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Pre-heresey Emperor's Children Dread and Rhinos


elfatto

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  • 3 weeks later...

It's took a bit longer than I would have wanted, but here's some shots of the full army and the display board. The tournament I was building the army for is this weekend, so i got off my butt and finished everything.

 

The display board is supposed to be the EC at the cleansing of Laeran, specifically the clearing of one of the Laer's sites of slaanesh worship. I wanted to have a lit up slaanesh symbol in the floor, kind of to show that yes, this is a chaos temple and as wink wink nudge nudge sign of things to come for my dudes. This was the first display board I've ever made, I'm pretty satisfied with how it came out, but I may have been a bit over ambitious in my original plans for it. Especially with the LEDs, wiring those up was a huge pain in the butt, I ended up doing some ramshakle wiring job held together with electrical tape that comes loose when a slight breeze blows over the board.

 

http://i.imgur.com/9XX76.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/JYxbZ.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/dxlZa.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/FViAO.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/EGwS0.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/ikYLR.jpg

You know that when I critique I'm honest and really I'm just looking to help you improve...so...

 

The army looks great, nothing about it bothers me. While I'm not a particular fan of the "Tron" style look, you pull it off perfectly and the results speak for themselves so kudos.

 

The board, however, is a great let-down. There's no real cohesion, the colors don't match the bases of your army, it doesn't accent your army, there's no real focus or movement. It literally looks like something half-assed that was put together simply to "have a display board".

 

To start off, I would have done the colors to match your army bases. That in itself would complement your army more; plus the base color you have would provide an excellent contrast (assuming you have other details on the display base) for the army.

 

Secondly, I see the Slaanesh symbol, but it's far too subtle, and as "cracks" it just doesn't look right. It would have been neater if you had used the tiles in some form of mosaic pattern so that the tiles form the Slaanesh symbol as opposed to using the negative space of the cracks. Coupled with subtle color variations the symbol would have been at once sublime and in contrast starkly visible to those who knew where to look.

 

Thirdly, the crystals. Cool in concept, poor in execution. Why are there random little prisms just floating about? Did the Laeran architects just start slapping down these things willy nilly? I want ten thousand purple crystals and I want ten thousand blue crystals to make the purple crystals look more purply, and I wanted them spaced thusly: purple purple purple blue blue purple blue blue purple purple blue purple...

 

Fourthly (maybe I should stop counting), there's nothing on the board that draws my attention or keeps me moving through the board. Apart from "oh, there's an army on top", there's nothing going on that keeps my attention on the board. It's like a painting, where all the elements flow to constantly keep the viewer's eye moving, and to keep that eye moving within the painting and never outside it. Your display board is open, there's no ancillary/secondary details that want to draw my focus, and it's basically an army on some tiles. Yay. Where's the story? I think you're missing a fantastic opportunity to really set a scene with your display board to accentuate the background of your army.

 

Lastly, if you're going to use foamcore for the board material (it's a porous material, and is prone to warping as your board is already doing), put some support bars in the middle. There are different ways to do it, I would just suggest an X shape running from corner to opposite corner (so that it looks like this: |X| )

 

Alas, with the tournament literally days around the corner, it's probably too late to make a new one, so these are really just things to keep in mind for the next time around (unless, of course, you're like me and would just pull all nighters to crank another one out :lol: )

 

 

DV8

WHilst I agree the board is alittle of a let down, TBH the paitning is exemplary. The only issue I had was teh gradient on the engine casing is visible for teh dread, though that is probably a very minor issue, possibly exarcerbated by the lighting and stauratio from flash...

Thanks for the feedback guys.

 

@DV8

 

Thanks for the critique. I should have talked to you before I started making the board. As I said this is the first display board I've tried to make that isn't just a basic drybrushed sand on a board, and I had all these cool concept ideas in my head about what to do with it, but when it came time to actually make it I realized that I didn't know how to properly pull it off, so I winged it since the deadline to finish it was looming. I agree with you that it could have turned out a lot better. Hell when I finished spraying it I thought to myself "man, this is not really what I envisioned in my head", but in the end it was done and I was too lazy/cheap to remake it, since it'd likely be something I'd use just this once before collecting dust in storage somewhere like so many old Halloween costumes, and the board is only worth 2 points in the tournament scoring scheme (0 for no board, 1 for having any kind of board at all, 2 for effort beyond the basic flocked lunchtray). See, this is how I convince myself that it's OK and sleep at night :P.

I actually was all inspired initially after seeing your DE board in April, but obviously you have a lot more experience and patience with terrain and displays. I actually got an airbrush partially for this display, but again I have little experience using one, and some of the choices of materials I chose to make the display with weren't the best. The main reason why the colours don't match my model bases was because I used taskboard to make the tiles, but when I airbrushed it the lighter shades the paint would absorb into the board like a sponge and the colour wouldn't show through, so I had to improvise with some canned spray paint I had laying around, and those were obviously different colours. This whole thing's been a learning process. There's always Astro 2012 with my Death Guard (hopefully). Maybe I'll give myself more time to work on it next year if I decide to do something ambitious again.

Well painting a display board is no different from painting a model...it's just a very big model, and because all the elements will be secured down eventually, you have to really plan ahead beforehand. Doing sketches and stuff definitely helps to solidify your concept and acts as a guide so you don't get side-tracked (although you can always make modifications as you go).

 

As for porous materials, what you need to do is get a can of latex paint from somewhere like Canadian Tire or Home Depot (I just use flat black) to act as a "primer" you paint on. Because you're dealing with a lot more porous materials, spray paints won't take, neither will most acrylics...at least not without a LOT of layers (and you may end up destroying your board). So you have to use the latex paint to "prime" all the areas you think/know will need it (like the foam core, or tiles or what have you).

 

You can then also get textured spray paints with various degrees of texture you can use to add some grit and (obviously) texture to the surface. Krylon makes some excellent ones you can pick up for $6 a can from Canadian Tire. And since you're only use it to lightly texture, a single can will last you quite a while. I've been using the same cans for a while now, and have done enough terrain to cover a 6' by 4' and 4 display boards, with plenty left.

 

Once you've done all that prep, you can go about priming it (you'll need lots of primer...again I use Krylon Flat Black or Krylon Grey) with lots of spray cans. My Dark Eldar display board went thru a can each of black and grey.

 

 

DV8

Woah! Woah! Woah!

 

That purple is perfect and your NMM ia a great reference as I'm painting Abaddon at the moment in NMM - is there any company that does a tentacle pink equivialent? I'm gonna have to do some Emperor's Children as an allied contingent for my (as of yet only planned) Luna Wolves.

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