Finished up the Ripper Swarms this morning. Bases were Spice Brown (Ceramcoat) wet brushed with Golden Brown (Craft Smart) and then with Bone White (Citadel) after that a heavy splash of Devlan Mud (Citadel Washes). Another coat of matte sealer then static grass and done. Static grass was only applied to the leading edge and occasionally to the side to represent the Ripper Swarm devouring every living thing in its path! These are play peices and you can see the edges and transition areas are not sharply dressed and the highlights are exaggerated to better show up at gaming distances. I was intending to move on to the next Ork Trukk and sprayed the sprues black before I discovered that I have a pile of Blood Crushers of Khorne that I had been working on before we were sent out of town for three months. Looks like they are next up! In between I'm still working the Sister of Battle Fortress and got a lot of basic work completed on the small personnel door. I added a fleurs-de-lis to the center of the door and accomplished base coats and initial weathering.

Ripper Claws

Picking up after a hectic weekend (I managed to knock a cap off one of me teeth on Sunday and it took a couple of days to get it put back on) by working on the claw and teeth whitening. Here I brushed over the old Mold Yellow (Ral Partha) with light wet brush of Bone White (Citadel). After this I went back and retouched the faces of the individual rippers with Blood Red (Citadel) to get some definition between the very similar claw/teeth and carapace textures.

Rippers Carapace

The rippers next get some gray streaking on their carapaces (Ral Partha Gray) followed immediately byt a Sepia wash (Citadel Gryphonne Sepia Wash) This makes the little beggars look like proper roaches! I will finish the carapace top dress at the end to give one more texture layer and tie it all together. At the moment the carapaces look awesome from three feet but very splotchy up close as the pictures reveal. I'm a big fan of making the finished general use figures look great at about three feet since that is the most commonly viewed range. Center piece figures should be a bit more refined as they are often picked up for closer inspection.

Undercoats

Undercoats have such an influence on the outcome of a finish. In this case I want the eyes to be a glowing green color so I'm starting off with Sunburst Yellow (Citadel) over the red base color. Green goes next and the slop round the eye socket will be tidied up when the carapace textures are added.

Pics

Well. I think I should have started taking pictures of work a long time ago! My eyes have faded a bit so its hard to see some of the detail while I'm working on it without some rather draconian headgear! Unfortunately my magnifier is a one size fits all special and my head is, predictably, bigger than that... rats! Anyway the Charadon Granite is working out. The ragged edges will get touched up in the next round.

And Bugs!

The Forge World ripper swarms are altogether different.

My Tyranid army is enormous, very old school, and needs a lot of updating. The color scheme is largely the original tyranid army scheme. Genestealers are the original blue and purple scheme while Tyranid warriors and termagants are red. The other creatures in the swarm tend to be blue with the odd red one more or less randomly dumped in. During the update I want to make a more unified army while updating the technique and scheme.

The rippers are going the red route.

Due to the vast preexisting horde having been entirely painted over white primer I elect to continue with white even though the FW rippers pretty much scream out for a black base.

I thoroughly, or so I thought at the time, cleaned and washed the figures using warm soapy water and an old toothbrush. The figures are deeply recessed and this will come back to vex me later. White primer was applied and then I washed the figures with Mold Yellow (Ral Partha) and then with Alizarin Crimson ( Americana). At this point is became clear that not all of the mold release had been done away with. Pin pricks of brilliant white peered out between the forest of fangs and refuse, despite many coats, to be covered. I then used a heavy wash of Baal Red and it took care of most of the pinholes. Now I'm covering the carapace sections with Charadon Granite (Citadel Foundation) and it is collecting the remaining pin holes.