And here are the candidates from the Sternguard box:
Not a huge fan of the bald/bionic one or the mohawk one. The mohawk head looks a lot like a guy I was in the marines with, who always cut his hair in a "horseshoe" cut and was a general jackass. lol. The bald head is too mature for the persona I've given this model. I really like the final head, as it displays a fierceness without resorting to the "show me your war face" route. What do you folks think?
I also took a quick shot of the fin assembly of my drop pod, to see how it looked on screen.
I discovered that I am NOT a fan of painting large, flat areas of metallic colors. It's damned near impossible to avoid brush strokes and pooling. There's two coats of my darkest silver color, a wash of Badab Black around the edges, another coat of the darkest silver, and then two coats of my mid-tone silver. And you can still see streaks and lines! The Dullcote helped a little, but I really need to find a way to paint big, flat silver surfaces. Any tips?
The stance is not particularly aggressive or animated. To me it evokes the patience to wait for your enemy to make a mistake, the determination to stand your ground instead of rushing ahead. For these reason I like the impassive helmeted head and the grim determination of the last one.
ReplyDeleteLarge pieces of industrial steel that aren't painted tend to have a fair amount of color variation. For bare but well maintained metal I like to stipple rust brown over black. Then I drybrush in silver with a large brush to avoid streaks, wash with black, and highlight with a brighter silver. My goal is to achieve some random variation in color without leaving visible brush strokes.
I don't have as much experience with highly polished metal over large surfaces. I would probably try putting it through the airbrush, or thinning is as much as possible and going with several thin coates.
That's a good assessment of the pose, and accurately highlights why I'm not a huge fan of the screaming heads.
DeleteI've always hesitated with putting metals through my airbrush, out of some paranoid fear that they'll contaminate everything else I paint (which makes no sense because I clean after every use). I'll have to give it a shot. I tried thinning these really well, but something with the Reaper Master Series metallics makes them act strangely when thinned too much. I'm still trying to figure that out.
I like the last head but Kamui has a good point too.
ReplyDeleteI'm a fan of washes for everything but especially metal. I tend to do a heavy wash on my metals and it does well to hide strokes and metal imperfections by creating it's own pooling and imperfections. It also blends in those mistakes as well. I know you paint clean but considering it's a drop pod, heavy washes on the metal wouldn't be out of place either.
I think I might try out GW metallic for the next pod, as from what I've read recently, the Reaper metallic I use now simply suffer from a coverage problem. Other painters using them found the same problems I did. Great for small details, crap for flat surfaces.
DeleteI use Vallejo metallics and never had an issue with theirs. I've used some GW ones as well and coverage has been fine. Sometimes the brighter metallics can be troublesome but less so than what you're experiencing it seems.
DeleteYou know, I normally prefer helmets to bare heads, but in this case, I almost think that the helmeted option is the least desirable. Have GW sculpts gotten that much better?
ReplyDeleteKamui's assessment is pretty great though, so after reading that, I'd prefer the last head as well.
I really do think it's the improved sculpts. They look like humanoids heads, instead of cartoon people like the old ones that originated in Third Edition.
Delete