Yaoxie Lu Duan and Rui Shi August is remotes month for me. I switched the body from the official scheme. Lu Duan is a mythical beast with a horn, so I used the body with a "horn" to represent my Lu Duan. I was experimenting with a shiny, iridescent look for the front of the leg armour plates. I accidently made the ones on the Lu Duan look too dirty, but didn't feel like going back to fix it. Spoiler: Lu Duan I still have some old GW boltgun metal that surprisingly has not dried up, so I used it on the metal robotic parts. It's been a while since I last used metallic paint. This is the first set of Infinity figures that I used TMM. Spoiler: Rui Shi Together overwatching on the roof I thought about doing some freehand designs since these are bigger figures, but decided not to as it may make them look too busy. Still, I'm on the fence so may do it after all later. What do you think?
Freehand would be really cool, but I avoid it on my models as well because I'm scared to ruin it. Also I don't know how to write arabic. If I really have to do freehand I usually do a dry run on a piece of plastic or something. It helps a lot when I actually do it on the model. I really like the soft highlights on your models, it's so easy to for a harsher light with sharper edges. It gives a feeling of artificial lights.
Yes, that's exactly what I would do too when doing freehand. I'm thinking about writing Rui Shi in Chinese characters on the "wings" and do some Chinese cloud designs on the Lu Duan. For now though, I think I will leave it as is. As for the highlights, I used to do hard edge highlights when I painted 40K space marines and eldars. With Infinity I wanted to try something different. Soft edge highlights take more time as I had to wet blend and glaze. You can see spots where I got impatient and switched back to hard edge lights (such as the purple bits on the legs)
Yaokong Remotes Rounding off my August painting remotes are my two Yaokongs. I magnetized the side gadgets and the guns in front, but in the end I think it's more trouble than it's worth. Also the paint keeps chipping off the magnets. Does anyone have a good solution? Pictures look darker because I'm using manual exposure. I find the auto exposure setting on my phone camera tends to over-expose.
Leila Sharif, HVT, and Celestial Guards - Painted the rest of my Dire Foes box for the September painting group. Leila will be proxying for Luna or other mercenaries. I painted her armour lighter yellow to differentiate from the rest of my main Yu Jing army. The HVT was a blast to paint. Spoiler: More views Before I started on Leila and HVT, I finished off my last two Celestial Guards. These old sculpts look small and out of scale when put next to modern sculpts but they actually look ok in game. Celestial Guards assemble!
So, real life got busy and I've been away for a while. Then I received my copy of Defiance in January so spent the month cleaning and assembling the models. Anyway, I decided to do the bad guys first and the Noxes will give me practice and familiarity with Shasvastii anatomy. With the Shasvastii my first thought was I want intense blue, like horseshoe crab blood, as a part of their anatomy. The plated scales seem like good candidate for such colour. I used GW Talassar Blue contrast paint and compared it on grey primer and white primer. Nox (grey primer) The studio scheme has hashes on their arms that I like. I think I went a tad overboard with them though. Nox (white primer) The blue contrast paint turned out better than I expected. I did give them edge highlights but can't see them in photos. At first I painted the heads with pale greyish blue but find it blends too much with the rest of the body. A drybrush of VMC Golden Olive fixed that. The armour is black wash, then purple wash. Weapons are black wash then green wash. I tried to use the lazy painter speed paint method. However, it's been a while since I read the article and I really should have reviewed it before starting this project. As such, I made lots of mistakes and spent time fixing/redoing things (lessons learned!). In all I think I spent around 2.5 hours per model (with free hand details and bases). My aim is to make it closer to 1 hour. Overall, I like how they turned out and I'm satisfied with this colour scheme.
Shasvastii Caliban These "not predator" space vampires are wicked cool. I'm getting more used to painting with washes. Got a little impatient while doing highlights (should've used a smaller brush too). Still, looks good at table top distance so the mistakes aren't obvious. After I painted these I realised I should paint the baddies in the order of appearance in the Defiance missions. So, that makes Taighas and Jayth Cutthroats next on my painting list.
I finished the Jayth Cutthroats and Taighas a couple months ago but didn't take good pics until now. I painted the Jayth with two skin colours just for experimentation. One is olive green while the other looks more metallic blue-green. I wasn't very excited to paint the Taigha creatures. So again I experimented with two different skin colours just so I won't get bored. I quite like the purple rings in the bottom set. I was inspired by the blue-ring octopus, they just look so cool!
Cadmus I like these sculpts, but they don't have the square thingies on their arms like the picture on the card. I think the arm square thingies only go on the hacker model, which isn't part of the Defiance set. Gwailo By this time I was getting tired of painting Shas LI. So the Gwailo was a nice change of pace. I've never read the fluff for this guy, so I'm a bit puzzled why CB decided to name this guy with a derogatory Cantonese term for westerners. I intended to make the blue armour plates a different shade than the body ridges, but in they still ended up looking too similar. Oh well. Also tried to do some subtle OSL under the arms. Spoiler: More views Had a bit of fun with the backpack "wings". Are they supposed to be nano-screens? I'm quite happy with the way they turn out. Charontid The mini-boss deserves more attention so I've spent more time on him (her?) than the other Shas models. It's an imposing and intimidating model. On the other hand, I'm not a big fan of the way it's so top heavy visually (the protruding grill on the back doesn't help). It's like he skipped leg days and has to balance on two spindly sticks. Nevertheless I still had a lot of fun painting this guy. Spoiler: More views I realized something while painting the backside- this guy is running around the battlefield with no pants! And with that, my July goals are done. I want to step it up a bit in August so I can be done with the main set before the expansion boxes arrive.
Sooo... It's been a year and a half since my last post. The last things I painted before the long break were Defiance scenery pieces (not fun, and took way longer than expected) and Seed Soldiers (very fun). I just never posted the pics so here they are. I was tired of painting the same Shas armour so I gave these guys coloured shoulder pads. Pink Ranger is my fav. Then the expansion boxes arrived, which gave me anxiety with all the new models to paint. So then I took a break, which turned out to be a long one! Over Christmas vacation I decided too pick up the brushes again. And to my annoyance found that most of my GW pots turned sludgy (though I shouldn't be surprised). Anyway, polished off the Speculo Killers. I didn't use my usual colour scheme because they're special troops, but mainly because I wanted to do something different. And the Shas force is almost done!
Victor Messer is done! I love the pose and menacing look. On the other hand, the pose made this guy a real pain to paint. My favourite part is the upper arm with the hexes, though there are subtle skin tones that got lost in the photo. I also like how the coat turned out. Next: Sheskiin the big bad boss!
Continuing my slow work painting Defiance figures... Motivation has waned as I have pretty much given up on the game. I really want to like it, but I just find the rules too complicated! Anyway, I did finish painting all the bad guys - big boss Sheskiin and Aida Swanson. I actually finished them in January but forgot to take pics. Spoiler: Sheskiin I really like the Sheskiin model. The armour was a joy to paint, and the leather coat adds a nice variety. I enjoyed the nano-screen too. The Army Painter Speed Paint line came out just before, so I tried the "Slaughter Red" as I envisioned a dark red armour. However, the colour turned out too dark and not enough highlights. I tried diluting it but then it turned pinkish. Eh... Not what I expected but I actually like how it turned out. Spoiler: Aida Swanson This figure is the opposite of Sheskiin, ugh. I just was not feeling this gal. Probably because I had a terrible time gluing her left arm, just an awefully thin joint that's very difficult to work with. Taking a break from Defiance. I'll leave the heroes and the expansion sets for later. Going back to painting Yu Jing as I've been playing more games this year. Invincible Army assemble! Spoiler: Qiang Gao He's the only Defiance Hero I've painted. I tried to paint his base like one of the game tiles, resulting in him not quite matching the rest of my Yu Jing I was having a hard time keeping him in focus >_< Spoiler: Hac Tao The mighty Hac Tao! The HMG profile is a lot of fun; I've yet to try the other profiles. Here I'm trying something different to represent mimetism -6. Not sure if I like it. Spoiler: Haidao Hacker and oop Shang Ji These two were a blast to paint! I especially enjoyed the old school Shang Ji with the insect-like helmet. I also really like the back of the old Shang Ji. Something about those coils.... Unfortunately he looks small alongside the new sculpts, so he's going to proxy as solo pieces such as Zhencha or Guilang.
The painting continues! I've been having fun with IA so naturally my recent painting projects are all heavies. Krit Kokram He's a lot of fun to paint. I ran out of GW Fire Dragon Bright, which was main orange I used for my previous minis. Annoyingly, all the FLGS around me are all out of this colour too! I bought VGC Orange Fire instead. It's a darker orange so Krit ended up looking darker. I went out and got VML Light Orange, which is closer to Fire Dragon Bright. Spoiler: More Krit For some reason Krit has three pistols! I wasn't too happy with the way I painted Hac Tao, so I changed the camo part of the armour a bit, added more edge highlights, and some free-hand. I still don't quite like it. Oh well, it's going to be under marker state most of the time anyway. I also added some free-hand to a couple previously finished minis.
Tai Sheng and Tinbot The matte spray finish isn't completely matte, even though I gave it only one pass. It's not noticeable at table top distance but very noticeable in close up photos. Spoiler: More Tai Sheng "All clear. Let's go get some noodles-- dang it's closed!"
Pangolin Remotes I submitted the EVO hacker baggage bot to the Bromad Academy painting contest, which has many excellent entries and very inspiring works by talented painters. I saw some fascinating photos of iridescent beetles so I wanted to try the colour effects on the remotes. I am happy enough with the result. Spoiler: Pangolin EVO hacker
On a small surface it's actually not as hard as I thought. Looking at lots of photo references for colours really helped.
Invincible Army medium infantry- Lei Gong and Daoying Lei Gong was a blast to paint. His wings offer some nice surface for me to try something new. Spoiler: More Lei Gong Daoying MSR is another gorgeous model that I really enjoyed. However, I have yet to learn to use her well in game.
Zhencha, Armoured Reconnaissance Regiment These two are my first painted minis in 2024! I painted them together. Instead of my usual scheme for the orange-yellow armour, I used the CB studio (I think it's Giraldez) recipe found in the Red Veil book. Spoiler: More views Surprisingly, the colours don't look too different from my own scheme (I was expecting them to be more yellow). VGC Scrofulous Brown selectively shaded with thinned down VMC Cavalry Brown produced a very nice rich orange. The only thing I did differently was mixing Scrofulous Brown with VMC Ice Yellow rather than white for highlights. I also learned a lot during this experiment. Such as the advantage of using thinned down paint rather than washes. Sure, it's not as convenient as using dedicated washes straight from the bottle, but the saturation is stronger to provide better optical mixing of colours. That's really cool!
