Eagle Eyes ongoing army log -- Libby's face, & some base

[JeffTibbetts]

Thanks! They're white, but my boys have unusually large irises and pupils, and their irises are green.

[geektom]

Jeff, how is the progress on the Libby coming?

[JeffTibbetts]

Yaluk is on holiday. I think he was headed to a nice resort with a sauna. He'll be back soon when I need him to lead this little team I've got started for the league I joined.

 

It's starting out small so there's no room for an HQ yet. 200 points. When I get to add more points I think I'll bring him back and finish him up.

[JeffTibbetts]

I have the scouts and Vanguards are ready for the airbrush. Here they are right now.

The scouts. All arms are magnetized except the HB, whose waist is magnetized. The sergeant's arms weren't fitting together well, so I decided to split them. His arms are actually heavily converted. The left is cut at the elbow and the wrist, and I had to add the front of the spotter back on because I had used it for something else a long time ago… I also pinned most of the joints are pinned because their arms are so delicate. This pic is actually pre-greenstuff now that I'm looking at it… I GSed around the laurels on the sergeant's shoulder and I filled it the gaps that they left for the pouches on the shoulder pads. Those look goofy to me.

Sternguard teaser. I have a pile of arms, shoulder pads, heads, backpacks, and guns all ready to be sprayed. If you look closely you can see the mix of legs and torsos I used, including some regular tactical bits to reduce the bling-per-model ratio as usual. This should allow me, as it did with the vanguard, to allow me to stretch to a 10-man squad. I may actually just use the bits for sergeants and kit-bashing, though. I don't know yet. If they do really well I will certainly consider a 10-man squad. Also, I decided to add a couple of hip-plates made from the terminator crotch plates which I never liked on them. I added a joint made from GS to connect them to the armor more believably. They're big, but I like the Stern's armor to be extra heavy. They're some of the only models in my army that don't rely on stealth, and they always end up in the thickest of the fight, so the extra protection seems appropriate. I know some people might think they're too big, but you know what they say to do with haters… ;)

More to come, soon, I hope. I plan to spray them tonight after my daughter goes to bed, maybe.

[Disruptor_fe404]

I advocate the use of the crotch-guards from the Assault Terminator boxset.

[JeffTibbetts]

Yay! Worked pretty well.

[geektom]

I have decided I am going to eventually do all 10 man squads- I figure it gives me flexibility on making my lists come game time.

[JeffTibbetts]

I think that's fair. I may stick with just 5 of the Stern. Gives me the option of giving the other 5 termi armor. In my fluff the 3rd battle company only has 1 Sternguard squad on loan from 1st company.

[JeffTibbetts]

This is as far as I got before I lost air pressure. With it being as cold as it is outside, I was only able to fill my 7-gallon tank up to 80 PSI. I fill it at a gas station and their compressor was really weak this time for some reason. I don't really fancy going back out in the cold, but hey, I got all the green down!

You can also see where I filled in the gaps on the shoulder pads, and where I blended the laurels into the sergeant's pad.

[JeffTibbetts]

Okay, I didn't get very far on the scouts. Here are a couple, though.

I know this pic is blurry, but honestly at this point that's fine. :D All I did was block out some of the black and darker colors. I am toying with the idea of not giving the scouts red weapon casings, and making that a 3rd company thing. I plan on making the cloth camo of some sort, and all my pouches will be black just like they are for all my marines. That will extend to the boots and gloves on the scouts. I am sorely tempted to do them up all in varying shades of black and green (plus white chapter symbols), and the only place red will show up are on the lenses of the guns and eyes.

Also, I would like to at least think about weathering them in some way. The fluff I came up with to justify my clean-looking marines is specific to 3rd company and their fighting style, and I think I COULD get away with having the scouts operate differently, as they would be spending a lot of time in the field. I think some patina on their bronze might look really cool, along with the camo patterns and maybe some weathering pigments to represent ash on their boots and knees. What do you all think of that idea?

Would weathering make them look too different from the rest of my army?

[Disruptor_fe404]

Hard to say, so I feel a test model might be in order!

[JeffTibbetts]

Haha! You would say that. Maybe I'll do the 'other' top half of the HB scout. It's got a camo cloak. But I also feel like, if I'm going to do the weathering, I should go get a pot of the Nikalakh Oxide or whatever the heck it's called. I think I'll put the base colors on these bad boys and maybe I'll play around with that one. If I don't like it, it will be easy to strip anyway. 

[JeffTibbetts]

Here's another batch of updates. I was playing the bachelor this weekend with my girlfriend out of town, and I've joined a league which starts today. I spent ALL day Saturday painting. Airbrushing. Regularbrushing. Assembling. It was fun but my back hurts now, and I fell off the wagon when it comes to not eating paint (how does anyone wet blend without it?).

This was the state of my scouts at the beginning of the day.

As you can see, I had at least gotten the black blocked out, and had a good couple of layers on the bits that were going to stay black.

Here they are now:

I just love the look the HB guy is giving my iPhone in this pic. I have a base coat of all colors down, except tiny bits of red for lenses. I opted to go with a much darker scheme on them, with the vibrant green being kept to a minimum. I will most likely be doing a jungle camo on the pants as well.

Sternguard! They are assembled, finally. A lot of this is magnetized as well. That guy up front with the tabard is Xlotl (pronounced something like Shlot), who you can read more about in the link in my sig.

And here you can see a ridiculously extreme close-up of Xlotl's face, and the other dude who was mauled by a bear or something. I absolutely love the character of the sculpts in this Sternguard kit.

That's all for now, folks. I'm off to play some of my first real games of 6th ed, albeit with modified kill team rules. What you see in these pics makes for 198 points, and I'm using Raptors tactics of course.

[Disruptor_fe404]

Looking good, mate! I agree on the Sternguard faces being awesome.

 

It might be the lighting, but are the Sternguard's skintones paler than the Scouts?

 

Because if yes, that's an awesome nod to Corax's gene-seed traits.

[Iron Hands Fanatic]

Nice progress Jeff, the fantastic sharpness to the green across all your units really brings the force together, and the bronze is awesome on the sternguard.

 

I agree with @Disruptor_fe404 - the difference in skin tone between the scouts & vets is a really cool hint at their heritage - I was admittedly taken aback at your choice of pale skin considering the climate of their homeworld, but its really fluffy when you consider Corax's geneseed.

 

Any thoughts on the warpaint (esp. on the scouts)? I actually had a thought that maybe rank identifiers in terms of helmet stripes / colourations could be derived from warpaint / tattoos taken from their homeworld's culture. 

Sorry if I'm whipping a dead horse with the whole warpant! tattoos! totems & jewellary & stuff! - I just really like the chapter's background.

 

Anyway, keep up the good work :D

 

[geektom]

Both units are looking great- your green continues to amaze me!

[JeffTibbetts]

Thanks all for the comments! And yeah, I failed to mention it but I did consciously use a different skin tone for the vets. It's not just lighter, it's grayer as well. I plan to add more highlights that should make it even more pronounced, but not too bad.

 

@IHF, I did write it into fluff that their dark baseline skintine makes the gene less noticeable than the Raven Guard. It still impacts them, but it ends up making them look less South American Native a bit. And don't worry, I'm for sure settled on doing warpaint. It will most likely be just a stripe across the eyes and a chin chevron, but I like the idea of making the sergeant's somehow distinctive or more elaborate. Good call. Oh, and that bronze? That's actually just a straight base coat. I haven't done squat with it yet. That's actually a really great base paint. Warplock Bronze I think it is?

 

I'm thinking I might do face paint even on the vets but I'm not as sure.

[JeffTibbetts]

Without further ado, let me drop my scouts here. I won't call them finished yet, but pretty close.

Got most of what I wanted to do with them in there. Added one more level of highlight to faces, and some FACEPAINT! I'm about 80% happy with it. I really like the way it looks from the tabletop (remember, it's 2 feet, not 2 inches) but it is a bit sloppy. Of course, it's sorta supposed to be… But it's really hard for me. I just like everything to be so clean. I opted NOT to paint the eyes and it was sorta hard for me. I tried it, and I thought they looked really funny poking out of that dark band. I decided not to do them at all but I may change my mind.

Bronze work: base Warplock Bronze, washed with mix of 2pts Abaddon Black to 1pt Nuln Oil, washed with Nihalakh Oxide in the cracks and then rubbed with a Q-Tip, Highlighted with Warplock again, and then a final highlight with Hashut Copper I think… The oxidization is very minimal. Just a hint, really. That's exactly how I wanted it so I'm cool with that.

Pants have a camo pattern over black, with large blobs of Caliban Green (almost too dark to even see, but it greens up the whole thing) and then small lozenges of Snot Green. It's subtle, but will look good on the capes that the sniper squad will for sure have, and I think I will be adding capes to this squad sooner or later.

Black has a one-level highlight, most noticeable on the hair and weapons. Metal is Boltgun with the same black wash from the bronze recipe, which really does a great job taking the shine out. I then added an edge highlight of Boltgun again.

Green has my usual edge highlight of 1/2 Moot Green and Warpstone Glow.

I think that's it. I will maybe go through and do one more level of tiny edge highlights, but for now I'm cool with them. Still waiting to hear back about my decals that I ordered from a guy at a hobby shop, so I'd like to see them on here.

[geektom]

They look great! I was not sold on the face paint idea, but it looks really good now that it is on.

 

Also, I appreciate how you update the title of this thread each time you make a change- very helpful. I will start doing that, too.

[MagicMan]

Awesome, the face paint is really cool.

[JeffTibbetts]

Thanks, gentlemen. I wasn't sold on it either until I did it in photoshop. It turned out pretty much just the way I wanted it to. I was really worried they would look like KISS members or, even worse, Juggalos (is that how you spell that?). 

 

I'm glad y'all like it. 

[MagicMan]

Nah, it definitely looks more native american. 

[Iron Hands Fanatic]

Nice, jeff, they look awesome - yet again you've managed a perfect balance of uniformity & individuality

I really dig the warpaint - especially the uniform basic design, with slight personal variations - I think you're probably right on not painting the eyes

On the topic of whether you should apply it to your other units - I think it could be really effective considering how good it looks on the scouts.

In terms of how to apply it, you could always have a rank system for the warpaint designs / templates - you've already got one for scouts, so you could have a second for initiates (tacticals, assault, devastator) & a third for veterans, maybe altering the colour for sergeants?

Just to give you an idea of the possibilities, I did a quick mock up of some ideas:

& then swapping out the black for yellow/red/blue on the segeants?

Anyway, good work - kinda makes me regret stopping any mini work - having a crack at some Persecutors could've been fun :P

[JeffTibbetts]

I was waiting for you to see it, IHF. Thanks for the mockups! I chose the band partially because the old scouts had it, but also in large part because almost all the South American natives seemed to use it. Same with the chin bar. I do like the idea of working in tac/assault/dev markings, though. I'm not 100 sold, but I will think on it. If I do that, the vets would have to have a skull… Maybe that's where the sugar skull designs could come in. I think that might look a bit much, though.

 

Also, my sergeant does indeed have a red head stripe, as that's what the helmets would bear. Stands to reason that veteran serg would have white stripes as well. I will need to really think about how to extend this. I really like the way the skin tone turned out on the Sternguard, though, and I don't know how much I want to cover up. I love the idea that veterancy is denoted by white, and so it is with the sons of Corax as their skin lightens. Maybe the lightness of the skin is mark of veterancy enough. I know it's a codex marking, but I don't mind the double-meaning. It works out. 

[Disruptor_fe404]

I think the lightness of the skin would be a good way to do it. The Veterans don't use face paint because their skin is already white.

 

Or, you could go the other way and have the Veterans paint black around their eyes and their nose to make their face more skull-like but use their skin as the white.