HUNGRY! Skrag the Slaughterer

 IN MAH BELLY!

Skrag continues the tidy up portion of my Ogre Kingdoms army.  By that I mean big monsters and character models are still turning up to be painted.

This guy is the metal casting and his way to heavy for comfort.  It had to be sealed several times during construction and remains difficult to move due to the fiddly gits hanging onto the pot.

Is it soup yet?





 I did have a lot of fun adding the blood effects!   Chop, Chop, Splatter, Splat!  Inna da pot it goes!



The weapon blade was stippled and I like the effect.  I recently met a fellow gamer that paints in a much more realistic style than I do and it has inspired me to work on adding some elements of that style in to my highly cartoon oriented approach... not that I intend to become a hyper realist!  I like my fantasy cartoons, especially since they show so well at typical table top ranges, but I might do an army project that is more realistic at close range while maintaining the long range visual appeal of the cartoons...  should be fun!

Greasus Goldtooth

 While moving boxes around the game room I located this Greasus Goldtooth model that I had been working on just prior to moving to Japan last year.  Moving does that yar!

I finished it up this evening.  It had really been quite close when the move hit so it wasn't that bad to knock out.

The worst part of this model is that it is metal.  The thing is so heavy that it was a challenge to handle it while painting and required a few intermediate coats of sealer during the course of the project.  I've been using Army Painter flat which goes on thin and seems to be fairly durable with minimal impact on color and texture.  The gems are spot varnished afterwards with Vallejo gloss.

I built the thing with the goblins in the reverse of their usual position.  I had thought of them as throwing the gold at a crowd in the fashion of monarchs impressing the little people.... on after I'd gone quite a ways down that road did I realize they were intended to be creating a gold carpet for Greasus to be paraded on!   oops.....

Legendary Gluttony counts as a Daemon Prince of Nurgle

 The Sci-Fi version of the Legendary Gluttony miniature by Raging Heroes wrapped up today.  Once I got really working on this model it was a lot of fun to paint.  It is also very solidly designed with sturdy pins molded into the model... which is a great bonus.

 Its mounted on a Secret Weapon "Blasted Wasteland" base that I got as a miss pitch when ordering a set of "Blasted Wetlands" from the Warstore.  There is a flat area in the front that I'll likely add some Nurglings to just to solidify the leanings of this model which will primarily be used to count as a Nurgle Daemon Prince.

The actual GW Daemon Prince of Nurgle is one of my favorite models mostly because of the awesome Frankenstein face.  I'll have to paint one up and see how the two compare.

 I think the Fantasy version of this model might make a great Chaos Ogre utilizing the very obvious Great Maw theme...  HUNGRY!

The victims here are don in the style of my Inquisitorial troops which makes them a particularly tasty snack!

The wings were done using Secret Weapon 'Red-Black' wash and the pustules were ticked up with Vallejo Rosa Salmon.

Dark Eldar Beastmasters and Gluttony WiP

The Blood Rain Beastmasters arrive.  I'll have to set up a picture with the Beasts and the Beastmasters all together.

Some minor conversions were made to vary the appearance of this single pose.  I also seem to have left the 'safety strap' off the models. The models are metal and the supplied standard flight bases may not be a great mounting for them  so I'm thinking about moving them to 30mm round lip or 40 mm beveled bases.

  Since the models are actually bigger than the bases I don't think that upping the size of the base footprint will have any adverse game effects.

When doing the glider scheme I misjudged the area that would be covered by the rider so the Kabal signature fractal pattern is almost entirely covered by the rider.  In retrospect I think adding the pattern to the, otherwise simply red, drapes would have been more effective.  I'm thinking about adding that in.  I'd left it largely plain to accommodate campaign and Kabal badges but those could still be accommodated after patterning and overflow badges could be easily be moved to the glider vanes.  

Next up is the Legendary Sci-Fi Gluttony. 

I started out with washing the base colors and then layered up from there.  At this point there are three layers on and there will be one or two more edge layers for illumination. 

 The trick with the cartoony approach I'm taking to Nurgle is to make the models look decayed and diseased without being to muddy.   I'm considering adding some powders at the end of the cartoon process, mostly in the flab folds,  to distress the whole, add texture, and convey an 'unclean' feel.

 The arms are gaining definition at this point.  Sigils and symbols are getting some illumination and various details that are a little bit shallow on the cast are getting drawn in with washes.  The shoulder flesh of the left arm needs 'pinking'  as it seems to be in motion around the faces so I want to pick it out a little bit differently than the main bulk of the flabby skin.

The wings have only their initial washes at this point.  The Secret Weapon washes I used for this have been interesting to to work with.  They are very strongly colored and the pigments separate out rapidly making it very important to store the bottles in an upright position as the pigments tend to settle in the dropper neck and solidify.  Its easy enough to remedy and the colors really are quite nice.

Dark Eldar Beastmasters WiP and 3 Skaarlys.

The Beastmasters are coming along.

The Gliders are nearly done just needing some black Highlights, a few more coats of Blood Red, and gems. 

The Beastmasters themselves are having a longer workup due mostly to a belated realization that I'd need to vary the poses a bit. 

 These are metal versions and the single pose is dramatic which causes issues when seen as a group.  I've built five so they can be used in a critter themed group.  I opted to vary the arms a bit and the five ended up as three standard arms, each in a different position, and two that have the whip arm replaced with daggers in different positions and a whip moved to the right hand.  The dagger arms and whips were spares swiped from Raging Heroes Blood Vestals SF. 

The Beastmasters were worked up over a black base.  You can see the basic work up in the bone white and flesh.

I did finish up three Skaarlys models, also Raging Heroes, using the different weapon variations include with the kit.  I ended up with a fan/sword, fan/whip, and pistol/sword.

My painting hiatus is still showing but I'm getting back up to speed at a pace.  I'm spending more time on touch-up and general tightening on the Beastmasters than I spent on the Skaarlys.  I'm happier with their progress.  The next mini on deck is the Legendary Version of Gluttony Sci-Fi.  I'm going to use that as a Daemon Prince of Nurgle.  The model is a bit more Cthulhu 'Old God'  in feel than it is Nurgly but I'm thinking that adding a few nurglings to the scene might move it in the right direction.

Moloss and Minion

 Moloss and Minion from Raging Heroes is ready to join the Ubergrotesques of Urien Rakarth's Carnival of Horrors.  The mini would really work better on a 50 or 60mm base but I do want to use it as a Grotesque so it had to be convinced to accept a 40mm base.

Just prior to basing the mini I ... dropped it... on the floor!  It suffered a dent to the drum frame and some broken claws arms and had to be repaired and touched up.  Water effects were added last and were a bit tricky due to the crouching pose but I wanted to get a little depth and sink the fists in the muck a bit.  in retrospect I should have muddied him up in general... probably the whole army looks too clean to be crossing the Blasted Swamps!

For most of the army I made the assumption that they are evil fashion victims and had some eldritch means to keep the muck and gore off their spendy outfits and... more importantly.... out of their hair!  I think it works for Dark Eldar themselves to have that skill but the grotesques and the beastpacks are less easy to go that route...until... I decided that the Dark Eldar masters don't want muddy, gore splattered help/slaves/beasts messing up their spaces and have somehow extended the 'clean tech' to their entire force!  Problem solved!

Here you see the beastmasters starting their journey across the painting table.  The group of 3 Skaarlys SF versions, to cover a few weapon options, is also doing well though I forgot to photo them.

Dark Eldar Army Banner and Grotesque Music

 Here is the army standard/objective marker for the Blood Rain.  Its a complex kit from Raging Heroes.  In general it assembles relatively well but the banner is extremely fragile which makes it difficult to properly clean up.  Still its a stunning tabletop piece and I'm very happy to include it in the Kabal.

 To the right is a Blood Vestal (SF command ver.) also from Raging Heroes.  This model had some issues when aligning the raised leg and required a lot of green stuff to sort out.  I swiped a fan from the new Skyraa character model and really liked the motion and feel of the final pose.  Ultimately she required a lot of work to bring out details and I'm still not entirely happy with the result, but thats painter fail and not any fault with the model.

I went with the new style of Grotesque from Citadel for the Ubergrotesques of Urien Rakarth.  These are from the first run of Finecast and it really shows.  They were warped, quite brittle, and seem to be missing some parts which I replaced with fancy cut toothpick ends. 

 I'm experimenting with a few different necrotic skin types on these but wanted them to still work out as part of the same unit.  These are still WiP and large areas that will be metal are based in a sort of corroded wash just to set the tone.  There should also be a fair amount of green and yellow 'bile' in the different fluid vials that erupt from their bodies at various points and a lot of odd tubes and wires of various colors. 

I'm still looking for good alternative models for the rest of the unit.  Ideally I'd like something is roughly the same size and feel (like a big ghoul of some sort) with some more easily modifiable pose (or several base poses)  than is the case with the actual Grotesque kit. The official kit is sculpted in an unfortunately striking pose that is not easily adapted across other members of the unit, making it very hard to resist the 'Conga Line' effect.  It would also be cool if it rang in at something less than GW's hefty $24.75 per model.

Finally I'm working on another Raging Heroes model to use as a musician in the Grotesque unit.  Moloss and Minion is another complicated but very characterful kit.  The tiny, multi-armed (or clawed) drummer is tricky to get assembled as the arms can make it impossible to position the drums if you get too wild with their placement.  These will add a great deal of cool feel to the unit even if the musician has no actual game effect.