Duel scale Chaos themed warband project log

[gpemby]

It has been a long term goal of mine to really focus on and devote some time to this hobby. Family and injury have really impacted me of the last few years but now for 2023 I aim to devote some of my free time every day/week to get back onto painting and modelling. I also want to try and be better at documenting and organising my thoughts on my projects so here goes!

I have been browsing MMF for ages and collecting all sorts of interesting models into a someday maybe projects folder. I have been a fan of the Station Forge models for a while and can see a lot of potential for their use as Inquisitor models or just really cool models that I'd like to print and paint one day. With one of their many patron releases I spotted this image and it planted the seed of an idea.



I really like the idea of see him rampaging around indiscriminately stabbing people to spread literal, and thanks to his blessings, actual chaos. Then after a few weeks an email from MMF about a sale that would see Station Forge models be 50% off I couldn't resist and made a few of the purchases from their backlog. I have now signed up to their Tribe as it was clear that I would save plenty of money that was as I'm probably going to be wanting a lot of their releases over time!

While exporting the files I looked at the pre supported folder and an idea formed. Why not create this as a dual scale warband? We have the technology.... It would also be an interesting painting challenge to achieve similar results on the different scales.



All I had to do was sit for an hour or so and support a million islands on the scaled up parts. A skill I have been working on for the last year with my Printer. This is something that after the print I probably should have done with the pre-support as well as I guess that they don't check for lower layer thickness that I use. This means there are some very minor issues that can been seen on the smaller model in areas that just had a bit too much freedom of movement during the print. Nothing that I can't hide with some dirt, grime or rust later on.

With the models printed cleaned and built I gave them a nice black prime with a heavy light grey added from above. The most dificult part of the build was actually mounting the bigger chap in some way.



I started the painting of each. I had not picked up a brush for over 6 months due to a reasonably serious back injury so it was really nice to finally blow the dust off my paints and get back into the swing of things. The plan was to paint him up properly and then dirty him back down again to suit his nurgley theme. My first failure with this plan was with the use of some Dirty Down Rust effect paint. I assumed it was going to offer me some quick and easy magic in a bottle but I must have failed to shake it enough. Now considering I am a a shake for a minute and use a vortex mixer kind of guy this was a bit of a shock. Rather than giving me a rust effect I just got a really glossy brown wash. Not ideal so I had to hope that some Army Painter Dry Rust could help me recover the chains.



I really wanted to represent that the chains are moving and in use so took some time to try and place some metal at the link joints to represent that there was friction keeping the rust from forming. This gives a nice pop of silver metal within the sea of rusty brown/orange. I think it's still too orange of an effect so I may risk it and run a wash over so see if it darkens down just enough.

The head and horn posed me an interesting conundrum as I was torn between trying for a really really pale skin tone with the pox or attempting to humanise him first and nurgle him second. I tried the first approach and it just didn't work out how I had wanted so I worked up to a more typical skin tone instead but kept the purpling around the boils. I am extremely pleased with the horn. It has come out exactly as I had planned with the target being similar to a piece of reindeer horn (https://imgur.com/hQeTHPN) that has previously given my dog the most horrendous bout of the runs ever witnessed. A true product a demon of nurgle could be proud of!

[gpemby]

I watched a video from Miniac about true metallic metal (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oonV14paiQ&ab_channel=Miniac) and thought to myself

"Wow what a massive ball ache he made that out to be!"

So I took the basics and started with a slightly minimalised version of the approach.



With a pretty good knife done I decided to give the Dirty Down Rust a second chance. This time I,
A) read the instructions and
B) followed the instructions.

Turns out it separates something fierce and there are ball barings in the pot that you need to be shaken free of the gunk. Then the shaking/vortexing really churns the solution up! After that revelation, the difference in the results to before was night and day. This stuff (when used correctly) really does provide a magic result! I obvs then decided that I could make it even better and went and added some more Dry Rust patches to try and 'improve' an awesome looking effect. I did not, much regret but lesson learned.



The next stage takes me back, probably over 5 years. When I decided to return to the building & painting models hobby, I bought some bulk lots off eBay of people getting out of the hobby. This gave me a large but random mix of things to work with. One particular lot was for basing bits and materials. Your typical rocks, tufts etc but in the bottom of the box that came was a transfer sheet. I put it to one side and basically forgot about it through 2 house moves. Now in all my time in the hobby previously I had never one attempted to use these. I don't know why or that there wasn't youtube at the time so if there hadn't been a guide in white dwarf, I'd have no idea what to do with them. This time round though I could watch videos, look at text guides online and get myself comfortable with how they are meant to work.



Slightly worried that these were old and might not even work at all any more I gave myself a little bit of extra protection by giving the areas a gloss varnish to protect a bit from the water.



I didn't get the perfect result but I am very happy with what is my genuinely first ever go at them. I always intended to blend and scratch them into the armour anyway when I get to the battle damage step. I do like the results enough to get some proper tool for the job on order and hopefully some Micro Set will arrive soon to help with the blend/finish of any further decals.

[gpemby]

With the transfers left to dry over night I came back to less than perfect stick on the shoulders. I assume this is the standard problem for all of shoulder pads through history. Flat transfers don't quite like curved surfaces. This is something I hope the set fluid will help with due to its acidic design to soften the transfer. This curve issue caused me to completely remove the transfer from the right (unseen) shoulder and I will use something different on there once I have the Mirco Set.

To fix the others I went about tearing some of the transfer off where it had not stuck down and also adding some 'damage' by over painting the shoulders grey base.



I next moved on to the trousers. I have left this for ages because I just could not settle on a colour. My choice of dark grey/black for the jacket handicapped me slightly and I really didn't want to do black trousers. My fashion sense has been constantly questioned by my wife when attempting to dress myself in 'none matching' outfits so I asked her for advice here. She said black, which was annoying, so I painted them red.



This red was really cool but for some reason incredibly glossy so I added a layer of Matt Varnish to kill off the shine. I think I will return to them and maybe make some changes/improvements to the highlighting. Here is a WIP view of the 2 scales side by side:



Seeing these photos tells me that I need to give the highlights on the coat a bit of attention to clean up and make the blends a touch smoother!

[gpemby]

This is the next photo that has my attention. I love the more dynamic poses in this set. I also like rolling crit fails on dangerous actions to eliminate a entire city block with a plasma failure. I also want the chunky fella. However at this ratio I think he'd be too chunky at 54mm scale so  I may look to scale him up to a lower ratio that the other so he's 7 foot rather than 9! Guess I need to sit and do some supports but with the colder weather and my printer being garage bound due to kids and toxic fumes I might have to wait for spring anyway as heating the garage with the price of gas and electric these days would need a re-mortgage!

I have printed them at the smaller scale with the original dimensions so they might be a pre paint/scheme test while I wait for the chance to print the bigger boys.

[maglash1017]

Really cool stuff! Looking forward to more updates

[gpemby]

Really cool stuff! Looking forward to more updates

Thanks! I hope to keep trickling updates, big or small as I get things done!

I have only really had a couple of hours spare since the last update and I spent an hour of that supporting the larger version of the plasma guy and sorting a mini back log of 3D prints onto a build plate to see how much space I had. I do hope a mild day appears on the forecast so I can consider running a print!

The other hour was spent with refining the grey and highlights of the coat. I went around and across the whole model and tried to really refine and clean the light and dark areas. I may do a tiny bit more as I am sure to either spot some mistakes that need a tidy or create some mistakes with any other work that I do in the near future.



I haven't really kept the smaller version as closely up to date as the larger so I also spent some time catching up with him. I have used some different transfers due to the size difference and although they won't truly match each other, they will have a very closely linked scheme. The nurgle rotters blood bowl team transfers have some nice and tiny versions of their symbols as well as a slightly larger version so future additions to this warband could well have identical transfers.

[gpemby]

With no 'little' version on the red symbol that fit well enough on the chest of the smaller version I decided to make one myself. It went well but my tiny stroke brush control is hella rusty after over 6 months without painting. Not the worst thing to have to clean up and by sticking to a very simple symbol, basically a red M. I was easily able to touch up the shape with some of the under grey. I also started to add a free hand symbol to the right shoulder of the 54mm guy, also in red as this one look so good. I have yet to decide if that will survive or be wiped off.



Next I wanted to work on the mask. I had always planned to try and base the colour on really worn out leather but it just didn't look correct any more on the model. I instead had a google for some inspiration on 'old gas masks'. After being super careful about what you search for on google  I eventually found a really well rotted soviet mask with a colour photo. I used this as a base but tried to keep the black mask base colour rather than switching to use more grey to go with the models grey coat and the grey armour......



I didn't get the best wip/progress photos here for some reason my phone camera wasn't in the mood to focus on the face. So I have taken another one with much better lighting and focus.



With the major details nearly done I guess I have to move on to pin washes and battle damage for the armour next!

[gpemby]

So this is the next stage in my untested process for this model.  I put the picture first so it lines up with the one from the previous post to allow a quick comparison. I've added an oil pin wash to darken down the recesses, especially of the armour on his chest and shoulders. It's a completely nothing stage until you compare it to the before/without, as then you can really see the extra depth that just appears thanks to the extra dark across the chest plate . This is my first real go at using oils more tactically than just an all over wash followed by some clean up.



The brown wash on the lower half off his coat and legs is an attempt to dirty him up. I have enjoyed painting him as cleanly as I could to practise the brush strokes again and get back into the swing of things but its time to risk it all. I don't want to go for the all over streaking grime style wash so have started tactically applying it to the lower edges. I think it will be too glossy on its own but will have to wait overnight for it to dry.

Then it'll be on to battle damage and wear to really finish off the model.

[gpemby]

An over night drying time has really done the shine some wonders but it was still too much 'wet look' so I wonder if one of the browns I used was too oily at the time of creating the wash. I will dump some out onto cardboard for an hour or so the next time I decide to make up a muddy/dirty wash. I have given the lower half a really thin coat of matt varnish to knock the edge off the shine.



I may very well add further layers of matt varnish to this to see if it can really kill off the shine. That said the damp muddy look isn't the worst thing I've ever seen.

The only really big part left was the damage. I wanted to really mess up the armour to give him the full decline into not caring anymore. I am normally a fan of the cleaner looking models. The vast majority of my painted models are fresh out the shower/off to the battlefield for the very first time. I have always been scared to ruin a paint just with dirty washes or trying to paint battle damage so going for this warband really takes that fear away as they are going to be dirty, rusty, manky fellas.

The battle damage effect was going to be as simple as I could manage but something that I will take my time on as getting the scale right will be the key. And even with this in mind I did it wrong at first. I had the idea of what to do from watching a few weathering tutorials. I wanted to paint some dark patched and then highlight some very selective transitions with a very light colour to try and represent the layers of paint > primer > armour. After putting some dark brown patches down, I soon found that there was no way on the earth I could place the lighter off white in small enough patches to make the effect work. It wasn't the end of the world, but I should have stated with the off white, then over painted the brown.

This new approach worked fantastically and really started to give me the effect I was after. There are still some areas that I want to go back to and touch up ever so slightly to make some of the off white patches slightly smaller. There was a little more to do with these patches to try and force some further depth. This was to use black and just add tiny touches and patches to finish the effect.


There was an attempt to use some oils to create some rusty streaking from the chains across the chest plate. This didn't work at all and has actually removed some of the effect the black pin wash gave as I guess the spirit I was trying to use to streak the oil also reactivated and removed the black.

I switched back to acrylic washes and worked some brown streaks onto the chest working down from the joins with the shoulder chains.

Here he is in his current form:


Final to do:

• Face / eyes need some tweaks
• Head boils need a bit of contrast
• Final touch ups on the chest damage that has too much white/obvious brush strokes
• Damage up the green canister a bit

[Mike712]

Very cool prints and nice paintjob too!

I should really do more with my 3D printer...but it stinks out my study and hallway

I really expected a renaissance of inq54 modelling with the boom of 3D printing, perhaps there is, but just not exhibited much here. I feel these are the sort of projects people quietly tick away with in private.

I've really underutilised my printer, I could make anything, but my painting backlog is vast as is 

[gpemby]

Very cool prints and nice paintjob too!

Thanks, It is coming alone nicely if I do say so myself!

I've really underutilised my printer, I could make anything, but my painting backlog is vast as is 

It's a mad tool that has really, sort of, over whelmed me with options. I see more 3D files getting produced that I want to print and paint than I can ever hope to keep up with. It means that Ideas are constantly getting replaced with the new is always better meme from HIMYM.

   
• Damage up the green canister a bit

Went on with this step last night and gave a really good weathering run over the green of the tank/canister. I went with a similar approach as with the body armour but this time I got them in the correct order this time. After creating those patches I wanted to give a slightly different finish to separate the armour damage being chipped paint to this being a rusty metal canister.



This was all well and good until:

I dropped him, and I dropped him good and proper. F**k

I felt my cork on a base was slightly cumbersome and a bit of a risk but seemed to be good enough but it just slipped away and down he went. 15/20 hours of work goes crunch. He might well be repairable but I don't think it will be a seemless job.....

[gpemby]

I needed some time after the drop. I was really gutted and feared that I would not be able to repair him. I had to think hard about when I printed him as I had switched from a 'starter' resin that is notoriously brittle to a 'tough & flexible' resin that should make models more robust. I can't for the life of me remember when I printed this chap as it was long before I would have been comfortable enough to paint him.

The repair went reasonably well with the knife re attaching almost seamlessly. The arm however, was probable a mistake on my part. I dry fit it a few times and noticed the previous layer of glue was pretty much creating a guide that seated the arm exactly back where it was before. I hoped this would work well. It kind of didn't. I am not sure how but when I went for it, it did not bite into the groves and would not sit well. I had to wing it a bit due to its shape and getting an awkward hold while the glue was drying. It has set slightly off its original home.



Not the worst and a few layers of dark grey and a wash or two might just re blend it enough from distance that no one would really know on the table/in the cabinet. 

After the repair I moved on to the other finishing touches. I wanted to focus on the sickness look of the top of the head. I added some purple to the skin all around the boils to add to the sick and damaged look. I also went back over the boils with the AP 'disgusting slime' before adding a 50/50 mix with a bright yellow for a very tiny touch highlight to try and make them pop (pun intended). 



With the head done I went on to the eyes. I am not a fan of painting eyes at the best of times but after a long break I was dreading it. My initial plan to cheat the system was to paint them red and leave it. Do for a possessed/hyped up on chemicals vibe that allowed me to avoid actually doing it. However, I wanted to have a go, so I used the red base to give the eyes some depth and then used a Roman Lappat https://youtu.be/513ZIueH6_A tip, and tooth picked a dot of black onto each eye.



Evil.

I have been working a bit on the other mini shown previous and started to build up the base colours as a test and trial for his bigger counter part. This was a touch to test my note taking skill from the work on the first pair. There is a nice bit of variety here with the addition of the brown leather pouches and head cover. It will give me something new and different to weather and destroy.



Don't mind me, just testing things:
https://imgur.com/4cahGKD

[gpemby]

The last week has been much less about painting and more about prep and planning. I have been pondering bases and base schemes for this warband. I either want to go for an industrial underhive type theme or the opposite and go for a muddy wasteland theme. I will maybe have to ponder on it for a little longer.

I have also spent some time working on the next batch upscaled prints. Getting them all supported and ready. It takes time but is one of the easier things to pick up and put down when things constantly interupt any hobby time I might get.

The plan to keep some painting going on at least every other day has seen more work done on the smaller scale lads. Just pushing some pigment around. I have also begun the larger, very deadish chap.

[gpemby]

After a tough week at work (I dislike working overtime) I haven't had the actual free time to spend any real time on the hobby. This has annoyed me more that I would have expected, which is a good thing as it means I really want to have some regular time to get some modelling and painting done.

That said I have spent a tiny amount of time working on the smaller scale chaps. Mostly the big dead-ish dude. I was not happy with the skin as it was far too one colour. I tried a green wash into the recesses and then re-blend, but the green used for the wash was rubbish and looks silly. I am going to have to rethink that and maybe re paint a lot of the green.

I also worked some classic nurgle purple one to the exposed organs in his stomach wound. Again I then went for a bit of a bloody red wash into the wounds to try and deepen some of the background elements in the wounds but just ruined the look of the purple as the red wasn't powerful enough to sit on top of the purple. A lot of lessons learned about this scheme and a lot more testing to do.

I also started work on the armour and power fist. This went from its highlighted prime to a grey base before a coat of the magic Dirty Down rust. Not doing this over a metallic base was a test to see how well it rusts over a normal colour base. I am please with how easy it is to produce a solid rusty result but while I could just leave it like this, I want to maybe run some metallic flakes back onto the edges as well as look at adding some 'paint' back onto areas to try and represent that this weapon wasn't just pure metal but has decayed over time from a more typical primed and painted fist.

[gpemby]

An evening of time was spent trying to achieve something new. I had successfully experimented with adding damage to a paint job but this time around I wanted to go for a significantly more aged look. After a time pondering around on google images. I found a few images and took some inspiration from them. This one stuck with me https://imgur.com/CQt5brR. I really wanted to create that super rusted paint look. I decided to start with the rust (as shown on the previous post) and then build up the paint.

I took a very deliberate approach to add some patches of off white and then covered them with the grey. I pushed the grey over the edges of the white in a majority of places, to leave just tiny speckles of the white. This gives the paint/primer look as well as helping with subtle 3D effects. With the patches created it was clear that these were too large and too clean edged to give the desired look. I went back to the rust colours and stared to slowly dig back into the edges and occasionally the middle to the patches. I really spent some time here with a very small, pointed brush to paint back the chipped effect.


Bigger view of this arm:



There area a few spot s and dots that are too clearly a drop of paint that I will want to tidy up (well actually mess up) with some extra sharp edges.