You're right (and thanks again btw)! Although it's neither the Tikbalang nor the Uhlan, but the Squalos! Don't know why I didn't come up with that myself. I remember thinking the helmet was very big, but I didn't think TAG big. Thanks!
Whoops, forgot to post my progress in a while. Well, here's the last Puppetbot: With him, my Puppetactica is finished: And since we're at it, here's a group shot of what I had for Tunguska at the beginning of the year. Will do a new group shot when the next batch is done.
Thanks @Wikkid Devil! We continue with the Securitate. I stuck to the Dossier art with these ones, although I liked how the dossier does the white stripe at the front all the way down the leg, so I did that. The studio versions all stop at the chest plate. Since these were extreme speedpaints though (2-3 hours each), I left out the TSF freehand on the back. I like it better this way anyway, since too much of the olive (that's already obscured at the front witht the most of these) would have been reduced even further. As you can see, I also went for playability rather than chronology – I rather wanted to have the HMG and repeater finished first than three combi rifles.
And on we go: My first Hollowman – and interestingly my first Heavy Infrantry ever. I've always had a lot of respect for these minis, which is why I pushed them back for so long I guess, but by now I felt confident enough to pull it off. My Hollowmen get a special treatment as you can see. In the end they will all have unique color schemes. My idea was that since they're robots, there may be different manufacturers in Tunguska providing the suits, so they're all different "brands". Had a lot of fun trying out something different than my usual blue-green-olive-orange. The olive and orange here are also slightly different recipes. The most fun though was the red. Really happy with how it turned out. To accompany him, he also got a little sassy Tinbot bunny I luckily had already airbrushed (so she didn't take too long):
I had a very productive week two weeks ago, which is why this is all coming this quickly: My Mary Problems: She was converted from an Aleph Danavas hacker (see this post). The SMG is a printed Haqq version. Was fun to paint something from a different faction for a change. But I will probably have to redo the face at some point. It came out too tanned for my taste and looks a bit too much like monkee and not like the cute robot kid like on the box art that I tried to emulate.
Alright, this is a biggie. My Zondnautica is done. What an awesome box of models! I had to change the base of the pilot in between the single and the group shot. I had her done first, but then it made more sense on the bike and the bot to have that kind of base pattern in terracotta, so in order to restore consistency I had to swap the grey and the terracotta on the pilot. So much fun to paint the bot after the bike. Would recommend it to everyone. While you paint, you get to discover which part of the bike goes where on the bot. Some of it is... imaginative, but hey, it's the technology of the future :P Also, the more I see it, the more I feel the olive and green go much better with the orange than the blue. What do you think?
Alright, the last big one for now: Similarly to my Hollowmen, my Kriza had been lying around for way too long because I had too much respect for him. Then two weeks ago I simply gave myself the challenge to finish him in three hours (he was airbrushed already). To be fair, that's too fast, I admit that. Which means I will have to go back to him at some point to clean him up a bit. For one, I'm not one hundred percent happy with the color composition — too much blue and not enough focal points to break up the silhouette. I also will be amping up the contrast, change a few things on the base and clean up the edges. But for now, he'll do. Especially since I never thought I would be able to pull it off this quickly in the first place ONE LAST THING I promised to take another group shot at the end of the next batch. Well, the batch is bagged, so here is my current Tunguska: I'm happy to say I have pretty much every unit represented at least once now and the most important units done (Zondnautica, Puppetactica). At the same time, there is still a lot missing. Here's a list of what's still lying in my bags: 3 more Securitate (one of them will count as a Clockmaker) Daktari Jammer Heckler Raoul Jelena Kovač Miranda Ashcroft Bounty Hunter (in my case the ltd. ed. Saito Togan) Interventor another Panda (will stand in for a zondbot) another Grenzer 4 more Hollowmen Kriza HMG one Salyut one Tsyklon one more Spectr Perseus So, 21 more minis in total. I wish I could keep them coming as regularly as the ones before, but in fact I will take a break for a couple of months. To be honest, the hobby has taken over a bit and I've been neglecting other areas in my life. So I want to get back on track before I take up the brush again. For now I'm happy to have a playable vanilla force as well as a playable sectorial, even though it took me a whole year to get here. After I'm done with Tunguska, I still have a dozen or so Corregidor models left. But those will wait until the big battlepack arrives in August. Then I'm planning on a concentrated Corregidor phase. Or not. We'll see ;) Until then, take care!
Alright, I'm back :) Let's get this baby back rolling with the last of my Securitate, Mr. Hacker/Clockmaker/"What does that big red button do again?": Quick survey: Would have anyone noticed here that his hacker mask is a different shade of green than the west/bags if I hadn't pointed it out?
Nope, didn't notice the difference. And even when you pointed it out I don't think it's that much of a difference.
Alright, then I will redo it with a different color. Don't want it to be the same as the armor. But since we're talking about olivegreen armor: Finally, my Salyut :) I got some decals recently and wanted to try them out. What do you think?
Finished the second Kriza and updated the first. Moar decals! For comparison, old and new next to each other: The crispness in the new pics is only due to the fact that I have a new phone with a better camera. The main edits were deepening some shadows, cleaning up some edge highlights, adding more olive to the armor (shoulder, knees), replacing the very ugly purple on the base, brightening the green lights and the gun magazine, and adding highlights to the base as well as decals to the canisters.
That REM and Krizas look ace! I love that green on the REM. BTW, I learned from scale modellers to use Micro Sol and Micro Set to apply decals so that the edges become more transparent and blends into the background better. It really works to avoid the "sticker" look.
Thanks for the compliment and the tip! A fellow painter friend already gave me the same advice. Will try to get a hold of those before I use the decals again. You can't really see the sticker look from afar, but yeah, it's visible in the pictures. Next up: Marc uuuh Raoul Spector: I decided to give him the proper Moon Knight treatment he is obviously referencing. I also decided to change the base color of my Mercs to differentiate them better from my Nomad troops. Was fun to paint something in (almost) only black and white!
Marc Spector aka Moon Knight from Marvel. I tried to go after the first picture of this site as a reference to give the whites more depth: a bit brownish from the bottom, a bit blueish from the top.
Since we're already doing references, here's another one: If you can't tell who he's supposed to be I must have not done him justice, so here are a few of his favorite lines to give you a hint: "I am a rogue Myrmidon. Weapons are part of my religion." "I can bring you in warm. Or I can bring you in cold." "Bad news. You can't live here anymore." "I'm sorry, lady. I don't understand Frog." "This is the way."
