Been a while...

Summer break is upon us and I've finally had some time to work on projects.

Just another marine, he's not perfect but I feel like they are getting easier to work on.  I've bought some of the new Khorne base paint spray and have been using it to basecoat the models.  It's cut down on the time it takes to assemble these guys.  Best of all, it means I don't have to sit there and apply coat after coat of red in order for them to be ready to paint.

I'm finishing the bases right now and will post again once the models are totally finished.

Destiny Video Uploaded

Sweet!

I have no desire to talk during a video.  I know that's pretty much a death kneel to anything I do on YouTube, but if I do speak it'll end up being worthless rabble.  Eventually I want to start twitch streaming (when we can pay for faster upload speeds), and will at that time talk to the audience.  Until then, the videos will either be silent or only have my team mates talking.

This video was a heroic run-through of one of Destiny's story missions, done on Heroic mode.  It was a fairly simple run altogether.  Tonight we are planning on running Vault of Glass for the first time as a clan.  If all pans out, I'll record the video and upload it next week.  None of us have run it, but we are hoping for a full clear over the course of the next two days.

-Cj

Sisters of Battle model

Ran by the local game store the other day and they had a metal Sisters of Battle Adeptus Sororitas model for sale.  The faction is not that popular and as a result you don't see them that often.  Also, they do not have a plastic range yet, so they are a little harder to come by.  This one happened to be an extra from a special order the store owner had made.

Adeptus Sororitas are one of my favorite lines of models due to the odd nature of the faction.  An all-woman religious fighting force out to protect humanity.  But in true 40k style they end up the joke of many stories.  Honestly, I wish they'd hire Karen Travis or some other kick-butt author to clean the slate and write a decent back story for the army.  At the very least they could clean up the story in the codex.

Rumors on the net however are that GW doesn't know what to do with the range, and as such has not made any changes to the models.  With the recent feminist/anti-feminist movements going on, it was probably wise of them to back off.  My hope however is that one day they will dust off the models and polish the faction a bit.  I would love to get my hands on some plastic models

My best project yet.

Man it's been a crazy two weeks!

We brought this little one home from the hospital at the end of last week.  She is an absolute doll!  I can't think of any other project I've written about here or elsewhere that even compares to our daughter.

She's not perfect, but no one is born into this world perfect.  We ended up having to leave her in the hospital for an additional two days, which caused many tears.  Her infection score was too high, so in an effort to get it down they kept her on antibiotics for a few days.  She also was having problems eating.  Thankfully the nursing staff was amazing and helped us get her fed and taken care of.

Hopefully I'll get back on track with some more projects soon, but with the amount of both homework and regular work, combined with a new baby, I'm not sure when I'll get another post done.
-Cj

My videos

I actually have a like on YouTube.

It started yesterday when I noticed I had 50 views on my videos.  50!  I'm still reeling about it!  They all occurred on Sunday for whatever reason.  When I checked today, I noticed that someone from Greece had liked a video.  YAY!

Really, when I look at these videos, I wonder what there is to like.  It's just the campaign footage from Halo Wars with no commentary!  Yet there it is, one like!

I've got a blog post on Destiny I need to finish, but it probably won't get done until Thursday or Friday when I get some more time to play.  It basically goes over the public perception of Destiny and likens the game to a trip to the mall.  Also, I have a usb cable coming in tomorrow that should allow me to record destiny game footage onto my computer and upload that.  Hopefully by grabbing the latest game play and posting it to YouTube I can gain more subscribers.

Video Recording

Success!

Yesterday I played around with Adobe's Creative Cloud Premiere software, and I was able to get a video that had been recorded a few weeks ago using an Elgato Game Camputre HD processed and uploaded to YouTube.  It's video from a recent game of Halo Wars that a good friend and I played.  Up to this point when I would upload the video from the Elgato into Premiere the audio track for the video would end up around 10 seconds late.  Going online, it turned out that because the Elgato outputs the video as .mp4, you have to enable file extension view in the folder options of your control panel and rename the .mp4 to .mov.  I don't know why it works like that, but after doing so the video was able to process and sync audio and video just fine in Premiere.

After figuring that out, I started the video processing, and quickly decided that I need to invest in a better heat sink and fan system.  My processor ended up maxed out and was over 70 degrees Celsius for about an hour.  As far as I can tell there was no damage to the processor, but sustained activities at those temperatures are not good for a computer.

Another odd thing, after finishing the video Premiere decided to dump it back out as a .mp4.  I didn't think much of it until I attempted to load that video to YouTube and it failed.  Same trick however, after changing the video to .mov and trying the upload again, it worked like a charm.

The thumbnail for the video was another cool trick.  In the Game Capture software I found a screen shot from the video I liked and clicked on the screen shot button near the play button of the software.  After clicking there, the screen shot was put on the desktop.  The picture was actually too large for YouTube, so a quick wash through Photoshop to change the file extension got the picture to the right size.

From here I have a few more video projects to add to my channel.  The video for mission 5 and 6 of Halo Wars needs trim'd and posted to YouTube.  Tu1kas and I still want to finish off the campaign and post those videos.  Additionally, I need to troubleshoot and figure out why I can't get mic audio to play through the Xbox.

Lastly, this morning I decided that it would be good to record some of Gruuler's (my gamer tag in xbox live) play through of Destiny, Bungie's latest game.  It comes out on September 9th and should provide some great game play moments to record and share.  Hopefully as I keep at recording and postings of videos, I'll learn a few more in's and out's of the process to speed up content uploads.

-Cj

Weapon placement on models

Well, I messed up my Land Raider.

When you play with vehicles, you measure from the barrel of the weapon for distance to target.  If the target is within the max range of the weapon, then you get to fire at it.  While making the vehicle, I followed the instructions that have you set the turret in the back window slot on the side, without realizing that you could put it in the front bay as well.  Since I was going with the heavy flamer variant, this means I've lost two inches from my frontal range due to the weapon being placed two inches farther back on the hull.

Honestly, it could make a difference if/when I play.However by moving it back you gain additional coverage along your side.  Since the weapon has a 45 degree arc this means that models approaching from the side will be flamed before they can get close.

One other thought, since I wanted to run the Centurion setup, it probably would have been better to set up the Hurricane bolter variant since the tank will be staying a ways away from danger, lessening the impact of the heavy flamer.  Since I've already set up a turret, it's off to ebay to see if I can't find someone selling spare side turrets.
-Cj

Land Raiders and Ruby

Everyone needs a good tank.

We sold some more Magic cards recently and I had enough money from the cards that my wife let me purchase some more Warhammer 40k sets.  Now, I know that I don't have much time during the day to play Warhammer.  There is a store about 10 minutes away that hosts games, so I'm hoping that some Saturdays I can slip away and play.

This is not a new situation however, since our last place was located 10 minutes away from a hobby store and I still did not get the time to go play.  In reality, I just like the models.  I never end up with the time or energy needed to go play.  Plus, for some strange reason the lighting in stores makes me sick.

Anyways, this one is a Land Raider Redeemer.  Well, at least parts of one.  They are categorized as the heaviest tanks my Space Marines can field.  They are armed fairly well, and armored even better.  While this tank does come in 3 variants, I prefer the Redeemer as it comes equipped with duel heavy flamers, a great close combat weapon designed to burn through infantry.  You can also equip it with a Multi-melta, a great anti-vehicle weapon for a tank that can take on both armor and troops.  The draw back is that it looses some capacity, down to 12 from 16 that you get from another Land Raider variant.  That variant comes with hurricane bolters, a good weapon that boasts a farther range, but weak enough that I'm not overly fond of it.

With the amount of capacity this variant of Land Raider comes with, you can pack quite a punch inside it's thick armored hull.  That's 12 normal models for Space Marines, 6 bulky, or 4 very bulky troops.  That's enough troops to cause problems for anything that gets in the land raiders way.  Since it is an assault vehicle, any troops inside of it can charge out of the vehicle and assault the next turn, ensuring troops get close enough to make a difference.  Terminators, some of the nastiest assault units in the Space Marine list, can assault right out of this tank.  Centurions, a new unit that boast incredible firepower, last much longer if you pack them inside this can.  Move them out, and order them out to pop any armored foe that gets in your way.

Points wise, this is a huge investment, so it's not something I'll take against every list.  The centurion setup alone runs 600 pts, a massive amount when compared to other solutions that give you the same level of firepower.  In addition, this setup can be countered fairly easily if you can disable the tank.  Still, it's something I'd love to try against my friend who runs Tau.

Anyways, that's the latest 40k news from me.  Ruby development is coming along, but today it got about 3 times more complicated than planned.  I still will be attempting to learn Ruby on Rails for the next few months, but now I've found that it's not one, but 4 languages (Ruby, Rails, CSS, HTML) I will need to master.  Shoot.

-Cj

Ruby on Rails

Well, schools out for the next week and a half, and it's been nice.  However, we've been so busy with moving into our new place that I haven't had any time to work on models.

My new pet project during this school break has been Ruby on Rails development.  My poor wife, she has to put up with me switching hobbies every few months!  It's a little different this time around, as the attempt with RoR is to hopefully design a better website and blog for all my mutterings.  I know, I know, I hardly write or post anything these days.  The goal with this project is to give me a unified platform through which I can post videos to Youtube, blog, and collect and make available URLS that I come across in my hobbies.  In essence, i want to learn a business skill that's sell able, that will also cross all my different experiences into one unified site.

What a Year

I hadn't realized how long it's been since I posted on here.  Life's been really crazy this year.  Early on in the year, we found out we were expecting and I spent the first 3 months of 2014 wondering what the heck I had gotten myself into.  Eventually my panic and depression gave way to optimism and hope, and in two months our baby girl is expected to arrive!

I've thought a lot about how this is going to affect our lives.  The first year of my daughters life is going to be filled with me attending school and missing out on a lot of important events.  It saddens me to think that I will miss her first word, her first step, and a multitude of other firsts.  But there is a trade off there, one that I can't avoid.  Either I put the time into school, to get a better life for our family, or stay for those moments.  But I can't help but feel some level of sadness at the thought that I will not be very involved for a while.

Thoughts from there start turning to the lack of time for hobbies, gaming, and everything else I like to do.  Those actives are distractions in our lives, sure, but they are still a part of who I am.  I have several projects however that I can maintain for the time being, things to keep me distracted.  Even in the midst of a busy schedule, you still find time to painting and game.  One of my cooler purchases this past year was an Elgato Game Capture HD device that I am intent on using to produce videos and content from new and old video games.  I'll link to those Youtube videos once I get a good collection up.

I'll leave you with this painting of a Space Marine Captain, one of the limited edition releases for now.  The few white spots on his armor have been touched up since this photograph was taken, and he has now become my official showpiece.  Besides, this is my hobby blog after all, 

-Cj

Happy New Years!

Happy New Years everyone!

Jessica and I got talking about the blog last night on our way to a party, and I realized it had been a while since I had blogged.  I got to thinking and figured this would be a good opportunity to write about some of the games and what not I had played this last year, and some thoughts on them.  Because I don't have much time now, I think I'll start off with X-Com and try to use time throughout the next few days to write several blog posts

X-Com: Enemy Unknown

So this game hands down ended up taking the most of my gaming time this year.  I've clocked about 100 hours into it, which may seem like a lot of time, but when you factor in the 5 college classes, getting married, and working full time, it seems like even more.  Yikes!

What drew me into this game was the science fiction setting of aliens attacking earth.  Events start out at about the time we are in now and take place over the course of the next few months to few years.  Each month you gain money from countries that you offer protection from abductions.  You provide early warning assists in the form of satellites, each one guarding a particular country.  Get enough satellites over a region and you gain some sort of bonus including quicker interrogations of captured aliens and cheaper upgrades.  You use the income resources to purchase equipment for your soldiers and expansions to your base.

Research takes place after you defeat your first aliens and includes researching different devices, like strange alloys and power sources.  Biological research leads to interrogations of alien subjects, which give bonus' of their own, usually a decreased research time on different weapon, armor, and other research paths.  Research speed is dictated by the number of researchers you have working for you, which you can gain more of through completion of mission assignments and from countries you protect.

Missions are fun and tactical, involving a turn based system where you issue squad orders, and then the aliens get to issue their own.  This can lead to some really bad situations, for instance if the random map generator decides to place tons of enemy's right where your troops spawn, your in for a really bad time.  This leads to two complaints of mine, the first being that the spawn system is a bit bugged, and secondly that the random number generator is in fact not random at all.  I should take that back, it is semi random, but it's a seed generator that weighs each action you take in planning out the next action of the AI.  So, if you save your game and then shoot at an alien, you will always get the same result if you decide to reload the game and shoot at him again.  If you reload the game, then have a soldier move, you will get a new seed and thus a different outcome on your shooting.  This can lead as well to some interesting situations, like if you reload a turn before and complete your actions in the exact same pattern, then the aliens on their turn will move the same and shoot the exact same.

However, aside from the bugs, I really did enjoy the game.  The tactical nature of the turn-based combat system really makes this game shine.  The nature of character deaths as well adds a unique spin on the genre.  If you loose a squad member during a firefight, they are gone for good.  Survive, and they gain experience levels unlocking new power ups and abilities.  This ends up giving you quite a the incentive to have your soldiers survive, and makes it personal when they die.

Every now and then you'll find X-Com on Steam for under $10, like at the time of this writing.  If your looking for a great tactical shooter, I'd recommend picking this one up ASAP!

-Cj

Progress

Just thought I'd take a picture and share the status of this project.  I need to spend some time on it and fill in some of the white areas, but honestly I'm really proud of the progress on this model. 

I'm really proud of how the bases are coming out.  The base was done in the same style I've talked about before.  A layer of Armageddon dust, dry-brushed with Ubshanti (I'm sure it's spelled wrong) bone, and washed with Agrax Earthshade.  The outside is layered with a light brown, which blends the whole concoction together.  Some static grass later and you end up with a really pretty base.

I've got another type of grass I need to add to it, but at this point after I've polished up some of the smaller details on this model I'm going to add the head, left arm, and backpack.  I'm still hunting for an appropriate mace for this character, but have my eye on something that looks really good.

-Cj

Recent Projects

Been pretty busy lately, but I thought I'd throw up a pic of a current project for you to enjoy.  I played a few games of Zone Moratlis a few weeks ago, and during that time the guy I played with showed me the Forgeworld stats for a named space marine character from the Exorcists.  I decided that such a model deserved a place in my army, and as such purchased a Lord Executioner sans head to model him with.

I'm really happy so far with the results.  The blue on the ropes helps out a ton, and the grey on top of black that I used for the buckles turned out a lot prettier than I was expecting.

-Cj

A tournament!

So I entered a tournament!

Mind Games held a 1000pts tournament today.  My wife was going to a football game (we are a messed up couple) so I decided to skip out and go play Warhammer 40k!  It also helped that she doesn't have a ticket for me, but we won't get into that.  For this tournament, I took 1000pts of Tau.  The list comprised of:

1. Tau Commander: Fusion blaster, missile pod, shield generator, iridium armor, stimulant injector.

2. Riptide:  Ion blaster, smart missile system, stimulant injector, velocity tracker.

3. Riptide: Heavy burst cannon, fusion blaster, advanced targeting system, stimulant injector.

4. Fire warrior team w/Devilfish. (6)

5. Fire warrior team. (6)

6. Pathfinder team w/2 ion rifles. (9)

My theory with the game was first, big guns = dead models, and taking two riptides seemed like the best choice.  The heavy weapons gave me some flexibility in taking out targets, and the heavy burst cannon plus pathfinder teams meant I could do some serious damage.

Game 1: Vs. Space Wolfs

Okay, repeat after me.  DO NOT WALK SPACE MARINES ACROSS THE BOARD!  That's a little harsh, but the way this game worked is he had 3 tactical squads footslogging across the board along with a dreadnought and speeder.  I felt bad when I looked at the list, but what can you do?  Game 1 came down to the first turn when I wiped one squad of tactical marines with his psycher off the table.  This particular guy had a lance that removed a model on a failed initiative roll as well as a shoot-anywhere-beam-of-death weapon.  Having two riptides, I knew that with my low initiative values I would be loosing a guy a turn so the psycher became first target.  I passed the turn having killed off the psycher and the rest of the group whom were standing out in the open (missing in above picture, they were just to the right of that tactical squad in the middle).  From there it became an academic game of wipe a unit a turn until there was only his speeder left.

Total: 1-0, 9 pts earned.

In all honesty, this was a rough match up for this guy, and he ended up not winning any games.

Game 2: Vs. Eldar

Wrathknights are tough.  The above picture is the state of the board upon game ending.  Simply put, this game was based around killing off his troops, toughness 6 models with 4++ saves and ignoring the walkers.  Even that ended up being a pain, and by the end I had only killed 8 of the buggers.  8!  Meanwhile his wraith knights had a field day with my riptides and troops, and in the end I lost this one 2-1 in-game points.  He got first blood, and I was broken (a game rule the store uses).  I had broken him (under the pt values we were using).  In retrospect, I was unbroken, and so was he, so it should have only been 1-0 his favor.

1-1, 1 pt earned.

If I could change how I played, I would have changed one move where I dumped my firewarriors close to his troops, and instead would have pushed them back towards an objective for the tie.  This guy ended up in 4th place, earning $25 for how nice his models looked.  And they looked really good!

Game 3: Vs. Tau

Alright!  I figured I had an easy win here since most of his army was kroot and firewarriors and old broadsides.  Here's what the board looked like at the start:

I was set to run my riptides up the ally's between the center building and the two on my flank.  Guess again, I suppose, since he seized the initiative!  Player turn one ended up with him blasting my left riptide with 20 sniper rounds and every other heavy weapon he had.  It had one wound left when an failed overcharge, failed armor save, and failed feel no pain gave him the first blood point.  From there it ended up turning into a slug fest, with smart missiles killing kroot from the devil fish and the riptide slowly advancing forward under constant sniper and railshot rounds.  His army kept on the riptide, eventually bringing it down in a hail of 12 S6 ap2 plasma shots, more than enough to finish off the tide with ease.  My commander deep struck behind enemy lines, but that didn't end up mattering much because he really wasn't able to down anything important back there except distract all the heavy weapons.  By the end of the game, both warlords were alive but he outscored me 7-4

1-2, 4 pts earned.

Him seizing the initiative totally cost me the game.  Otherwise I could have boosted my shields up to 3++ on both tides and walked forward in a path of destruction, preventing myself from taking the game killing wounds.  Absolutely nothing you can do to change the result of this one however, so there will be no loosing sleep over it.

So thus having earned a total of 14 pts, I found myself in 5th place.  1st through 3rd ended up in the money, and 4th won best painted.  Placing 5th out of 9 players made me feel pretty good, and I hope to get the chance to play in some more tournaments in the future!

-Cj

Marrige

Well I got married.  Isn't she adorable???  It's been a long month, and we are still not finished getting things straightened out, but it's also been an amazing time.  As such, I've had NO time to do any meaningful painting or writing.  I hope to have a blog post up on another painting project soon.

-Cj

Painting Tau

Since I haven't had computer access at home for a while, I've been doing a lot of painting.  I don't have any step by step pictures, but I figured it would be good to update the blog with the progress of this little pretty!  I picked him up a short time after the Tau update to 6th edition but haven't spent much time painting tau up until recently.  The yellow paint scheme came about from watching GW's main website where a person had posted some yellow Imperial Fists.  He used Averland Sunset base with a Seraphim Sepia wash, followed by another coat of Averland Sunset to pull it back to yellow.I loved the results so much that I had to try it on my Tau.

The whole model is base coated with Rhinox Hide, and I decided to trim the  yellow with Flash Gitz Yellow.  The blue itself was a discovery that came much later.  While working on my first riptide (seen in the background of the top image), I tried to find a good color that would stand out with the yellow.  Prior to this, I had used white and red on my Firewarriors, and decided to try the blue with the riptide.  I loved the results so much that I'm starting to convert all my yellow Tau stuff to have the Altorf Guard Blue stripes.

You start by laying down a layer of Celestra Grey.  Then, apply a few layers of Altorf Guard Blue.  The layer paint that makes up this particular shade of blue tends to not apply evenly, so you will have to lay a few layers down.  For this particular one, I tried both laying two layers of normal paint as well as a few thinned layers.  Both techniques will work just fine, so it's really a matter of preference.  The blue itself is then trimmed with Lothern Blue.

The metal parts are a fairly easy paint job.  Leadbelcher was applied to all the spots where I wanted the metal to be painted, and then I used Nulin Oil in order to shade the Leadbelcher darker as well as deepen the shadows of the crevices.  Finally, Runefang Steel was used on the servos and edges of the metal.

I hope you like the model.  I still need to finish the burst cannon and base it, so I'll post pictures of that when it's done.  I'm planning on using a spare crisis suit and a Firewarrior to finish off the base.  No spoilers, but I think it'll turn out fairly spectacular!

-Cj

Chaos Space Marine Hellbrute & Champion

Rawr.

This was one of my favorite paint jobs, even though looking at it you can tell it's not complete.  I picked up a Dark Vengeance set when it first came out thinking I'd like to paint some Chaos stuff, and was initially excited at the prospect of making an Imperial "Chaos" Army using the new cultists models.  However, it soon turned out that cultists were not anywhere near what I imagined them to look like.  I painted a few of the Chaos models, but eventually gave up working on them.

I've since given this army to a good friend of mine who has purchased quite a few chaos models in hopes he can put them to better use.  It's nice to still have these pictures to reference once in a while.

-Cj

Space Marines to the rescue!

So the new space marine codex came out two weeks ago.  I haven't purchased it yet, having made a promise to someone special that I wouldn't, but figured since it has arrived it's time to finish up some tactical marine models that are lying around.  These 4 are a part of 6 that will be my razorback squad.  The razorback is a transport that can carry up to 6 models that are normal sized, larger ones being denoted bulky and very bulky.  It has a turret on top of it giving it limited offensive capabilities and it's main purpose is really to soak up some incoming fire so the troops can move forward.

Up until this point, I've just pulled some of the Ultramarines painted back in my starting days and thrown them into the battle force.  I'm a bit of a perfectionist and it's always bugged me that these blue guys were riding around with the rest of my red forces.  Additionally, Dave decided he wanted to try out kill team, and from what we've read the tournaments for kill team require your models to be fully painted and based (it's only 200 pts of models, about 10 tac marines and a few heavy weapons).  The rules also said they needed to be What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG).  If you look closely, each model has grenades and a pistol on them to represent the basic wargear options.

This painting experience was a bit different due to a supplement GW has just put out for free that covers base painting techniques for space marine tactical marines.  Using those techniques and suggestions on various parts of these models has really increased the quality of the paint job.  his guide also gave me some great ideas on how to paint various parts of the miniature.

Now one small statement here - obviously I am in no way shape or form employed or affiliated with GW.  I make this shout out however because that manual gave me some really good tips and suggestions, and it's free, so why not go pick it up and see there's anything helps you?

The model's base was done using some painting techniques from the book with a twist.  In the book, they use Armageddon dust on the vehicle for dirt kicked up on the side, and dry brush tyrant skull on top.  I used that same pattern on the bases and then washed with Agrax earthshade to make the top parts of the bases match the brown used on the ring.  Lastly, some hobby grass and flock was used to spice up the bases and make them a bit more colorful.

The other two models are complete except the Sergent.  For that model, I plan on using some transfer pens to apply the faction symbol to his shoulder pad.  If it turns out good, I'll post some pics later.

-Cj

Gauntly Appearance

Last time I wrote I talked about how I had worked on some Termagaunts.  I want to go over now how I decided to paint the skin.  We will only cover this process, but eventually I'll cover the armor chitin, weapon, and base.

1. To start off with, I applied a white base coat done with GW's  spray paint.  It's fairly expensive and there are cheaper options out there, but I've never persued them.  If anyone has some suggestions, feel free to leave a comment.  For now, I'll probably stick with the GW product for consistancy but am always open to suggestions.

2. Next up I took some Vallejo Medium and mixed in Citadel's Ungor Flesh in a 1:1 ratio.  The goal is to get the paint thin so the lower layers shine through better, while still retaining the ability to leave the paints mark on the upper layers of the model.  Previously I had just applied the paint straight out of the bottle, but this never seemed to give me an even coat.  Thinning out the paint seemed to leave a nice layer over everything.  Don't get me wrong, it did puddle in the crevices, but that works to our benefit later on. 

I didn't use GW's thinning medium here because I like how Vallejo's medium comes in a drip bottle instead.  Not having to guesstimate with a brush on how much medium is needed and instead being able to measure the amount of medium dropped instead has made the mixing process very easy.

3. Again getting a good mix, we apply a lyaer of Fire Dragon Bright.  The mix is again a 1:1, and I'm only doing a single layer.  I've seen it recommended that you do more for thicker, stronger colors, but I choose the 1-layer option because I want the coloring on the under layers to show through better.

4. Then you apply a layer of Troll Slayer Orange to the model to give it coloring that really pops.  You'll notice in the picture that you can still see some of the under layers, but the effect is subtle enough that the majority of the effect is lost on my phones camera.  I promise that the real model shows these layers a lot better than this picture.

5. Finally I applied a layer of Reikland Fleshshade shade to the model.  This fills in some of the holes in the model, making the recesses look darker.  I also liked how it seemed the lower layers shined through a lot better with the contrast from the darker wash.

Tonight I painted 3 more Termagaunts, and from beginning to end of painting the skin it probably took about 10 minutes per model, if that.  I've been really pleased with this coloring scheme since it's so different from the metal paneling of the Space Marines, Necrons, and Tau I'm used to.

I'll write another blog soon about how I decided to do the shell.  I like the purple layering, but decided to go with the green instead and have been quite pleased with the results.  Later on we will cover how I approached the gun these guys hold, since I really haven't quite figured that out yet.

-Cj

Gaunts and you!

So I went shopping again on ebay and picked up a Tyranid codex for pretty cheap about 2 weeks ago.  After having painted that Zoanthrope, the painting itch hit so I picked up a Hive Guard and gave painting Tyranids another try.  It was quickly brought to my attention that testing paint schemes on expensive models was not a good idea, as you'll see below.  I'd recommend that anyone wanting to try new paints styles on different armies pick up the cheap $8 - $10 box of troops for their respective group.

I used a brown base under the orange on the Hive Guard instead of the fleshy base I used with the Zoanthrope, thinking that the brown base would shade the upper layers of paint in a positive way.

Bleh.  I mean the red isn't that bad looking, but it was shaded way too much in the brown direction that I just ended up highlighting it in red to see what it looked like. I think a chemical bath in LA's Totally Awesome cleaner is in order.  If you haven't heard about it, you can buy LA's at most any dollar store and it will strip acrylic paint off of models with the best of them.  I had to use it on the Zoanthrope because of a mess up with the clear coat, and the resin was not impacted at all while the removal of paint was almost totally complete.

So now what?  I want to paint beautiful nids, but can't afford to keep messing up on fancy resin models!  Short tirade on pricing: Games-Workshop prices their models according to their value on the field, and not their value in plastic/material/molding costs.  A Riptide, at $85, has just as much plastic in it as some of the $55 models, but since it's the big go-to unit for Tau, it's price is dramatically higher.  I'm sure this is already known by others, but it bugs (pun intended) the heck out of me.

Anyways, back to my original suggestion: look into smaller troop boxes and experiment from there.  This then is the result of those actions:

I'll get into specifics in another blog post on how I got the color shading on the skin, but suffice it to say I really enjoyed the method and I am very pleased with the results.  The picture truly doesn't give it justice, but it'll have to do for now. I have some other armor colors to try, as well the base they stand on needs some big attention, but if I could get the purple color at the right shade on the armor scales I should be set and ready to go.

-Cj