Legacy Servitors, Sanctioned Psykers, and a Heroquest Ogre

 These were a pile of minis that I found in a box of WiP stuff that I got as part of a bulk buy of Imperial Guard way back in the day.. either 2nd or 2.5 edition 40k ... I think... anyway it was a very long time ago!

I rediscovered them while unpacking random boxes during a recent move of house (Not sure which one... the one that I am currently preparing for will be the fourth move of house in three years... )

Anyway as these were a salvage project I wanted to get them tabletop ready but also wanted to limit how much work would be put into them.

 I decided to keep some elements of the work the original owner did and just update them to fit in with some of my current armies.

The Ogre was a bit different,  I believe I got it as part of a promotional give away at Gencon.  I did a quick assembly and slapped some paint on it to demo speed painting to someone... it then got tossed in a box and went unseen for a couple of decades...

It was in a frightful state when I rediscovered it in a bag of bits...  so I treated it to a little repair, changed the color of his shirt from blue to green, added some chevrons etc...

 
The servitors are some of the most disturbing minis that GW ever produced for a variety of reasons... from the leering face of the human male, to the dead man stare of the Squat, and capped by the clinically efficient arrangement of the clothing ... particularly the female model... this is the stuff cyborg nightmares are made of.

 The original paint scheme had each model in a different, loud, color... they were quite blinding to look at.  I could feel the cataracts forming in real time!  So I decided to make two color coded teams (red and green) with one team getting the extra servitor.

 The Sanctioned Psykers were a fun batch that got a complete repaint except for the great purple cloaks... I love the color and it stayed with just some touch ups and a few highlights.

The lead Psyker, Frank Primul, is leaking energy which is clearly visible on his face, The effect was created using Algae Wash from Secret Weapon.

I'll hopefully get one more batch of figures done before pack-out day and then I'll switch from models to books and try to get familiar with 8th ed.  Return to working on the Serene Dawn Project, and write some fluff while waiting for the models to catch up with us...

Of course Bones III is drifting around the the mail system... it may, or may not land before the pack-out!

Its Life Jim! Forward Base KS terrain

 This was a fun project and might not be completed!

the "Its Life Jim" add on to the Forward Base Kickstarter from Antenocitis Workshop is cast in clear resin.

The colors are intended to underscore the Science Fiction feel of the models so are in an unusual spectrum.

 Where possible I wanted to leverage the material to create effects so there would be a lot of translucency to the models.

To get this effect I relied on a lot of washes. heavily pigmented washes from Secret Weapon and The Army Painter for the bases coats and mid washes while turning to Games Workshop for less pigmented washes.

 Highlights and hard details were painted using the usual suspects, mostly Reaper and Vallejo.

I dropped in a Mantis Warrior Standard/Icon bearer from Raging Heroes for scale.  She's actually a little tall in retrospect because she's mounted on a base that is more elevated than most of my models are on... but you should get the idea.

 One of the goals was to make the fan structures and berry-like bulbs, the blister-like masses, and the cylindrical rolled flowers to be very translucent... almost clear.  In the case of the smaller berries and all of the flowers I gave them a light wash to tint them and later removed the wash from large areas of them with an eraser.  The larger berries and the fans retained the tints.  the berries have an orange glaze and are then detailed with a Reaper orange triad.

 A shot of the whole set!  It should provide plenty of alien life accents to whatever system I'm using... they'll make fine Chaos Flora, or Feywild stuffs... even Malifaux comes to mind... when not performing the usual Sci-Fi duties.

 A look at the orange berries and the purple fallen trees.  I had a hard time with the trees because I really wanted to leave the wood cores clear... like the trees were glowing in their decay... but... and I said I might not be done yet... I think I would have to put actual little lights under them to make the glows do what I was imagining. In the end I tinted the cores ... but I really should have done that first....

  I'm going to do a lot of Illuminated buildings for the Undertown Kickstarter, and for the rest of Forward Base, so I'll look at these again when I'm doing that and see if I really want glowing terrain!

  A look at the barrel blossoms.  These were tricksey little devils! Tinted inside and out edge layered and then outer tint erased... whew!

 This material is very flexible and really feels like rubber when so a lot of the smaller bits are moveable... like leaves etc... I've painted straight onto the surface after a good scrub and a couple of ultrasonic baths. the material takes paint reasonably well although it remains to be seen what the durability will be after they get a few games under their belts

Next up.. a push to finish up some GW legacy minis that are on the desk and hopefully the Space Pope from Raging Heroes.