The Lichborne - Homebrew Warband

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Sorry you struggled with him, but the result is very nice.  In particular, the light effect from the chaos symbol on the pistol is fantastic.

 

One thing, though, is the ammo belt is a bit backwards from what one might expect.  Normally the back would be gold/copper colour (being the casing), the middle would be steel (if a metalic belt) or brown/grey (for a cloth belt) and the front would vary with the warhead/bullet type (for modern rounds, typically grey, steel or copper - I tend to do mine red or yellow for 40K).  So, not that there is anything wrong with deviating from kind of the expected colours, but its worth giving a thought as to what you want each colour to represent.

[Volgon]

Thanks @Dr_Ruminahui! I was a little frustrated I couldn't get anything to work for me but after tinkering with it and hitting up youtube earlier I think I have a better plan of attack next time. As for the ammo belt, thanks for the reference pic. I'll admit I didn't really have any thoughts on what the ammo types should represent. I just painted the front and rear parts of the bolt shell as brass and then picked the red on the basis of it being a color that wasn't metallic. I find that, despite the vibrant blue, my color scheme does tend to skew a bit towards monochrome/drab colors with all the blacks, browns and dirty silvers so I like to add a bit of extra color where I can. It's purely for the visuals even if it isn't necessarily realistic.

[Dr_Ruminahui]

I'm happy the picture was helpful.

 

I guess my earlier confusion with the ammo belt was thinking that the middle "fat" portion (so, the bit you've done red" was the belt or links and therefore should be in a steel or neutral colour.  After all, there needs to be something holding the individual bullets together and drawing them up into the gun - though I suppose "space (or just regular) magic" could be the answer, though an unsatisfying one to me personally.

 

The red kind of gives a meaty look to it, so it could be bands of flesh acting as the belt, which is a much creepier way of doing things but not out of line with the faction's aesthetic.

 

For those models you haven't started painting yet, before you do so you should really consider pledging them as vows for chaos in the 2024 Call to Arms.

Edited June 18 by Dr_Ruminahui

[Volgon]

Another day, another guy (mostly, waiting on some bits to spruce up the base) done!

 

For this guy, I wanted to try some new things again and I think I succeeded on most of them. A primary goal was to try and give the blue armor more pizazz. Firstly, I wanted to attempt glazing once again, and it actually worked this time! On my previous attempt I was trying to glaze two distinct colors together (similarly to what you see in power sword videos where there are two distinct colors painted on and the transition is glazed). This time, I painted my base tone and then glazed the shadows with a darker color. This made it a lot easier to get coverage and I didn't have a nasty gradient line to work with. That being said, IMO the effect is too subtle for the amount of effort it took. You can't see it in the photos (though I am no professional photographer), and while I could see it while holding it, it was harder to notice at arms' length and once it was in my display case just ~3 feet away from my face I couldn't see it at all. That being said, I believe the color I picked for the shadow was too similar to my base tone. If I had gone with something quite a bit darker like a Kantor Blue I think the effect would be much more noticeable. I am going to try it again at some point once I acquire a darker blue.

 

The second technique I attempted was also to spice up the blue. I did a scratch mark weathering technique which many have probably seen before. It just involved painting a scratch on an armor piece with a dark color (I chose a dark grey for mine) and then highlighting that scratch with the highlight color for the armor. Very simple, cool effect, and I was happy how it came out. Unfortunately I made the mistake of doing it before the sponge chipping which, once applied, makes it difficult to make out those scratches. Next time I think I will do the sponge chipping first and then paint over the chipping or in non-sponged areas with the scratch marks to make them more visible.

 

I tried hazard stripes for the first time. I've never thought they looked particularly difficult to do but I was wrong, at least for this guy, as the space to work with was so small. I also made the mistake of trying to paint yellow stripes over black. I had reverse my order and totally redo both pipes by basecoating white then painting yellow and then painting black stripes.

 

Lastly I took the good @Dr_Ruminahui's previous suggestions and worked on my bolt belt. I kept the casing a darker color and then also tipped the bolts red which I think is a cool effect. Perhaps I should have painted the entire tip red rather than just the front flat part but I think it's ok as is.

 

The heavy bolter gunner marks the last of the generic operatives in the kill team. I have the 5 bespoke operatives plus a handful of leaders both kill team related and not remaining. I already have my Anointed conversion primed so he will be the next project.

[Dr_Ruminahui]

He's looking great!  I love how you did just the flats on the bullets - it looks great, and I think for these bullets anyway the effect looks better than if you had done the whole head (doing it your way never occurred to me, but looks better).  As for yellow over black - yeah, don't do that (for the reasons you have learned).  Much better to do black over yellow.  If you do need to do yellow over black, paint the yellow bit white first, then paint over that in yellow - white tends to have better coverage and will do a better job at cutting the dark background than mutliple coats of yellow.

 

You should really consider vowing any lichborne you haven't started yet for chaos in the Call to Arms event.

Edited July 2 by Dr_Ruminahui

[Volgon]

Glad you like it @Dr_Ruminahui, good to hear about the bolt belt as well. I think the effect is helped by the fact that this specific ammo belt has flat tipped ammo.

 

As I mentioned in my previous post, next project will be my Anointed. I want to continue working on the blue to give it more complexity. I'm definitely going to give glazing another shot. I will try to make a return to "less is more" when it comes to the sponge weathering, similar to the latest Chainsword wielder or the Chaincannon gunner. I feel like I overdid it on the Heavy Bolter and it made the paint job more muddled than I really want.

 

My current plan for the blue is:

1. Recess glazing with a dark blue (Kantor Blue in this case). A dark blue should offer much more contrast than what I used before and will hopefully be more noticeable. Visually, I'll have to see if the armor retains its overall shade with the inclusion of the dark blue.
2. Brown chipping in the lower areas of armor panels. Go lighter on this than on the heavy bolter gunner to allow other techniques like glazing to show through. Retain some larger splotches where I can paint in silver areas to mimic paint chipping all the way to the metal.
3. Blue chipping with a highlight color for some chipping contrast. I haven't done this before but I may attempt it next time.
4. Do scratch weathering last to ensure the effect shows. I don't want to repeat the mistake of sponging over the scratches to dull the effect.

Edited July 2 by Volgon

[Volgon]

The Anointed is DONE! What an absolute beast of a mini. So much detail, lots of little cracks on the armor, and the backpack with the tiny vertebrae. Very happy with the result though! I think he may be my favorite so far. A little backstory: the Anointed in kill team is basically a pre-fully Possessed marine. Personally, I am not a fan of the generic Chaos mutation stuff like tentacles, claws, pustules, etc, and for my warband specifically I don't see them as drinking the Chaos kool-aid (hence no mutations on any of my minis) but you can never fully escape the warp's degeneration (hence this guy). The warband's sorcerers ply their trade as necromancers, using Chaos as a tool to replenish their ranks. This Anointed has been brought back from the abyss one too many times, however, and the mutations have manifested.

 

Because of the nature of the warband, I see many of them as being nothing but bones and withered skin, souls fractured by reanimation, and sustained by unholy energies. It makes sense then that a collection of, essentially, skeletons and zombies would exhibit mutations of the bone variety, so that's the direction I went with this conversion. I haven't been that happy by my normal bone recipe that I've been using on the skull helmets so far, so I wanted to try experimenting on that a bit and this guy was perfect for that. Out of the 5 bone recipes I was pretty happy with 4 of them, and of those 4 I was super enthused about 2. I used a lot of stippling on the bone growths, the backpack, the claw and the shoulder pad to get some transitions/textures and I love the color and look (these were Stormvermin Fur base > stipple/drybrush Rakarth Flesh > stipple/drybrush Wraithbone). For the skull helmet I did a Vallejo Sky Grey base (for coverage, this is basically Grey Seer) > white > Nuln Oil order and then tapped some Stormvermin Fur on the brow to make it look more worn and I really like that recipe as well.

 

[Volgon]

Haven't posted a WIP in a while but thanks to @spiros14 I wanted to try my hand at some stitched flesh/sutures. I can't sculpt very well but I thought it would still come out better than attempting to paint them on. I also like the physical nature that the sculpted sutures add, rather than painting them on. I'm pretty happy with how they came out. I think the chest staples might be a little large but on the other hand their size may help them stand out further away. They aren't perfect but I think once paint is down they'll look pretty ok.