Attack of the (Undead) 50-Foot Woman (with Giant Steam-Fists and a Necrotite Boiler)

So along with my Skorne Mk2 Faction Deck that arrived on Tuesday, I also got the Brute Thrall model destined for my 15 point Warwitch Deneghra list. The model has an absolutely tiny head that is cast as a separate piece, and it got me thinking about doing some sort of conversion. As I’ve said many times before, I always have to do something different to my models, just for the sake of being different. It’s both a blessing and a curse.

Don’t ask me why (no… seriously, just don’t) but for some reason, I’ve gotten it into my head to make my Brute Thrall a woman. And why not? It’s obviously built from a collection of different corpses , ala Frankenstein’s monster, so why couldn’t the Lich Lord or Necrotech who constructed it use parts from a female cadaver? It’s possible. Plus the model is going to be lead by a female Warcaster, and I rather like the idea of having a big, hulking female brute as part of the force.

Just a quick aside here. Most people who know me fairly well know that in addition to being a zombie and a pirate, I’m also a giant perv. That’s the real reason for the gender-swap operation I am about to perform here.

Enough pointless rationalization! On to the procedure! Bring me my tools!

Brute Thrall pieces

Here we see the pieces of the standard Brute Thrall model, roughly arranged in their proper places. Note the tiny head (indicated with the red circle). For decency’s sake, I will most likely reposition the tubes that normally run from the backpack to the steam-fists. Instead they will run from the backpack to the model’s chest, covering up the nipples, similar to the tubes on my Warwitch Deneghra. I’ll probably have to sculpt little metal plates on the breasts where the tubes connect, complete with little rivets to avoid possible confusion. But that’s still a ways off.

The head-donor model

Here is the model that will so kindly offer up it’s head, all in the name of experimentation. It’s a Female Demon model from the Dark Haven Legends line that I picked up at my LGS this morning. I chose the model for several reasons. First, the head was pretty far away from the chest. That was important as I have to lop her head off. No neck would mean all kinds of problems trying to get her head off. The horns were the second reason. They sort of make her look like a Satyxis. Lastly, I can use the ponytail and wings for other conversions. I have no idea where the wings will go, but I plan to add the ponytail to the back of my Ashlynn D’Elyse model.

Denogginized!

Here’s the first step. I used my flat-sided clippers to carefully separate the model’s ponytail from the rest of her hair and the two points where it touched her tail. I also used my clippers to make an incision (heh, doctor talk) on either side of the hair just above the shoulders so that my saw wouldn’t move around. My X-Acto saw went through the model’s neck pretty quickly, though I had to use a regular X-Acto knife to cut through the last little bit at the back of her head – sawing on a flat surface, like a table, can be pretty tricky. I set the ponytail aside for use at a later date and started work.

That's alotta hair!

When I turned over the head, I saw that getting rid of the hair and making a clean attachment point was going to be more difficult than I had first though. There was more hair on the back of the head than I originally thought there was. Too bad I didn’t get a clear view of the rear of the model while it was still in the package back at the store. Oh well. I used my clippers again to remove as much of the hair and the neck as I could. As the Brute has it’s head jutting forward and the demon’s neck was directly under the head, I needed to get rid of everything below the chin line.

Haircut

Here is the (rather blurry) result. I removed the hair from both sides of the head, and flattened the back. That will make pinning the new head to the original body much easier. I’ll have to use Green Stuff (two-part epoxy putty) to sculpt the hair along the back of the neck, as well as the the lose strands to either side. After that I used my pin vise to drill a .7mm hole into the back of the head and inserted a small pin. A dot of black paint onto the pin that was then lined up and pressed against the neck showed me where to drill the matching hole.

The rough fitting

Here we see the final result of the first stage – a freakishly small horned female head on a massively muscled body. I realize that it looks strange, but so do most projects while they are still being worked on. Also, what exactly is strange in this case? The original model is a like an 8-foot tall zombie with with a boiler on it’s back and pipes jutting into it’s rotting flesh wielding giant mechanikal fists that are the size of a guy’s torso. If that’s not already weird, than I don’t know what is. The next step – using Green Stuff to model the hair and… *cough* augment the chest area. I won’t be able to start that until Saturday though. Stupid work schedule. See you then.

Cryxlight – Progress Report

Wow. Two posts in a single night. Don’t worry though, I am sure this will not become a habit. I thought about including this in my previous post, but the topics were simply too different. I have an update on my progress with Warwitch Deneghra. Here she is, though she’s not done yet, as I still have to finish her loin cloth (or is that leg cloth?) and maybe do one more highlight layer of the green OSL.

Here’s a little breakdown of the colors I used. I stared with her skin and laid down a coat of Dead Flesh – the same thing I did with Pirate Queen Skarre. I think it is an appropriately named color, even though Deneghra is not actually dead (yet – she becomes an undead model when she becomes Warwraith Deneghra, the Epic Warcaster). To achieve a sickly pallor (even though you can’t see it all that well in the photo) I mixed Ghost Grey into the flesh color for the highlights, eventually using pure Ghost Grey as a final step. Instead of highlighting the raised parts as I usually do, I carefully thought about what parts would catch the light emanating from the vents on her spear. Normally I paint my models as if there was a uni-directional omni-light hanging somewhere above them – in other words I highlight to bring out the detail in the model and not for realism. This time was different. As I said in the original post Cryxlight, I am going to paint my Cryx models as if the only light hitting them is coming from their green glowing necrotite furnaces.

The boot (?) on her exposed leg was painted Leather Brown, and then washed with watered down Black Ink and then again with Green Ink. Her armor was painted Scurvy Green, which is a pretty dark color when it’s wet. Thanks to my partial color-blindness I had trouble seeing if I had missed any areas while painting. Thankfull it dried a bit lighter and I was able to see things more clearly. After that was a wash of Black Ink to bring out the detail, followed by Scurvy Green again. Then the first highlight of Jade Green went down, again with careful thought about exactly which parts would be catching the light. The pipes, Soul Cages, chains around her waist, and spear were painted either with Tinny Tin or Gunmetal Metal, then washed with Black Ink (really tricky to not mess up when washing the chains) an then highlighted with the base color again.

Then came the first layer of OSL paint – a watered down coat of Escorpena Green. This went down on the edges of plates and in little pools on flat areas that would catch light. You can’t really see it in the photo, but some of the areas are a bit too dramatic. I am going to have to use a 50/50 mix of Escorpena Green and Jade Green to soften the edges of some of the “light areas”. After that I’ll probably do one more tiny application of Livery Green on the highest points to really make the lighting pop. I am a bit unsatisfied with the lighting on her flesh – it looks like green blobs on her skin rather than green light. Maybe I need to mix some “skin” color into the “light” color to soften the glow a bit.

Oh. Someone asked about this on the Privateer Press Forums, so I’ll post the answer here too. Yes, she is topless. Well, sort of. Way back when she was still bare metal I used an X-Acto hobby knife and some little files to remove the top “lip” of her mechanikal breastplate. Like I said, I always have to do thing to my models just to be different, and this seemed to fit the bill. So while she is sporting a lot of exposed breast, the pipes of her mechanikal backpack are in exactly the right places so as to not actually show anything.

Cryxlight

Just a quick post tonight while I wait for the superglue on Deneghra to dry (I noticed her arm was a bit loose as I put her down on my painting table). As I said in my previous post, I am more motivated to paint up my stuff now that I’ve broken it down into manageable, playable 15 point chunks. And what better model to start with than the leader of the list herself, Warwitch Deneghra.

While walking home from work tonight, I decided that I am going to try something rather ambitious – I plan to highlight her using only object source lighting (OSL). I did a little of that on Pirate Queen Skarre, but it was only on the back of the model where the vents of her backpack were producing light. The rest of the model was highlighted “gamer style”, meaning I just used highlights to bring out the detail of the model. I didn’t actually think about where the light source was coming from.

With Deneghra, I will paint her in such a way that the only light hitting her will be from the vents on her mechanikal spear Sliver, the Soul Cages around her waist, and the vents on her backpack. An easy thing to say, but probably not that easy to actually do.

Escalation Lists

I posted previously that I had recently developed an extreme fascination for the Retribution of Scyrah. While this is still true, I found out what a large portion of that fascination was – list building. Writing up an army list renews your interest in whatever faction you are writing the list for. Case in point, I put together a little 15 point Cryx list led by Warwitch Deneghra and hey, presto! Instant motivation to get those models out of their blisters and onto the painting table. Truth be told, I have more motivation to paint up the Cryx list than the Scyrah one, since I already own all but one of the models in the Cryx list. And the one model that I don’t have should be here soon, as I already ordered it a few days ago. Sweet. Last time I said that I wouldn’t bore people by posting the Scyrah list I put together, but I have some bad news. I am posting my Deneghra one. I’ll use it to keep track of what I have finished and what still needs to be done. So here it is.

15 pt Warwitch Deneghra Escalation List

1x Warwitch Deneghra – +5 WJ pts
1x Defiler Bonejack – 5 pts
1x Defiler Bonejack – 5 pts

1x Bane Thrall Unit – 5 pts
(Leader and 5 Grunts)

1x Mechanithrall Unit – 3 pts
(Leader and 5 Grunts)

1x Brute Thrall – 1 pt
(Attached to Mechanithralls)

Total – 14 pts (+5 WJ pts)
Model Count – 16

Before you say that I can’t count, and the the above list totals 19 pts, be aware that Deneghra gives me 5 “free” points that I can spend only on Warjacks. That’s what the notation (+5 WJ pts) next to her entry means – plus 5 Warjack points. Those 5 pts are precisely enough to buy a “free” Defiler Bonejack, though as I have 1 point remaining (I’ve only used 14 of my 15 pts) I could replace one of her Defilers with a Slayer Helljack. I’ve got the model assembled, undercoated, and ready to paint. But the Slayer doesn’t have an Arc Node, meaning that Deneghra can’t channel spells through it, and that is what I really want to do. The spell Venom only costs 2 Focus allowing me to (hopefully) lay into an enemy unit/model with 4 SP 8 ranged attacks – 2 at POW 10 from Venom and 2 at POW 12 from the Defiler’s Sludge Cannons. Or I could channel either Crippling Grasp or Parasite through the Bonejacks before firing their Sludge Cannons, thereby lowering the DEF and ARM of the target and making it easier to hit and damage.

Besides, that’s why I put in the unit of Mechanithralls with the Brute Thrall attachment. Those little zombies (and the one not so little zombie) can do a lot of damage if they hit something with a charge attack. I plan to use them as my “heavy hitters”. It’s sort of an experiment in efficiency – the Brute Thrall can hit with a POW of 19 using his Combo Strike. If he gets in a charge attack, that’s an extra die when rolling for damage meaning he should get an average result of 29-30 (if you assume that the average roll of 3D6 is 10-11). Even the Khador heavy Warjacks only have an ARM of around 20. The Brute’s little zombie buddies should get an average result of 24-25 with a charge Combo Strike. If they all hit (which is unlikely, I know) they are churning out 33-40 points of raw damage (meaning damage in excess of the target’s ARM) even to an ARM 20 target. Which is just about enough to completely wreck a heavy Warjack. And the whole unit only cost me, what? 4 pts. When you compare that to the cost range of a heavy Warjack, which is anywhere from 6 to 10 points depending on the faction and Warjack, I have come out ahead. If they actually get to do their job that is. But if they do manage to do their job you can be damn sure I am buying another Brute Thrall with that 1 pt I have left over.

Sail in to battle, glory, and metal!

I had nothing to do today, as my neighbor and usual partner in crime was busy. With his fiancée. Boo. But on the upside it meant I got a lot of painting done, and Pirate Queen Skarre is almost finished.

Pirate Queen Skarre - my Cryx 'Test' model

The first thing I did was shade her coat and boots. I watered down some Black paint and washed it over everything. This got rid of some of the shine that I was worried about (and I’m hoping the mat sealer/varnish I spray over her after she’s finished will kill the rest of it). After the wash was dry I went back in with Imperial Blue to start building up the highlights. This was followed with a second smaller highlight of Magic Blue.

I have been trying to keep my paints thin so I can build up multiple layers, but it’s a tough juggling act to add just the right amount of water. Too much water and the paint turns into a sort of  ‘ink’ and runs into the recesses of the model (very bad if you are working with a light color for the highlight stage as recesses shouldn’t be lighter than the surrounding areas) but too little water and the color is too strong, making too sharp a contrast with the color beneath it.

Anyway, the coat and boots started looking pretty good with the highlights put down. I used some really thin Imperial Blue to go back over a few places where the blending wasn’t as smooth as it could be to finish up. I then used Bone White to trace two thin lines along the hem, open edges, and cuffs of her coat for a bit of detailing. Gold Yellow went carefully over the lines, and then a 50/50 mix of Gold Yellow and Dead White on the highest points for highlights. I had been a bit over zealous with the highlighting, especially towards the rear of her coat where it met the cloak, and I thought the yellow was too bright. So I used Imperial Blue to tone it down again, to give it some shading, and also to clean up the area between the lines along the hem.

After I had finished all this I noticed that the illustration of Skarre in the MkII book only has gold detailing on the outer edges of her cuffs and  in the bottom corners of her coat. Dah. I should have checked that first.

Pirate Queen Skarre - my Cryx 'Test' model

Next was her cloak, which is probably the largest area of the model. I was not sure what color it was in the illustration (I’m partially colorblind – blues and purples, yellows and yellow greens, dark greens and browns, and sometimes even reds and greens give me trouble. Basically if the colors are really close in tone or value, I am not able to tell them apart.), but I decided to go with a greenish brown. She may be a pirate queen, but she’s also a vassal of Toruk the Dragonfather and so needs some sickly green somewhere on her person. The first color I put down was Dark Green. All of my Vallejo Game Color paints are new (I got them at a clearance sale when my local hobby shop moved to a new location) and have to be shaken vigorously before they can be used. Even with a bunch of shaking though, the paint still went on more like a glaze than actual paint. I had to put down about three layers before it finally started to cover up the Steel Grey undercoat. a 50/50 mix of Dark Green and Black went over the base coat in the recesses to make shadows and on the inside of the cloak on the front of the model. That dried really dark, so I used Dark Green again bring the color back to green. Sick Green was the only highlight color I used, and it went on in very thin applications to (hopefully) result in a very smooth fade. After the cloak dried it got a wash of Brown Ink to ‘dirty’ the color, and then some Black Ink along the top edges of the cloak where it meets the Necrotite boiler and shoulder pads.

I’m thinking about putting some sort of runes or script along the bottom edge of the cloak. Or maybe some sort of design on it. It’s so big that it’s just begging for more attention than I’ve currently given it.

The metal on her (the shoulder pads, Necrotite boiler, knee guards, and chest piece) got a coat of Gunmetal, a wash of Black Ink, then highlights of Gunmetal again followed with small areas of Silver. The gold (the sword guard and pommel, the skull shaped exhaust vents, and little heart shaped doodad on her chest) had the same treatment with Glorious Gold, Brown Ink, and Polished Gold.

Pirate Queen Skarre - my Cryx 'Test' model

I’ve always admired the bright green  ‘soul-coal’ glow that the pro painters get on their Cryx models – it really gives the impression that the boilers/furnaces are actually emitting light rather than just being dark (or light) recesses. I read a great article on OSL (Object Source Lighting) somewhere on the net recently, and wanted to try my hand at it. So I put a drop of Escorpena Green onto my palette (the same color I used for Skarre’s eye) and laid it into the appropriate places on her boiler backpack. One good thing about thin paint is that it flows quite easily into sunken areas, like the grating of a death-coal burning arcane boiler. A dot of Livery Green went down next, followed with a tiny dot of Dead White to simulate the hottest burning areas. Then I thought for a bit about where the glowing light from her backpack would hit before putting lines of Escorpena Green along the inner edges of the exhaust pipes, skulls, and steam pipes of her backpack. It was a thin application and left the metal showing through, but didn’t really look right. A little Dead White mixed in helped cover the metal and made brighter highlights.

Here’s where my color-blindness became a problem. I couldn’t see the difference in colors between the gold of the skulls and the bright green of the OSL lighting. I still can’t, and just have to hope it looks OK.

The only things left to do now are her Great Rack (I still snicker every time I say that) and the grip of her sword, Takkaryx.

She wore blue, spiked stilettos

I did a little more work on Skarre tonight, in between working on stuff for the Changeling: The Lost game I am running tomorrow afternoon. I cleaned up the brown ink ‘tear’ running down her right cheek with some Bone White, as well as tidying up her hair with Black. Her hair looked pretty flat though and needed some highlight, which I added with Sombre Grey, then washed everything with Blue Ink and again with Black Ink when that dried. It looks ‘OK’ now, but I’m not really that satisfied with it yet. Maybe a few brownish strands would help it look better. Dunno.

Pirate Queen Skarre - my Cryx 'Test' model

Her right eye got a tiny dot of Escorpena Green for the ‘white’ and then an even tinier dot of Livery Green for highlights. I didn’t even attempt to do anything more with he left eye as it is just too damn small. Her chain mail skirt and sword blades got a coat of Gunmetal Metal followed with a wash of thinned down Black Ink. I decided to give her a dark blue captain’s coat (she is a pirate queen after all) and blocked that all in with Imperial Blue. That blue is going to be the mid-tone, as I want her coat to be closer to a dark bluish black when finished. It actually looks a bit shiny right now. That’s not good.

I’m really starting to see the drawback of the grey undercoat now. On any model, there are numerous little spaces that are practically impossibly to get at, even with a tiny ass 10/0 brush. With a black undercoat, the missed spaces aren’t that noticeable, since they just look like dark shadows. With the grey undercoat they are more noticeable. I’m constantly finding spaces in odd places that just look too light. Maybe I’ll give Deneghra and her ‘Jacks a watered down wash of Black Ink to make sure all the cracks are filled in before I start painting then.

The tour continues…

Another quick post today as I’ve got to leave for work in about 20 minutes. Sucky. I would much rather just stay home and paint Warmachine models all day. Where do I sign up for that job?

Pirate Queen Skarre - my Cryx 'Test' model

So, our tour of the Broken Coast continues with the highlighting and shading of Pirate Queen Skarre’s skin. After laying down the base color of Vallejo Game Color’s* Dead Flesh, I mixed in some Steel Grey to make the shade color. A 1:1 ratio looked way too dark on the palette, so I added more Dead Flesh until I got to about a 3:1 ratio and laid it down in all the recesses and shadow areas. I then broke the rule I had set for myself and washed everything with a watered down Skin Wash. This really brought out the details in the skin areas but destroyed the bluish-grey tint it had.  Stupid move on my part. So I added some Blue Ink to the wash (man that stuff is dark) in an attempt to get my ‘sickly’ flesh tone back. It worked to a certain degree, but not that well. After it dried I ended up going back in with the Dead Flesh/Steel Grey shade mix anyway, so it was a rather pointless step. I added Bone White to the base color for the highlights and started hitting the raised areas on the brow, nose, cheekbones, chin, and tops of the breasts. I haven’t painting anything in a long time and was out of practice. I had forgotten how damn small those details are! Needless to say I had to clean up and then reshade several areas as my paintbrush just didn’t seem to go where I wanted it to on several occasions.

Skarre's Portrait

I blocked in the eyes with Dead White, added the pupils with Black, then steppe bad and saw I had made her cross-eyed. Damn. After several more attempts I simply gave up – the hair on the left side of her face makes it almost impossible to lay down the white properly, let alone the pupil. This is probably why the (very nice) painted example in the WM MkII rulebook doesn’t have pupils either. Heh. I didn’t feel quite so bad about my failure after seeing that. I finally just hit the sockets with Skin Wash again to bring out some of the detail. I didn’t notice it until just now, after it dried, but I must have put on too much wash. It seems to have dripped a bit, making a kind of ‘tear’ effect. It actually doesn’t look that bad, but it ruined the blue color under her cheek which I will have to fix again tonight. I’ll probably try to put in some eye whites again, as the sockets are looking far too dark now that I am looking at her again.

I’ll end this post with a shot of my palette after I finished her skin and before I washed everything off.

Skarre's Color Palette

* From now on, all the paint colors I mention are Vallejo Game Colors until I note otherwise. I am pretty much done with GW.

Off to the Broken Coast

Tonight will be a short one, as I have to get up early tomorrow morning.

After not wanting to lay any paint down on either Deneghra or her ‘Jacks for fear of screwing something up, I realized that I had a perfectly suitable test model collecting dust on my bookshelves – the Great Rack sporting Pirate Queen Skarre!

Just an aside here. I’m a fan of pirates. A big fan. To the point where you can find me jigging down  to Pirate Power Metal quite often (the band I like is called Alestorm. Check ’em out, they’re arrrrr-some! It’s like someone went back in time, gave a band of pirates electric guitars, and said “Sing, you scurvy dogs!”) Strangely enough though, I am not that big a fan of the pirate-themed Cryx models, or the idea in general. I can’t exactly put my finger on why though. Perhaps it’s because both zombies and pirates are already so awesome on their own that their awesomeness starts to cancel out when you combine them – leaving you with something less awesome than the parts you started with.

Anyway, I washed her off to remove any mold release left on the model, removed the mold lines and flash, slapped her together, and then smacked her up with a basecoat of Vallejo Steel Grey paint. While that dried, I thought about the color scheme I would try, but couldn’t come up with a good one. So, rather than being different just for the sake of being different this time, I’m just going to paint her as she looks in her illustration in the WM MkII rule book.  Also rather than jumping all over the model and having different areas going at the same time I am going to focus on one part at a time, starting with her skin.

Pirate Queen Skarre - my Cryx 'Test' model

I thought for a while about what skin tone she should have. I have a unit of Satyxis Raiders and a Satyxis Raider Sea Witch on the way specifically to be used in a Skarre-led list, and am going to paint them all with similar skin tones. So I have to record/remember how I paint Skarre so that her sisters will look just as good. I finally decided to start with a base of Vallejo Game Color’s Dead Flesh. Even though the Satyxis Raiders aren’t dead (something of a rarity for the Cryx army) I didn’t think that they would have healthy colored skin. I mean, these chicks hang out with zombies for Christ’s sake. They are bound to pick up some kind of nasty disease, right? To enhance the unhealthy pallor I plan to mix a bit of dark blue, dark green, or maybe even a grey into the base color for the shadows, and to mix an off-white into the base color for the highlights.

I am also going to try and not use washes or inks on her skin. I haven’t tried the Vallejo inks yet (though I bought them all), but the old Citadel inks always left an annoying shine on the model. It looked wrong having shadows that reflected more light then the highlighted areas. So, no inks. Just pure shading.

This is only a test…

I finally got around to priming and basecoating my Cryx models on Saturday night, though I’m not sure how I feel about the results yet. You know how people always say you should test new things before you commit to them? Yeah, that’s solid advice that should be followed at all times. Otherwise you might end up with something you are not satisfied with. Case in point…

Cryx “Techno-sewer” bases

I finally finished assembling the few Cryx models I have for Warmachine. Cryx is going to be the faction I play with when I finally do start playing, as I am always drawn to the evil undead army for some reason. No matter what game I play, I always end up being the “bad guys”. I had originally bought the Cygnar Battle box (just to be different this time, I told myself) assembled the models, played a few battle box games against my friend’s Khador, and decided I was fooling myself. Why fight who you really are? So, I traded the box to another friend and “started over” with Cryx. I haven’t played a game with them yet (my first game will be tomorrow) but it feels so much better being in the “right” faction again.