Drug-Crazed Psychic Vampire Space Elves

That cronos is coming along very nicely. I really like the dire avengers as well, a very classic scheme but with your own unique style.

(Love those action shots too. That’s how I feel painting sometimes )

Thanks!

My show, Cirque of the Dead, opened this week, so I'm exhausted and had very little time to paint and there's still adhesive from the prosthetics in my ears. Nevertheless, some stuff happened.

The vials are still wonky, on account of the model not having a clear "down". I've decided to stop thinking about them until I get this thing glued to its base, at which point I'll repaint them as needed.







Action shot?

Haha loving the action shots

Cronos is looking great too. If it helps ease your mind with the vials if it's actually in motion they won't be perfectly level anyway. They'll be sloshing about on various oscillations depending on the size of the cylinder and how much fluid is in it, so it makes perfect sense that they'd all be a little off compared to each other

Looks almost like a GW official painting.
The vials are awesome (looks like an old tutorial posted on this forum) and looks pretty natural, as ynaidwriath stated it implies movement on the miniature.

+ they add a great contrast to the purpleish all around tone, I'm really liking it.

Another week.

Apparently this week I spent seven and a half hours working on the lower tentacles. They are not finished.



Action shot. (I missed a mold line.)



Happy Halloween!

It's been another busy week without much time to paint, though I managed to get in another 8 hours. This means I've now spent 42 hours painting this thing. It's starting to remind me of Count Rugen's machine in The Princess Bride, which is actually extremely apt, given that it's a Cronos.

That’s a lot of hours, but he is really coming along nicely. Can’t wait to see the carapace finished so he is fully complete

(Love the giant machete. I assume it is there to punish any of your Mon’Keigh slaves when you need a pain boost)

Thanks! Building up the highlights on the tentacles took forever. Now that they're finished (save for the inevitable touch ups) I'm hoping I can make faster progress.

The machete-like thing is one of my juggling knives. More of them may make an appearance, dependant on whether I missed any more mold lines. :-)

42h! Jeez! He's certainly looking great though

Remember all the bits I accidentally snapped off the Cronos because I can't be trusted with small, delicate objects? Well, I pinned them, using 22 gauge floral wire, and glued them back on.



The designs on my Covenite vehicles and pain engines are based on diagrams of the human nervous system, because I think anatomy in general and nerves in particular are an appropriate fit for a Haemonculus Coven. Here's what I came up with for my Cronos, inspired by some of the nerves in the brain.



And here's the Cronos. While I reserve the right to make adjustments to it at some point (particularly to the vials and the head), for the immediate future it is finished.









I spent 57 hours painting this thing. Ironically, much of that time was taken up with the tremendous amount of detail on the underside of the model, which no one will ever see unless they physically pick the thing up and look. I think that work is still worthwhile; if a model is compelling enough to pick up and examine more closely, I want that experience to be rewarding, not disappointing.

That said, 57 hours is long time to spend on a model, and I'm more than a little relieved to see the end of it. And now I'm free! I can go out and see friends! I can play with my cat! I can read books again, or watch movies! I can do literally anything instead of spending all my time hunched over a godawful lump of soulless plastic!



Dammit.

That Cronos looks utterly AMAZING!

Totally worth it!
Your Cronos looks fantastic, the freehands, the vials, the flesh and bone on the tentacles, the blades, the list goes on... outstanding o.O gonna keep a veeery close eye on this.

Thanks for the kind words!

I'm a bit behind on my updates, but I've gotten a lot of painting done. In the last two weeks I did 30 hours of work on the Talos, which means it's (theoretically) about half finished.





I also managed to break the chainhooks off the bottom of the model when I was spraying it with a working coat of varnish and it fell off the flying stand peg I was using to hold it. I clipped off the remains of the bit, dug a duplicate out of my bits box, and painted it up. I'll glue it into place last, after everything else is finished, in case there are any more accidents.

Seriously, bits snapping off my models while I'm painting them is not a thing that usually happens to me! I don't like it, and would like it to stop.

Action shot!



(Remember, spontaneous combustion is a perfectly normal part of the miniature painting hobby, and nothing to worry about!)

The painting and especially the patterns are truely impressive.
Thanks for your hard work, your (hilarious) sharing and the inspiration

I got another 12 hours of work done on the Talos.





The end is in sight, but I don't think I'll be able to finish it this week. And there's a Haemonculus waiting for me when the Talos is done.

Action shot. (Get it?)

Freehand design work for the Talos. After I did the one on top I decided it was too busy, and came up with the simpler design below. I still like the original drawing, so I might adapt the design for something else later on. Also, I think it looks a bit like kelp (doubtless the Kelp of Suffering or Doomkelp or some such).



And here's the finished Talos.









Next, I've started the Haemonculus. This is mostly base shading and establishing midtones; his skin should look quite different when he's finished.



Here's a detail of his sump organs, before I glued the plate on.

Looks great, love the amount of detail you put into your work.

Fantastic painting, as I come to expect from your log.

They look quite shiny and clean for Haemonculus creations. I always assume some blood, rust and grime would be present on the pain engines.

The cracked earth bases look really neat. Is there a display board or table of matching terrain to go with those?

Thank you!

I intend to make associated objectives and terrain, maybe even a display board, at some point. I've sketched ideas and hoarded bits for them, but I want to make the army a bit more armylike first.

The lack of weathering is quite intentional, and I have a bunch of reasons for it. Here's my logic, presented in an utterly haphazard and disorganized manner:

There is no reason why Covenites need to be slobs.

The Dark Eldar possess staggeringly advanced technology, which they use without restraint, and are staggeringly vain. It stands to reason that their battle gear would appear precisely how they wish it to; crystaline matrices would self-repair paint and structure, contained gravitic fields would repel dirt and grime, etc. In my headcanon, Commorites who wear battered and dirty warsuits are doing so intentionally, because it's trendy, like pre-ripped jeans.

My headcannon is a tormentor helm.

Haemonculi are, among other things, artists and scientists. They don't want their art or their experiments tainted or ruined because of contamination. If they're replacing your skeleton with an artificially engineered tree, they don't want you to die of an infection because they didn't clean their tools. Because of the need to control their environment in order to accomplish their goals, I expect many Haemonculi (and by extension, Covenites in general) are neat freaks.

I've plummeted down a rabbit hole lately regarding how I paint flesh. Because I'm glazing, washing, and stippling so many colors onto the skin, I like the smooth, clean artificial surfaces for contrast.

That is a nicely coherent defence of the clean and controlled, and one I can definitely respect.

I had a slightly different view of the Haemonculi, going back to 'The Torturer's Tale' and the 3rd Edition Codex where the Haemonculus is removing the subject's skin so it will feel cooler, but doesn't really seem to have a purpose in mind. I guess I'm seeing more of a blood spattered lunatic, and you are seeing an artisan who will apply a spike to create the maximum pain and suffering, but keep the victim alive for the longest time possible.

Were my painting skills up with yours, my Coven units would look different, because I have a different view of the fluff, but I have a new appreciation of the cleanness of your painting.

Now you have me wanting to paint some Wyches with pre-ripped jeans...

Hah!

I read Torturer's Tale when it appeared in White Dwarf too, though I don't recall its position on cleanliness. Haemonculi are lunatics, but they're also intent on extracting as much pain as possible from their victims. There are bits of lore going back to 3rd about Haemonculi keeping their victims alive for absurd periods of time/indefinitely. And we know some of them employ haemovores to clean up the mess.

They're also supposed to be an extremely varied and individualistic bunch. I think a Jackson Pollock Haenonculus is just as supported in the lore as a tidy one.

My Vampire Counts (and I still need to repair that plog since the photos kicked the bucket) got similar comments, although I wasn't painting them to be nearly as clean as my Eldar. The aesthetic reason is I like anatomy. I like organs and tissues and vascular systems. I like things in jars and Gunther von Hagens' Body Worlds. So I want to emphasize that, not cover it up with layers of dirt and blood. With Covenites, it's like I'm painting stuff from Dr Frankenstein's lab, monster included, so the flesh is really fleshy, but the tools are clean.

Also, Haemonculi put a lot of work into their pain engines. They're supposed to be artisinal, so there's going to some sort of relationship between the Haemonculus and their creations. Maybe the point was the process, and they don't care what happens to the result. Maybe how it degrades is the point, and as such the pain engine was constructed to oxidize and fall apart in very specific ways. But a pain engine that self repairs and maintains itself seems pretty reasonable, and even if it doesn't do that, it's not hard to tell your Wracks and slaves to clean and polish the Talos because you're going raid Realspace and you don't want its joints seizing up.

One of the things I find great about the Dark Eldar is that they are individualistic. Right here we have two different people envisioning the Haemonculi differently but within the context of who the Dark Eldar are, they are both correct interpretations. The works of two different artists who are not attempting to replicate each others works but instead work the art as they see it within their own egos.

Haemonculus is finished.

Ooh the mottled quality of the smock's skins is really disgusting (beautiful?). Your haemo should trademark "bedsores farm" before the other covens move in on the market.

More importantly, you've demonstrated the real estate of the smock / cloak thing for sigils and such. I can't recall ever seeing someone use it for that before. Great innovation!

On a side note, I noticed you've got the wrack "pilot" bits on your Venom... is this something that is included with the wrack kit? I have triple-checked my venom and raider / ravager sets and they definitely do not include anything wrack-specific, unfortunately.

Thanks!

zelatar wrote:

On a side note, I noticed you've got the wrack "pilot" bits on your Venom... is this something that is included with the wrack kit? I have triple-checked my venom and raider / ravager sets and they definitely do not include anything wrack-specific, unfortunately.

Yeah, the Wracks kit comes with parts to make Wrack pilots and gunners for your Venoms and Raiders. It's a wonderful kit, even if it is a bit pricey and, for the past few months, seemingly impossible to find for sale anywhere. It's worth noting that making a gunner or Raider pilot takes up one of the bodies in the kit, so if you're doing that, you're only getting four troopers out of the box. Also, it will take two boxes to properly crew a Raider.


Updates!

I spent a few months mostly been removing mold lines and gluing stuff together. I'm not bothering with pictures of that. ("Yep, that sure is a plastic, unpainted model. You sure did remove those mold lines.") I also did a senseless Wrack conversion. I think the ossefactor bit is wonderful and distinctive and I love it, but it's so distinctive I think it's awkward to repeat it on too many models. Basically, I love the ossefactor bit so much that I don't feel like I can use it anymore.

...look, it makes sense to me.





I also painted up the last few of my Dire Avengers, so here's a crappy group shot. (My poor old camera struggles with depth of field when I'm shooting several models at once, and won't let me adjust it manually. It's old and dying and should be forgiven. The models in back look pretty much the same as the models in front.)



And now I'm painting Scourges.

Oh god the feathers why



I've managed to get the first one finished, although I'm probably going to go back and tinker with the eyes and faceplate later.









Because of the wings, I'm painting these models one by one, and because of the wings, they're taking an unreasonable amount of time to paint. (It took me about 24 hours to paint the above Scourge, 14 of which were spent painting feathers.) It's going to be a slow trickle painting and posting this unit.