Allerion's Army Reborn
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Allerion's Army Reborn
Well well well look who the cat dragged in. For the many (all?) of you who don't remember me, I was a somewhat-regular on this site in the mid-to-late-2000's, but my interest waned due to how long it took me to paint anything and the lack of close playing locations. 15 years, a degree or two, a wife (not two), an established career, and a move to the big city later, I thought to myself repainting everything I painted while I was a kid was a great idea in preparation for The Old World. Well I guess we will find out how well this goes.
First things first, I've been toting a few minis around with me for last decade or so "just in case." A handful of 6th edition swordmasters, shadow warriors, and two heroes. Not much but very convenient when packing my life into moving boxes. I thought about painting a few years ago and got as far as stripping the shadow warriors, but that's it. So, here we are:
Not great and they've had a rough few years. The SW's were probably the ones I painted the best and I took no pictures so oh well. I plunked everything in some IPA to strip the old paint and waited. Turns out lots of layers of old Testors enamel paint doesn't quite "fall off the bone". Tried Simple Green which was more of the same story, but after a while and a toothbrush, eventually most of the old paint gave way. Considering how hard I had to scrub with a toothbrush I'm concerned about how to strip plastic models, but I guess I'll get there when I get there. Anyway, now everything is stripped and can be primed:
Black primer doesn't make for great pictures. I've been watching all the "how to speed-paint" videos which are all over youtube (hopefully completing these in fewer than 6 months), so the first step seems to be several layers of drybrushing. Got it:
Now for some color. I picked up some Army Painter Speedpaints kit after watching countless videos of "just glob it on, move it around, and it does the rest". So I decided to paint the skin first, which is when I realized none of the paints in the kit really matched the stereotypical elf skin. The first paint I tried way way too yellow, the next way too dark. I tried a few washes on a third and wound up with a Khorne Red skintone. Not ideal. So I said screw it and went on to the armor. Overall color scheme I figured a purple/white with gold armor would look nice, and I got the speedpaint kit with metallic paint in it so it was easy. Well, I globbed it on, moved it around, and quickly realized it was just regular old gold paint that had good coverage over base coats. Feeling very lied to by all the Speedpainter-shills on youtube, I decided I could probably do a rough-and-dirty NMM. Why not at this point, everything had gone poorly so might as well try. So I did a base coat of a mid brown with yellow over top, and the end result was a copper-y-bronze-kinda looking color, which I like a lot more than the regular gold color anyway. Cool beans. I threw some white and purple on (which did work as advertised), and I got this:
Hmmm. In a word, disappointing. In more words, not quite the "glittering host" High Elves are meant to be. I could go through and add highlights to try and lighten everything up, but in reality the problem is the base layers are too dark for what I want and I'll spend more time trying to highlight than starting over and figuring out what is right. I do like how the armor turned out on certain models that had more highlights, but the armor color on un-hilighted areas is... yuck. I also need to think more about white/purple so it doesn't look too dark.
Until next time...
First things first, I've been toting a few minis around with me for last decade or so "just in case." A handful of 6th edition swordmasters, shadow warriors, and two heroes. Not much but very convenient when packing my life into moving boxes. I thought about painting a few years ago and got as far as stripping the shadow warriors, but that's it. So, here we are:
Not great and they've had a rough few years. The SW's were probably the ones I painted the best and I took no pictures so oh well. I plunked everything in some IPA to strip the old paint and waited. Turns out lots of layers of old Testors enamel paint doesn't quite "fall off the bone". Tried Simple Green which was more of the same story, but after a while and a toothbrush, eventually most of the old paint gave way. Considering how hard I had to scrub with a toothbrush I'm concerned about how to strip plastic models, but I guess I'll get there when I get there. Anyway, now everything is stripped and can be primed:
Black primer doesn't make for great pictures. I've been watching all the "how to speed-paint" videos which are all over youtube (hopefully completing these in fewer than 6 months), so the first step seems to be several layers of drybrushing. Got it:
Now for some color. I picked up some Army Painter Speedpaints kit after watching countless videos of "just glob it on, move it around, and it does the rest". So I decided to paint the skin first, which is when I realized none of the paints in the kit really matched the stereotypical elf skin. The first paint I tried way way too yellow, the next way too dark. I tried a few washes on a third and wound up with a Khorne Red skintone. Not ideal. So I said screw it and went on to the armor. Overall color scheme I figured a purple/white with gold armor would look nice, and I got the speedpaint kit with metallic paint in it so it was easy. Well, I globbed it on, moved it around, and quickly realized it was just regular old gold paint that had good coverage over base coats. Feeling very lied to by all the Speedpainter-shills on youtube, I decided I could probably do a rough-and-dirty NMM. Why not at this point, everything had gone poorly so might as well try. So I did a base coat of a mid brown with yellow over top, and the end result was a copper-y-bronze-kinda looking color, which I like a lot more than the regular gold color anyway. Cool beans. I threw some white and purple on (which did work as advertised), and I got this:
Hmmm. In a word, disappointing. In more words, not quite the "glittering host" High Elves are meant to be. I could go through and add highlights to try and lighten everything up, but in reality the problem is the base layers are too dark for what I want and I'll spend more time trying to highlight than starting over and figuring out what is right. I do like how the armor turned out on certain models that had more highlights, but the armor color on un-hilighted areas is... yuck. I also need to think more about white/purple so it doesn't look too dark.
Until next time...
- Giladis
- The Merlord
- Posts: 2909
- Joined: Tue Jun 21, 2005 11:13 am
- Location: Zagreb, Croatia
- Contact:
Re: Allerion's Army Reborn
Welcome back to the misty shores of Ulthuan!
-
- Posts: 436
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Re: Allerion's Army Reborn
Welcome back. I'm really jealous you have the middle guy with the big sword and the shield. It's about the last model I miss in my collection.
Re: Allerion's Army Reborn
Welcome.
Maybe try a pure white base for the speedpaints rather than drybrushing over the black
Maybe try a pure white base for the speedpaints rather than drybrushing over the black
Re: Allerion's Army Reborn
You learn to smells when something is too good be true. And the speedpaint ad-campaigns stink
- Prince of Spires
- Auctor Aeternitatum
- Posts: 8274
- Joined: Wed Apr 22, 2009 1:07 pm
- Location: The city of Spires
Re: Allerion's Army Reborn
Welcome back!
For what it's worth, I actually think your models look pretty good. They still might need a bit of work. But for a first try I like them. The SW look nice (except for the red face of the guy on the right...).
As for speed painting. I always get the impression that most of the speed painters get to be that fast because they first learned to paint really well while going slow. And then they sped up and removed unnecessary steps from their process. But just following their techniques always feels like it should give the results you're seeing... There are a few who claim to be bad painters and never spend much time painting. But if you're putting out Youtube hobby videos, then you're not someone who only spends an hour or two a week doing hobby stuff. Then you've been doing it for a while. And while you might not be putting out Golden Deamon quality minis, you're definitely getting above tabletop standard.
For what it's worth, I actually think your models look pretty good. They still might need a bit of work. But for a first try I like them. The SW look nice (except for the red face of the guy on the right...).
As for speed painting. I always get the impression that most of the speed painters get to be that fast because they first learned to paint really well while going slow. And then they sped up and removed unnecessary steps from their process. But just following their techniques always feels like it should give the results you're seeing... There are a few who claim to be bad painters and never spend much time painting. But if you're putting out Youtube hobby videos, then you're not someone who only spends an hour or two a week doing hobby stuff. Then you've been doing it for a while. And while you might not be putting out Golden Deamon quality minis, you're definitely getting above tabletop standard.
For Nagarythe: Come to the dark side.
PS: Bring cookies!
Check out my plog
Painting progress, done/in progress/in box: 167/33/91
Check my writing blog for stories on the Prince of Spires and other pieces of fiction.
PS: Bring cookies!
Check out my plog
Painting progress, done/in progress/in box: 167/33/91
Check my writing blog for stories on the Prince of Spires and other pieces of fiction.
Re: Allerion's Army Reborn
Thanks for the warm welcome back So it turns out trying to paint an army, work fulltime with a good amount of travel, and get a masters degree means the paint an army part tends to get put on the backburner and progress has been slow. Oh well. Over christmas I visited my parents and picked up as much as I could fit in a suitcase which actually turned out to be quite a bit. Turns out I managed to fit:
16 spears
16 archers
18 WL +FC
18 PG +FC
13 SM +FC
5 SW
5 heros / mages
1 TC
2 RBT
1 dragon kit unassembled
8 SH
5 ER
13 DR
Kislev Winged Lancers box + Minis
Battle for Skull Pass minis
4th & 5th edition rulebooks + 6th ed HE book + BforSP books
in my luggage and nothing got damaged other than some old testors glue or superglue (bonded between painted surfaces) not holding up.
With it being christmas time and the gobbo squig rider fitting in the "quirky humor" part of the hobby I always enjoyed I decided to paint one, and in general I like how it turned out:
Kinda a pain to photograph but it was fun to paint and makes me smile when I look at it
Back to elves, I figured the first thing to do is start stripping old paint.
The problem is when I was 10 I had no idea what primer was and just slapped on lots of heavy coats of mostly enamel paint. The yellow guy in the back? Painted over the traditional white/blue of the others, "just to see what it would look like". Its kinda funny to "discover" all the details I covered with paint. So the first thing I did was learn that Simple Green changed their formula and is now fairly worthless for paint stripping. All the IPA around me was 70%, so I wound up using a good amount of scrubbing with a toothbrush to remove layer after layer of paint. This was tedious and not fun. After deciding Good Enough, I glued the spearmen up and primed. I promptly learned that spraying too much primer results in cracking, so back in the IPA the spear elves went. More elbow grease Eventually I watched some video claiming LA's Totally Awesome is a great paint stripper, and it turns out it is and didn't damage anything. It also dissolves super glue. Given it's a useful chemical I suspect its not REACH compliant so I have no idea what you Europeans do. Anyway, I reprimed the spearelves, this time only getting a little bit of cracking, and started to paint. I've been trying different techniques and colors so they're all a bit unique but they're spear elves so it's okay as long as the shields match. I'm close to being done, I need to move them to their new bases and that's about it. I'm sure I'll get to it soon.
In the mean time, I'm going to a Dwarf Metal concert soon so I decided to paint this little psycho up:
And the obligatory butt shot:
I'm not really a metal head but I do like dwarfs so that will be interesting. I'm very happy with how he turned out, I'm getting better at understanding what speedpaints will do and figuring out how to make a vision become reality. I like how the runes glow and I didn't screw up the eyes. I also fixed his posture a bit, seemed too far forward out of the box. Anyway, I should finish up the spearelves soon then on to the next unit.
16 spears
16 archers
18 WL +FC
18 PG +FC
13 SM +FC
5 SW
5 heros / mages
1 TC
2 RBT
1 dragon kit unassembled
8 SH
5 ER
13 DR
Kislev Winged Lancers box + Minis
Battle for Skull Pass minis
4th & 5th edition rulebooks + 6th ed HE book + BforSP books
in my luggage and nothing got damaged other than some old testors glue or superglue (bonded between painted surfaces) not holding up.
With it being christmas time and the gobbo squig rider fitting in the "quirky humor" part of the hobby I always enjoyed I decided to paint one, and in general I like how it turned out:
Kinda a pain to photograph but it was fun to paint and makes me smile when I look at it
Back to elves, I figured the first thing to do is start stripping old paint.
The problem is when I was 10 I had no idea what primer was and just slapped on lots of heavy coats of mostly enamel paint. The yellow guy in the back? Painted over the traditional white/blue of the others, "just to see what it would look like". Its kinda funny to "discover" all the details I covered with paint. So the first thing I did was learn that Simple Green changed their formula and is now fairly worthless for paint stripping. All the IPA around me was 70%, so I wound up using a good amount of scrubbing with a toothbrush to remove layer after layer of paint. This was tedious and not fun. After deciding Good Enough, I glued the spearmen up and primed. I promptly learned that spraying too much primer results in cracking, so back in the IPA the spear elves went. More elbow grease Eventually I watched some video claiming LA's Totally Awesome is a great paint stripper, and it turns out it is and didn't damage anything. It also dissolves super glue. Given it's a useful chemical I suspect its not REACH compliant so I have no idea what you Europeans do. Anyway, I reprimed the spearelves, this time only getting a little bit of cracking, and started to paint. I've been trying different techniques and colors so they're all a bit unique but they're spear elves so it's okay as long as the shields match. I'm close to being done, I need to move them to their new bases and that's about it. I'm sure I'll get to it soon.
In the mean time, I'm going to a Dwarf Metal concert soon so I decided to paint this little psycho up:
And the obligatory butt shot:
I'm not really a metal head but I do like dwarfs so that will be interesting. I'm very happy with how he turned out, I'm getting better at understanding what speedpaints will do and figuring out how to make a vision become reality. I like how the runes glow and I didn't screw up the eyes. I also fixed his posture a bit, seemed too far forward out of the box. Anyway, I should finish up the spearelves soon then on to the next unit.
- Anduil of Elithis
- Posts: 113
- Joined: Mon May 21, 2007 8:25 am
- Location: Hamburg
Re: Allerion's Army Reborn
Looking good! The spearelves picture is before the paint stripping, right? Do you have one after this process as well?
Re: Allerion's Army Reborn
I'm slap chopping my models in a similar fashion but I think it's better to mix other techniques in for thinks like elves. I'm using metallics for metals and still doing at least one highlight pass for the flesh of the elves with a lighter tone.
The idea is more about speeding up the a lot of highlighting and shadows on a model. Replacing layers of building up multiple colors with three quick drybrush passes and one contrast pass and some high lighting when your doing a group of thirty models is a huge time saver.
Only using contrasts/speed paints does look very nice for some models. It's fantastic for like lizardmen, demons, orks or tyranids for example, but the classic armored elf it's probably only a good starting point.
Plus of course not all contrast/speedpaint colors are equal either. Some are very light and others cover fantastically. Thankfully there are guides and examples online of what to expect.
The idea is more about speeding up the a lot of highlighting and shadows on a model. Replacing layers of building up multiple colors with three quick drybrush passes and one contrast pass and some high lighting when your doing a group of thirty models is a huge time saver.
Only using contrasts/speed paints does look very nice for some models. It's fantastic for like lizardmen, demons, orks or tyranids for example, but the classic armored elf it's probably only a good starting point.
Plus of course not all contrast/speedpaint colors are equal either. Some are very light and others cover fantastically. Thankfully there are guides and examples online of what to expect.
-
- Green Istari
- Posts: 13847
- Joined: Sat Sep 13, 2008 11:26 am
- Location: Otherworld
Re: Allerion's Army Reborn
Have another welcome.
Nice!
I love him! The creativity, the colours, the whole nine yards.
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http://ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=70550
Cavalry Prince Reloaded
http://ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=80&t=70001