Blog Aginor's Painting Blog

Hmmm the more I look at artwork I see where you are coming from with the orange and the white dot.

This is an example:




Then of course for magic users I want it to be like Mazdamuni's eyes in TW2 or like Big Ears' eyes in the Goblins webcomic when he is enraged. Without pupils but glowing:





These ones' eyes are a bit too orange for my taste although they look cool:



And this is what I want to end up with, eyes-wise, at some point:

 

About the glow:
How do you do a yellow glow on blue skin?

I mean: if I do it thinly it looks green. Which is kinda cool (I did that accidentally on my very first model, page one of this thread) but IMO it doesn't quite look perfect. What is the best practice way for that?

 

The best way to do eye glowing is paint them white and then glaze with the colour, to do yellow I would paint the socket and a little of the surrounding flesh with dorn yellow then paint the pupil white then glaze with casandora yellow then dot with white

 

Look how @Itepixcauh has added a white dot just off the pupil.Then look how @neveroddoreven has added white to this eye, it's that what makes the difference.

 

Fun fact in between:
Last night I applied grass to my Chameleon Skinks' bases...
....and today I discovered an even better (longer) static grass in my local model train shop...
Meh. Good enough I guess.

 

A few of y'all have asked me for the text of my Shadowstrike song so here it is.

I originally wrote it for the April 2017 poetry contest here on Lustria Online.

It uses the melody of an old German song called the "Badnerlied".

The parts in brackets are either sung or shouted by another singer and/or the crowd.

It was a simple fun idea and it took me only an hour to write.
Note it might not be the best English because English is not my first language.

I actually didn't expect to get any votes for it in the contest but three people liked it enough to give me a point each.

Enjoy!

The Shadowstrike Song
###############

1:
We come from hidden in Azyr
Upon our enemy
Their leaders will not know we're there
Until their army's blood they see

Chorus:
So run, 'cause we're the Shadowstrike (Shadowstrike!)
Our Masters' hidden poison spike (Masters' spike!)
We'll wipe them out, we'll wipe them out
We'll wipe them out, we're the Shadowstrike

2:
The Skinks the small ones but the fast
They move, a sudden breeze
The hailstorm from their boltspitters
Brings enemies to their knees

Repeat chorus

3:
The riders on their flying beasts
Both Rippers, and Terradons
They roar like thunder from the clouds
Their weapons shining bronze

Repeat chorus

4:
Chameleons are invisible
They'll even hide in your plain sight
They're patient, their bolts are venomous
They show our Masters' might

Repeat chorus

5:
Our priest will point us at the foe
Whatever's there will quickly die
Our attacks will hit them from all sides
The Mortal Realms to purify

Repeat chorus

6:
We fight for Order and the Slann
The Chaos to defeat
The Stardrake is on our side
Our enemies will bleed

Repeat chorus

 

And here they finally are, 10 Chameleon Skinks:


All of them are unique, they look into different directions, have different tails and casquets and look into different directions, holding their arms differently as far as that is possible.

I chose blue tongues for those with open mouths because those look cool.

I put them on grassy bases using a mixed length electrostatic grass flock.

The metal parts on them are not highlighted on purpose, for camouflage reasons.

Some look a bit goofy with their eyes into different directions, but that's how chameleons roll I guess.

They were fun to make, I just hope they don't break too easily.

 

And here is their boss, the Stalker a.k.a. Oxyotl:



Lol I just now noticed there is still some static grass stuck to him....

 

And around two minutes after posting the above I dropped one of the Chameleons while putting them into the cupboard.
Broke off the tail...
Glued it on again and was lucky that it is only visible when looking very closely.

 

Thanks!
No, it was one of the others. I just have to be more careful in the future.
My homemade modeling material isn't quite as stable as green stuff, I have to work on that mixture a bit more.

 

Thanks!
I am pretty happy with those especially considering that those were my first attempt at sculpting something ever. (Except some green stuff mushrooms)

 

Ok here are my easy to build Skeletons aka the Mongoloid Guard aka Leibstandarte Goofy finished.



I still hate that sculpt. I did my best to shade and corrode them to make it less obvious and they now at least halfway fit my army if you don't look too close, but those models look like they fit a completely different art style, probably from the 90s and/or Grim Fandango.

The worst thing is the heads. Did the sculptor ever see a human skeleton? The lower jaws are far too wide.
I kinda get the whole skeleton being oversized but at least the proportions should fit.

I mean: just look at this shot:


What the f*** GW....

 

They are 90ies models and back then GW did not have the tech and machinery to sculpt fine detail in plastic, just shows you how far they have come.

I was going through my bits box this weekend and I found some skellies and it has made be decide to start a Undead army again but this time paint them slowly not the spectral theme.

 

I think I disagree. The detail on some of the heads (teeth and damaged skulls) clearly shows that they were able to produce those fine details, and I know for sure that other companies (like Revell doing plane models in 1/144) could do that in the 80s (ok maybe it was early 90s... EDIT: No I am pretty sure it was the 80s, maybe even earlier) with the same material (Polystyrene).
To me it looks like an artistic decision, perhaps to match some contemporary resin models or so.

Anyway, whatever is the reason, IMO they look bad.
And seeing how well you can do easy to build models nowadays (like the Shadespire stuff) I hope they soon replace those. I would definitely buy some if they were visually comparable to normal skeletons, just without armor and without weapon options (like the simplest ones from the regular Skeleton box), just bones+spears+shields and that's it.

 

Just got home and found this deer on my hobby table.
Not sure why it is there. Might have to ask my daughter...


In the background you see my finished Bastiladon (for reference) and the new one I am building right now.
I decided to put the Black Knights (half basecoat done, left side of background) aside for a bit. It helped my motivation.

The new Basti will be done in different subassemblies compared to the first one to make it easier.

 

Did some work on my second Basti.
Base colors are on and some shade applied to the lower part. I will probably add a bit more shade to make it roughly as dark as my other Basti.



In that picture all the green armor parts except the tail are actually not glued on. I decided to not follow the manual for that one and just glued most of the shell parts together and all the lower parts together.
That makes painting some parts MUCH easier.




Now for that shell:
I want to do a pattern (not necessarily the colors though) like this one, which colors would you use and in which order?


The base color is Army Painter "Greenskin", (not yet shaded as I am not sure if I should do it now or later) as I want it to be the same base color as my other Basti.

For that one I used
- Base: Greenskin
- Light drybrush with a brighter green
- shade with Green Tone
- pattern color GW Moot Green, applied with a sponge

Here it is, for reference:
http://lustria-online.com/attachments/20170502_223532-jpg.30643/

http://lustria-online.com/attachments/20170502_223559-jpg.30642/


So what I am going to try and do is paint over that picture on my PC and see what could work. I am open for other suggestions though.

 

Quick first draft, to determine the shape and colors.
Later the lines should be thinner and...uh... just better. This was done in 3 minutes using an old mouse.

Basically every scale has a yellow spot in the middle and a bright green line flwoing around it in some distance, roughly following the outer shape, still letting the dark green base color showing through in between.



Now I wonder if I should
- add another, thin yellow line
- add another light green line (same or a different color than the first?)
- add a black line
- shade AFTER adding those lines (tinting everything greener and darker but pulling the colors more together) or BEFORE, which would be harder to correct mistakes but have the bright colors shine more.