Swamp template No. 2, part 3

The rotting log has been finished, sanded, painted and glued into place. It's a pretty light-duty glue -- when the Envirotex dries, it'll hold the sucker in place far better.

It's just successive layers of brown, each lighter than the last. I think I ended up using two washes and five shades of brown; after it was in place, I added to light touches of green-brown to the part that will be below the water line. Later, I'll be brightening up the top half a little more, moving it toward grey, but that's not going to be until the Envirotex is in place. When that's dry (or mostly dry, depending on if I'm willing to destroy a brush), I'll be adding more green-yellow to the side of the log at the water line, and maybe even have some float on the top of the Envirotex to simulate pond scum.

I ditched the other plants I'd sculpted; I couldn't get them to work right, but my Milliput is acting weird, too. It's crumbling and falling apart; I don't know if it's old or I didn't add enough of the yellow part to the white part. (Milliput's an epoxy -- it has two substances that, when combined, become a workable putty that dries to a sandable finish. It's good for creating detail-light structures or for making cores to build up from; that's because it's easier to work and it's water soluble. However, it cracks very easily and doesn't hold fine shapes like green stuff.) In either case, the plants are next to unworkable and I'm having the damndest time getting branches on them. I'll try again with new sculpts on swamp template No. 3; this tree turned out not bad, so I feel l ought to keep trying to sculpt.

To add a little more to the final swamp, I ended up grabbing an old pewter tree I've had lying around for at least six years -- before I moved down to Orange County -- and I twisted it and bent the branches so it looks forlorn and droopy. It's going to hang over the other elements, but it's thin so it should come out looking OK.

Croak Hunter, part 2

Done with Croak Hunter No. 1. It turned out pretty decently, but it was definitely a learning piece -- the zenithal highlighting worked much better. I'm not going to go whole hog on the technique -- at least, not yet -- but I'll be folding it into my repertoire.

Most of the muddiness has been cleaned up, but it's not a very strong piece, composition-wise. Among the lessons I learned on this mini: If you're going to use a dye technique, rather than a painting technique, you must know what you're about before you put ink to pewter. I'm normally fairly freewheeling when I paint something, adding color and replacing it as it suits me; that's just not an option with this highlighting technique. Luminosity turns to muddy very, very quickly as you add layers of color -- just look at the Croak Hunter's feet and hands if you don't believe me. They used to look like his throat pouch at one time! There's also only two colors in the model (brown and black don't count); Anthony suggested putting blue in the shadows, which I should have. I should have also folded more orange into the model; the eyes and lobster-claw necklace got orange, but nothing else did. It should have been a stronger sub-theme; I may go back and add it to one of the bags at his waist and some of his turtle shells.

The shells look better in this photo than they do in real life, which is funny -- the rest of the model looks better in real life than it does in the photos. There are a handful of examples of the miscues that come with inks on this side -- at the ankles and where the bracers meet the upper arms, for example. If you mis-lay paint, it's really really devastating and a real pain in the rear to clean up. The best solution would be to keep my inks close to their base colors, but that also means buying more paints. There's nothing worse than buying 3 bucks worth of paint for a highlight on one unit. ... That's a lie, there are several million things that are worse, but it'd still break my top, dunno, 500 of crappy things I put up with sometimes.

The spear didn't go so poorly, though. It could probably use another layer of brass color (I generally use whatever gold I can get my hands on -- in this case, Reaper's "Antique Gold" -- mixed with a medium brown.)

There's a lot of "what I may go back and do" on this model, but I just couldn't look at frogs anymore. I have a feeling that the longer I look at it, the more dissatisfied I'm going to be, so off to do another pair of Bog Trogs!

Swamp template No. 2, part 2

The floating log is coming along. The other half is still bare Miliput, and this half needs more roots and more sanding, but what doesn't, yaknowhatimean?



And swamp creature is added to the template. It'll look better with some water, I promise. I hope. I think.

Not a Lizard

The great Menoth cleansing proceeds on schedule. Paladins getting a scrub? Check. Sharing a bath with Exemplars? Oh, check. Is it just me, or is it getting hot in here?

Post-bath relaxing. Paladin cape came off because I can get it on the model better this time; shoulder pad and base came off because Simple Green hates it some crappy super glue bonds.

Croak Hunter, part 1

It seems every faction in WarmaHordes gets its own solo that terrifies the living poop out of the enemy. True to form, the Blindwater Congregation gets the Croak Hunter, a nasty little guy that has stealth, poison on a ranged weapon and punishes opponents that damage him without killing him.



Sharp-eyed viewers may notice the splotchy white base on this guy. It's the same base that showed up on my initial failures on the Bog Trogs; this guy is also an attempt at zenithal highlighting. The difference is that this pass actually worked. I'm not sure why -- probably because this guy is a lighter-colored model all around. Maybe it's just because I need to bang my head against brick walls to get anything done right.

While it looks muddy here, the red-to-green fade is actually quite nice and natural looking. Some additional coats really made the red pop while still having a believable fade into the green. But here, a picture does more than my words:

Yes, there's a lot of brown in his feet still. A little bit of creative mixing will fix that problem; it stems from not having a suitable dark color there yet. I'm quite stunned at how nicely this whole thing turned out, all things considered. I am living in fear of overworking the colors; I feel like there's precious little I could do to make most of the skin look much better.

Here's the backside. The spear and rope is almost done -- quick work, too -- it just needs a highlight coat to fix up some of the muddiness, and a few coats of bronze on the pointy bits, of course. The turtle shells are a bit of a flummox -- I really don't know how to approach them. There's way too much red as it stands in the model now, so that's out, but I'm loathe to introduce another color. Speaking of -- those red bags on his left hip will be toned into dark brown. There's just way too much red on the front right now, and it's throwing off the whole composition.

Finally, there's a significant craftsmanship issue on this model -- grains of sand somehow ended up on the legs and feet. I'm going to fix it in post, so to speak -- it'll get folded into the model as a sort of general muddiness at some point, but I'm annoyed with it. I'm not sure how the grains got onto the legs to begin with, and I'm doubly unsure of how I missed them until I had a layer of green down already.

Swamp Template No. 2, part 1

The first template taught me a few things. This one's gonna be pretty drastically different -- I want to learn other things.

You can see that this one has a different feel already -- that swirling green mass reflects that this swamp is going to be non-idyllic. The idea on this one is to have dead and rotting matter, like logs and twisted vines, and something big and unidentifiable will be slithering about in the depths. The water's coming in two layers on this one -- first will be a green-yellow layer that's got flock floating in it; the second will be a lighter layer that's relatively clear of debris.

Here's the stuff in progress -- what's going to be a floating log, a wilted and disgusting plant, and the something that'll be swimming in the muck. If you can't tell, it's a scaled beast of some kind; its back is just breaking the water. (Think of those old pictures and drawings of Nessie -- how it's supposed to break the surface like a snake undulating up and down, rather than left to right.)

These will be trees; they'll get green stuff bark and thinner, crooked green stuff branches.

Not a lizard

Sorry about the glare. Sorry about the faux-wood paneling. But yes, well-spotted -- it's not a lizard. It's my sub-crocodile excitement of the moment, my old Menoth army. I'm going to make a paladin-themed army; I'm just short a unit of Bastions. I've got all these old Menites sitting around, I may as well get zealous about 'em. Ha! Ha! Menoth humor! In Protectorate, Menoth humors you! No, the other one -- Menoth burns you at the stake! Ha! Ha!