on some dullcote and forgot the rule to just apply and not move it around.  If you do it strips off the paint.  Not usually a problem with spraying it on (since you're not brushing and its drying fast).

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1724477/so-you-want-brush-testors-dullcote

So, almost completely destroyed the paint job on this D&D mini, but luckily I noticed it before too much damage had been done.  I was able to fix it enough where hopefully no one except for me will notice.

Termies: Then and Now

Inspired by some reddit posts earlier this month, I decided to create a few collages of the terminators just to see my progress in the past year or so.  It was quite surprising actually to see how much I have improved.  It's funny too, because at the time I did the first set I thought I was doing a great job, and I'm still proud of them, but really they don't look so great next to the new ones.

But its great to see how the vast majority of 40k hobbyists on reddit encourage each other and help everyone improve, because a painted army is way more fun to play against than an unpainted one.

I also can tell I got a bit better at taking and editing the pictures with the phone.  It does seem the latest ones are a bit washed out though.

Assault Termie GIFs

The Assault Terminators are complete but I wanted to continue with the promised follow-up post with time-lapse gifs showing their incremental progress.

The images below span from approximately June to October 2019 starting from just after finishing the base coats.  They might cycle a bit fast.  Next time I might make the gif have a longer delay.

My techniques are continuing to improve, I feel I did much better with the white this time, but still I'm working on using thinner and thinner paint.  It always seems the paint is really hard to control when it is thin, because it gets runny, but it seems that is why the pros use the larger sized brushes?  Still more practice is needed.  Nevertheless, from 2-3 feet away my models look incredible and so I think I should be good to work on my Terminator Chaplain, but perhaps I'll simultaneously work on an old Captain HQ (which I have in duplicate) to test run things first.

I should note that in this picture the two terminators with TH+SS combos in the back row were not stripped and had thick coats of paint that had ruined their detail a bit.  I had purchased them off eBay this way, and rather than deal with harsh chemicals, and mostly due to laziness, I decided to see how well my paint job would hide it.  With the camera you can definitely tell (which is why I didn't take any close-ups of those two), but from a distance they look fine.

I think in the future to take better time lapse pictures for any more than one model I might mark their positions on the paper that I use for a backdrop.  Sorry that they jump around, but the whole point of this blog is to document things I learn as I go.

Speaking of learning - on reddit I just now ran into a link to painting tutorials by Darren Latham, they're really good and he has some on painting faces, power swords, and black armor - all very relevant things for me.  I think this is the next step for my personal progression - and specifically how diluted the paint is he works with and how he applies it.

Assault Termies Complete!

Just completed my Assault Terminators and I'm very happy with the results.  Maybe in my next post I'll compare the progress I've made since the (standard) Terminator squad a year ago, but even I was amazed.

These represent some of the first models that I've painted that weren't originally bought years ago, but instead purchased much later on ebay to fill in my 'classic' Rogue Trader era collection.  They're all done (note the lead picture was taken just before the final step of adding silver highlights after the dullcoat - forgot to retake that picture, will fix later).

I do have a Terminator Chaplain (hint as to next project) which is a bit beyond the classics but fills in my all termie HQs, and so these models were picked up to go with him and also be a practice run.

Thus explains the color scheme.  However, just like my red Ultramarine Terminator squad, these black Assault Termies are veterans who get to adorn their armor with an alternate color (says me).  I was never a fan of the very rigid color schemes that they pushed people into.  Anyway, there's examples of this with Deathwing, and I came up with this plan way before there were such in-depth codices, its just taken this long to implement it.

So I wanted to get black power armor practice which means it was time to learn a new skill: edge painting.  I found the Giovanni Di Lena tutorial and went to work.  Also, I needed upgrades which I posted about earlier - the improved brushes, wet palette, and most importantly, the magnifying glasses.  It really helped to be able to see the details.  While the steady hand and figuring out how to work with the various colors is always a constant struggle that you can really only learn through experience, just seeing what your doing is surprisingly important!

Also, the excel spreadsheet really helped me to focus on getting work done every night rather than sitting around for half the time (no joke) trying to remember the plan.  I highly recommend these things.  It took almost exactly 75 hours to paint all 10 (doesn't include assembly or priming).  For comparison, the Librarian was 12.6 hours, so adding models as you might expect can increase efficiency a bit.

I didn't have a pot of Dark Reaper, so I used 50/50 VMC Basalt Gray and VMC Black, it worked fine I think, but we'll see next time (I got some of the Dark Reaper now).

Also, this was the first time I was successful at lettering and the text on the purity seals with paint on a brush rather than using the micropoint pen.  Again quite a step up.  I lucked out here and got all 3 letters on the first try.

In a continuation post I'll show some WIP pictures as they progressed through various stages.  To get the extra white backgrounds I bumped up the exposure on the pictures a bit, which looks more washed out on the PC as compared to the phone screen.  I'll have to play around with it more.