All the colours of the rainbow - better to eat you with

Hehe, found this on BoLS and thought it was funny so I am sharing it here!

Who else has a Nid army? We need to do an Apoc game with all the Nids on one side!

WIP: Termagants

More shots of the Termagants work in progress. I have tidied up the internal flesh and the skin.

Tomorrow I begin working on the carapace and weapons.

Group shot - camera still not the best as I am using my webcam. I will improve the shots using my digital camera closer to completion. 

Close up of the Termagants. You'll notice the cleaned up skin. 

New: Fantasy 8th Edition

LOOK! Looks like it's coming soon!

Advance order is 15th June 2010!

Full action Tau suits

Here we have some WIP of my Tau Suits. These are all fully articulated, very similar to gundam kits. Since someone with as much design sense as a cabbage did the original crisis suit sculpts, I took the liberty to 1up the new forgeworld designs. As you can see, I've tried my best to retain as many of the original tau design language as possible. The suits have been kit bashed from various mecha toys and models. PVC joints are by a Japanese company called kotobukiya. Since the Tau are actually Japanese anyways, gundam and samurai inspirations were also in mind.

Comments are welcomed

Long Fangs

Just to keep up with my obligations to my buddy Ray in terms of painting, here are my new long fangs. I've spent about 6 or so hours so far... 40k is really a love/hate relationship for like all my relationships with girls... You love them, but there are def. times I wanna twist off their heads.

Nothing really unique about my style, pretty much standard procedure. The only thing is I try to get them done the cheapest way possible. instead of using gw's matt black spray paint, I use any kind of matte black spray I can find at hardware stores for 3 reasons.

1. Price. I ain't payin gw S**T... $20 hong kong roughly around $2.50 usd, i can get the same sized spray can instead of whatever the obscene amount gw demands...

2. Spray paints sold at hardware stores tend to be less fine than hobby grade sprays. This can be used to your advantage when you decide to dry brush and highlights as the rougher spray tends to pick up better and therefore saving time on dry brushing without re-applying layers that appear to be too faint. You will need to get a feel for this first...

3. Your basecoat should always be the most important layer. I could care less if you can paint Sistine chapel on your model if your colors peel off due to crappy base coats. Hard ware grade spray paints are designed to hold onto almost anything... My neighbor's spotted chihuahua will agree with me. With that said, there is also no longer the need for metal primers for metaloid minis and therefore saving you even more money... Please note, metal models will still chip if you are not careful. The reason is paints is softer than metal... You will still want to purity seal the model.

Thanks for reading guys...

WIP Death company

I posted my death company progress here .

Enjoy.

Maelstrom Games: Discount Extension

Great news for those who have not purchased in the last discount. I just got an email that it's been extended:

Your 17.5% off UK RRP discount voucher now ends on Thursday 27th of May 2010 at midnight (GMT) and it's a great chance to grab yourself those Games Workshop products you really fancy before they go up in price!

WIP: Termagants

My painting technique has a flaw...takes bloody long to dry. Here's a WIP photo! You can actually spy the one without the carapace done yet. The skin is based on Bleached Bone followed by a wash of Warlock Purple. Both stages require a lot of drying time!

Carapace is Chaos Black. I am still deciding on the base rim colour but I reckon it'll be a dark gray to contrast with the lighter skin tone.

WIP Pics for the Tale

I have commenced painting me Sanguinary Guard (SG). I have divided the sections to be painted up. The SG mainly consist of : Armor, Gems, Wings/winged motifs and weapons.

Started with the armor and was filled with the Red Thirst of painting them muahaha!!

SG WIP front view.


SG WIP back view.


WIP Group shot 1. Eight of the armor of the SG is done, two left.


Overhead WIP view. Tako (my painting mascot) can be seen in the upper left corner ;P

Paint on guys! :)

Objective of this Blog

I have received quite a number of queries asking what this blog is and what we intend to accomplish.

It's pretty simple.

Painting is quite a lonesome thing sometimes and this serves as a great platform for all of us to share our work with an audience whom we know. On top of that, we as a group have been scattered across the globe and this trend may continue as we are posted for jobs or family beckons.

As such, I hope this blog will serve as our community blog. A place that we can use to share our experience in gaming wherever you are - Hong Kong, Singapore or Australia etc.

I hope we get a steady group of followers, people who are like minded like us - out to have fun.

Fun is defined as an evocative game of 40k or Fantasy in amazing terrain and beautifully painted armies. A game where winning is not everything but ensuring you can tell a good story at the end of the game.

If you connect with the above, then you are with a community of like minded gamers. I invite you to meet with one of us wherever you are. Send me a message or leave a comment with some contact details. We will be keen to game with you as well. "Follow" the blog to get regular updates and do get in touch!

Base considerations.

Long time Warhammer buddy/ex-lecturer Kelvin has a very cool blog.

He also recently did an article on bases which I found to be an extremely interesting read.

Head over to The Painting Shop to check it out.

Primers and Spray.

Remember when we first started? For me I did not even know about priming minis prior to painting. I simply applied paint directly onto the miniatures. The results were horrendous obviously, however I still have that mini, I can remember as clearly as I just began, it was a plastic chaos warrior. The one were it was a single pose, before the first sets of multi-part plastics.

I guess we have all gone down that slippery road before. Trying to find the elusive "perfect primer". Experimenting with various brands/kinds of spray paint. And more often than not we get frustrated with the results, if not totally in love but realizing it to be too costly.

Honestly I love the Games-Workshop primers. They have a perfect consistency, easily available (back then) and were relatively cheap. At least back then when I was working in GW. The staff discount was seriously serious.

But before that and ever since GW left Singapore, Hobby specific primers eg. Tamiya, GW and various others, were just too expensive for a struggling student to afford. Therefore I resorted to cheap spray paint from Hardware stores, and even the supposed "better" spray paints being sold in Paradigm Infinitum for 2-3 times the retail price found in hardware stores.

So I decided I could not afford Hobby Primers anymore. (I can now but choose to distribute my funds more effectively to many other things, like food and more miniatures!) And went ahead going through tons of spray paints. From the RJ paints found in Mustafa to the London paints and of course the infamous Nippon PLYOX. Most of these paints could get the job done. Cheap, good coverage and most importantly, really flat.

The same can't be said for PYLOX. It absolutely suck balls of fury. Prices were highest among the normal, coverage was blotchy, and worse of all their flat black isn't really flat at all! I had to waste time re-coating my minis with chaos black to get rid of the gloss!

After much spray paint "brand-hopping" I finally settled on a brand called "KOBE". I had alot of success with them, getting a good clean flat surface which was genuinely matt. And being one of the cheapest was a nice bonus as well. $3.50SGD a can. Guess it can't get any cheaper than that!


Did a little spray spree. Total cost $21SGD.
Great price!

~Although it seems like a chore, priming and undercoating is an important part to our painting journey. It would be interesting to know what you guys are using to prime your minis and maybe even share some more useful tips and lobangs for them!

Stegadon

Hi all,

I'm a long time gamer of both 40k and Fantasy, you can call me Grimloq. I've just started up my lizardmen again after a long dormant period and decided to paint up one of the new Stegadons. I went with an experimental color scheme. It takes a while to get the color combination right, but when you do it's extremely rewarding, as you have a uniquely painted model. I'm very happy with the results.




I'm still thinking what I want to mount on the back, but when it's completed, I will post more pics.

Grim

Tutorial: Easy Gold.

This is a method I experimented with and found that it worked quite well to produce a fast and effective gold colour.

What is so special about this? Well, if you ask me I honestly think it looks a little Non-Metallic Metal (NMM). And that seems to be the hype painting style most people are into. Which is a really good thing as it really pushes the painting skills of any painter that much higher.

I painted this using both metallics AND non-metallics. Let's see how I did it.

First I sprayed the model with flat black. Then I gave all gold armour areas a heavy drybrush of Mithril Silver. After this I proceeded to give the model it's first heavy coat of Gryphonne Sepia wash(GS). Once the GS was dry. I applied another heavy coat of GS. This was repeated till the model has been coated with 5 heavy coats of GS.

At this point the model will start to look brownish/gold. Just the perfect gold look!

To finish of the model I simply hard-edged/line highlighted the "gold" armour with Golden Yellow.

That's all. It should take about 30mins painting the gold on a SG model. (minus the drying time of course!)
And it's a damn short amount of time required to produce a fine looking gold.

Some Veteran Guardsmen.

Started on my squad of Guardsmen last night. Settled all the modeling and priming prior to this challenge. (alot of work has been put into shaving every cadian shoulder pad and side pants pocket down, but that will be for another post!) Then got down to the messy part of painting the bases. I always do this part first as I can be as sloppy as I want before I detail the miniature itself. If you look closely you can even see one lonely painted (greens) guardsmen at the back. Tonight I shall finish the greens on the other 9!

I honestly think I'll finish these guys up within the week!

News: British Pounds Very Weak

Most of you would realise this by now but the GBP is very low. 


1 British pound = 2.03140492 Singapore dollars
1 British pound = 11.2699354 Hong Kong dollars


Coupled with a discount by Maelstrom Games (Your voucher code is: GW-BEATER) www.maelstromgames.co.uk, you should definitely consider getting that purchase you've been holding off for! 

Event: Tale of 6 Armies

The event has started! If you notice, there is a link on the left hand side of the main page so click on the "Join site to RSVP" and click on "attending" and you will be registered! 

In a nutshell, each of the 6 people have committed to painting and completing 10 models in 2 weeks. The event starts today and ends 6th June. The full list is: 

1. Ray: Tyranids: 10 Termagants

2. Sam: Blood Angels: 10 Sanguinary Guard

3. Youcai: Blood Angels: 9 DC and 1 chaplain

4. Daniel: 10 Space Marine Scouts

5. Defeng: Chaos: 10 Traitor Guard

6. Melvin: 10 Imperial Guard

See you guys at the end of 2 weeks! 

Spartan Space Marines

I just found these and these are amazing to create a Spartan ARMY! Link: http://sciborminiatures.com/

Just look at these pics!

Jumping on the bandwagon?

With the recent release of the new Blood Angels I'm sure there are many people in the world who has been bitten by the latest army craze. Well, besides the fact that they seem quite overpowered with all their new shiny rules. Who can deny that they are just about the most beautiful models GW has put out till date! The moment I saw the pics of the new minis I was sold!

My first ever 40k army was the Blood Angels. I started them almost 10 years ago when I could clearly remember 3rd edition 40k being released. I have since amassed quite a huge BA army. (will try to get some pics up) But sadly I have not played much with them. Ever since I started my Guard army after the BA they pretty much came to a standstill. I still have so many BA unpainted. They have been primed and ready for more than 8 years!

Well.... fast forward to 2010. Where the BA are the latest shiny plastic soldiers. And here I am, rekindling the bloody flame of Sanguinius that attracted me to the world of 40k in the first place. I am therefore building a new BA army. Totally keeping in line with the awesome new Descent of Angels rule. (well it may not be a list that will actually WIN me any games, but who cares? It's freakin' awesome!)

It shall be simple. Nothing that can't fly will not be included. That means NO tanks. All my models shall have jump packs. And models who can't (dreadnoughts) shall have drop pods. I have already ordered a couple of dreadnoughts from forgeworld. And I shall also get pics of the NEW BA army up when all my new models have arrived!

In the meantime. Here are the 3 test models I have painted for my new BA!

Wet Palette Painting

I'm not sure if you guys have tried. Wet Palette painting. This is godsend I tell you. Paints will remain fresh forever like straight from the pot for hours on end! Go try it. I tried and now I can never paint without it. It will save you sooo much time from constantly opening and closing you pots to take paint. And also save sooo much paint that is otherwise dried on the normal palette. It's amazing like magic!

Here's a WIP shot of me using my wet palette!




http://thepaintingcorps.blogspot.com/2010/04/how-to-simple-wet-palette.html

Try it if you guys haven't. You will never turn back!

1750 Nids Vs Space Wolves

Played a game last night with Jay at FA. 1750 Nids vs Space Wolves.

Interesting points to note: the Nids fare really well in the Dawn of War style of deployment. I hit his table half by Turn 1 and the rest of my Nids arrive enmasse in Turn 2. I would be scared shit if I were him!

Pictures say a thousand words so go over to the link and post your comments.

http://picasaweb.google.com/enrgie/1750NidsVsSpaceWolves#

A Shift in Focus

Have recently moved over to the 40k from Fantasy.

The guys have been using YC's blog as platform for discussions etc.

Swordmasters who are an absolute infantry blender! With ASF, the effect of being charged or charging is the same! Best unit to hide my mages in.

If you look at most of my minis, you will notice that they don't have their movement trays anymore. I have magnetised all their bases with rare earth magnets and have used a metal based paper stuck on cardboard. This is amazing to hold them in place while still minimising the base size for the unit. No confusion and they can stay tipped next to a hill

My warband from Mordheim has made it into the army. In fact, the HK guys are planning a Mordheim game and I will be joining! So they will be back!

I still love my unit of Dragon Princes and I am happy that this version of the book has made them so powerful. I am getting another unit of them. I have found that they perform the best in units of about 5-6 as they have two attacks each. Also, never forget that with their immunity to flame attacks, most magic missiles and breath weapons can't hurt them. I have paired them up with two nobles, one with the Star Lance and the other who is a BSB with the Battle Banner (+D6 CR).

I completed this unit of Archers in 2 weeks. The camera was not able to pick out the highlights that I have put into their robes. Still have quite a lot of work but I will be skipping it for the tourney and will come back only if I have time.

White Lions

This is the unit of White Lions that I am currently working on. I have just completed a unit of 10 archers which I will post up after this.

HK Tourney 2009

Two of the classic RBT's in the army. I have purchased a new set of two and I will be doing them up after brushing up on the tournament army.