First forays into AT - House Orhlacc and Legio Crucius

[Kenzaburo]

Hey folks,

 

in the TIAT thread I recently mentioned that I picked up the rules and a knight box. After lots of research into knight houses and Titan legions, I settled on a knight house and a short list of legions. 

 

My knights will be house Orhlacc - I like purple, wanna get to paint it and I liked the lore on that house. 

 

For my legion, I am considerung Crucius, Astraman and from time to time Atarus.

 

Now, Crucius has cool fluff, but it's just black and white - that can get boring fast, when you paint it. Astraman has seemingly little published lore, but an interesting colour scheme. Not a fan of the blue parts, but the green, white and gold looks great. Atarus has cool fluff, nice colours, but you see it a lot. I'd like to differentiate...you know, that special snowflake approach.

To make this thread a bit more interesting, here's some first WIP pictures of my test knight for Orhlacc:

 

Comments and critique are always welcome, as well as any input on houses, legions and whatnot.

Edited February 8, 2020 by Kenzaburo

[Fajita Fan]

That’s some PURPLE. I like it, my purples always look lilac.

[Kenzaburo]

Thanks, man! It's my very first go-around with that colour, to be honest. But I'm super happy with its vibrancy and richness. It's harder to do though, than I thought it'd be. It's one of those colours which turn chalky when you reach the brighter highlights.

[Fajita Fan]

Which is it?

[Mendi Warrior]

Very nice!

[ShotgunFacelift]

The purple looks great, aswell as the the Clean pattern lines. Looks like the test was a success!

[Achinadav]

Love the purple, really vibrant.

[Fajita Fan]

He's keeping his purple recipe a secret from us...

[Kenzaburo]

Haha, far from it, but I was busy over the weekend. Here's how I do the purple:

 

1 Basecoat Xereus Purple

2. Mix Xereus with Genestealer Cult Purple and lightly drybrush on some highlights

3. Drybrush some pure Genestealer Cult Purple

4. Mix some Dechala Lilac into the GC Purple and do a top drybrush

5. Pick out the upper edges with pure Dechala Lilac for some edge highlights.

6. Glaze the area from top to bottom with a mix of Naggaroth Night and Xereus Purple, heavily thinned down.

7. Repeat No 6 with the lowest parts of the area

8. Pick out some of the top edges again with Dechala Lilac

 

Careful with the Naggaroth Night. Mine seems to have tons of pigment, so even a glaze will feel more like an ink in effect. It’s very saturated and will deepen the shade a lot.

 

Got any more questions about the colours, just let me know. :)

[Fajita Fan]

That’s...a lot of steps... It’s so much more vibrant than mine.

[Gore Crow]

Beautiful purple!

[Kenzaburo]

It's really not that bad. :D Since a lot is basically soft drybrushes it is done quite quickly. But I agree, if you were looking for a "basecoat, wash, highlight"-3-step I'm sorry to disappoint you. It might be that I'll find a way to cut a corner or two with the next models, though. I'll try. But this little guy is the test mini, so I will try a variety of stuff and then try to optimize the steps. 

[Kenzaburo]

So, I've got 2 weeks of vacation starting this week. Before the wife and I are going to start travelling, I'm trying to get the knight done.

 

Currently I'm working on the heraldry of the knight. Hopefully I'll be done tomorrow, still got some details and the base to go. 

 

Here's a tease and sign of progress, tho:

[Fajita Fan]

I sorta wish I’d kept my waists separate like you did but I’m a crappy painter so it wouldn’t have made much difference.

[Kenzaburo]

That's not so much due to me wanting to paint it separately, but more due to the fact that I couldn't decide on a pose. ;)

[Kenzaburo]

And here's the finished version - took me almost all of yesterday to get it done. I really need to look into custom details - those freehands are going to kill me otherwise. :) 

 

Building a base for that scale was fun though - like building tiny dioramas. 

 

 

Hope you guys like it.

[Bjorn Firewalker]

The Knight is beautifully painted. Excellent work.

[Fajita Fan]

Whole household.

That standard.

Do it.

[Kenzaburo]

Thanks, guys! :)

 

Oh man, Fajita, I'm gonna try. At least the squad of 3 - I'm not quite sure how large a household is, tbh. So, I'm not gonna commit (yet), but the lance of 3 is a done deal. 

[Mendi Warrior]

Excellent, very nice knight.

Households can be very large if you feel inspired to go for large forces 

[Gore Crow]

Gorgeous purple, and ecellent freehand!

 

Have you gotten any closer to picking a Legio to go with it?

[Kenzaburo]

My Titanicus project is finally progressing - due to Titans of the Heresy, I've decided on a titan legion (Crucius) and started my first Warhound titan:

 

Crucius uses a black and white scheme, with gold trim and bits of red here and there. Their symbol is a mailed fist - with no transfers to be found. So this is going to be ...interesting? Probably more challenging, I guess. 

 

I now finished the metal skeleton, next up I'll finish the basecoat (remaining armour plates), then I'll do the trim. 

[Captain Semper]

Looks great Kenzaburo, the stripes are extremely clean and well-defined! Black and white is a great combo despite it's inherent difficulties of both colours. It seems you got this one! 

 

Good luck if you go down the chequers road... :lol:

 

What will the load-out of this guy be? And does it have a name? 

[sitnam]

Shout-out to House Orhlacc, not only the best looking Knight House, but IMO the most interesting. The lore in the HH books is awesome. 

 

Love the purple too, it looks almost metallic from the pictures. Where did you find the transfers?

[Kenzaburo]

Update time, folks!

 

I did some more basecoating, blocking in all of the armour panels and highlighting them. Then I started on the trim - jesus, this might be the one thing to keep from diving deep into Titanicus altogether. Just a first go-round on all the trim on the warhound took ages!  I was not expecting this. 

 

What helped was to bluetack the entire beast together, which was quite motivating:

 

Next up I'm gonna go over the trim once more, fix some mistakes, paint the eyes and the plasma coils. And then... well, this is where I'm undecided. I think I might wanna go the oil wash route. Anyone got experience with that? I think, this is what I should do next then:

1. Apply decals

2. Do some chipping on the armour

3. Gloss coat

4. Go for oil washes on the panels and the metallics

5. Add some weathering with rust and dirt

6. Seal the thing with matte coat

6. Build the base

 

Or I go the classic route:

 

1. Highlight and wash the trim

2. Carefully blackline the panels' borders

3. Apply decals

4. Do the chipping

5. Do the rust and dirt stuff with a couple of glazes

6. Build the base

 

Anyone got experience with the whole oil thingy? I did that ages ago on a couple of Tau vehicles, but that was quite a bit of work.