I've been working, I promise

It's been a busy week. Between "World of Warcraft: Cataclysm" and a surprise extra shift at work, I've been less than productive on the miniatures front. That doesn't mean I haven't been working -- I'm just not painting or modeling at a rate that I'd like.

So I'll round up what I've been playing with and working on.


This is that Bog Trog featured in the last Bog Trog post. I've been looking at him all week, angry that I haven't had a wakeful moment to knock him out and simultaneously daunted by all the white on him. I finally just bucked up and got some color on a lot of the unpainted areas today.


Clearly, there's more to be done. I've got to highlight his reds, his talons need to be blackened, the brass isn't applied yet, his eyes aren't done, and there's a handful of highlights and yellows that need to be added to his skin and scales. Still, it almost looks done now!


On Safiya's urging, I bought a glaze medium for my acrylics. (Anthony had suggested something similar.) As usual, advice from real artists trumps my bullheaded approach; the glazes it makes are wonderful. It's like painting with washes, but the glazes have a heavier consistency, making them easier to control.


I assembled my Bloodgorgers. They're easy to put together -- two pieces for grunts, three for commander -- and don't need much green stuff. I plan to field them at the upcoming tournament; they might even have primer on them by then! I also put together my Thrullg; I'll get a picture of him up later. (He's the squid-man that makes my gator army a thing of beauty.)


These wooden puzzle toys were a buck each at Michael's. They're big and tantalizing -- I want to make terrain featuring them sometime. The dragon in the foreground will get some green stuff and be added as a fossil to a rock outcropping.


The snake has fewer problems, from a modeling standpoint, than the dragon; after some green stuff, he'll be turned into part of an evil altar. (Those seem to pop up repeatedly in my Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, so I'll get a fair bit of mileage out of it.)


That tournament I mentioned earlier? It's got a holidays theme to it. Players get a slight bonus for decorating their 'jacks or warbeasts; I've settled on three different, temporary additions. The first is this elf hat.


And there's the big man himself, ol' Deathjack, in his happy hat. Dangly ball at the hat's tip is incoming.


Finally, here's that Skarre conversion. These are out-of-date photos, but they've been languishing on my hard drive and I'm not taking any more photos until I get that sword just right. Hint: that may be a while yet.


Those gaps have been filled in, but it's still looking goofy. It's been difficult getting the sword thin enough; I've been scraping and scraping. I have a feeling that, eventually, the whole sword's just going to come off and I'll pin on a replacement.


And here's Skarre with her little crabby friend. This base is definitely getting an overhaul; if I'm really ambitious, I'm also going to clip off her horns and re-pin them to her forehead. It's going to be rough work, but dear lord are her horns hideous the way they are now.

Bog Trogs half done, plus some

The Bog Trogs are coming along. I keep learning new things -- I've never done any kind of research on painting techniques before, and Anthony's a walking encyclopedia of "pigment on minis." Between forum trawling and picking Anthony's brain, I've got a ton of new things to try out.

So here's the latest Bog Trog. The turtle shell on his right shell could use a few more details, but it's OK the way it is now. I'm using a lot more washes and glazes than I ever did before; they look great, generally speaking, but they also require more babysitting. Overall, it's still a faster and better paint job than my old base, wash, highlight deal. I'm sure that, in six months, I'll be annoyed with how these look now; in the meantime, they're good to go and I love them. Oh love, how fickle you can be.

And the other side. The binding on his spear is underdone; I'll probably go over it with Citadel's "Scab Red" mixed with "Blood Red" to highlight the individual straps. This guy marks No. 3, which means I'm halfway done with this unit. If I ever end up playing Warhammer again, I think I may tear my eyes out -- that game's got 20 or more dudes to a unit, which is just stupid. I think my biggest WarmaHordes army is 30 models total.

This is No. 4. His green skin is done, while his scales need another coat of highlight (or two, and maybe a wash).

Citadel's "Flesh Wash," which is discontinued, is amazing and will get used all over this guy. It's a great wash, but it's really shiny -- probably why it was discontinued -- but it makes leather, wood and turtle shells look great.

This is the same sculpt as Bog Trog No. 2. If you have a poor memory, that's the one that had things on his belt which were totally unrecognizable. Oddly enough, they're still completely unrecognizable. I'm still going with octopus. At least now I can rest easy -- they're just hard to recognize, not over-primed. Cheers, I guess?

Summore Bog Trogs

The Bog Trogs are coming along -- rather, a Bog Trog is coming along. Several washes later, here's how he's looking:



Yes, that's another not-a-lizard project to the left. I found an old Hive Tyrant in my garage that I'd never attached arms to; I cleaned it, added magnets to it and then took an inventory of the possible weapons and biomorphs it can have. Eventually, it'll all get magnetized, but that's a ways away -- there are way, way too many options in 40K games.

The bronze is done on the legplates; it's not flashy, but it's OK. The skin's been washed / highlighted to about where I want it, and the face is pretty much done.

The modesty cloth is close to being done, too; it's going to need the tears darkened up a bit. You can see that the fins on the arms and the feet aren't done yet; they're always a bit of frustration on these types of models, because they're very visible while being pretty uninteresting. On the leader of the Bog Trogs, I'm going to play with glazing them to try to get a translucent look, but these regular troopers don't need that level of detail.

You can really see here how much cleaner this Trog is, and it's all thanks to proper priming. The scales will need another layer of lighter green on them, especially on the shoulders; I'm also going to need to make the color gradients on his crest and swept-back whiskers more obvious.

Bog Trogs, agains

I've talked a lot about doing Bog Trogs lately -- so much so that I'd bet some of my readers were rolling their eyes and assuming that I've stopped work on them. Sure, I've got a history of dropping half-finished projects, but that hurts, guys -- it pains me to know that you might think that.

And there you go -- a Bog Trog, about a third done. I really am moving on them, just slowly, like cold syrup. But you know what pancakes would be without syrup? That's right, slightly less delicious. This is the just the base colors -- light washes of Citadel's "Snot Green" on the skin, "Dark Angels Green" on the scales, a glaze of P3's "Battlefield Brown" on the leather, turtle shell and weapon, and some Citadel "Scab Red" on the modesty cloth. I'm still a little confused about fish wearing things over their crotches, but I figure it's some sort of unassailable modeler's tradition, like breasts on snake women and such.

The legplate is going to be bronze, so it gets the black undercoat. I'm going to force myself to do slightly fancier metallics on my next 'jack, but for now, we'll just go the simple route.

You may notice that the items slung on this Bog Trog are recognizable. That's because this trog was stripped of paint and given a single coat of white primer; it's a lot thinner and than the 3ish coats the others got in my aborted zenithal highlighting tryout. That's also the reason why these colors pop a lot more; the single white primer coat is a lot brighter. However, don't think that I'm bashing the technique -- I'm using a lot of the glazing I learned from trying it on this model, and it's working quite well. I'm certain that it was a case of trying to run before learning to crawl -- I'll give the technique a shot again, with airbrushed primer, on my Gatormen or last pair of Bog Trogs.

Speaking of the items slung on the Trogs -- here's a fish. I'm looking forward to trying my hand at nonmetallic metallics on this guy; for the uninitiated, that's mimicking a metallic finish with matte paints. I know it's a swamp fish -- not because I'm any ichthyologist, but because the Trogs live in swamps, natch -- but that don't mean it can't be shiny. The shading on this guy's leg was a wash of "Dark Angels Green" and then Citadel's "Thraka Green."

Finally, here's the other trog, waiting for his time to get some attention. Soon, my friend.

By the by, if you ended up watching "Nerima Daikon Brothers," stop at episode 6 (or so). If you see the guy with the soup bowl pants and hot-pot head, you've gone too far -- it's all downhill once the show decides it needs a plot.

Bog Trogs in 15 seconds

So, there's a story behind the Bog Trogs. There's a story behind everything, I know, but this one needs a little setting up. Remember that post, where I went on and on about color schemes? And remember that wonderful, pasty Bog Trog mockup? Yeah, not happening.

"But why," you gasp.

Two reasons. The first, and short one: Because it's haaaaard. Bog Trogs are my largest unit, by far; while they're the smallest percentage of my army, points wise, they're also going to be the largest percentage of my army, models wise. I hate painting the same guy over and over again. Hate. Solution: simplify the color scheme. Less time hating.

No. 2: Anthony showed me these wonderful videos on how to do a beautiful painting technique called "Zenithal Highlighting." It involved painting a model with either an airbrush (preferred) or with two primer coats -- a heavy black one, then an intentionally uneven white one. The idea was to use a spray can to apply the second, white coat, spraying down onto the model so you got a mostly white miniature that would have darker areas where you'd naturally have shadows. Then you'd paint the miniature with super-thin paints and essentially dye the white primer; where it was heavier, the paint would naturally be lighter (because less of the black primer shows through). We tried this on the Bog Trogs, and it was a 98 percent disaster. You see, there's a special chemical composition to washes -- real washes, not watered-down acrylics -- that causes the dye to bunch up. I was just using watered-down acrylics, which meant my inking didn't move or react like a wash. Every one of my Bog Trogs ended up a horrible, uniform muddy green color; I threw a tantrum then started over on them.

Examples:

Here was the first wash. So far, so good -- darker eyes, darker toes, darker space between the knuckles.


I know you won't believe this, but this was a thin, thin, thin wash. It was Citadel's "Dark Angels Green" lightened up a shade with Citadel's "Snot Green" and mixed 1:3 with water -- that's right, this was only 25 percent paint. Note how it didn't pool. Note how it didn't run into the crevices. Note how it did just mightily muddify the miniature.


Oh, it burns us! Just look at it! I tried this on three Bog Trogs before screaming about the Illuminati, stomping about the house like a child and generally acting like a spoiled, paranoid brat. I just did a standard paint job on the guys, working up from this horrible snot of a base color.


Here's the final product for one. Note the brass -- it's a minor detail on the model, but I wanted to go with something primitive (compared to steel, at least). Considering that iron rusts and these guys live, you know, in the swamp, I thought it was a nice touch. It's also better with the color scheme of green with red touches.


The backside of trog No. 1. I have a confession -- all the trogs have these little things hanging down from their belts, and I have no clue what they're supposed to be. This one has what looks like a quiver, but the Bog Trogs don't actually shoot or throw anything. Other ones have less identifiable junk; I played a game of "what's that object" and just ended up assuming the Trogs were carting around octopuses. It's what I'd cart if I was a Trog.


This is Bog Trog No. 2. I made a deal with myself -- every two trogs I paint, I get to paint something that's not a trog. That's why there's only two done -- to save my sanity.

Bog Trog Ambushers 2a: What color scheme?

While the Bog Trogs certainly have a reptilian look to them, I promise that they're rather ichthian. They've got these sloped skulls and big eyes and little mouth feelers that all scream catfish. I didn't get many shots that emphasize those features, but they're there. I promise.

Bog Trogs are ambush units (hence the name "Ambushers"), so I wanted them to look like they'd blend right into a swamp. That meant dark colors and lots of browns, greens and blacks. There's another reason for this: I want there to be an obvious hierarchy to the army. Crocodiles obviously trump catfish; it's true in real life and, dammit, it's true in a board game. These guys shouldn't upstage the voodoo-lovin' crocs, and a quiet color scheme will help with that.

For ideas, I turned to the best guide to these sorts of things -- nature. A quick google of "swamp fish" was fruitless, but "catfish" gave me a few cool ideas. (Maybe the swamp fish search wasn't fruitless, per se -- I discovered that the smallest invertabrate in the world is a fish that lives in acid. Try it yourself, it's a very small fish.)


(stolen from aquapage.eu)

I really like this one. Not only does he look like a Bog Trog, but it's a simple and approachable color scheme. The flecks along his back would probably be lost, but the Bog Trogs have scales there anyway -- sooo seems like a wash.


(swiped from indiangameandfish.com)

I like how dramatic the difference is in this big guy's colors! Unfortunately, there's not much of a scheme to work with here. However, the color difference is something I may steal.

(burgled from aquariumlife.net)

This is something that's probably too delicate to do on all of the Bog Trogs, but I think this little guy's precious. Maybe I'll put something like it on the leader.

Now, I'm not married to any one scheme yet, but for now, I think I'll do something like this:

There's really not enough brown in any of those colors, and they're all really too bright, but it gives you an idea of what I'm aiming for. (I mix paints gooder than I PhotoShop.)

Bog Trog Ambushers 1: The Assessment

I had originally intended to use the Bog Trog Ambushers as sahuagin in my Vian campaign. However, I never did more than put them together (the major reason being that 4th Edition and Pathfinder essentially nullified all the work I'd done with 3rd Edition OGL).

That's them -- the bases are about an inch and a quarter wide. That's a package of Hi-Chew in the background to give you some scale (and because I didn't bother clearing off the workspace before snapping these pics).

The first photo is of an average grunt; the second is of the leader, who wears an alligator-skin cap. (That's the swamp equivalent of a coonskin cap. He's like the Davy Crockett of the marshes.) Already, though, you can see some of the problems with the figures -- there's an awful lot of flash. On the sample grunt, it's very prominent along the top of his left arm; on the leader, there's a good deal of it along the bottom edge of his weapon. It's especially obvious along the blade and on the bit at the bottom. That's fix No. 1 -- remove all that nasty flash. It looks bad now, but it really, really comes out when it's painted.

More problems:

The leader's got a terrible gash where his head piece was glued to his body. It's really, really noticeable, and will have to get filled and molded with putty.

Ditto here behind an arm joint on a grunt. This is by far the most common problem; many of Privateer Press's molds have large gaps in them, so it's somthing that you just get used to fixing. (There's also the fact that I tend to force things to go where I want them, then green stuff the difference. It's not always the model's fault.)

This weapon is pretty warped, another common problem. Just a few small tweaks should fix it, but if not, the haft can be clipped out and replaced with a brass pin and some green stuff will replace the detail.

Once those fixes are made, I'll prime these guys (in white, unfortunately, since I'm not aware of an acrylic spray in a medium tan) and get started painting them.