 | Main - Tactics - Fiction - Rumours - Army Features |
Moonduck's Ghostly Grave Guard - Moonduck | |
|
The idea is to simulate the look of the Dead from Return of the King in as easy a manner as possible. As this is a block of 20 closely ranked models, I decided that speed-painting them would be perfectly effective. Noting a lack of speed-painting articles around (or at least what I considered speedy), I decided to take pics of my progression for eventually article publication. Here follows the simple procession: 1) White primer (might be easier to do on black, but I was out of black primer at the time, and was worried that black would mute the colours making the light effect a tad harder to see) 2) Old Flesh Wash on just about the entire fig. Here's a pic of the lot of them invading my desk and claiming it for themselves. 
You'll note that my flesh Wash is neither as dark, nor as as red as the current Bar-b-que sauce incarnation. I've taken to mixing my own, with good results, and it matches the old stuff much more closely. 3) Black out the black areas and the metals. Here's the standard bearer looking nicely black and tan. Now I'm thirsty. 
4) Drybrush white on the bones, hands, flesh A_Cryptkeeper01 says, "My arm, it is white!" 
5) Crimson Gore over the Flesh Wash for the maroon areas My test model, looking far more orange than he is in Real Life. 
6) Tan and maroon areas get a black wash to dull down the tan mostly. 
You'll note that the head on this one is a normal Bret Men at Arms head, as opposed to a skull. A lot of the Bret heads have they're teeth rather prominently displayed, or their mouths open narstily. I found that the simple expediency of lopping off the nose, at the proper angle, gave enough of a skullish/zombie look that I did not need to do massive conversion on every one. 7) Drybrush Boltgun metal on the metals 
There really is Boltgun Metal on his helm. 8) Bronze metallic or gold metallic of some sort on the bitz what need to be that colour (studs, weapon hilts, belt buckles). No pic for this step, didn't show up well. 9) Seriously thinned (with 3pts water and 1pt Future Floor polish) Scorpion Green washed over the whole thing. Dry, repeat. 
One repeat of the wash is usually sufficient if the mix is right. I didn't really write down the numbers on the wash, sorry. I put two drops of Scorpion Green from the paint lid into my pallete, and then a dropperful of water/Future mix, and that was sufficient. There's no time spent highlighting anything as the light effect obscures it anyway. The blacks and reds are done prior to the green wash as the wash, is so heavy that it pools over even the black very nicely. It'll hurt your sensibilities to do a wash that heavily, but it works, and the Future Floor polish helps to prevent peaking and pooling. in fact, I had to encourage pooling in the areas where I wanted it. The wash also has the assistive effect of cleaning up your lines. Anyone that has speed-painted a bit knows that your's lines tend to suffer a bit. They're sacrificed in the name of gettin' her done! Well, the really heavy green wash obscures those sloppy lines by pooling in the recesses. Happily, from having done this technique on a hero or two, it is very possible to use the same wash cleanly, and have the same effect. It really is a cool, and simple, trick for this glowy green look. One Grave Guard with shield: 
A couple of shots of the finished unit: 
| |
Want to discuss this? Or anything else? | |
Main - Tactics - Fiction - Rumours - Army Features | |