Cultural Learnings of Painting for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Nomads

Thanks @Vakarian, and thanks @THEGRAAK for the tip! I'll try those colours next. The problem is I want to achieve this kind of ceramic effect like on the Cube Jager. It's not pure white.

Which, btw, now that I already spilled the beans: In my first post I asked if anyone knew who I stole my color scheme from. Well, it's this guy:



Of course I added some variations, like the dark green and the reddish brown. But I love the mix of muted and flashy colors on him. I still don't know how to get my orange to look exactly like his – nor the ceramics. Any advice is appreciated.

Well, here's my next take on the whole thing: Zero #2:



I changed the color scheme a bit compared to the first Zero, since I decided to keep the brown pants for Corregidor and continue the trend set by the Prowler of giving Bakunin the splashier treatment.

To compare:



Next up, believe it or not, is finally a Tunguska mini: The icestorm Grenzer. Boy do I dread that coat. I haven't painted coats since my LoTR days, and I remember never getting them right. Here goes nothin!

 

Before everyone thinks I've given up already I thought I'd say hello again. I haven't been idle, I just decided to assemble all my stuff for now so I can field more units on the table instead of building each one only before I paint them. Since most of them are just standard, I didn't feel like there was much to share.

But this week I did some conversions, or rather non-standard assemblies, of my doggies. Had some spare parts from a Taskmaster and a Lizard, which looks much better than the old wepaonry imho (that dildo cannon, my god...):

Spoiler: Two more views

Still needs some putty too smoothen out the cracks, but I like the look. I'm still not sure though if I should just take the dildo cannon off and replace it either with the rocket launcher or nothing at all. What do you think?

Thanks! The Prowler is fun to paint. I have the second one too, love the medium armor on them. And I'm glad you like the colors! Especially with the splashier Bakunin colors I'm happy how they turned out. Tunguska will obviously be more somber.

Yeah, maybe that's it! Less yellow. But I like it a lot now too, so I think I'll stick to it as it is. Or maybe I'll try the sunny skintone version on my Tunguskans.

Speaking of which, let's end this update with some proof I've not been completely idle on my Grenzer:

 

They are. But I hope they keep the "who's a good boy?" poses. Otherwise I'll be sad. And thanks! :)

I sat down this morning and decided to heed my own words from last night and get rid of the dildo gun on my second Zond. Let's face it, I'll be using the Transductor more than the Reaktion Zond anyway, and never two of the latter, so who needs two big guns? Especially if one looks like a penis? So I cut off some pieces (the balls? the tip?), reattached them, found a spare fin from a couple of old Hellcats and voíla:



Fancy comms equipment!

And while my brushes are on vacation I also finished assembling my Brigadas this morning. Since I feel obliged to join the hate on the weapon options they put in these boxes these days, there were two things that ground my gears:

1. The obligatory visor lift. Why make me paint a face if I could paint another cool helmet instead – and much faster? And why is it on the the ML? Give it to the hacker which I don't need anyway I say
2. Where's the Combi Rifle the profile promises to the hacker?

Luckily I still had some leftovers from my Corregidor box. So with a couple of hand swaps the Hacker got her combi, and since she is now left-handed, I could also swap the heads (before she would have looked the wrong way). Satisfyingly, the fair ladies now look like this:



Tbf, the hacker now has a bit of a big left hand (it's taken from the male Alcuacile hacker), but you know what they say about women with big hands...

 

Stupid Google Photos, always making things more complicated than necessary It should work now ;)

 

You're probably right. I'm just too lazy to switch again atm :P And as long as I remember to do it in the right order, the pictures work – for now ;)

Thanks! Since I've been finishing my assemblies, here come two more:



The one top is the limited edition RPG Kickstarter Nomad HVT that I got on ebay before I started collecting all the Dire Foes HVTs. Now I don't need him as an HVT anymore, and his body mods make him look like a Morlock, so all I needed was an appropriate weapon. Since the official Morlock box is sorely lacking in accurate weapon outfits anyway (another one of those), I gave him the surplus Combi Rifle from my Alguacile Hacker (who was already missing a left hand anyway – now he's totally empty-handed...) and the knife arm from the Icestorm Spektr (which I never really liked anyway and didn't need bc I already have the two old Spektr models). And there he is: My first custom build Morlock!

The second one was even simpler, and again due to a CB-made SWC box malheur: Since the Securitate come only with one actual SWC weapon across all models (the HMG – no Sniper, no Feuerbach [until now, but needlessly separate], not even a Boarding SG), I decided to build my own Multi Sniper. Luckily the standing lady from the Tunguska Starter volunteered, so all I had to do was cut off the arch on top, drill a hole, put in a peg and stick the tip of my Sin-Eater's sniper rifle to the end (the Sin-Eater is much better off with an MK-12 anyway, and I can always say that that's what his gun's supposed to be now :P)

So. Having assembled every last one of my Nomads, I'll show you the full magnitude of my foolhardy endeavour tomorrow wiht a group shot. It's..., well, I might have gone on a couple buying frenzies these last months...

But then, so God help me, I will finally sit down and finish painting that Grenzer!

 

I did it.



Revelation of the day: Really dry drybrushing is pretty much as good as semi-professional blending – and takes a fraction of the time. Allowed me to finish this baby in 8 hours instead of (probably) 12. Also: First time since I re-started painting that I attempted a freehand again. I feel I can live with it.

Since he's Tunguska, I decided to incorporate more black and less ceramic and use the dark olive green as the main complementary color besides blue+orange. I like it enough to consider making those the default colors for Tunguska now.


Taking Stock

Like I said yesterday, I also made a census of what's ahead of me. I'm good for the next year I guess painting-wise. Anyone heard of the saying "Don't bite off more than you can chew"? No? Me neither.



Split up into sectorials it looks like this:

Tunguska




Corregidor



Lizzie just happened to pose for this picture. I have no idea which TAG I want to play, but she's my favorite TAG model from the Nomad ones (look at those hips!), and since her guns are in her hands anyway, I can legally proxy all the other ones with her #smart


Bakunin



For a Sectorial I never wanted to play I have a lot of its minis...

What's next?

Now that everything's assembled I can focus completely on painting. At this point I'm up for suggestions. I don't really care about Sectorials too much right now tbh, I want to get comfortable with playing Vanilla first anyway. So if anyone has a mini they see here that they want to see painted first, let me know.

 

Hmm, so far I'm mainly using glazing to color things in. Maybe I should start doing what you're saying. I'm just always afraid that any glaze will dull my edge highlights to the point where I have to do them all over again. But as they say: You don't improve by not trying out new things. Will give it a spin!

Jup. No boxes left! I mean, I have some boxes of a future NA2 project stacked up in a cupboard, but that's a whole other project that I won't bother with until next year. Or maybe even the one after. Right now I'm pumped to bring this army to life. And yeah, the final group shot will be awesome!

And yeah, that's what I heard. But I feel exempt from that because I had already bought way too many models back all those years ago when I didn't even have any prospect of ever playing the game But yes, the friend who brought me back into the hobby also implores me to stop buying stuff. But then he sends me post of people selling nomad stuff for cheap all the time. What shall I do?

Didn't even see that fine print til I quoted you XD Well, maybe it is. But remember that riendship is magic, and magic is also heresy. So I'll try to stay on the lighter side of dogma :P

Nice, thanks! Watched a first one about their chipping effects – definitely will look into this once I start painting terrain. or bigger models. Thanks for the tip also about the makeup brushes. Never thought of using those for drybrushing!

Also, if no one has any requests paint-schedule-wise, I'll just go ahead and pick the next mini that's already primed: Lady Spektr. One of the first models I ever bought and such a cool sculpt! I honestly love the old Spektr sculpts much more than the new ones. Very excited to finally paint her!