Horus Heresy: Back To The Grind!

I have just gotten back from a lovely extended weekend away in the country, it was exactly what I needed to recharge my batteries and I feel inspired to pick up right where I left off with my Horus Heresy project. Just prior to going away, I got a couple of supplies from Forge World arrive in the form of a transfer and of course another tank to add to the vehicle pool. This week's plan is to continue work (and hopefully finish) the infantry I started last week - I had intended to finish them over my holiday but alas space issues - and then start moving some of the vehicle pool before finally starting work on Ferrus Manus.

I have decided to split this project into three main chucks - Infantry, Vehicle Pool, Air Support; which should give me a very nice array of vehicles to display in the gaming room (more on that soon!).

Below is a shot of what is on the 'manufacturing' line.

This project has literally come out from nowhere as I have been working solidly on other miniatures lines solidly since the start of 2014, but I am going to ride the wave of enthusiasm and see where it leads. I am purposefully not focusing at all on gaming; not that I have anyone to play anyways ha!; But instead I am picking up things I like the look of and adding them to the collection...which in some ways is quite dangerous (for the wallet!) but in other ways a good thing, as it means I am more likely to build/paint it.

My overall plan is infantry and Land Raiders, I am a huge fan of the Proteus Land Raider (nostalgia like most), so the fact that I can use them as transports is excellent. In terms of non Land Raider, Fellglaives, Fellblades and Battle Automata are all on the list for this year!

Thanks for reading,

DiStudios

The 14th Legion

Horus Heresy: Medusan Immortals WIP

Things are going according to schedule, with the battle damage and osl complete on my squad of Medusan Immortals. I am very pleased with my first attempt at sponge weathering and am looking forward to speeding through my infantry with this technique. The test shield also turned out according to plan, which means I will proceed to paint the shields and weaponry over the next few days, one last test needs to be completed, which is the weapons glow (more on that when I get to it), but for now here are some progress shots - albeit bad photos, which have turned out a little bleached for some reason. With things looking the way I envision, I am a little skeptical about possibly ruining it all with pigment dust.

Horus Heresy: Iron Hands Test Models

As a break from all the Warzone stuff I have been doing lately, I have returned to the reassuringly expensive arms of Forge World. Regular readers will probably remember some time ago I was looking to start a Horus Heresy Iron Hands army, but got completely side tracked by other miniatures. Well as of today, the Iron Hands are officially on the march! My hope is that this mini project will help me paint en masse and of course finally score me a fully painted Horus Heresy army in the process...

There are a number of ways I could have gone about painting these figures, personal favourites include blue and turquoise highlights for the black. But I decided to take a altogether different approach to painting these guys, as I am looking for a more gritty realistic look as opposed to the sharp highlighting I normally do. As a result the figure above has had a single, very subtle amount of grey used as a liberal highlight (which was then washed with Nuln Oil). The plan is to have a simple base that lets the weathering and dusting bring out the 'character' of the unit.

Because the legion colours are predominantly black, I have decided to add a few colour breaks where possible. While I could easily add brass to the equation, I feel too much metallic and black will make the army look overly garish. So to counter this I decided to paint the pistol and ammo holsters a dark brown. This warm colour stands out but not in a way that makes the models look out of place.

What remains now is to shade and highlight the browns and of course brush the metal areas with a bright silver - this will be the basic model complete. After this it will be down completely to the chipping and weathering to bring the unit to life.

Thanks for reading,

DiStudios

The 14th Legion

Gallery: Minions Thrullg

An oldie from my Warmachine/Hordes collection, that I never got round to photographing. I found him today and decided that he was actually quite nice and so deserved a (quick) photo shoot. This miniature shows my first forays into using pigment dusts and clear resin for base work, the idea being to create a swamp like feature to unify the project.

I did enjoy working on the various beasts that the Hordes Minions list possessed, but as with most things sacrifices had to be made, in order to move on to other projects.

Warzone Resurrection: Prodos Games Commissions

Greetings everyone! For those of you who went to Salute this year, I hope you had a great time looking at all the lovely miniatures and increased the heights of your respective hobby mountains! Sadly I could not be there this year due to work commitments, which is a shame as I was really looking forward to meeting the Prodos Games team: responsible for the excellent Warzone Resurrection and up coming Aliens Vs Predator board game. If you did manage to pay their stand a visit, you might of come across a couple of pieces painted by myself for their display cases...

I had been eagerly awaiting the arrival of these figures, ever since I saw the renders on their Facebook page and Prodos did not disappoint! From the demonic Kabuto masks to the Sashimono banners, every ounce of these figures pour character. The colour scheme was decided by Prodos Games, to match the art work and at request of fellow Warzone fans I will be doing a step by step for the reds I use. I can't wait to start my set of six, which will be in the typical dark blues of my army scheme.

The Eradicator Death Droid is a very impressive chunk of resin, it stands roughly 8 inches tall and has enough bulk to make it stand out among kits of similar size. What is most impressive though is the price; it is quite a fair bit cheaper than other manufacturers considering that it is all resin. This figure alone has tempted me to start a Cybertronic army, but at two factions of worth of models already I will be stuck at the painting table for a very long time as it is!

I decided very early on that I wanted a Apple/I robot feel to the figure, so white panels and clean stripes for colour breaks, however after applying the shade and base I quickly decided to add weathering to make it look less boring. The large expanses of armour mean that singular colours are really going to dominate a large model like this, so extra detail should be added to keep the piece interesting.

For that reason I decided to add lots of hand painted weathering, firstly adding lines/spots of black, and then adding dark flesh paint on top, making sure to leave some black showing. I made sure to place the Cybertronic symbol on the nose as oppose to the shoulder pads, again to break the expanses of white, I think I could have done it slightly larger than it is, but overall I am happy with how it looks.

At the request of Mark (director of Prodos games) I added some free hand circuitry in a subtle green, I had wanted to do a matrix style set of stripes on various armour plates, but I think that may have been overkill and in fact less has become more in this case. I also added some glowing effects to again break up the expanses of white armour, which I think it is effective and draws the eye to the piece.

Issues

As I was taught by good old Gamesworkshop: "When it's good it's your fault, when it's s**t it's your fault", and I will be the first to put my hands up and admit that there are some problems with the piece. I did not  initially pick up on the mistakes, but other fans have kindly done so. The heat stains on the fusion style gun are off and some people have mistaken it for glow, this is a technique I will practice on until I get it right, and naturally once I do, I will share my results here, I know how to apply the technique, I just need to master it. Some people don't like the vent glow, I actually do as it is a nod to the original piece that had 'eyes' painted in a similar colour but sadly that detail did not translate to the 2014 version...perhaps it was best that style of sculpting was left in the 90's haha. Also the hazard stripes on the chain saw are a little off, which is unusual for me as I tend to get those right 90% of the time, these are always painted free hand, I never use masking tape as more often than not, when I use masking tape the lines look really off - maybe I have issues with my eyes that need investigating haha!

Despite the issues above, I had a great time painting this piece despite having never touched a Cybertronic figure before (I am Bauhaus and Mishima through and through!) and I can only say thank you to Mark and Prodos Games for giving me a shot at doing a 'professional commission' - please note I am using this in the loosest possible way as I appreciate I am not by any means a pro painter - I am really pleased that they did use the pieces for the Salute convention and I hope that the job is good enough for future use by the guys at Prodos. If I am very lucky, I might even get the honour of painting a few more bits for them.

Thanks for reading,

DiStudios

The 14th Legion

Prodos Games now have a brand new website, check it out HERE