The Warforge Miniature Modelling and Conversion

Based and smoked

And now, these guys are done, or just about. I finished basing them, and did the smoke up to the best of my ability. I tried to leave a bit of yellow/red visible on the interior of the smoke by the nozzle. I think the overall effect is pretty decent.

A final mob shot:

I didn't add checkers or too much else on their equipment largely because I think it'd end up being way too noisy. As-is there's already a pretty decent spread of colors and details, and I think adding chekered strips on things like shoulder pads and equipment would detract from the hazard stripes. I am probably done with these guys for now.

What I would like is a decent name for the whole squad. I want to make a 'Counts-as' version of Zagstruk and Da Vulcha Boyz, meaning I need different names for both. I figure my 'Zagstruk' equivalent should have a gas mask like these boyz do, down the road. I'm thinking 'Da Blitz Gitz' right now, because I like the idea of them being orky drop troopers who come in from extremely high altitudes at an absurd speed. If I can settle on a name that has good glyph connotations, I may revisit the squad and add said glyph markings to all of their shoulder pads.

I will do Zagstruk a bit down the road for these guys. I'm probably going to scrap my old one, or at least hugely revise it, because I figure if I'm making a counts-as Zagstruk he shouldn't have vulture-power-klaw-feet but some other equivalent gimmick.

Runt and runtier

I'm back from my brief trip to the American Northwest (and Canada too) and I'm going to go ahead and finish this squad up.

I painted the stormgrotz up...

 

The saturation came out a bit weird due to an attempt at using some new lights, but you get the idea. Now, it's time to paint the smoke and bases and add proper detailing (adding checkers / decals) to the ones I've already finished, as well as touching up any mistakes or problem areas. I think I'm going to try painting the existing smoke plumes completely black, putting a bit of red and yellow around the nozzles, and then drybrushing grey overtop. We'll see how that ends up looking!

Nine of ten

Two more days, two more stormboyz. This makes nine of ten done.

 

And the obligatory mob shot:

Just the stormgrotz left!

Finish line in the distance

I finally sorted out my lighting setup a bit for when I take photographs, so the following will hopefully be slightly clearer. I think it may actually be a bit on the dark side, but I'll turn the exposure up a teeny bit for the next round of photos and see if that has any effect. Anyway, two more stormboyz are taken care of, mostly.

 

The one with the red tips on his rokkit is probably my favorite so far, though I just noticed I failed to do the fingernails on his leading hand. I'll take care of that now.

Just a reminder, so there's no confusion: The smoke's not painted at all. I'm leaving that off till last, until I get a good idea of how I want to tackle it. I'm considering adding blood spatters on all their weapons, but I'm not sure if that'd reduce the visual impact of the hazard stripes they're all packing.

A current mob shot:

And on we go. Only 2 boyz and the grot pair left till this project's tidied up.

5 down

Picking up where we left off, I've managed to finish painting two more of the Stormboyz which, all told, is not that much of an impressive feat, considering it's been about two weeks since my last update. Still, I've been busy!

 

The mob's coming along. I'm saving the Stormgrots for last as a sort of treat, I think. Doing the smoke/flames and the bases shouldn't take long once I have all of the models finished up.

Mob Rule of Leadership 3

One more stormboy mostly down.

 

These photos reveal a couple places that I need to touch up, but I'll get to that later on. Group shot again:

Quick question. Do these images appear too bright or dark to some of you? I've got multiple monitors on my PC, and I usually try and normalize the images that come out of my camera to have a proper light balance based on the biggest screen that I use primarily for work. Odd thing is that these images look different on each monitor, so I'm not sure if my photography's actually coming out looking decently for the majority of you guys.

Two of a kind

The second stormboy is "done". I say done in quotes because there's still some pretty obvious stuff to do like touch-ups, maybe some checkers, the smoke, and the base, but I'm just trying to get each individual ork to around the same stage.

 

And here's the two done so far together:

On a good day, with no interruptions, I'm getting about one stormboy done to this point. Figure I'll be done with the squad in two weeks.

I just did the cabling on this guy orange, as it seemed simpler for now. I may revisit that later, or make the first stormboy'z cabling orange as well. Still going to put blood spatter on the blades, but that'll be one of those things that's done at the end to all of them at once.

Painting at a crawl

Since I tend to paint pretty slowly, I haven't had much time to get a ton more done on the stormboyz. I have, however, toyed around a bit more with the stormboy I singled out previously. I think I like the hazard stripes as a colorful accent on parts of him, although I wish I could paint the damn things neater. I don't have a very steady hand.

 

The hazard stripes, particularly on the side of the choppa facing front, at the tip, are sort've poorly done, but I am not going to stress out about it too much. I figure any sort of mishap on the choppa can be easily covered with blood spatters on the blade itself later.

I'm not going to worry about painting the base or smoke until I'm done with all of them. For now, I'm setting this guy aside and moving on to a different ork to play with. I will undoubtedly come back to this guy later and try to clean up a few mistakes. There's a few spots on his garments I want to highlight, but I'll end up mixing some weird brighter shade of blue to do it with, so I am waiting till I can do it to all of the stormboyz at once.

I'm more than open to suggestions or ideas. I'm thinking I might make some custom glyph to represent the mob, print it out on decal paper, and chuck it on the shoulder pad of each boy in the mob. The rokkit of this boy could probably also do with some checkers, but I really haven't felt like fighting to get a smooth coat of white down on it.

Singled out

Well, I finally (mostly) finished base-coating the bastards and doing the menial work, but I decided I was much happier with my 'finish one at a time' method, at least from this point out, as I had more regular updates to show that way. I picked an ork at random and started the task of trying to properly paint the thing, rather than just base coat!

He's not done yet, but I figured photos wouldn't hurt anyway.

 

This is my tentative scheme for the stormboyz, although I'm toying around with the idea of some hazard stripes (black and yellow) on the chainsaw-choppas, and perhaps some yellow on the cabling on his lower body. I'm thinking some checkers would probably help fill all the area on the rokkit as well... and I need to pick the pipes and details out yet.

My usually tactic is to wash the shadows on and leave it at that, though I may try and highlight things like the uniform a bit better to make it pop more. I'm reasonably happy with the skintone, though.

The smoke I'm not happy with yet. I thought if I drybrushed it black, I'd have the lighter colors still showing on the 'interior' of the smoke, and it'd look good, but it turned into one mostly-black mass. Not really sure how to tackle that.

Anyway, still going.

The colors, duke! The colors!

I haven't made tremendous progress, but I want to throw this up here to prove that I am, in fact, painting.

I've been base-coating the models so far, and finishing the nooks and crannies I have to, such as the skin on the neck areas beneath the helmets. I basecoat in the bright colors, and use the citadel washes to handle the darker areas. I'm going to be washing the skin with a hit of thraka green, then work on the metals and other tiny details, and then hit the whole model(s) with black washes and touch up what I need to with highlights. Here's one of the orks close-up, just so you get an idea of where I'm at for all of these.

After a black wash, the blue on the clothing will look a lot darker, and hopefully more like leather. This is the first time in a long time I'm doing any sort of batch painting, which is why it's taking so damn long... Not to mention all the other stuff I have going on around home!

More to come.