Harlequin Carnival - La Danse Macabre

Thanks @Cavash! I really enjoy painting all the different colours. It is when I have to do large areas of the same that I tend to get bored. The whole base coating thing is pretty tedious tbh but once I manage to grind out of that stage it all becomes pretty fun . Pleased you appreciate my stuff

Your genius still amazes me, they look great. I too love the liquid effects.

@CurstAlchemist. Thanks very much hopefully I can knock out a tutorial that does them justice. They were not too hard to do

That, is so COOL!

Oh schnap, the sisters of battle are going to be miffed when they see you have swiped their ping pong ball!
I like how you have gotten the talos parts to seamlessly fit with that model. This is your best one yet.
Also the bubbly effect in the tubes are pretty... pretty.

@Skari. Thanks very much

@Scrz. Thanks . I am planning on writing a tutorial this week on the pipes, as has been requested, as I have started on the second in the batch of 3 to do. I have picked an easier Talos for he second to give me a bit of a break. The 3rd is more involved, much like the first. Pleased you like the conversion. They parts do work together nicely, which I am chuffed about.

SC

@Klaive. Apologies j have not had a chance to work on the tubes for the tutorial yet and I am on hol next week, so it will be a little while before I can get it done (plus I got distracted by a conversion project too). Here is a stage by stage while you wait

1. Base the pipe in a dark green colour
2. Mix 50:50 dark green & medium green (snot green) together and cover most of the pipe with it, leaving just the ends the base colour.
3. Add more medium green to the mix and apply small dashes/lines with a thin brush all along the pipe, making sure to go all around the diameter of the pipe (although they do not have to be joined, random is fine).
4. With the pure medium green, apply more dashes/lines along the pipe (this does not have to cover the above lines you have already done)
5. Add a small amount of white to the green and repeat dash lines, but a lot more sparingly
6. Add yet more white to the lox, and paint small circles and dots at the ends of the pipe for your bubbles
7. Glaze with way watchers green a couple of times to blend it all back together and you are done

It is easier to explain with pics, so I will get the tutorial done as well, but hopefully that makes enough sense to follow. Feel free to shoot me any questions if you need.

SC

Over the last week I have been working on a new unit for La Danse Macabre, Cloud Dancer Jetbikes. I had been doing a bit of reading over in the eldar & qharlie section and army lists about the Corsairs, and I find that I like their fluff a great deal, their rules are really thematic and fit into the theme of my army quite well (a roving carnival circus as corsairs seems strangely fitting I think). It is sad that the Corsairs do everything better than the Dark Eldar, and play in a style that should be how the dark kin works. Sadly this is a damning reflection on the state of said codex that even reasonably fluffy players like myself are unhappy with it. Saying that I do still enjoy playing dark eldar, so depending on how I feel, or what type of game my opponent wants (fluffy, competitive etc) I can whip out either builds and give them a good game

Luckily my army is extremely flexible, with each unit being able to play as another wih relative ease (my guardians can also be used as wracks, mandrakes as Ghost Walkers etc.). The plan was to convert my reaver jetbikes so they could also be multi purpose, being able to be run as Reavers, corsair cloud dancers or eldar jetbikes as needed.

The start of the project was the kitbash between eldar and Dark kin jetbikes to create a more corsair themed unit, but one that could be used as all of the above with very little quibble. Unfortunately all of my jetbikes were already assembled and glued, so I had to whip out the hobby saw and hack each one apart just in front of the handle bars, and then glue an alternate front on each of them.









The second stage was to create the weapons I needed. Obviosuly I was already kitted out with the dark kin weapons, but I only had 3 scatterlasers (why would you kit them with anthing else ) so more were needed. I kitbashed one using the mount from a reaver and barrel from the eldar bikes. Once this was dry I made a rubber mould of two of them, and then did a bunch of resin casts of them all. This was fairly unsuccessful, as my mould making/casting skills are still pretty basic. I was able to salvage the barrels on most of them and cut up some more mounts to add them to. Then each bike and weapon was magnetised so I can swap out/create weapons as I require.









The basic work on these is now done. I now need to work on adding some carnival fun bits to each of the bikes, and working on converting the riders. That should be fun

I have also cooked up another idea that I am really excited about. It will be used to represent either Hellions or Corsair reavers with jetpacks. I leave you with this pic as an idea of what I am working towards.



SC

spellcheck2001 wrote:

@Klaive. Apologies j have not had a chance to work on the tubes for the tutorial yet and I am on hol next week, so it will be a little while before I can get it done (plus I got distracted by a conversion project too). Here is a stage by stage while you wait

Thanks SC that's fantastic! Appreciate the writeup. Between that and the pics of your finished work I'm good

Love the bikes so far, and your tute on casting.

I've been very quiet of late, missed the great inspiration and sense of Bad Elf community on this site! It's been a tremendous pleasure catching up on La Danse Macabre! @spellcheck2001 I slaute you! Stunning modelling and painting.

Sorry for the late reply guys. Been on hol camping with no way to charge my phone (no glamping for this gent )

@Klaive. You are very welcome . Let me know how you get on with it.

@Rathian. Welcome back, and thanks for the kind words, I always appreciate them

Good coverage over on Faeit buddy, well done

Ps I've been travelling for work for the last couple of weeks so haven't had a chance to use your tutorial. I'm home this weekend and keen to try it out. I'll show you how I go in my project log.

Hey folks. Been taking some updated photos of La Danse Macabre as I am submitting them to white dwarf for their readers model section. If I am lucky I might get one or two in. You never know

It is nice to see everything up to the same standard of photography, and getting them all in one place to showcase hopefully gives you all an idea of how they all work together  as a force on the tabletop.

Wow these look fantastic the bright and clean colour scheme really contrasts with the grim and evil look of the models themselves.

Very nice

Out of curiosity, what did you use to make the Wardancer-esque guys with the Scourge legs and Doomfire Warlock heads? I've been toying with the idea of making some Croneworld Eldar Pleasure Cultists using Chaos Daemons rules and I wanted some bare-torso Elf/Eldar male bodies.

Your stuff is really amazing, your  thread was one I constantly viewed as a lurker. I think you need a lot of creativity to shine at conversions, my favourites personally would be the monkey's in top hats riding the inflated balls lol.

Good luck with getting them into White Dwarf, I think Games Workshop are also currently showing images on their website of stuff sent in from instagram, I don't even know what instagram is but.. it could be another way to have your models shown off.

@Ynneadwraith thanks very much It is really fun to cook up the creepy conversions and then think of wacky colour schemes and patterns to paint the models with.

The bodies are actually the dark elf doom fire warlocks (same as the heads) but I sculpted the lower torsos and backs as the kit is just the top bit.

@ Cherrycoke. Very kind of you to say so, thanks I had great fun with the monkeys, and they are one of the things I am most pleased with in the army. The odd occasion I get to play with them I always swap models out in the unit to keep them alive as long as possible on the tabletop

I have submitted them on instagram as well, but the response has been positive from the WD team, so fingers crossed I might get one or two in the mag

SC

B*gger, I was hoping you wouldn't say that :S my greenstuff skills are sub-par at best. I was hoping you'd have a source for bare torsos

They look really cool though!

Haha sadly not sorry dude. Only wrack bare torsos spring to mind for GW plastic kits that would work

Yeah I checked them and they're a bit too out of proportion.

Drat

Look what I found on the games workshop site.
Gz!

Very nice Christmas present

Definitely deserves to be there

@Cherrycoke. Well spotted! I would haven missed sed that thanks

@ynneadwraith. Much appreciated

Well folks, after a long hiatus I am back in the hobby saddle and have started on a talos as part of my corpse thief claw formation.

This a real Wip post, and I hope to do more on a regular basis as I work through this mini. Hopefully you can see how I work through and make the colour and pattern choices that go into the fairly bright colour scheme of this project







You can see I have started on the colours and sections that are consistent throughout the whole scheme of la Danse macabre (such as the red base colour and metals). This gives me the backdrop to be able to start deciding on the bright colours and patterns and how they will work together and not clash with everything else. I will now start blocking in the colours I choose, and then start all the shading and highlighting of each part. Wish me luck

SC

LOL, I love the inflation pump with the small balloon so much it's not even funny. That's really, really great.

Hahayeah it tickled me too when I made it. I was struggling initially about what to do with the pose, but once I had added the balloons he was holding it all clicked into place and the inflation pump came into being. Still makes me chuckle when I look at it now