Hot off the Earth Caste productionlines!

It has been awhile since my last post, but I have been busy.

Crisis suits have filled out quite a bit. I revisited my original, and gave it a heavier detailing to match my newer versions. Here they are all displayed with magnetized weapons. Each suit has 4 magnet hardpoints available.

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The devilfish mimics the stealth drone "reeds" style camo pattern. I enjoyed painting the camo and feel it really helps to tie the fish in with its job ferrying the pathfinders around.

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I wanted my Piranha to look like its seen better days. Maybe its been overhauled more than once, or maybe the pilot just likes skimming over mudfields. Either way it could use a good power wash.

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My first Pathfinders are complete! Others are on the way, giving me two squads of 5. These were alot of fun to convert, pose, and paint. The use of a cooking scourer bristle as reeds has inspired me to try sprinkling these around the rest of my army a bit. They could probably use a wash or two to tone them down.

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A new Kroot tribe has arrived to support cadre Revenant Autumn. Ol shaper Grim Eye has no love of these blue kroot. He hopes to show that his boys are the superior choice for fieldcraft and melee. I'v converted him out of a shaper model I got from my ebay purchase of most of the army. He has been pretty substantially converted, and I like him so much that I might just run him as a shaper. For now hes just in there for looks, as I cant justify the points for it.

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My WIP Devilfish and Hammerhead.
I've put a lot of time into making this hammerhead as modular as possible. Magnetized doors, top hatch, back hatch, front turret. I even magnetized the rotatable engines, which has proven to be a good choice. Its normally a matter of time before I break that little plastic nubbin and have to superglue the engine to the hull. This way, its fully rotatable, and no worrying of breaks. I hope to LED the engines when I have the time. The other DF was already assembled, but ive worked on it so I can switch it to a skyray if needbe.

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My vat project was alot of fun. It sat in my mind for a long time, and to see it finally completed and so close to my original idea really makes me happy. I filled the full vat with plaster, painted it, and then covered it with a good amount of tinted green resin.

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These wrecks were an idea I tried from Terragenesis. Basically take a clay/dough, stick vehicle into clay to make a mold. Pull it out and fill the mold with plaster. voila, instant wrecked terrain. After these two I switch to cheapo playdoh and had much much better results with a little more cleanup. I'd take pictures but I gave them away as birthday presents.

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The column is a simple project where I took my girlfriend's unwanted swan candleholder, snapped off the 3 swans, and replaced them with old dark angels. I also dremel sanded down some flowery stuff, to be replaced with aquilla's. I also would like to hang a Tau banner from the top, with a newly installed ethereal topping the column, as part of a propaganda campaign to win over the human settlements.

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So thats the new stuff. Two vehicles, 4 crisis suits, and a bunch of pathfinders are still sitting around waiting for my new airbrush to come. Expect a post when I complete the next wave!
Here are some more pictures for those interested. A few more can be found on my photobucket account.

Cadre Revenant Autumn

While I dont have any pictures of new items yet, I figured I should put up some of my past work for inspection. Todays post is my Tau cadre, Revenant Autumn. Hailing from the volatile planet of Vior'la, this cadre takes an alternate color scheme more in line with a Farsight army. While it is still an army under command of the Ethereals for now, that may change in the future...


Firewarriors
First up are the Firewarriors, staple troopers for the belly of every devilfish. These were some of my first painted figures in this army, and it took me a while to settle into a color combination that was acceptable. I bounced from an original red/orange scheme, into red/tan/white. I admit the black weapon style originated from not quite deciding on how to help make the weapons stand out. I am pleased with the way they look for now, though I may one day go over that detail armywide. Perhaps a white instead.

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Stealth Suits
I love the old Stealthsuits, as they feel a bit more dynamic and interesting. I refuse to field any of the new eggy suits, though they are a wonderful source of bits. In the end I chose to go in army parade colors over a camo or darkened look. I may revisit them if I am inspired to add camo similar to my pathfinders.

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Pathfinders
My Pathfinders are my main source of conversion in the army. While anything I build tends to get some sort of tweak to it, alot of this army was bought already assembled off of ebay. As I was turning firewarriors into pathfinders, I really wanted them to be differentiable. I do this primarily through posing and basing. I want them to be hugging terrain, looking around corners, and surveying off of rooftops. Helmets and leg armor was shaved off quite easily, and markerlight carbines converted with an extra carbine thing on top. I bulked them up with kit and survival gear, adding kroot straps, and wood elf capes to some. I also took the comm antenna from the eggystealths to act as a beefed up helm comm. I know it looks a bit large, but I feel it helps to seperate them from the firewarriors, and symbolic of their long range communication neccessity.

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Hammerhead Gunship
Ahh the hammerhead, breaker of flight stands. I hated my paintjob on this model up until the last two hours. Once I started edging the panels with orange and beating it up with sand and mud colors, it really came together in a much more believable finished piece. The pictures definitely pick out the errors on it though, which dont seem as noticable in person. Or maybe I just painted in poor lighting..

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Kroot Carnivores
Kroot Kroot Kroot KROOT KROOT! These guys are fun models. I have another 10 to paint, of which I would like to introduce a bit more diversity. After making the first 2, I really ended up cutting down on the color depth of the skin, which I feel leaves them feeling flat. I may go back and highlight the skin much more, or add an underbelly tone. The hounds came from Chaos warhounds, with greenstuffed horn areas and beaks. I personally think they work perfectly as kroot hound standins, and a heck of alot cheaper.

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Crisis and Broadside Suits
I only have two Crisis Suits painted so far, mostly due to my dislike of painting larger stuff. I chalk this up to the difficulty in experimenting with style and colors on larger models. It can take many more steps to achieve a desired finish, and during these steps it may not be clear whether its working or not. For example large panels can just be a real pain to keep looking uniform, and proper shading technique becomes crucial to keep it from looking sloppy. I am much happier with the detailing on the broadside, and hope to bring my original suit in line with this style.

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Bit by bit the painted army grows. I have plenty of unfinished models to get through, and as you can see there are quite a few steps to rework my "finished" pieces.

Weekend Harvest

The weekend bears fruit. Completed 5 nobs, and 90% done on my Planetary Empires map. I apologize for the inconsistent lighting, I have yet to get a good photograph setup going. (Edit: I hav e some slighty better pictures which have gone into this post)


Corey's orks provide a welcome distraction to my Tau. The orks are just plain fun to paint. There is so much stuff going on with these models, and if you want to keep things dirty its OK in their book. I built up the yellow from an orange base, and then experimented with a light layer of gold along the edges to give it a glint. Leather was a couple different sets of brown-tan layers with a wash. Light bleached bone drybrushing for grittyness. Also some basic freehanding going on, but some good practice nonetheless.



The map took all of Sunday to complete: Assembly, priming and basecoating by airbrush, and all of the drybrush and detailing. I still have to paint the borders, flags, and buildings. Most of the base color was from a big drybrush of acrylic brown, and then the color variations were adding green, blue, or red to the remaining brown on my palette. This kept the colors tied together to the primary brown. I tried including the building tiles in this drybrushing but I did not keep it uniform, though the hive cities came out acceptable. In the end I went over all of the spaceports with a new basecoat and some layers of drybrushing.

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