AvP: the final batch

You know how these things happen. You think you've finished a project, you move on, times goes on... and then one day suddenly your pal tells you he forgot to provide me just these other tiny boxes:

Aaaaand there we go again

It looks like much, and I felt a little bit dismayed at the beginning, but once I took them out of the boxes, it looked more manageable:

Not "few minis". Just "manageable"

At first it was a little bit difficult for me to get used to these sculpts again. I mean, I think I said it before, but they are nothing like GW. They are so crisp and full of details that all of them are quite a challenge. But let's get started. My first choice were the Aliens, as the monochrome scheme is the fastest to get done.

I took my usual approach. Black priming, first (and very subtle) layer of highlights with black/dark blue and then highlights with metallics:

Two Praetorians. Unsure of the Roman influence in the Xenomorphic culture

A Royal Guard. Again, I have some doubts about the differences with Praetorians

Evolved Warriors. Designers got lazy with the names this time

Here you have the whole family:

The red stuff is just for you to know that your screen didn't turn B/W

 

Then I painted the humans. This time they're not USCM, but Weyland-Yutani Commandos, the PMC branch of the company. At first I was terrified because, if you remember, this was their lookings in the Alien3 fanfic film:

I'd call it a... problematic design. Yet not the worst thing in the movie

Fortunately Prodos had purchased the rights over the Aliens videogames. I won't speak of Prodos and rights, just leave it there. The thing is that they luckily got to produce this:

Spot the differences (if any) with the previous pic

This is what I got:

There are two USCM sentry guns

I have to say that these minis are cool as hell. I love the design, and both the poses and sculpts are definitely top notch. The only thing I don't like is the goggles, but apart from that, I'd totally make a WH40K Imperial Guard regiment out of these.

 

Now for the Predators. First thing is the special character, Machiko Noguchi. She is presented in two variants, one on the regular spaceship display, and another one on the hunt, deep in the jungle:

I totally hate painting the grid dressing or however it is called

The Hellhounds are a weird desing IMO. They look scary, undeniable, but I'm afraid they're not my cup of tea. Anyway, I tried my best.

Whatever the case, I wouldn't like to face these anywhere

Finally, the Predator Elders:

Now these are cool

Sadly never as cool as these

Here you have the mandatory family pic:

Strange family, but who am I to judge

This is all for today! I'd like to say that the AvP project is definitely closed, but who knows!!

I'm now working on some different stuff, I'll try to post it anytime soon!

Begin a year, close a project

 Happy new year everyone!

I hope everybody's doing well. I'm starting this year's activity with a kind of unexpected bonus that happily allows me to declare a project finished, which is always a reason to rejoice :)

When I was finishing the Aliens vs Predator project my pal told me 'oh, BTW, I totally forgot, I also have the 2nd ed of the game and an expansion' :O

Well, I should have seen that coming. I would have preferred to paint the whole lot at a time, but fortunately this time it was but a fistful of minis, which made things easier.

I begun with the easy stuff, the Aliens. The poses of the Xenomorphs in this box is much better than the first edition ones.

Much more dynamic and daring

These were called 'drones' in the 1st ed, now they are called 'infants'. The semantics escape me

The stalkers are creepier. The use of scenery reinforces the crawling menace vibe

So these are the Aliens in the new box:

Cheers. Winners of the scariest smile contest of this year

The Predators were tricky again. The fishnet suit is a little nightmare to paint, but in the end it wasn't as much as a hell as I feared. There's one repeated pose, the Discobolus Predator, but the other two are new.

Greek, classical Predators

The Colonial Marines were new too. Again, a couple of them used the base as a vignette. I forgot to mention, the second edition minis have the base integrated on them, which gives nice lookings.

Looking for trouble

Again, it's a shame they couldn't do the characters from the movie, but these serve their purpose more than enough. I love the Corps!

My pal also got an expansion. It is called Hot Landing Area, and features these nice gentlemen:

Nothing new about them painting wise, just the same recipe

Tech Barbarian in spaaace. With another head could fit into a Mad Max setting or something

One of them is not human

When I got these minis I didn't recognise them at first. I thought they were colonists. Only later on I learned they were prisoners, like the ones you can see on the fanfic film Alien3 (It's a shame they only made two Alien movies, right? I would have loved to have many more, but no other one was ever shot. Ever. A shame, I say).

I don't think you can really say from the pic, but the uniforms are not the same green. Jackets are darker than pants. And all the skin tones are different. The one in blue is not a prisoner, but a synthetic, the one in charge of their custody.

With this I can finally say this Aliens vs Predator project is closed (well, that statement is never true, but you know). What now? I have to come back to the Gargant, but I think I may do some other side works in the meantime. Who knows!

Anyway, I hope 2022 starts fantastically for all of you. See you soon!

Another glorious day

 Back again on the Alien vs Predator project! Today we'll have the (almost) final installment on this adventure, the Colonial Marines.

The basic games comes with a 5 men strong Squad, to which I added a Sergeant. Due to licenses, they are not the marines from the Aliens movie, but generic Colonial Marines. Any similarities with those is merely coincidental.

Hapone, Hips, Hoodson, Blake, Frest and Verbovskee

The minis are really cool. Awesome sculpts and fantastic casts. But remember, I'm painting my set and my pal's too. Besides the above, he also got another squad and a few bits, so I used them to make some minor conversions, in order to avoid having repeated minis.

I believe the running guy belongs to a different sculptor, feels a little bit out of scale

Conversions are pretty simple and subtle

I converted both of them. And left the Sgt untouched, no need for conversion here

He also got some more candy:

Well, these were to be expected

And of course this was to be expected!

You may remember I painted some special minis some weeks ago, including a Dutch Shaeffer and a Linn Kurosawa, both in video game aesthetics. Well, my pal also got these other 'regular' versions of the characters:

Looks like kind of Schwarzenegger in Commando, but with the bionic arm

Bases are oversized, yes, but it's the same size the other minis had, so I kept it this way

More stuff! This time it's a thing out of the Kickstarter. Precisely this pal I'm painting these minis for gave me an APC some time ago. I believe it's from Khurasan, now a discontinued item. As it's not a licensed piece, it cannot be an exact replica, but it's more than close enough for me:

Most glorious brick of resin

Three layers of highlighting and you could barely see them. Sigh.

As these are not the Marines from that movie, I thought I should change the adscription of the APC, and not enlist it as part of the USS Sulaco.

Given that both Nostromo and Sulaco obviously come from Joseph Conrad's Nostromo, I followed the same path and thus created the USS Costaguana.

Due to my poor skills you can read Costagoana, but I don't dare to touch it anymore

So here you have them all:

All right, sweethearts, what are you waiting for? Breakfast in bed? Another glorious day in the Corps!

I've tried to take a pic of the complete project, but I'm afraid I've already given my pal significant parts of his batch (storage at home is quite an issue these days!), so please accept my apologies and have this disappointing, incomplete shot, just to give an idea of what's this all about:

I've painted like more than the double of both Aliens and Predators

Is this the end of the project? Well, the end of the main body of the project indeed. But there's still a final installment of this whole AvP project! I'm already working on it, so I hope I can unveil the mystery soon!

A few AvP special features

 Just before I put my hands on the AvP marines faction, I remembered I had some special minis I hadn't painted, so the moment was as good as any other to get those away from the queue.

First of all, a monster I previously knew nothing about, I have to confess. The so called Alien King. I honestly thought there was no larger, more terrifying creature than the Alien Queen, but Prodos proved me wrong.

Hail to the king, baby

Even with my hand for scale, you can hardly get an idea of the size of this monstrosity

Just a refresher. That's a regular Alien. That's the Queen. Ripley's nemesis. You all remember

That is the King. I guess it's a victory of the patriarchy

What can I say. I don't think this thing is even playable, nor that it makes any sense in a game this scale. But there it is. Though the theory for painting it is essentially the same than the regular Aliens, I didn't drybrush it, but highlighted the model using metallics and used inks a little bit more carefully. The result is but a menacing Alien, yet bigger. Because bigger means more badass, apparently.

Let's move on. I had more stuff to do. There are a couple of special characters that came out from the videogames world, rather tahn the movies. Well, sort of.

Major Dutch Schaeffer first appeared, of course, in the original Predator movie. After that, with Schwarzenegger not being back for the sequel, the character moved onto videogames, where he got a bionic arm and this aspect:

Catachan? What is Catachan?

Lieutenant Linn Kurosawa comes also from the AvP videogame. I'm afraid I'm not into the game, so this is the first time I've heard of her.

Nephew of Akira Kurosawa

Next character is known as Specimen 6. Again from another videogame, it is (she is?) quite a fearsome Xenomorph. The miniature itself is a tiny vignette, a pretty striking one, yet not easy to photograph.

Yeah, Number Six was quite different in Battlestar Galactica

I bet she's screaming but you know... in the space no one can hear you scream

Taking pics to Aliens is deceiving, to say the least. The metal bases and the reflection of the light on the bright surfaces of the Xenomorphs make it tricky to find the right angle. Then add my total inability to take decent pics and you have it all :S

The last vignette is called One Last Mission. And it's the ultimate challenge for my puny photo skills. My final boss:

I hope you get an idea of what's happening!

Stomp that bug!

Where does the metal end? Where does the Alien begin? Aaaargh. Looks much better in hand

With these I can close another chapter. Now I can say I only have the Colonial Marines to finish the project. Well, I said that last time, I know. But this time it is true!

I believe.

Alienation

 Coming back to this game from this post (April?? Seriously? Man , I have a problem). I have painted the Aliens, which seemed the easiest way to move forward on this project. Sure, thery were a lot (my pal's game and my own), but they are the easiest to paint, compared to the rest of the minis.

I'm showing the basic steps I took. I'm using the Drones as an example for my technique.

I have an issue with those tails

The minis are great. The sculpt is wonderful and are pretty nicely casted. BUT the tails are quite a pain in the ass. They come separated, so you have to glue them. No need to say it's a tricky thing, having just one single, tiny anchor point. Besides, the tails I was provided with were as you see above, quite unrolled. A couple of attempts of bending a tail with hot water ended in broken pieces, so I didn't insist and glued them as they were. As you can see, the effect is... well, odd.

Whatever, I'll show you the thre easy steps to paint these.

Black priming (Oh, you don't say)

Highlights using Boltgun Metal (or whatever it's called nowadays)

A final generous wash of Nuln Oil, but the glossy variant

 This was quite a random discovery. I had never used Nuln before, and I was curious about it. But I made a mistake when I got it, and bought the glossy one. I wasn't satisfied, but then this project popped up and I knew these minis were perfect. I mean, the metallic highlights were not enough, but a gloss varnish would have been too much. However, this Nuln thing has quite an oily finish that is simply fantastic for the Aliens.

My pal got some 3D printed bases. At first I thought of wonderful Sulaco bases by Fenris Games, but Brexit issues and stuff made it quite... unadvisable. Fuck Brexit.

So my pal provided me all the bases we both were needing for the whole game. I left any other thing I was doing and painted them. Trust me, quite a tedious, repetitive  thing to do (and it means something coming from me; remember, I'm the guy who painted three Firefly games at a time, for example: Part 1 Part 2). Here you can make an idea of the size of this project.

OK, that's easy, isn't it? Just prime and ink them...

 Well, not exactly. You know me. Please look closer...

32, 40 and 80mm bases

Of course they all have hazard stripes, warning signs (generic warning, high tension or flammable signs) and the pipes underneath are coloured in red, green or yellow, so they have that industrial vibe from the movies. Once again the Nuln Oil proved to be great, I like that oily effect on the floors.

So just to complete the WIP pics series

 There are three kind of basic Aliens:

Drones, Warriors, Stalkers

 My pal's and mines:

Drones

Warriors

Stalkers

Once again you can confirm I cannot take decent pics for the sake of my life. Take my word, the minis in the group pics are just the same than in the individual examples you've just seen.

Sigh.

The special features:

The Royal Guard

Predalien

Crusher (that's a 80mm base!)

Of course, the Queen

 These are the two hives combined:

Buuuugs! Ehm, oops, that's from another movie

These are not all the Aliens in the project, but certainly most of them. I have a few more, but they are special minis from the Kickstarter campaign or stuff like that, i.e., minis with their own bases. I only painted those which needed these 3D printed ones. I think I'll leave those special ones for the end and I'll be painting the basic models, both the Predators and the Colonial Marines. I hope I can show them anytime soon!