BCK's Thread of Stuff: Maybe not eldar...

[Augustus b'Raass]

Well, there's two rounds. I'm already committed for the first round in July - but I'm definitely game for the August round - which is the best one either way ;)

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Hmm, putting it off for a few weeks was doable, but 6? I dunno, I got hankering to work on that guy.

[hushrong]

Oh boy, oh boy! You do Eldar as well!? Nice!

 

I had always wanted to make a Jain Zar conversion with dark eldar bits. Seeing yours is inspiring. Karandras is also looking fantastic as well.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

I haven't done much with Eldar except for these two and the main reason was that there was hasn't been a decent place online to talk about and showcase them. I'm glad to see other people saying similar things about their xenos armies and why they haven't built them in the announcement thread and now they can start working on them and showing them off here. I'm so glad we finally opened the B&C up to everything.

 

And to add another pic to a new post, here's a failed attempt at doing a Fuegan conversion before I decided to use Dark Eldar bits as the base for my Phoenix Lord project.

 

http://i.imgur.com/HY8LHiN.png

 

The Dire Avengers arm was to test the idea of giving him a shorter, underslung fire pike instead of the massive weapon the original has.

Edited June 18, 2017 by Brother Chaplain Kage

[hushrong]

I hear ya. I had been wanting to do some Eldar again because I get tired of gaming with power armor. Plus, my group is loaded with power armor armies and it feels like playing rock, paper, scissors but everyone brought rocks and you are just grinding them to dust to see who loses first. However, since I only like posting here I never felt motivated enough to get the Eldar going. I like to have a place to post my work, share it, and hopefully get some feedback on it. To me a good community, even online, is a major part of this hobby.

 

 

This morning when I came onto the board I saw your title "Storm of Silence" first and was wondering who else had such a title. I am still in a bit of shock to see Xenos here. B&C is by far the best 40k community I have been a part of with Mods who keep everything in line. So in the long run I do not see much of a problem with it. Plus, it will keep me informed on the xenos so that I may know thy enemy.

[Ferrus Manus]

I have to say I tend to find cutting up and resculpting eldar much more enjoyable than Power Armour and with the B&C rules change it's just made me want to push on with them that little bit more.

 

Really enjoying the Phoenix Lords, they're kind of making me want to have a crack at Baharroth myself. Question though, any particular reason you've gone with Dark Eldar bits as the base?

[Kordhal]

Your Phoenix lord conversions are amazing, and am really excited to see what you do with the thirster! 

[Olis]

I know full well that you worked upon other things besides the usual B&C fare, brother. It'll be good to see you apply yourself to all of your projects and not just the Imperial and Chaos ones.

[Lord_Ikka]

Ah, lots of posts from last Friday, have to catch up! For the Bloodthirster, I like the muscles on the chest as you have them currently. Actually, you could make them deeper/more detailed and paint them as literal raw mucsle fiber without skin. That seems pretty Khorne-like- having the Bloodthirster wanting to bathe in blood so much that he tore off his own skin to feel it in a more visceral fashion.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

I have question for you, brothers. I noticed that a lot when we announced the change to include xenos that a lot of people wanted to have the Forge split up for the various faction groups, and while that's not going to happen (so please don't make an issue of it here), would you prefer that I start a new WIP thread for anything xenos and leave this one the traditional B&C stuff?

 

The reason I'm asking is this resolution I made at the beginning of the year. 

 

 

 

Brother Chaplain Kage, on 02 Jan 2017 - 02:17 AM, said:
I want to get more models done, first and foremost. Second, I want to keep pushing my weathering skills after how much I enjoyed the Macharius I did for the ETL.

Specific models I'd like to get done:

1) Some pointy eared xenos stuff I can't mention here.
2) My second Macharius, and if I can correct the terrible casting issues, a Fire Raptor.
3) A small knight household of at least 4 models with a stupidly difficult paint scheme in mind.

With how slow I work I may be setting myself up for a big fall, but I really do want to try to get more done.

 

Point #1 was my Phoenix Lord custom figures, and to be quite honest, I'm getting burned out marines. I've wanted to play Eldar for a long time now and while I'm still quite interested in the game with 8th, the fire that the Astral Claws set off in me is already starting to die out. I've tried several times to get more work done on Sumatris and I just sit there, looking at the pieces on the desk and doing nothing. I need a change. 

[Custom Hero]

I would like to see your work together. A concise journey of your exploits, if you will.

 

A new direction doesn't slways need a thread in my opinion. Being able to get inspiration from your work in one thread would be awesome and invaluable to some if us. I like the variety you currently have in tbe thread, and who knows, maybe the very forces in this thread are to become allies or enemies over time? You sir, are the one who wields that pen...

 

Just my two cents.

[Soldier of Dorn]

As much as I am personally filled with righteous hatred for all xenos on this forum (,) I don't feel like you breaking off other models into a separate thread from this one would be a great idea. This, after all, is sorta a documentation of the entire canon of your work, and separating anything would strike me as an... odd decision. So not, I'd say.

[Chaplain Raeven]

Too many threads to keep track of already. Please have some mercy, keep all your work in the same spot 

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

The Sunblitz Brotherhood

 

http://i.imgur.com/vS0eBTm.png

 

 

"Void Dragon Darkstars in firing range in twenty, gentlemen. Weapons hot, good hunting, and keep them away from the Watchful Saviour. Trust in the Emperor and you will - AMBUSH! Fleet command, I have hostiles behind and below, out of nowhere! Request immediate reinforcement! I'm losing ships fast, God-Emperor damn it! Large fleet of Darkstars and Eagle bombers, unknown faction in orange with red markings! They're all over us and the Saviour! I repeat, I need reinforce-"

 

-Final transmission of Fury interceptor Captain Learon Eshone, Battle of Betalis III. 

 

 

The xenos being added to the board couldn't have happened at a better time; the muse was getting tired of the same old thing and wasn't coming around all that much anymore, but she was with me all day today. I'm taking that as a good sign. I'm starting with a classic old figure I've had for years and always wanted to work on:

 

http://i.imgur.com/ZgYC9Tb.png

 

Oh yeah, the bug-eyed Rogue Trader Farseer! The red outline on his robe is where I had to remove a lot of metal with a very aggressive file to get below a really bad mold line. His helmet also suffered from the same mold line requiring me to remove the rearmost bumps on the top, as well as filing on his right eye lens and the divide between them. As much as I like this guy, once I really started to look at him, the more I didn't care for the state of his robe. The folds in the cloth are shallow and soft and a lot of sections just look flat, especially on the front. Before I broke out the greenstuff and clay shapers I did my usual online research because I needed to freshen up the imagination with the completed models of others and some art. In my travels, I found Jes Goodwin's original concept sketch for this guy (which also happens to be on the cover of his Eldar Sketchbook). 

 

http://i.imgur.com/BcQ44BM.png

 

The first thing that grabbed my eye was the size of the spirit stone in the wraithbone on his chest which I thought would make a nice change from the norm. Now, until there's a proper Corsair army list, I'll be using the Ynnari army list counting as Sunblitz Corsairs, and the closest thing that this figure would fit in the Corsair list is a Void Dreamer, who are the warp navigators on the pirate vessels and is roughly equivalent to a Warlock in a Craftworld list. I've always liked the look of the Warlocks and really wanted to stretch my legs with the cloth sculpting to enhance his robes some. Time for greenstuff!

 

http://i.imgur.com/0W8nV1b.png

 

Bigger spirt stone, sharper robes with more definition and movement, and the right sleeve of his robe didn't look deep enough on the original sculpt so I extended the "walls" to help with that. From here, I'm wanting to add some more trinkets to him as a sign that the navigators are a superstitious lot who seek as much protection as they can get from the violent tides of the warp, and I may have to put a thin layer of GS over the eye lenses as mentioned previously. I might also add a helmet crest to help personalize him that little bit more. 

 

As always, thanks for looking!

 

-BCK

Edited June 28, 2017 by Brother Chaplain Kage

[Dosjetka]

Goodness me, mate. That cloth looks like it was part of the base model (i.e. looks like professional work). I'm continually astounded at the skill and level of detail you display on each of your pieces.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Thanks, Ludo! I rarely get to sculpt this much cloth on a marine and it was a nice change that also makes me think I can pull off making custom psychers and covering them in robes.

 

Build phase of the Void Dreamer is done, and as always, I wanted to do more but I almost feel like any more work on him on him would be a bridge too far. As it turns out, everything I've done since the last update is on the helmet. 

 

http://i.imgur.com/o06oSMo.png

 

Closer inspection of the bumps or gems or whatever on his helmet showed that they were all in pretty bad shape and were all so small that any corrective measures like using a file would practically obliterate them. So I cut them off and used plastic rivets to replace the four smaller round ones and then sculpted a new spirit stone and the other bump at the rear of the helm. Following the art again, I increased the size of the bumps on the side of his head so they crossed over onto the helmet lenses and thickened the divide between the lenses because filing away the mold like took a lot of material away.

 

And of course, the crest added to the back of the helmet which I didn't want to get too fancy with (being code for "I tried to get fancy and it broke after an hour of work"). 

 

I rounded up all my orange paint and added a few new ones (thanks BB) and will do some test figures tomorrow. The unfortunate thing about going with orange as the base coat is that there really is not a whole lot of orange shades put out by the various paint companies and none of them are exactly what I want, so I'll have to spend some time mixing and making notes. 

[Sagentus]

That model looks great, the cloak is amazing, the folds make it look nice and realistic. Massive improvement on the original. look forward to seeing it painted :) 

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

Color test day, yay! 

 

I only went with 3 colors of all the orange shades I had because a lot of them were far too "pumpkin" or almost neon orange, and the contestants were:

 

http://i.imgur.com/6eBcqpq.png

 

Vallejo Game Color Air Orange Fire and Gold Yellow, and P3 Heartfire. Straight out of the paint pot, Heartfire looked damn close to what I was wanting, which is a sort of neutral orange color. Like the color of an orange fruit. I played around with the VGC colors on my paint palette first, mixing up different ratios and what I really liked doing that was a 3:1 of the yellow to orange. It was perfect! And then I sprayed it through the airbrush onto a test piece of paper and it came out looking like Iyanden Yellow. A 2:1 yellow/orange was still far too yellow once sprayed. 

 

Then I used rattlecans to prime the test figures, which were all metal (for ease of stripping the paint later) and included a guardian, farseer, and my favorite banshee model, the "squid head". Initially, I did the farseer in just black, the guardian black with a zenithal white spray, and the banshee primed black and then a total covering of white to get it super bright. 

 

First up was the guardian using the P3 Heartfire. 

 

http://i.imgur.com/noleO5b.png

 

Looks orange in the pot and in the airbrush cup, comes out yellow.  Now, P3 is known for their paints covering very well, like the GW Foundation stuff, and it took a LOT of coats to cover the black. In fact, the coverage looks better in this picture than the figure does in person. Very disappointing because it could have been the perfect base color that wouldn't require mixing. 

 

Next was the farseer, and by this time, spraying on test paper, I had found that a 2:1 ratio of the VGC orange to yellow looked like what I wanted, and then I sprayed it on the black primed farseer and discovered just how translucent these two VGC colors are. It was like I hit the figure with a thin orange wash. Once that first thin coat was dry I went back and primed it white to try again. 

 

http://i.imgur.com/CCYR7mb.png

 

The picture actually looks a little closer to my ideal shade but it's extremely bright orange in person, bordering on neon. A 2:1 of each color didn't work, so I tried a 1:1 on the banshee. 

 

http://i.imgur.com/HCrrRLV.png

 

We have a winner! Also, damn those squid head banshees look good! So, the Sunblitz have an orange base with red markings on their vehicles, with white accent stripes on the weapons and I'll need to work out how I'm going to apply those colors to the figures. 

 

The moral of the story today is don't bother test mixing bright colors on a paint palette before airbrushing them 'cause they're likely to look completely different once sprayed, and the yellow/orange VGC Air colors definitely need a white primer coat due to the low opacity. 

[BrotherCaptainArkhan]

I'll be watching this closely. I'm still not sold on bringing impure filth that has no right to exist Xenos into the B&C, but if anyone's work will convince me it will probably be yours. I really like the tones you've got going for the Eldar and am particularly keen on the massive soulstone. Look forward to seeing that guy painted. Out of interest, have you given any thought to the base? I feel something a little unusual might be good to complement the exotic colours. Would you consider scratchbuilding a wraithbone base?

Edited June 29, 2017 by Brother-Captain Arkhan

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

I'll take that as a big compliment, and shoulder some of the blame as I was one of the most vocal voices pushing for the Xenos inclusion. 

 

So... what might a wraithbone base look like? And it's been so long since I was in the game, is all infantry on 32mm now or was it just the marines who got the boost in base size?

[Bryan Blaire]

I would personally put an Eldar leader on a 32mm base regardless. If you want a 25mm to play with, can always build a hollow center and put in a set of magnets to hold it down, which also gives the Farseer some elevation. Then the display base could have some crazy wraithbone growing up around him or something.

[hushrong]

Somehow my brain was drooling from laying eyes on the test scheme! Definitely looking forward to your corsair build up. I'm waiting and hoping they get more stuff in the near future.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

After putting paint to brush, I'm not real confident on this paint scheme and the colors on the palette being different than what got airbrushed should have been a red flag. I made the mistake of going straight to work on the warlock when other test minis would have been a smarter idea. 

 

http://i.imgur.com/B2x9eJf.png

 

It looks even worse in person and I'm having the same issue with this orange as I have always had with yellow - I just can't get it to work. 

 

I went back to the banshee to try a few things with the many light washes I technique I was using on my Crimson Sons and got some slightly better results. 

 

http://i.imgur.com/xCYWufZ.png

 

But that takes forever and there are going to be a lot of figures I need to paint for a 2k pt army.  I may end up with a Saim-Hann army after all. 

[Mr Yellow]

BCK was your choice to not use P3 Heartfire down to not being able to cover the black primer coat quickly enough?

 

I had the same issue trying to paint yellow on top of back/white base coats. Black required too much work to cover and I found white came up to bright.

 

I ended up using humbrol tan spray and then doing a light dusting of a white spray to allow the most prominent areas to achieve a lighter shade of yellow.

 

Alternatively I've been experimenting with Army Paint Desert Yellow with a light dusting of their Skeleton Bone.

 

Cheers

LM

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

I didn't go with Heartfire because when sprayed through an airbrush it came out more yellow than orange.

 

Here's some shots of the original Dark Eldar paint scheme I had come up with:

 

http://i.imgur.com/hd0TYBd.png

 

And Lelith with a tan for some good contrast.

 

http://i.imgur.com/cTScCG9.png