Trying To Make A Night Of It., 16/4/12 five herders finished.

Hi guys so i just decided to take the plunge and start a fantasy army my frist ever so i thought i'd make a blog so heres the start!

hope you enjoy.

first finished unit, well maybe finished. also i know ones eyes are messed up i just fixed that i didn't notice!



whats still left 20 spearmen and 20 archers from bfsp + the shaman and hero.





p.s i have no idea what to do for the bases and ideas would be great + i didnt paint the tent thing it came like.[B]

This post has been edited by illbread on Apr 16 2012, 08:38 PM

Hey, good start! I like it so far.

I will give one bit of advice. Remove the mold lines. Get a file and remove them. I didn't when I first started. I didn't want to. I was very lazy. They show up and make your painting look sloppy. You will see them all the time. You will regret ever painting your army and not removing the mold lines! You will finally get sick of them and grind them off, but it will ruin your paint job. You will spend a bit more time doing it over. It will be painful and you will regret ever not just removing them in the beginning! Trust me on that....

As for the bases, I would recommend sand. You can buy a 5 pound bag from the hardware store for $5. I think it's called playground sand. It will last you a long time. At that point, just use some basic glue to glue it down to the base. Make sure to prime that, too. So, it's best to put it on before you start painting your minis. As for how to color them, there are a number of methods. I went with making it look like real sand and found I'm not happy without a 6 step process of dry brushing increasingly lighter colors of brown on it. It's a bit excessive, I admit, but looks good in the end. You can always go for the volcanic or underground look and just do a shade or two lighter of the black with grays. It would look great. Maybe glue some static grass clumps on the bases.

One thing I can recommend is the GW washes. They are AMAZING. They can make your painting look fantastic with no skill at all. I found they are really good with the Battle for Skull Pass Night Goblin spears. I paint the metal with Badap Black and then a layer of the Brown (mud-what brown wash?). Then, I use a fine brush to put a few streaks of metal color on the edges to make them look jagged. You can use Chainmail again, but I found I prefer Mithril Silver. It tends to stand out a bit more.



DEVLAN MUD! That's it. It's pure gold. Just put it on anything and it looks amazing.

Oh, and spending $10 on a good brush really, really does make a BIG difference with what you can do.

This post has been edited by Groznit Goregut on Mar 7 2012, 04:43 AM

I reckon they look good so far! The photos are kinda blurry in the face areas, but from what I can see they look rather nice under that. Your camera seems to have been focusing on the spears. Using the Macro function?

Theo

They look really cute/horrible?! Certainly looks like you have done a very neat paint job. I agree with Groznit Goregut, what about going for a sandy looking base? You already have green and black as colours on the model itself, and it might make it contrast a bit more with a muddy/desert style base. And of course, you can add a few mushrooms

This post has been edited by Pacific on Mar 7 2012, 10:11 AM

I second groznit goregut comment about mouldlines. They are bit of a pain in the neck to remove, especially on such small and numerous models, but in the end it pays off and you'll have nothing to regret.

Same for basing. Do it before priming your models. What I do is : glue modelling sand on the base using slightly watered down PVA glue, after having removed mouldlines
When dried, apply a more watered down layer of PVA glue. This will help fixing the sand on the base thoroughly and it won't come off when you paint it.
Once dried you can prime your model as usual.
For painting I use scorched brown as a first colour (slightly watered down to avoid details clogging and drowning). When dried, drybrush with denheb stone (or bleached bone).

Super quick to do (apart from drying time, but not so long actually), and durable. Balow is an example of how it looks like :




Ok, apart from all that, you seem to be off to a good start, and having painted 20 NG already is a nice progress. Keep it up !!

Looking good man, very neat style to say your new. I've just started my first army too, its a bit daunting!!

defonately have a look round the site for tips and hints for painting it really helps.

Try making a grey colour with chaos black and skull white and lightly drybrushing their robes with it helps to add depth and detail, make sure you've painted enough models so that making a grey mix isnt a waste of your paint.

Overall very nice, keep it up

(p.s. check out my army blog [shameless plug])

Unlike everyone else I do my bases after fisnihing my models paintjob. This is mainly due to forgettign to actually put any basing materials on the models before undercoating them but also due to me doing my bases lazily.

Basicailly I'll cover them in pva and use GW's sand. Them wash the sand with a heavy coat of Devlan Mud then add patches of dead and scorched grass.

Lazy but it works.

The models you've painted look pretty solid base colour wise but as people have said I'd use wahses on them.

Babdad Black for the robes.
Devlan Mud for the nets, metals, rope and spear hafts
Thraka Green for the skin

Or failing that the whole model in either Devlan Mud or Babdad black will still give a nice effect.

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!

Gornak

Are you planning to convert anything?

I might but later depends on if i have the guts to or not.

based unit will touch up the bases and the moon icons on the nets right now.

Looking good. Although the red could perhaps use some additional shading and highlighting.

Also, the bases would look better with a bit more flock on it (a base can really make or break a model).

And because I just types this in azhagmorglum's blog (who does the same type of bases) here's a shameless plug:

Hi! just an update this week wasn't very productive but i did manage to get 20 more spearmen done and hero.




This post has been edited by illbread on Apr 9 2012, 05:25 AM

edited: already maxed out my ebay limit for the month!

This post has been edited by illbread on Apr 9 2012, 05:27 AM

update: bit slow this week but finished 20 archers bringing my core to 60 night goblins strong



i also got the shaman and the big boss done!



i have on my table now 20 n.gs to use as squig herders and some milliput to make the squigs so i should update soon on my very on squig!

Starting to come together, nice job. Looking forward to the squigs!

Theo