Tiger Claws:Siege of The Palace of Thorns HUGE UPDATE 07/12

[Dark Brotherhood]

This is where the most unfortunate gap in my pics comes. With the final hour approaching, and camera batteries dead, I plowed onward anyway. Cleaned up the arms for 46 marines, cleaned up 40 bolters, put arms and shoulder pads together, primed the arms and the Sternguard, and basecoated and washed the arms. On the 11th, I had my army armless and only basecoated, washed, and mildly detailed! Crap!

Not to be daunted, I drove down to the convention center/hotel in Denver and got set up to pull an all-nighter. No time for camera battery shopping Doctor Jones! Saturday morning I had not slept, but had gotten all of the arms temporarily mounted on my guys with blue-tac, and painted. The Tiger Claws were tournament playable! I went 2-1, beating Lash Chaos and Eldar. My loss was narrow, and mostly involved rolling dice like I was a black cat crossing its own path. A good start.

My goal wasn't accomplished, but in three weeks, i had gone from 4 marines to having all my dudes truescaled, sculpted, converted, basecoated, and built to playability. Good enough. I can sleep at night. I counted it as a victory.

I got home and unmounted the arms, to get started on the real long haul, the completion of the painting. I think my camera is off by a day at some point here, because these photos were definitely taken on the 15th after the tourney.

[Dark Brotherhood]

I painted up my industrial bases. I knew I wanted them to look realistic, weathered, and a little bit blue, just to "pop" the models a bit more. I think I accomplished it with some blue ink and Vallejo Verdigris Glaze. What do you think?

This pic and a few others have inspired me, due to their shoddiness, to attempt to build a photo light box. Hopefully, it will skyrocket my mini pics into the fabled Realm of Validity.

I have some photos of the highlighting on the black details, but they are so awful (the photos) I may just try again after I've built the photo box.

[NemFX]

They look good so far, but I wanna see these guys finished!

[slah]

I have to admit I mostly just looked at the pictures, so I don

[Dark Brotherhood]

They look good so far, but I wanna see these guys finished!

 

Me too! Last night (Friday whoooo!) i got some glazing done on the torsos. I am stuck because I can't decide whether to put the arms on them before I continue highlighting.

 

@ slah: Good idea on the rust paste. I have gone past "rusty" towards "battle damaged", I'm thinking, but I'll give it a try on something.

[Dark Brotherhood]

Oops! Double post. Edited March 17, 2009 by Dark Brotherhood

[Dark Brotherhood]

Well, I didn't get the photo box built last night as planned, so I tinkered about a bit and kind of cleaned up the pics of the balck details and highlighting an a few guys. Consider it a placeholder.

THE NEXT PHOTO IS TEH SARS

[worrywort]

Wow fantastic job !

 

Your "orange" is just fantastic !

 

Love it very well.

 

I love too the period, the last stand of the Astral Claws in the ruins of the Thorn Palace !

[Midas]

Yes, your doing great!

[Dark Brotherhood]

I got the photo light box done. Between this handy little device and the new camera, I should be able to get decent pics of my dudes now. The light box itself was really cheap and easy to build, costing me around 5 dollars US and taking about ten minutes to build. Many tutorials of varying expense and complexity are around on ye olde interweb, just search for "Photo light box tutorial" on google. Mine is actually way more cheesy than most. It is basically 2 pieces of posterboard and some vellum or tracing paper. I cut one of the posterboards in half, bent them about an inch in to make the frame and cut 11"x15" windows in the two halves. The full piece of posterboard then became the curved background, glued on to the bent folds of the half box. Like so:

Tape some tracing paper, vellum, or in my case, funky scrapbooking paper that is semi-transparent, just enough to disperse light evenly, on to the outside of the frame.

Then you just take a desk lamp (or two), and shine it into the box.

TA-DAAAAAA!

This thing is way bigger than you think it is. Here's a ten man squad hanging out.

I took some fairly decent photos with it. I was later informed that because of the way cameras read gradations of grey, you

MUST OVEREXPOSE YOUR LIGHT BOX SHOTS BY ABOUT 1-2 STOPS. Huh. This is the result with some photoshop gamma level tweaks, before I knew about the overexposure trick.

When I made these images bright enough to compensate with Photoshop, it tends to make them a little too faded looking. We'll see what happens when I try the next set of pics with my camera settings correct!

Aaaaaaanyway, here are the pics of my Doghouse Sternguard, with the guide coat painted on in preparation for painting proper. Again, these photos are all over-gamma adjusted because I am a photography noob. Hopefully, my jedi skills will improve.

This last one is actually not too bad. Some of the sternguard are missing heads, as I looted all of my friends' and associates' bitz boxes, taken every variant head and set of Corvus legs I could find and now there are no variant heads in the state of Colorado.

[thousandsons]

They look terrible. and with so long to be working on these guys how come nuthin is done??

 

 

( im a irl friend of his just giving him some crap lol)

[Chronowraith]

Very nicely done. I'm looking forward to seeing more and I'll have to give your orange a try. I've tried using GW paints for Orange and had little success as the lighter the orange the less pigment they put in the paint apparently.

[mightygoose]

they look damn sexy....

[Dark Brotherhood]

I joined the Call of the Imperium, and the weather finally became nice enough to primer. Those two factors, plus the threat of Tacticon looming on the horizon, should spur me back in to activity. Everyone has arms now! Each of my Tactical marines is converted, obviously with the "Megaman" truescaling, but I also did quite a bit of arm modification. I just think marines look way more exciting when they actually look like they are doing something. All of the bolters are pinned (PIN YOUR BOLTERS!) and I dug for every freaking variant hand I could find, to avoid the look of identical dudes with bolters and hands clutched tighly to chest.

Inspired by the bit in White Dwarf about the "priming stick", I tried it out myself, wrapping my priming surface item in backwards tape. It works! The tape keeps my small stuff from getting blown around by the spray when I prime since i don't paint on the sprue. Which is really interesting. So interesting that I made a whole paragraph about it. Also I am facetious.

Taunt Marine found that thing you were looking for and cordially invites you to come and retrieve it. It is a can. He may even open it for you.

This guy rolled a one. Again.

A terrible pic of the truescaled AOBR crouching marine, reloading his spent bolter. Next: more terrible photos!

Now i need to decide what to do with the shoulder pads. I will ask for help here, and in the COI. Should I paint the arms:

A: orange, with orange rims, black inset, and orange Chapter symbol?

B: Orange with black rims, orange inset, and black Claw?

C: Black arms or black hand or some other combination of colors I haven't considered?

What do you think?

[blackblade68]

Paint the arms orange with black trim with an orange claw outlined in black.

[Hobbes]

Keep going! They're looking great!

 

I think they should have black trim, black claw, and black fingers.

[Dark Brotherhood]

Wow fantastic job !

Your "orange" is just fantastic !

Love it very well.

I love too the period, the last stand of the Astral Claws in the ruins of the Thorn Palace !

Thanks! I had a lot of inspiration from the board, and the illustrious Cult of Orange. The Badab War is my favorite period in 40k fluff. Thanks for looking!

Yes, your doing great!

Thanks!

They look terrible. and with so long to be working on these guys how come nuthin is done??

( im a irl friend of his just giving him some crap lol)

Shut up and go paint some chevrons, n00b :)

Very nicely done. I'm looking forward to seeing more and I'll have to give your orange a try. I've tried using GW paints for Orange and had little success as the lighter the orange the less pigment they put in the paint apparently.

This was the problem I had with Orange Fire when I did my test mini. The only thing I can say is if you want to paint orange, use Vallejo paints, and get a bottle of Glaze Medium. They have helped me immensely.

they look damn sexy....

Awesome encouragement guys, thanks again so much. This keeps me motivated.

Paint the arms orange with black trim with an orange claw outlined in black.

Keep going! They're looking great!

I think they should have black trim, black claw, and black fingers.

I have a couple painter images to try on you guys:

The first is closest to how the corsairs are depicted now.

And this one may be a little too Halloween, but I like the black hands for sure.

I should have a few different arm tests painted up in the next few days, to see what everyone thinks. Thanks again for looking!

[Midas]

You should take the time to paint only their finger tips black. Their symbol should be black but only superficially so, weather it so it doesn't look halloweeny.

[thousandsons]

I like the hole hand as being black and the second painter test is the one i would go with. The idea of only the tips of the hands being black is neat but i dont think people will see it when they walk by to score you for painting at turnys. so i think if the hand is black then the modle will stand out more and get more attention.

 

Just my thoughts

[Donkey Kong]

I agree with black fingertips on hands.

 

For shoulder pads I support Orange insert and black symbol, I think that Orange or Black rims would go either way here. Regardless, awesome army, awesome project, awesome progress, and awesome work.

[Dark Brotherhood]

I agree with black fingertips on hands.

For shoulder pads I support Orange insert and black symbol, I think that Orange or Black rims would go either way here. Regardless, awesome army, awesome project, awesome progress, and awesome work.

AWESOME!! Ha ha thanks guys.

Started painting arms, beginning with weathering the boltgun metal. (Yes, I weather my bolters. "Get a hobby" goes here, but is sadly not appropriate.) These pictures are miserable, but you get the idea.

I think I have actually started taking worse pics since I got my lightbox. Meh.

These arms probably are not the end scheme. Which brings me to the following item:

For your consideration....Test arms! Keep in mind these are by no means finished (they're not even washed), I just wanted to block in the colors to try and make a decision.

Orange Claw:

All Orange, black hand:

Black Claw, Black Arm:

Orange Pad, Black Arm:

And the black claw, black rim, black hand:

C&C welcome and needed! Thanks and see you next time, I'm off to paint boltguns!

[thousandsons]

looks pretty good just finish the stupid army and play more games you nub!!!

[ephrael]

And the black claw, black rim, black hand

 

I vote this one. Looking good by the way.

[Fire Lord Captain]

I vote black claw and black arm. Lovely work by the way! :P

[Dark Brotherhood]

I vote black claw and black arm. Lovely work by the way! :)

Thanks, FLC!

So, I paint like a glacier.

But I have nearly finished 60 plus arms. I see arms in my sleep now.

I went with all orange pads, black arms, because it looks cleaner, IMO, and because I plan to weather them in a way that I think will make all of the other schemes look a little busy.

They are highlighted in a dark blue grey, which you can't see. Better pics when I get the arms on dudes.

Started weathering the heavy and special weapons, too. I wanted them to "feel" heavy.

Call of the Imperium III is counting down, and I feel like I am running out of time!

Edited May 27, 2009 by Dark Brotherhood