Update VI: Converted Ork Big Mek and Lootas

I’m proud to showcase the next 250 points of my 40k Ork army for the narrative escalation campaign that I’m organizing. The campaign has been going really well and it’s been such a blast getting to play more games! The orks are doing surprisingly well, having only suffered one loss out of four official games so far.

Now that we’re bumping up to the 750 point level I decided to include a unit of Lootas to provide some more dakka for my army, as well as a Big Mek with a Kustom Force Field to help keep said lootas alive and have them move and shoot. These are painted using the same techniques and schemes as my initial 500 points, with a real emphasis on speed painting and no highlighting whatsoever outside of multiple ink washes.

I’m relatively pleased with how the converted Big Mek turned out, and the Kastellan parts certainly came out looking as beat up as I wanted. I really enjoyed incorporating the brass/copper metals on the Kastellan portions, and figuring out how to paint the green patina these materials accrue was a blast. I do think the patina is a little sloppy around the rim of his head, but otherwise it looks alright!

Close-up of the patina on the bronze.

The model does feel a little dark overall, as does the rest of the army, although I don’t think I’ll be bothered enough to go back and highlight stuff in the future. Also the darkness helps draw attention to their signature orange skin, which was super minimal on this particular model so I’m glad I managed to emphasize it so much.

I'll be sure to post more closeups of other units in the army, as well as a picture with everything all together. Thanks for looking!

Big Update V: Ork Army - January/February 2016

Apologies for the lengthy absence from the blogosphere. After my visit home to Canada things have been very busy both in terms of my work and the hobby and I just haven't found the time to post!

The big news is that the 40k narrative escalation campaign I'm running will be starting very soon from March 1st onwards! I have been furiously painting to meet the deadline and I'm extremely proud to showcase my initial 500 points of Orks. With the exception of basecoating the boyz units before Christmas, everything here has been done from January 20th onwards, so I've been setting a really furious pace!

This force represents a conscious effort to paint to a tabletop standard, and I don't think I've ever been more efficient with my painting. While I am not challenging myself with any new techniques it is interesting trying to get a decent result when everything is calibrated towards a minimum expenditure of effort. There is no highlighting or even drybrushing involved with any of these figures. Outside of the initial basecoats the only thing I do to add depth (outside of a single coat of airbrush zenithal highlighting on the skin) is to build multiple layers of washes over the skin, turquoise, and metals. Overall I'm pleased with how everything has turned out, and I feel this is a good standard of quality to aim for with any non-skirmish system that requires such a large force.

Naturally I had to name all my characters and units, it is a narrative campaign after all! So lets go through them one by one.

Here is my warboss, Da Glorious Leada' Gorgot!
This is the forge-world Ork bikerboss model. Although I felt the buzzsaw he comes with was far too weedy looking, so I converted him a propa' power klaw using one from Kromlech's wonderful "Juggernaut Armor" Orks.

This is Gorgot's biker retinue, Da Bootstrapz.
Their Boss Nob is "Bunky da Bootz".

My two shoota boyz squads.
"Rugnut Irongobz's Band-O-Boyz" and
"Snagabob's Spleenbenderz"!

I had my first game of 40k this past week in a four-way battle designed to introduce the new players in our campaign to the system. I admit I was slightly nervous about it, as I really didn't want a repeat of the Batman Miniatures Game, where I felt like all my hard hours of painting had been for a game I didn't actually enjoy playing that much. My only previous Games Workshop system had been eight edition Fantasy, which had felt immensely clunky an unintuitive.

However I'm very pleased to announce that I enjoyed myself enormously. I didn't end up winning, but the system itself is far simpler than the clunkiness of pre-AoS Fantasy, and allows for some great narrative moments in a way that is really casual, fun, and smooth to play. I'll provide some more detailed thoughts on it after we're stuck into the campaign, but my initial impression was extremely positive. It also really helped me understand the direction Games Workshop took with Age of Sigmar in regards to making a system that was more intuitive to play.

I also have to say that I love my choice of faction and that Orks are a joy to play. They have tons of character and make for some great narrative moments. I'm extremely happy about my decision not to continue building on the Grey Knights I had painted earlier and make the (admittedly difficult) switch to Orks.

The highlight of my first game was my Gorgot charging a unit of tyranid warriors to do (what I can only imagine to be) a huge burnout that beheaded all three of them in a single round of combat. He then miraculously survived being charged by both a Hive Tyrant and Carnifex in the ensuing turn only to immediately blow himself up with his own item when he attempted to retaliate. It. was. brilliant.

Snagabob Snotgob makes a defiant last stand before getting blasted into the side of a mountain by a Predator's lascannon.

Having finished my initial 500 points I am frantically getting started on the rest of the army list I have planned for the campaign. I will post a full army list once it is finalized, but in the meantime here is a teaser shot of a converted Big Mek I've created. His name is Zagnatz and he managed to salvage a Kastelan Robot for parts!

WAAAAAAGH!

Updates: Christmas Break!

There has been, and will continue to be, a slight lull in my update schedule as I deal with a busy Christmas season that will see me finish a chapter of my thesis and then fly back to Canada to visit my family.

However there are big things coming in the future and readers can expect to see lots of stuff relating to Warhammer 40k in the new-year.  I am organizing a narrative escalation campaign ranging from 500 points to 1250 to begin in February and am painting up a small Ork force to accompany it. There will be posts not only commenting on the system and showing my painting but also some battle reports and army narratives!

As a placeholder here is a teaser of my unit of shoota boyz coming along. This is the basecoat on everything save for the metals. I look forward to talking to you more in the new year!

Forge World Fails to Impress

Disclaimer: I have often stated that one of the things I dislike about miniature-wargaming as a hobby is the entitled and oft-negative nature of its customer base. There are a lot of reasons why this attitude exists within the community, some of them reasonable, but many not so much. While I hate adding my voice to the  criticisms sometimes I can't help it and this is one of those times. I hope you find me justified.

Earlier this week I made my first ever purchase of a Forge World miniature,a subsidiary arm of Games Workshop that manufactures highly-detailed resin figures designed to compliment or replace those produced by GW itself. Forge World, like its parent company, gets a lot of flak for its high prices, but I have heard little to no criticism of its actual product.

So when I decided to treat myself by purchasing a new and untouched Ork Warboss on a Bike second-hand from Ebay, I felt assured that I'd get a great figure out of it. Unfortunately I was profoundly disappointed by the quality of the sculpt.

Now I know the first thing some people might take issue with is that I purchased this item through Ebay, as I know there is a whole recasting industry located in China that does imitations of Forge World products for half the price. I want to emphasize that what follows is an original Forge World product. 

• I purchased it from within the UK through an individual seller and not a store.
• The figure arrived within a Forge World bag with appropriate barcode, 
• When I needed a replacement part the seller provided me with his original order number. I used  this to contact Forge World directly who confirmed the original order/barcode and had a new part sent to me.

Hopefully this is sufficient to establish authenticity, and I can get into my issues with the quality of the sculpt itself.

Firstly, here is a layout of the figure's components. There are a lot of parts but its an intricate sculpt so that can be overlooked. There is also no assembly instructions included, but I had heard in advance that Forge World was really bad for this and was not expecting any. Thankfully I located an exceptionally detailed blogpost explaining how to assemble him. So despite this initial problem this is all pretty reasonable.

To give credit where it is due, the components that are well-cast look really good. The best example of this is the main body of my warboss, who looks pretty great right out of the bag. Although the chain on his little skull necklace is subject to some of the casting issues I encounter elsewhere.

Now we get into the real problem. It seems like every small component was very poorly cast, and they all have a huge assortment of flash and mold-lines. This is especially problematic given forgeworld's choice of casting material. Resin lacks the pliancy of plastic in which you don't need much force to trim and cut away excess material even on fine points. 

At the same time it is nowhere near as durable as metal, which requires more pressure to clean excess casting material but is very unlikely to break or lose its shape. To get around this a lot of companies use a type of soft resin mixed with plastic that is easier to work with, Games Workshop's "finecast" material is like this. (Which, despite its rocky beginnings, has become a great material to work with as time has gone on.) Forge World resin on the other hand seems to be "pure" resin and is extremely brittle, to the point that I believe they should not be attempting to cast anything small or intricate with it.

I am an experienced hobbyist, and I am happy to spend lots of time cleaning and assembling an expensive character figure like this. Between fresh hobby knives, a set of miniature nail files, a jeweller's saw, and small clippers I should have all of the tools and expertise necessary to effectively clean up a messy cast like this. Yet I have never felt a material fight me so much as when I work with Forge World resin. No matter how gentle I am I feel constantly at risk of having chunks of the model break apart from under me. Cleaning the really fragile components feels like trying to remove every individual piece of salt from a soda cracker without breaking it. Sure, with a sharp enough knife and enough time it is possible, but also exhausting, and I am constantly at risk of breaking off big flakes of material. This has also made me seriously concerned about future breakages as I plan to use my warboss on the tabletop. I don't know if pinning will matter much if the material just shatters around the pin...

Even the large components can be hard to work with. Many of the mould-lines are the product of off-set castings that require a lot of work to align.

Finally, to top off this nightmare of quality control Forge World accidentally packaged two copies of the left-hand bike gun rather than one for each side. As a result I had to get in touch with the Ebay seller to get his original order number so I could arrange a replacement part through Forge World. To their credit they were kind enough to cast another gun for me even though the original order was past their usual three month returns deadline. I had heard their customer service is excellent, which seems to be true, but at the same time I now completely understand why this company would require a good Customer Service team.

To put things in perspective, I wanted to give some examples of resin done right via some images of Guild Ball figures. These figures and its game are the product of an independent company called Steamforged Games that is closely associated with my local store Element Games. Yet despite their smaller size ,the quality of their resin casting is exceptional. Small components are not bent out of shape, flash is kept to a minimum, and mold-lines are  small and easy to remove. Despite their 28mm figures being almost half the size of my massive warboss, the detail seems just as good if not better on many components. To top it all off, their resin is of a much nicer and more workable quality than the Forge World equivalent.

Note the thin arms on the bottom left that came out perfectly.

A reasonable and easily cleaned mold-line along the front torso of the figure.

Another reasonable mold line along this guy's side.

Conclusion: I am a casual hobbyist, and my skills don't demand flawlessly cast miniatures in order for me to get the most out of my painting and gaming. Yet it seems to me that Forge World products are of such poor quality they are not suitable for tabletop gaming or professional hobbyists. The figure I purchased is an omnishambles of bad casting, extremely brittle resin, and poor quality control. They are a major company with probably the single most expensive miniature wargaming figures in the world, and yet independent companies with cheaper figures comprehensively outperform them. If I could have returned my warboss I would have, but as it stands he will represent my first and last time working with a forge world miniature.

Update: Since writing this piece, I have had a chance to take a close look at other forge world products shown to me by friends and the like. Some have been totally unassembled, others painted, and I admit that some of them looked to be very nice casts indeed. Yet the quality seems to vary enormously, and the brittleness of the resin that I discuss here is present across the entire range. However I feel its important I acknowledge that Forge World is perfectly capable of producing decent casts, and reiterate that this blog is an account of my initial experience with them, and why it led to them losing me as a customer. I know that my experience is not an isolated incident, nor do I think this blog is merely an angry rant. The issues I outline are legitimate grievances with Forge World's quality. I'm not sitting here hoping my blog puts Forge World out of business, rather I genuinely hope they fix these issues and that anyone else who decides to purchase from them has a better experience than my own.

Hobby Thoughts: How to enjoy painting miniatures.

I don’t claim to be a great painter. In fact I am perpetually reminded I'm not given the award-winning abilities of my roommate Byron. His basic line troops wipe the floor with my fanciest character models.

A phoenix guard model from my roommate on the left. A warpriest character I slaved over on the right.

Talk about a slice of humble pie right? Yet I have, over the course of the past year, come to truly enjoying painting as my favorite aspect of the hobby. This is something that was absolutely not the case for many many years, and I thought writing article about the changes in equipment, technique, and attitude I've undergone to reach this point this would be a great idea for anyone else looking to enjoy their time with the brush a little more.

From "I hate this shit" in 2010 to "I'm having a blast!" in 2015.

This article assumes that painting is a priority for you to some capacity within the hobby. Whether it’s painting a high-quality force or just hitting a “three colours and based” minimum for a tournament you may find something of interest here.

Equipment

1. Know what type of paints your buying and whether they align with your painting goals. There is no such thing as brand loyalty when it comes to paints due to the variance across each range. Experiment with different brands and see what you like, check out what others recommend. Of relevance to this is a personal revelation I've had recently in the difference between what I will call "tabletop" paint designed to have good coverage and go on as a basecoat easily with a harder protective finish, versus what I'll call "advanced" paints that might have a high pigment count but are not designed to be very opaque or cover effectively. 
• Examples of "tabletop" paints include Vallejo Game Color, Army Painter, and most Games Workshop paints, all of these are designed to basecoat smoothly and stand up to the rigors of handling produced by typical gaming. Of particular note here are Games Workshop's "Base" range and Vallejo's "Extra Opaque", both of which are formulated for maximum coverage.
• Examples of "advanced" paints include Vallejo Model Color and Scale 75 paints. Both tend to cover poorly despite their vibrant colors, but because they are not very opaque they produce beautiful blends far more easily then having to really thin out a paint that wants to cover everything.
2. If you are painting anything bigger than a skirmish-game sized force then do yourself a favor and buy an airbrush. Even if it’s a cheap set up you will get back hours of your life through simple techniques like colored base coats and/or blocking out colors on basic line troops. I can't see myself painting anything without one.
3. Get a good traditional brush. I haven’t really implemented this myself yet as I've  not yet tried the much-idolized Windsor and Newton series 7. But I have gradually progressed from using Games Workshop, Army Painter, and currently Kolinsky sable hair brushes from Element Games. The improvement in control of the paint coming off the brush has been noticeable each time.
4. Use a florescent or daylight lamp to illuminate your painting. Any cheap articulated lamp will do, and it helps even more than you think.
5. Don’t buy things you don’t want to paint. If you want to have a good time painting, then paint something you find beautiful. With the glut of skirmish games in the market right now there are many companies with extremely poorly designed, or downright ugly miniatures. I'm not inclined to care how great a system rule-set is, how beautiful people may claim the miniatures are, or if a particular model is really strong on the tabletop. If you don’t like them, don’t spend hours of your life on them.
6. Don’t buy more miniatures then you can paint. Trust me, I know how hard this is. But having a legion of things that need painting is going to hurt your enjoyment more than anything, and turn an otherwise enjoyable painting session into a small part of a massive slog towards completion. Unless you’re doing big batches with simple techniques like airbrushing/washes where you can see progress being made extremely quickly, be conservative with your painting goals. One unit at a time, reward yourself with a character between them , put away any miniatures that need painting so they’re not out in the open guilting you. Don't assemble things you won't be able to paint right away. Don’t spend loads of money in one go, regardless of how good the price is. A personal rule of thumb for me is to buy, assemble, and paint only one box at a time, be it a character, vehicle, or unit. You get to enjoy your painting more and you save money, it's win-win!

Technique

Given that I'm not an expert painter this section is quite basic, but I hope still applicable to everyone getting a bit more joy out of their painting. However feel free to skip it if you're already a strong painter!

1. Spend time on assembly, clean all mould lines, pin things that need pinning. With modular options think about natural-looking yet dynamic poses. Add some details to your bases like rocks, etc. There is no point beautifully painting a miniature that was slapped together in a few minutes. Conversely, a clean and well posed/assembled miniature will make even a basic paint job looks miles better. This is the reason I stopped buying second-hand figures. 90% of people are not thoughtful in their assembly, and the effort and time to salvage their careless work is not worth the reduction in cost.
2. Choose a primer colour that will help you paint your chosen colour scheme. Using a black primer for a brightly coloured force that has a lot of yellow (for example) is just adding hours to your painting, whereas its a great decision if your painting lot of metallics since they cover nicely over black. Conversely using a light primer with darker colours will make more work for you, as any mistakes will stand out much more and you'll need to basecoat and shade more extensively. Grey is a nice middle ground if you have a mix of dark/light colours. For other colours outside of these three I recommend using an airbrush basecoat over one of them rather than a colour primer.
3. Using a little plinth of some kind for painting is often quite useful. It isn't always strictly necessary but having a magnet on the bottom of your figures and sticking them on a wine cork with a penny glued on top can help with accessing hard to reach points. Alternatively if you are pinning your model to their base, consider painting the base and figure separately and just sticking the figure into a wine cork while painting it. This is a must for metal or resin figures since paint layers can easily rub off on your hands.
4. Thin your paints. People always say this but you have no idea how true it is until you do it. Just water is fine for most applications and it won’t affect coverage if you’re using a good basecoat paint. How much you need to thin depends on application, but for basecoating you should need to do two coats for good coverage of anything that isn't extra-opaque like the Vallejo line or GW base paints.  Glaze medium is an exceptional thinner for when you want to reduce how opaque paint is in order to have it pool in the recesses like a wash, enhance how easy it is to blend a paint, or just washing over a series of layers to tie them together.
5. Basecoat carefully. Unless you are doing advanced shading and highlighting the need to put down a clean basecoat of a single colour over your primer before doing anything else is really important. If your basecoat is neatly done then everything else is gravy and the model will still look good almost regardless of what follows. It should all feel downhill after a good basecoat.
6. Washes are your friend. Most people already know it, but for the sake of any truly new painters, washes go a long way to adding depth to your models. Bonus points if you use a bit of glaze medium to make their colour go on smoother. A careful and clean basecoat with a wash or two is probably the best place to start for a beginner painter on your average line-trooper. Keep it neat and keep it simple. Once your comfortable with that you can step it up to the magical formula of basecoat, wash, basecoat on raised areas, higlight/basecoat mix for highlights, which is more than adequate for the majority of hobbyists out there.
7. Less is more when it comes to paint. Keep things simple with a handful of colors and only 1-3 pots of paint for each. Repeat simple techniques and shade down or higlight up by mixing rather than introducing tons of different paints. Remember that black is not a color and doesn't clash with any scheme, so if a figure has a lot extraneous details like equipment hanging all over it consider just painting the extra stuff black to keep the visuals clean.
8. Paint your bases last. If you mess up the colour and get it on the miniature's feet it’s a lot less noticeable than the reverse scenario.
9. Varnish your paint-job. With plastic miniatures this is only necessary at the end, but with metal or resin I would suggest at least three coats of varnish: one after your primer, one after your basecoat, and one when its finished. There's nothing worse than having your hard work get rubbed off when you are painting or playing.

Mindset

1. Plan your painting in advance and use test models if you want to try a new color scheme. Think carefully about how your colours will look and check out how they relate on a colour wheel. Consider in advance how you will base your figure and what its visual interaction with your colour-scheme will be. Also be sure to write down your paint scheme as it develops so that if you come back to a particular scheme down the road you can retain consistency.
2. With each miniature, know what quality of painting you’re aiming for from the outset. Don't try to paint line troops like your character models and vice versa. Make sure your expectations align with your skillset. Knowing when to put down the brush is just as important as being able to paint like a golden demon winner. When it comes to line troops remember that quantity is its own form of quality, so most of us can keep it simple.
3. Keep pushing yourself to make painting interesting. If you are not enjoying your painting try employing a new technique. Try painting a different model in some new colours, or a one-off figure from a totally different system or army. Always try to incorporate something into what you are doing that challenges you. Try a bit of weathering on your vehicles or armor, or try some blending on a character model.
4. Take the advice of people who are good painters. This doesn't mean you have to do everything they say. But really try to absorb it and think about how you can apply it to your next project. I despise coming back to a model I feel is “finished” so I never implement any criticism I get immediately, but I will always internalize any feedback I receive and keep it in mind for the next figure.
5. Know when to step away from the painting desk. If you are ever frustrated or finding you are not enjoying yourself just stop and do something else for at least 15 minutes. Stretch, go for a walk, talk to some friends. Its just not worth harming your mental state to finish a miniature, and if you push yourself like this its only going to reinforce whatever you dislike about the process. Additionally, if you are frustrated with a paint job just step away and don't look at it for a day. Coming back with a fresh pair of eyes is far better than going back and forth and agonizing over things.
6. Don’t play if it’s not painted. Another tough rule to follow that goes hand in hand with “don’t buy too much”, as the less models you have awaiting painting the less likely you are to try and field them. The payoff, however, is absolutely worth it in my mind. Being able to put a fully-painted army on the tabletop gives a cathartic pleasure in and of itself, and contributes immeasurably to the enjoyment and visual immersion one gets out of the game. If both armies are painted then you get a beautiful, immersive and far more characterful game out of your chosen system. Alternatively if you’re playing against an opponent with an unpainted force then you have already won, dice rolls be damned.

I hope this wasn't too pedantic from someone whose clearly only an average (if that) painter. Then again I think its precisely because i'm average that my words might be a bit more relevant to most of the hobbyists out there.

Happy painting all, and thank you for reading!

Painting Experiment: Orange/Yellow Orks Part 2

I'm planning to run a Warhammer 40k escalation campaign with a narrative focus next February. To that end I have to decide on a army to build and paint for it and, because i'm a masochist, I've elected to go for Orks rather than the using the Grey Knights I've already completed. While I love the Grey Knight models the fluff and character of the Ork army is vastly preferable to me. I love custom armies with a great backstory and a focus on having fun rather than winning games, and the Orks are all of these things to a tee!

After the (relatively) successful experiment with orange skin I spent a lot of time agonizing over a color scheme to accompany it. I settled on a bright turquoise produced by Scale 75 and tested it on my original model here.

Turquoise is exactly opposite bright orange on the color wheel and compliments it very nicely. So I quickly moved to get some actual 40k orks to test the scheme on. Thankfully a mate of surgical fame had a partially-used pack of stormboyz he gave me to test my scheme on.

Initially things went great and I loved the way they looked with my orange skin.

The grot inside this rocket is probably my single favorite miniature of all time. I'm dead serious.

However after this it got a little complicated. 40k Orks have tons of different components slapped all over theme, especially these stormboyz figures, and it was tough trying to decide where the turquoise needed to be. I eventually added a secondary color and did the majority of their armor in black as its an absolutely neutral tone, and actually compliments the turquoise and orange quite nicely.

My plan now was to paint turquoise on the clothing and black on the armor with just a few small turquoise accents here and there. But unfortunately even this simple arrangement ended up looking a little too garish given how bright the turquoise i'd chosen was.

The jumpsuits are too much in that color.

To this end I decided to use a burnt umber over a good portion of the clothing to tone things down, and it ended up looking alright. This guy (exempting the red on the rocket) is probably the best indicator of where i'll go with things. Burnt umber clothing, black armor, and turquoise accents here and there in both areas.

Naturally I did some sponge weathering on their armor to give them that properly battered orky look. The black looks lovely with a bit of metallic sponged over it. I also liked the idea of them slapping turquoise paint over the black, which I managed to convey a bit with this guy's eye. I'm going to experiment with adding this sort of "handpainted" turquoise to the armor some more I think.

Unfortunately I messed up the bases after experimenting with different washes on each one. I'm going with a desert theme to accompany the orange/yellow skin tone since they are fungus after all! I'll be getting some new pigments to use on them and further dirty them up. I may also chose a different turquoise color that's slightly less in-your-face about things in order to tone down the palette a bit and make the orange stand out more.

Working with these guys definitely  hammered home how important it is to test your colour-scheme out on some miniatures before starting to paint your force properly. These guys haven't been washed or highlighted yet, or had their details picked out, but even going this far has given be a great understanding of what to do with my chosen scheme. Next up, an Ork battleforce! (And painting a GK librarian when I get bored of assembling things)

Thanks for looking guys!

Completed Project: Grey Knights Terminator Squad

So at long last I have finished my unit of Grey Knight terminators after about a month and a half of fiddling around with them at a very casual pace. I was definitely slowed down by using so many unfamiliar techniques but I'm quite pleased with the finished result! Here they are as a unit:

Some quick thoughts on the painting aspects that were new for me here and that I didn't cover previously. Firstly, oil washes. I was deeply impressed by the effect that oils gave and they were wonderful to work with. After gloss varnishing the models I washed the cream armor with a straightforward mix of burnt umber thinned with low odor mineral spirits. I immediately noticed that the oil wash pooled in the recesses far more neatly and the finish over larger patches of of the model was extremely smooth and there was no "blotchiness" or tidemarks that usually accompany an acrylic wash over a large section of mini.

This is after the oil wash dried. The lighting is poor but it gives you a rough idea of how natural it looks.

Furthermore, because the oil wash takes so long to dry (about twelve hours to be completely dry) you can push it around as much as you like and wash off sections with straight white spirit, which I did to make sure not to darken the models too much. You can even do this after its totally dry as well! The control you have over the wash is unparalleled and combined with what is already a smooth coloring the result is strong yet subtle. I have simply never experienced such a realistic-looking wash.

I will absolutely be returning to work with oils in the future, especially considering that its relatively quick to move into and out of them, a coat of gloss varnish, apply the oils, and once its try a coat of matt, and your done!

The final new technique I experimented with was the use of resin bases. I decided to keep it very simple and ensure the bases were relatively dark in order to draw the eye to the cream armor, and by extension how mangled it is! This follows from roomie Byron's excellent tutorial on basing either for contrast (as in this instance) and cohesion. I decided to use a few simple drybrush layers on the stone and some burnt umber pigments from Vallejo to keep the "dirtiness" consistent with whats on the terminator's armor. The resin bases from micro arts studios were a dream to work with and the texture is exquisite!

Bases as they appear in natural light.

Bases under fluorescent light that shows more detail.

The last thing I want to show is my attempt to hand-blend an intense blue into the eyes and nemesis force weapons. The eyes came out nicely but the swords were much more of a challenge. However with enough glaze medium and time I was able to bang out something reasonable. The final edge higlight of white along the edge of the blade was rather messy, but a blue ink glaze tied everything together nicely. I know the quality would have been far better and the process easier had I just used my airbrush to do it, which I did for the force hammer, but I wanted to set a challenge for myself as blending has always felt rather elusive to me, like something only pros do. The fact I can even blend like this though, (poor as it is) is a sign of just how far I’ve come, as this stuff seemed downright impossible to me even six or eight months ago.

The best of my hand blends.

The blend produced by the airbrush.

Anyways thanks for reading guys! Here's a few more pictures in different light. Looking forward to my next project!

The squad under natural light.

Single model under natural light.

Single model under fluorescent light.