Paid To Paint!?!?

Of course, with my acquisition of a hundred dollars worth of models (a 500 point Chaos Daemons army consisting of Pink Horrors, Plaguebearers and the Lord of Change), I began to actually play the game. Basically to tell a long story short (because there are OH GOD SO MANY PICS), my friend JT, who I began to game with, was very impressed by my Plaguebearers, and offered me to paint some of his Biel-Tan Eldar for $50 (20 guardians, a Wave Serpent, a Wraithlord, and an Avatar of Khaine). I had no clue what I was doing but I graciously accepted. I found it pretty awesome that I could be paid to paint miniatures. Especially because I was so new, I really got to experiment and learn a lot. I acquired more paints (on JTs dime!) Good times over the next few months! Here are the results.

First off, the Wave Serpent (or Falcon? - I can never remember). This was a really fun piece to work on. He requested a racing stripe, but otherwise, I was given free reign. I chose to stipple various greens over a black basecoat, because I really enjoyed the Alatoic paint scheme. Unfortunately, I didn't know much about painting white, so the white areas are completely unshaded, and pretty thickly painted. It's worth mentioning that at this point, I was using mostly undiluted paints (except for the stippling). I also included a few pics of the base, because I especially love it! I used a few spare Eldar bits to represent ancient battleground debris. ALSO, I made a stencil to paint on the Biel-Tan craftworld rune, which I was pretty stoked about.








I wasn't excited with the results of the Wraithlord. The paint scheme was the inverse of that of another Wraithlord JT has; This would have been a little better if I'd had the courage to highlight the model, but I did not. I also did not shade the whites at all. Sad panda.




These guys were the bane of my existence for a while. There were just... 20 of them. It sucked. White on black. Awesome. Anyway, I finally found the inspiration to finish them. I did 2 squads of 10 with different static grass. Please excuse the horrible background on the first pic, and horribly painted unmasked models with wild anime eyes.





Well, what can I say? I was excited and nervous to paint this model, and I smartly left it for last (although I made his base very early on in the process). This is by far the best model I've ever painted, and it was an amazing experience. The model is so detailed that it's just quite easy to get to look good. I tried a new technique with the blending on the antlers, and a bit of highlighting; I also perfected my tried and true stippling on his sword.








I also took it upon myself to base some more of his models, which Austin had previously painted, to give the army a coherent scheme. I put some battlefield debris (and tried my first transfer) on the Wraithlord's base. I got lichen and used them for the snipery guys whose names escape me at the moment.

Enter Plaguebearer

Soooooooo, I was pretty hooked into miniature painting, even though my zombies were simple models, simply painted with bad paints and bad brushes. But the seed was planted. I think I attended a few more 40k games and obsessed over GW's site quite a bit before splurging and getting the 40k rulebook, the Chaos Daemons codex, and a shiny set of dice.

Soon after acquiring these things I got my first GW models: the Plaguebearers of Nurgle Command box (5 models). Boy, was I excited. They are very cool models. I also got a handful of Vallejo Game Color paints in the nastiest green and brown hues I could find. I got a decent set of fine detail brushes from Hobby Lobby. And then I went at it! My first good paint job! I must give credit to the tutorial "Goatboy's Quick n Dirty Painting: Plaguebearers" as it did form the basis of this paint job, though I didn't use the same colors. These were heavily drybrushed building up from a base of Scorched Brown to either Snot Green or Bubonic Brown. As far as details, they were given Blood Red eyes, and Scorpion Green slime coming from their "pus factories," as I aptly named them. Enjoy!

First one finished, as he is the leader of the squad.

I was proud of myself for attempting to highlight the slime on the Icon.

Nothing really outstanding here, but solid.

I went in more recently and redid the teeth and tongues on these guys, since I've gotten a bit better with tiny details.

I like the basic blending on the sword (done by drybrushing). I had to retouch this up recently, but this is very similar to the original effect (perhaps a little cleaner).

"Pus factories."
Just thought this guy's spine was cool!

Humble Beginnings Part II

Okay, so you've seen my set of heroes from LNoE. Now it gets fun. I basically accomplished what I wanted to; to make the miniatures different enough to tell one from another on the game board. BUT I WANTED MORE. More paints, more minis. So even though this wasn't necessary in a practical sense, I decided to paint the 14 zombies that also came with the game. I went to Hobby Lobby and picked up a handful of Testors' Model Masters pots; yucky colors and a skin tone (because mixing a satisfactory one up from basic colors was a pain in the arse).

Since this is pic-heavy, I won't talk a whole lot in this post. I'll just let you know that there are 14 zombies, 7 green zombies and 7 brown zombies. My friend Austin told me about converting miniatures into different poses (I really didn't know anything about the art at this point) so I got pretty enthusiastic with that; I also tried my first few washes (by just thinning down paint mixes). This was a really fun experience that got me wanting to learn more. I started looking at CMoN and eventually got some 40k figs and started a paintin'! Enjoy.

The 7 Green Zombies

The first zombie I painted!

I sometimes get overenthusiastic with blood.

Simple conversion! This zombie's lost her arms!

Crawler conversion inspired by CoD:WaW Nazi Zombies.

I tried to take a chunk out of her leg and cut out a bone to be sticking out with my exacto knife; it kind of worked?

This one was fun; his skull, shoulder and forearm have been severed with some sharp object. Brains, bone and limb show.

Lunging crawler a la CoD:WaW.

The 7 Brown Zombies.

Simple conversion; am I losing steam?

I thought zombies were supposed to die by decapitation!

This zombie is holding a leg, which she has been munching on. This quite possibly could be her own.

Okay, I think here I was going for some kind of Resident Evil mutated zombie form. Or I just really like Goro from Mortal Kombat... with 2 heads?

Humble Beginnings

So Last Night on Earth (Flying Frog Productions) is a very awesome board game that I picked up last July. It's a blast. I haven't played Zombies!!! or any of the other undead-related board games out there, but I've been told by others who've played them all that LNoE is a little more interesting than the others.

My friends and I spent a few weeks over the summer playing the game as much as we could. My only real qualm was that the hero miniatures (there are 8 grey plastic individuals on the side of the living) were almost indistinguishable from any distance, which was annoying while playing the game. Since I had recently observed my first few 40k games, I guess I became "inspired" and decided to paint the heroes. My stepdad, Jason, had some Testors oil-based paints to paint model planes, so I first tried with some of his stuff.

FAIL. The oil-based paints seemed to react with the soft plastic of the minis and would not dry; they remained sticky. I tried to let them dry for a few days before I decided to take the paint off with paint thinner. So after a tiny bit of research, I decided to pick up this cheap acrylic Testors paint set. Please realize that I had no clue what I was doing!

So I painted the heroes, mixing any color I didn't have (including the flesh tones) and spending a long time fixing mistakes since they are so small (half the size of 40k minis) and I had never really done any painting at all before.

As you'll see, I painted in solid colors with no shading, no fine details picked out (eyes, etc). Oh, and by the way, GLOSS ALERT!

The Eight Heroes of Last Night on Earth

Sheriff Anderson, Small Town Law Man

Billy, The Sheriff's Son

Jake Cartwright, The Drifter

Jenny, The Farmer's Daughter

Johnny, High School Quarterback

Becky, The Nurse

Father Joseph, Man of the Cloth

Sally, High School Sweetheart