Tortle Power! - Monk Complete

I am really happy with how this Tortle monk turned out.  I had an idea of what I wanted to execute but what really helped was Dr. Faust's video, which I used for the skin and shell.

And here he is with "Bromley" the wizard:

Here's work in progress pictures as well as the colors:

From the front, skin and robe:

The side and back showing more of the robe and the shell:

The process only took me about 18 hours.  I used VMC Red, Khorne Red, and Mephiston Red for the base of the robe, then shaded with Flesh Tearers Red Contrast, then a combo of Flesh Tearers Red and Creed Camo Contrast, then Khorn Red, Mephiston, Evil Sunz and Fire Dragon Bright for the highlight glazes.  For the golden border it was Fire Dragon bright, then Gryph-Hound Contrast for shade, then Fire Dragon Bright, VMC Light Orange, VMC Golden Yellow, and VMC Flat Yellow for the glaze highlights.  The staff was a thined WyldWood Contrast over wrathbone, then Pallid Wych Flesh highlights.  The hemp rope was VGC Desert Yellow, Ushabti Bone, Skeleton Horde Contrast shade, and then Ushabti Bone again, but I used lines to create the texture.

Assault Squad Arms!

With the release of 10th edition of 40k the Vanguard Veterans got some less than favorable changes.  But, luckily I anticipated the need to be very flexible with their loadouts and magnetized their arms.  While unfortunately the magnets are a bit weak and make them a bit fiddley - I'm able to change them into a basic assault squad with ye ol' humble bolt pistol and chainsword.  The assault squad rules might be someone more favorable, but also makes the squad a bit cheaper which is another benefit now that it is much harder to adjust army lists with how they are doing points right now.

Anyway - its just fun to have chainswords and I was able to create these fairly quickly for the upcoming narrative campaign at the 2023 US Open.

The greenstuff let me down a bit - I was going to hide it with gore, but maybe I'll add that later.  I'm really happy with how the hazard stripes turned out.  This was also the first time really trying to do the chipping effect.  Both the hazard stripes and the iconography were achieved using some stencils that I bought online.  The stencils are intended for use with airbrushes, but that's not something I have access to, so I tried a technique I saw that involved using a sponge to blot on the paint.  They had used the technique on flatter vehicle surfaces with stencils that were much bigger.  Here the technique didn't work so well on the curved shoulder pauldrons - and at first they were a complete disaster.  So much so that I only used the stencil for the Ultramarines icon, I ended up just free-handing the assault squad arrows.

In the end I was able to salvage it since I was intending on them looking chipped, and so after some effort touching them up in spots they turned out passible.  The stencil did much better on the flat sword surface, but also instead of blotting with a sponge, I used a brush and just tried to stay in the lines as close as possible without touching them.  I'll give it another go next project, this was sort of a test run for the Rhinos.  That project is still WIP and I'm making progress which I'll update on soon.

Explicator Bromley Complete!

Continuing with my experiment with "Slap Chop 2.0", or should I say concurrently - I have completed the Inquisitorial Acolyte Explicator Bromley.  Bromley has appeared several times now in the Vadinax Global Campaign as well as in my upcoming new D&D campaign as a variant human wizard.

Overall I'm fairly happy with how he turned out.  Contrast worked pretty well for the robes and face, as well as the parchment.  On both the Multi-Melta Devastators and Bromley, I experimented with an undercoat of Iyanden Yellow contrast before using a second coat of Blood Angels Red contrast to really warm it up.  It worked great.

I also used a drybrush technique to do the flames on the torch/flamethrower staff.  I think it worked out well and it was very simple.  I used the Artis Opus technique and brushes.  I probably could have used more orange, red, and black/gray, but its still fine, just a bit hotter of a flame.  A lot of examples of the model had painted the brazier dark metallic colors, but since the flames were leaping out a bit, I felt the illumination/heat effect looks realistic enough.

Overall the model came together in a total of just over 9.5 hours.  When compared with other character models that I've painted recently, contrast cut the time roughly in half.  I would say that the "Slap Chop" technique is really great for troops, especially ones with a lot of skin or fabric type surfaces, but for characters I think the savings in time dramatically fall off.  You're going to want to be spending time on details, and characters are usually small batches of models, so at that point I think traditional techniques perhaps augmented by contrast tinting make more sense, or I guess at that point it becomes using the right paint technique for the job.  Again as before I have the same criticism of the zenithal quality from a rattle can - it probably looks better with an air brush.

I didn't go for any OSL effects from the torch this time, but I suppose I could revisit that maybe, but probably not though.  Those effects could have been potentially achieved in the beginning step using some tinting undercoats perhaps, but again an airbrush would have probably been the way.

The model itself is a classic OOP metal miniature and I think the date on it was 2003.  Its found in the 2005 Catalogue as "Witch Hunter Acolyte 2: 9947010804803" - I was lucky to find it on eBay exactly when Inquisitorial Acolytes were added to the Vadinax Campaign to attach to your army to provide a re-roll bonus.  It was the perfect chance to paint up a fun miniature that could also easily double as a steampunk D&D wizard!

Multi-Melta Devastators Complete!

This squad was a study in using the so-called 'Slap Chop 2.0' technique.  While I've used contrast paint before on DA GOFF ROKKAZ and a few D&D miniatures, this was the first time trying it on the flat panels of power armor.  I was also adding in the technique of using a zenithal highlight of gray on black with white highlights.  This is the basic 'slap chop' technique that has appeared online somewhat recently (2022 or so?).  Then there some prolific painters that put forward a 2.0 version that basically uses colorized airbrush steps instead of a grey zenithal, and then does edge highlighting in key areas to make it 'pop'

Since I don't have access to an air brush, I couldn't try the colorized zenithal or anything, but I was able to do a bunch of edge highlighting to do an approximation of the technique.

There was definitely a learning curve here - part of it was using Ultramarine Blue Contrast - which I hadn't really used at all, and getting this to match the standard paint formula that I use for Ultramarines which is closer to the 2nd edition colors rather than the 'modern' 9th edition colors (soon to be 10th edition) of today (2023).

Once I got it figured out though, I was actually surprised at how it turned out, its somewhat close.  I also compared the time it took to paint the models (per model) with my last devastator squad using my standard technique.  The last squad took an average of 594 minutes per model (or about 10 hours), while this 'slap chop 2.0' method took 257 minutes per model (or 4 hours and 20 min).  This is a significant reduction for approximately the same quality.  I think this has been beaten to death already online, but I wasn't sure if it was an acceptable paint job quality level for me.  Turns out I think it could be for troops of the line level models, and elements of the technique could be applied elsewhere.

What really lets it down for my set-up is the grainy spots from the rattle-can zenithal highlight.  I imagine a real airbrush significantly improves this effect, but for me I was seeing grainy spots up close.  Furthermore, with limited rattle-can options in colors (and an unwillingness to buy anything other than black and gray right now), I wasn't able to take advantage of the effects to undercoat with browns or yellows to create deeper or more interesting colors/lighting.  Thus they look a bit flat and faded compared to my standard scheme, even after adding the highlights.

Still it wasn't bad.  I kinda got a more painterly effect going since I had to add in a bit of my ligher 2nd edition blue in a weird midlevel step between the contrast shade and highlight.

The squad itself is not quite an actual squad, but rather 4 multi-meltas to finally form a solid anti-tank devastator squad, plus another las cannon and an armorium cherub.  I was a pair of legs short to create another sergeant (oops) but I still have enough to field everything I need.  Its for the best, I can add another sergeant perhaps with the grav-pistol that I got at a later point when I don't have higher priority things to get to.

Two of the models are very ancient:

First is Heavy Weapon D1 from the 1988 Citadel Miniatures catalogue

And next was D3 also from 1988.  Both were designed by Aly Morrison and Mark Copplestone

I couldn't find an older listing, but these were some of the first miniatures in my collection.  D1 is especially wonky with his weird pose and the way his chest hose connects to his helm.  They are pewter (or maybe even lead) and pinned together so the weapons should be pretty well connected.  They're very interesting because they dont have the backpacks that would become standard, but instead they have kind of unique backpacks built into the sculpt.

The rest of the models are extremely modern, plastic, and nothing really to write home about.  I do like the modern 'first born' kits though.  After 40 years they've nailed the best look for the Mk VI 'Beakie' and Mk VII helms, and I really like how you can customize their poses.  It is a bit hard to get the arms, shoulders, and weapon cabling all lined up right when you go to glue though.  

Anyway, I think its kind of fun to mix in modern models now into my army to make it all seem like each marine has his own unique armor.  I think at this point my army has infantry units spanning most eras of 40k.  One of the newer models is a Horus Heresy style Mark VI body and Mult-Melta.  Again its fun to mix in pretty much all of the different configurations of this weapon - underslung, shoulder mounted, and the conventional pistol grip.

The armorium chereb was fun to do, but really kinda shows the problem with the zenithal technique here.  I probably should have tried to get a bit more gray under.  The effect creates a really dark shadow, which might be realistic in a way, and then the flesh has a kind of ashen tone to it.  But perhaps this is reasonable for a creepy flying cyborg baby.

Vanguard Veterans Complete!

Ok, finally done.  Best models yet!  It's true what they say, just keep painting and you get better and better every time.

While I think that the gothic text for Sergeant Nox's was my best ever, the text lettering across all shields and etc. was fairly consistent and still pretty neat.

The face for the (yet unnamed) alternate sergeant's face really turned out great too, very pleased.

The NMM gold also turned out pretty great for a first real dive into that.  I can definitely see spots where it isn't quite right, but I feel that this is one of those skills that will have a lot of room to master.  Mostly it seems like its all about looking at examples and reference images.  There is a guy on instagram that posts really great examples all the time and I think had subconsciously helped me a bit, maybe further conscious effort to look at his work, and others, would be the next step there.

I think the magnetization needs a bit of improvement.  I used smaller magnets (mostly because drilling bigger holes into pewter might not have been possible) and between that less than perfect placement - some of the arms feel a bit weakly attached, or aren't quite joining perfectly.  That's an area to improve next time.  I do think these vets are a bit of a special case with different weapon options, but yeah not exactly sure if it was worth it.

And finally here they are in the pose I've been capturing throughout the process.  Perhaps I'll get around to a gif that steps through the steps again.