What do you do when you've spent more than 24 hours and whole forests worth of carbon to travel to literally the other side of the planet to visit old friends?
Fresh air? What's that?
That's right, you sit inside and you paint tiny space men* with them.
Fair warning, this is just another step-by-step painting work in progress, so if you're not terribly interested in that please click anyway as I am terribly lonely and I get beaten if these posts don't get hits.
I recently made one of my semi-regular trips back to my sheep-infested homeland, while also acting as The Megapope's mule for plastic crack. Games Workshop gouge the crap out of their antipodean customers, so I was happy to bring him a box of Devastators that wasn't being charged at 800% markup.
Look how happy he is!
Being a gigantic nerd, I had planned ahead and bought with me an Infinity figure (another Naffatun, like the ones in one of my earlier posts). So while lascannons and heavy bolters flew from their sprues like plastic rain, I got busy painting.
I don't think that ponytail is particularly safe.
Didn't have any primer on hand, so I picked up a can of Tamya white primer. It's actually really nice, had a good tooth, and didn't wear at all. As usual I started with citadel Desert Yellow for the uniform, then Dark Flesh for armor and detailing. It'll be mostly covered by subsequent orange coats, but enough will remain in recesses to add depth.
Really, it's going to get caught on something.
My Ultramarine-obsessed host was lacking in Badab Black and Gryphonne Sepia washes**, so I had to make do with extremely watered down Snakebite Leather (for the yellow) and Chaos Black (for the grey). The brown worked better than the black, but both did their job. The highlighting on the yellow, however, is not at all up to my usual standards, and I blame the unfamiliar (and hook-ended) brush. I'll have to fix it later.
Or catch on fire.
The orange, on the other hand, turned out great. I decided not to overthink or over-blend things, and the bolder highlights coupled with the added depth from the dark flesh make it pop against the pale cloth areas. Sadly, I was missing the greys necessary for the gun and boots, as well as blue for the visor/details, so this is as far as I could get. I thought it was worth posting though, as I'm pleased with how much I could get done in just a couple of hours - it's always much more fun to paint with someone else.
Also SOMEONE has to post in this blog.
* Actually, in this case a tiny space woman. Unlike most tiny space women, she is wearing sensible clothing and no combat heels. Sadly she has not avoided Gigantic Boob Armor Syndrome, but I guess we can't have everything.
** I think they're too dirty for Ultramarines.
By Gravitas
Posted at 22:50
ragik
I swear, Infinity miniatures exist purely to make me feel like a terrible painter. I consider myself a mid-range painter, not golden demon worthy but able to implement standard techniques to get a passable result. But something about the Infinity line makes me feel like I'm a 12-year-old learning to drybrush again. I think it's the dynamic posing and realistic* scale, they really make you step up your game.
Anyway, Ragiks! The drop-troops of the Hassassin Society, specialists in turning up unannounced to mess your stuff right up. I've used these guys successfully by luring the other player's forces into the mid-field with some Ghulam plebs, then having the Ragiks turn up in the opponent's own setup zone to gun down their lieutenant and other high-cost units from behind.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I was a little unsatisfied with how the orange was turning out on my Naffatun, and after a bit of thought I decided that the problem was that the armor didn't have enough depth.
The solution was pretty simple, put down a base coat of Dark Flesh underneath the Solar Marcharius Orange. It makes the gaps between armor plates seem deeper, and gives an overall slightly richer shade.
The guns are a continuation of my experiments with non-metallic-metal. They're still a bit messy, and turned out much better on the rifle (above) than on the heavy machinegun, but I think I'm starting to get a handle on the technique. I'm especially pleased with how the rifle's clip turned out.
The sword is another experiment, painted in Necron Abyss with edging in Enchanted Blue, Ice Blue and Skull White. It's okay, but I think it's missing something.
These guys aren't actually finished, they need a final pass to clean up a few mistakes and add a little edge highlighting on the shoulder vents. Overall though, I'm much happier with how they turned out, and hopefully I can apply these lessons to the next couple of miniatures I'm painting - those unfortunate Ghulams that the Ragiks use for bait.
* Compare them to Games Workshop humans, who's fists are often bigger than their heads.
The excellent Ghost In The Shell meets Necromunda cyberpunk skirmish game Infinity really needs its own write up, and maybe I will do that one day when I'm bored. For now it's enough to say that I've enjoying playing the game with proxy models while slowly purchasing and painting the actual figures.
Painting them ORANGE.
It is no secret that I have a huge nerd-boner for space, in particular the exploration of Mars - probably due to being bitten by a radioactive copy of Kim Stanley Robinson's excellent Mars Trilogy when I was but a wee lad*. So a Mars-based color scheme seemed like an obvious choice, striking enough to stand out but still a logical choice for a combat unit.
However, I had a problem. I had no idea how I wanted to paint martian camo. Did I want to attempt a DPM pattern? How red is the red planet? How do I avoid everything becoming a blur of warm colors? Clearly I needed to experiment.
So I did. Because I give precisely zero damns for the secondary market, I used as my test models figures from the slightly-rare Schaeffer's Last Chancers. Partly because I had them lying around, but mostly because the ridiculously sculpted model named "Shiv" had become some sort of unstoppable force in the games I used him in.
Proxied for a lowly mechanised infantry trooper, he would wade through incoming fire to murder models many times his worth with a shotgun. Clearly a model who deserved to be rewarded.
Rewarded with a MANLY BEARD sculpted from the most MACHO OF GREENSTUFF
The scheme I used on the model I affectionately call Stabby McStabberton was based on pictures from the martian surface, a deep red/brown tending to orange and pink. After a coat of white primer, his uniform was base-coated in Dark Flesh, then highlighted towards Blazing Orange. I think I gave it a Thrakka Green wash too, because why not?
Secondary colors were a desert yellow and a neutral grey/black. The yellow was Desert Yellow with a Gryphonne Sepia wash, then highlighted to Bleached Bone. The black was Chaos Black with simple Codex Grey/Skull White highlights.
I knew that I needed a cool color to make the whole thing come together, so any metal surfaces were hightlighted with Shadow Grey and Astronomicon Grey. I had decided not to use any metallic paints on these guys both as a stylistic choice and as a way of experimenting with non-metallic-metal techniques. I spent a bit more time on the knife than I did on the gun, and while I don't think I really nailed the effect, it was an interesting experiment.
The skin tone was another experiment, as I had never painted non-caucasian skin before. I didn't want to use Dark Flesh as a base, as it was already the base of the uniform, and also I thought it was a bit too red. So I eyeballed it, starting with a base of Beastial Brown and a wash of Leviathan Purple, highlighting towards Tallarn Flesh, then changing halfway through to Elf Flesh. Think there might have been a bit of bleached bone in there as well.
The result is good, though I probably should have aimed for a lighter shade to contrast more with the uniform. It's more Indian Subcontinent than the Middle Eastern tone I was aiming for, but I quite like it. Finally, the hair has a slightly blue shade to help it stand out against the skin.
Overall, the colors on the miniature are okay, but not quite what I was after. It's too much a mass of red, and ironically it blends too much into the base (Dark flesh, heavy drybrush Blazing Orange, light drybrush Elf Flesh). The yellow, and the blue-metal were promising. Time to try something a little brighter.
AUGH TOO BRIGHT
I never did finish this guy, firstly because the figure itself never inspired me (he's no McStabberton that's for sure), and secondly because by the time I'd got half finished, I had a pretty good idea of how I was going to go about painting the actual figures. His jumpsuit is a stylish Blazing Orange with a Devlan Mud wash, highlighted towards Elf Flesh, and blah blah blah, I'm already sick of this guy. The darker skin (only basecoated and washed) looks much better against the orange than it does against the red though.
So the orange contrasted nicely while still being in an acceptable Martian color range, though it was a bit bright (and too much of it made it look like a prison jumpsuit). The yellow was just about right, and in fact could probably be used more liberally. The red would be okay for an accent color for pouches and the like, but not suitable for anything larger. The metal was good, but there needed to be a bit more blue to make the whole scheme pop.
Now I had a workable plan, a little experience with some of the more unfamiliar colors and techniques, it was time to paint the actual models I bought for the task.
Next: I finally get around to painting the damn things.
* This is not actually true, I didn't read Red Mars/Green Mars/Blue Mars until I was in my mid 20s, and they were only slightly irridated at the time.
Fresh air? What's that?
Look how happy he is!
Or catch on fire.
