Space Marines v.s. necrons

[Vairocanum]

i kinda screwed up the pictures but hopefully you can give me some comments on what to improve on these two diarama thingies.

 

first:

http://s821.photobucket.com/albums/zz134/Vairocanum/DSC00344.jpg

http://s821.photobucket.com/albums/zz134/Vairocanum/DSC00345.jpg

 

second:

http://s821.photobucket.com/albums/zz134/Vairocanum/DSC00357.jpg

http://s821.photobucket.com/albums/zz134/Vairocanum/DSC00353.jpg

http://s821.photobucket.com/albums/zz134/Vairocanum/DSC00352.jpg

http://s821.photobucket.com/albums/zz134/Vairocanum/DSC00354.jpg

 

lone wolf:

http://s821.photobucket.com/albums/zz134/Vairocanum/DSC00338.jpg

http://s821.photobucket.com/albums/zz134/Vairocanum/DSC00339.jpg

http://s821.photobucket.com/albums/zz134/Vairocanum/DSC00341.jpg

[SCC]

The dioramas are well done, the poses and action are clearly defined and fitting. The Ultra dodging the Necron blast is particularly neatly done given the figures look pretty much stock, clever choice of bitz to make that work :)

 

The painting could be improved though. First things first, multiple coats of thinner paints almost always produces a better result than thicker coats. Thinner coats will not only leave detail unobscured (look at the panel lines on the Wolf's legs for example, they're close to filled in with paint) but they'll allow you to build up colours for a deeper, richer look.

 

Second, at the size we're painting it's important to give the model depth, the quickest way to do that is with washes. GW makes a pile of useful ones or you can make your own with ink, a drop of washing up liquid and some plain old water all mixed up to give you a watery, lightly coloured wash. After you've basecoated your mini you can apply the wash to give shading and depth to the mini. A wash will settle in the lines, crevices and recesses to give you simple, effective shading with very little work. You can then compliment the wash with some simple highlights.

 

Littlbitz has a simple to follow highlighting tutorial here. If you want to see the first half of the tutorial look here, you can see Littlbitz adds depth to his models with 'black lining' which is essentially a very heavy, targeted form of shading that's easy to do and looks good.

[MattCrawford]

SCC took the words out of my mouth.

 

That being said, I have no idea how you converted those skele-guardsmen to look so damn awesome. :tu:

[Vairocanum]

To SCC:

thanks for the comment, and yea i know need to start improving my painting skills. ive been playing warhammer for a couple years now. but i didnt really start playing with larger armies until last year. i was more into converting stuff or playing kill teams or small skirmishes. so before i was just lazy and gave my models to my cousin to paint for me so i never really improved that much on my painting skills since i first began.

 

To MattCrawford:

thanks for the comment, and the skele-guardsman was just made from butchering one guardsman seargeant with "running legs" (they look more like walking legs to me) and a skeleton archer from warhammer fantasy. cutting off parts and replacing them with bone parts until they looked nice. for the chest i just shaved off a lot of the chest until the skeleton fitted in.

[TheOniwaban]

Haha! I love that marine "matrix'ing" that gauss blast/beam (or however the ammo fires)