The Start of a New Army

And so I've finished yet more little dudes. I've picked up a new army box now, and as a test I put together the fire warriors and started painting those first. I really love this army, and their style. The iconic long barrel rifle is just awesome, and they all look so "techy" too which is a lot of fun. For a first, these guys are ok. I've learned a number of things now, and I want to test out some of these new thoughts on the paint colors with maybe a few of the drones in the box. So, those might be the next guys you see. Either them, or stealth suits.

I really didn't want to take close ups of these guys, because they're kind of hideous. I love the distance shots, as they look fantastic at range. Up close, you can definitely see the poor brush strokes and stuff. These are all things I've learned from now and hopefully will have improved on the next round of guys. Thankfully, these Fire Warriors are just troops. They are rightfully my test subjects.

So, the color is something a lot brighter than what I'm use to painting. This is in part, half the problem I had with the guys. I don't know what put the stupid idea in my head that having an undercoat of brown would make the armor appear better, but it did. In the end, I found the light yellow brown color their armor is made of, was a hell of a lot harder to paint on. I could always see through to the brown and it drove me up the wall. Eventually, as you can see, it worked. However, I know a lot of the grooves and details in their suits is now missing.

With that said though, I know what to do now. I'm going to go with what I know is right, and paint down some ocre first before painting on the armor. This will help alleviate the terrible lines I was witnessing.

The next hairy spot was that arm pad and its white emblem. Originally I'd just had it the same color as the armor, but then I looked at a few reference pictures and noted it was white and black. Doh. So I put those on at the end and probably not the best manner possible. Things I'll learn from the next set I paint.

I'm still trying to figure out how to get the right color for the guns. I don't mean the yellow brown on them, but that grey bit should be a fair bit darker than it is right now. I thought it would be fine with a few coats of black wash over it, but in the end, it still looks bright. I'll need to figure out the proper color for this BEFORE I get to doing my stealth suits, as they make use of a decent amount of that color.

I had fun with the bases. They look desert like to me. Yes, there's no grass on there, and that's on purpose. I didn't think it would look right. Sadly I went over and did all of the bases in one go, and that's when I came up with a brilliant idea. I'll have to do that on up and coming bases though. I'm going to make an attempt and making some "cracked" looking desert. It should be pretty awesome and easy enough to do with a few of the tools Jorgen has showed me for making bases. I'm kind of excited about it too actually. So we'll see how that turns out. For now though, I'll use what I have.