Vior'la reinforcements

I am lazy so just copying over my post from ATT. This is some of my more recent work. The four suits are just about done, save for a few touchups. The color balance is a little off in these pictures, but the red is pretty close.









The pathfinder reinforcements have finally arrived. They now have a proper 'ui, who has, ahem, "rekrooted" some odd characters to fill the ranks. I need to finish up gsing before they can move into the paint queue. The female 'ui was made with some Wood Elves Glade Guard bits.









And here is a quick shot of the cadre on display. The flash managed to reflect the weathering attempts on the pathfinder fish a bit more than is actually there in normal light. My original hammerhead has turned out to be much brighter than how the rest of my force developed, so it is in the process of being darkened.

O'scar'mey'er Wei'ner stage WIP

Here is a quick update of my current work. 4 suits and two fish are at hand painting stage. At this point their base coats look like hot dogs and mustard (thanks for the reference Joe) The one fish is fully modded out. Insides are painted, everything is magnetized, side doors and top hatch are hinged, LED railgun and engine thrusters, modular for HH,DF,SR load outs. I figure I will do this just once and get it out of my system because it really makes for a long project. I also managed to make the other fish skyray compatible as well.

I recently got a Badger Renegade-Velocity airbrush, and it blows my old Aztec brush out of the water. Long times before clogging, very forgiving on mixed paints, and quick on color changes. The level of detail I can achieve has lead me to more experimenting in shading, though I'm not quite proficient at it yet. I managed a slight shade through black base coating and a white base coat on certain parts, but its clear that I need shadow/highlight colors to reach a full affect. While this isn't necessary on the suits, such as this one, because I hand paint in the end resulting red. But hand brushing shadows and highlights on the vehicles can really ruin the look on such flat surfaces. Hopefully I can get the hang of doing it with the airbrush to deal with an otherwise annoying step.

There are some fun modficiations in this group. The most obvious is the deepstrike suit. As I've had some slight success with a lone deepstriking sunforge suit (twinlinked flamer/ Air frag burst 'Vre variant as well) in the last few games, I've decided to model a specific suit for the job. I've spent some time sanding down almost all of his corners to go for a bit of aerodynamic feel to it. His raised height will single him out and generally mean he will have nowhere to hide. I might lower his stand just a bit, and base in a bit of vehicle roof as a simulated target (probably out of a plaster mold like previous ruined terrain! I love that technique!) But honestly, his job is rather suicidal, so I don't feel much remorse in lessening his life expectancy.

This group will nearly complete my current Tau collection. Only some newly converted pathfinders, half done firewarriors, and broken crisis suits remain. After I still have some army-wide tweaks to bases, freehand symbols, and weathering, but these can be done at a leisurely rate. I'm much more excited to continue work on my Christmas XV-9 and prep it as a GD entry!

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.