Gallery: Kingdom Death Sunstalker Infant by Sven

 **This is Kingdom Death NSFW!**

Well, following the preview from last Monday, this should not come as any surprise. The Sunstalker Infant is one of Kingdom Death’s earlier monsters and quite a rarity on top. I’ve been lucky enough to get one a low numbered cast, quite early in my collecting career thanks to Chris/DiStudios and although I am really glad to have it in my collection I was also a little intimidated to begin painting it. For one it looked like a lot of work with all those girls around it and second I had no real idea for the colour scheme. Following the release of the adult version I gave some more thought and suddenly came up with a plan that I really liked and was excited to try out.

The idea was to show both, its connection to the sun, light and to the humans. So I wanted all the hands and tentacles (with divers ends) to be brownish skin coloured and too have a radiating yellow main body. So I began with a white base coat and dry brushed pale yellow at the spots where skin and light would meet and blended it towards the core. I added some yellow ink to the recesses to create a bit of texture. After these two steps I went right for the skin, for which I wanted to use my Ysian  approach. Vallejo Heavy Sienna mixed with Heavy Skintone to get a matt brownish skin to contrast with the light, then highlighted by adding more skin tone to the mix. Sadly the final result was way too brown for my liking.

 

I distracted myself by painting the maw before getting back to the skin. I used a rosy fleshtone (GW Bugmans Glow) for the gums and deeper maw, added some lighter tones to the tongue and washed the whole thing red. Easy yet effective. Very important for me was to have the throat and “eyes” of the model (The true eyes of the monster are actually its nipples…) pitch black to act as a harsh counterpoint to the light yellow and skin. I achieved quite a nice effect by adding a simple black wash with Army Painter Dark Tone. Finally realising that the model was just about finished, I went back to the skin and came to the conclusion that I just left too much of the deepest brown coat shine through. So I mixed the same colours again, just with a bit more skin tone and glazed the skin parts. The hands on the ears got a final highlight with GW Elf Flesh.

 

In the final steps I decided that the yellow parts were too plain. So I shaded the recesses with some skin wash ink and painted small veins with the same colour in the darker, yellow parts. The model comes with a piece that’s a big spurt of vomit, but I left it off, as it would cover so much nice detail of the model, such as the tongue and lower jaws, the little penis-tentacle and the place where the umbilical cord connects. It also doesn’t look very convincing…

 

Finally came the girls. There are four in total, but only three are the caretaker which seem to be trying to clean the monster. For those (and all other people of the Sunstalkers in future) I wanted a scheme that reflects the colours of the monsters only more artificial. So really rich yellow and dark brown were used on the cloth. On the base I placed them rather close to each other to make them feel like a group that interacts with each other.

 

For the vomit I went with a camo green base and added orange-brown dots to it. I think the result looks the part.

 

The final girl is a naked woman holding the baby that’s connected to the Sunstalker. She was done very quickly and I washed the baby red to get a newborn look. I also like how the absence of the other girls on this side leaves her alone with this rather solemn task and separates her from the humorous scene of the caretakers. In hindsight perhaps the belly of the baby should be glowing a bit, as it’s receiving treats from the monster? Or it could go wrong and it could be covered in back veins around the navel… any opinions?

 

Finally I must say that I actually like the finished model. The diorama like character makes it unique in my collection (until I tackle the Wet Nurse) and actually I think the beast looks rather cuddly.

 

Thanks for reading. More Kingdom Death will follow soon… I am working on something that is fast becoming one of my personal favourites.

Thanks for reading,

Sven
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