Suddenly, Little Plastic Men (40k)

[Vanas]

I'm looking at a Lord with a veil. It's pricey, but could be damned useful. My other thoughts were Warscythe, Lightning Field (25), Gaze of Flame (15), Res Plz(40) and Phylactery (15) because he's certainly gonna get charged. I've not got a spreadsheet set up yet for points values value, but I'm thinking two lots of Immortals, 1 Destroyer and 1 Heavy squad for the serious firepower stakes. Lord's retinue, I'm thinking Flayed Ones because I doubt the Pariahs would last long enough for their armour breaking to be really useful.

Edit: Finally almost finished painting a Destroyer after 2 1/2 hours. For someone who has the artistic skills of a dead hedgehog, I'm rather pleased by how it turned out. Tomorrow, the transfers.

[Vanas]

Apologies for the double post, but I've been playing with the camera, managed to improve the quality a little.

Here's a less generic Warrior and one of the destroyers, Destroyer, Warrior and Lord side view and Destroyer, generic Warrior and Lord. That last one's about 5 an a half hours worth of painting.

[Ryan Thunder]

Bah, don't be so hard on yourself. Those aren't too bad. And besides, you're a newbie.

[Bob the Gunslinger]

The only advice I can give you is to apply a wash of some sort to the models. Maybe brown ink and watered-down black paint?

You should also consider using the time-tested Necron painting technique of Black Undercoat Followed By Boltgun Drybrushing. You could probably paint a few dozen models in about an hour and a half, depending on how you undercoat.

Also, I really like the Necronlord. He has some flair.

[Vanas]

Heh, the generic warrior there and most of the rest are undercoated and drybrushed. Was mentioned in the codex and I thought I'd give it a shot. Looks quite good after you've added the green there. Recently picked up a spraygun, that'll get me undercoating faster.

I saw the brown and black wash thing, yeah. I might give it a shot on some of the more expendable models. and see how it comes out.

[Acidburns]

I try and avoid metallics as much as possible. Highlighting metallic paint is difficult, the trick to making it look good is to shade right down to boltgun metal mixed with 50% chaos black. Washes help too, this guide here might help, but you may not want to go to this level of detail on your rank and file troops! If you like a darker look then a simple badab black wash with a little devlan mud would work wonders, and be very quick.

Also, there's another nifty guide here with a cool necron colour scheme that is not metallic.

[Bob the Gunslinger]

Vanas: Really? The boltgun looks so even and bright that I couldn't tell they were drybrushed. I wonder what they would look like if you used a dryer brush and sloppier technique....

Acidburns: I like that tutorial a lot, and will steal that true metal technique for my own, but what if I want an object to look bright silver? How do I make a shinier metal, without it looking all dark and dirty?

[Acidburns]

Acidburns: I like that tutorial a lot, and will steal that true metal technique for my own, but what if I want an object to look bright silver? How do I make a shinier metal, without it looking all dark and dirty?

I'm still trying to work that out myself. I'd give over more area to the metallic paint and leave less of the dark metal & washed areas visible. Try enlarging the areas in steps 7-9 and leave less of steps 1-6 visible. The more area you give over to the chainmail & mithril the brighter it will look, but I think keeping the dark areas in some degree is necessary to stop it looking too flat. It's also important that the dark areas are more matte than the rest, otherwise the light will catch it and undo the effect!

Metallic paints are a bitch, if you want a darker look it's easy to get good looking tabletop stuff with drybrush & washes, but getting a shiny polished metal that looks good up close is hard.

[Vanas]

Vanas: Really? The boltgun looks so even and bright that I couldn't tell they were drybrushed. I wonder what they would look like if you used a dryer brush and sloppier technique....

Ah, that's because I only showed the colour scheme I quite liked. As it happens, this picture shows the generics, who may well get updated to the same standard as the previous one. Also, I got a new toy.

One of these is not the same. One of these does not belong.

The white-headed one in the back's not quite done yet. Also, I swear this camera picks up the bits I need to tweak better than my eyes.

Edit: Seriously. I'm now considering getting a magnifying glass and going over these buggers a milli at a time. But that might be a bit too obsessive.

Following previous advice, I've given the Flayer a coat of the mud wash, it certainly made a difference to the skin tones.

[Acidburns]

I can't make out much detail on the flayed one(?) but the metallics on warrior on the left and the immortal on the right are looking good in particular. The axe heads on the weapon would benefit from some shading / highlighting. I haven't played 40k for some time, but I've heard the current Necron codex is vastly improved over the early ones.

[Vanas]

Heh, the left warrior is literally just drybrushed. Good lighting's a wonder for this sort of thing. I'm tempted to make all the warriors the same colour scheme as the white headed ones. More solid metallic paint, white heads. I'll see if I can't get a better picture of the Flayed One later, it took ages and I'm almost happy with it.

As for the axeheads, yeah. I've made a couple of attempts to add some detail, but I'm not quite at the level yet to get a good metallic highlight sorta thing going on there. At the moment, they're just plain mithril attached to a Boltgun... gun. I'll have a further play at some point.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Well I have a bunch of Space Elves armed with Fusion Guns and melta bomb frisbees.