Sessioni's project eternal: Skeletons, first batch

[Sessioni]

I have been on a painting spree for a while. Today I finished (at last) my 40 Skeleton block, I'm sure you have already seen these fellas, but here they are all finished:

I painted the skeletons pretty fast, the clothing's highlights especially, but it turned out ok tabletop quality.

edit. Took me only 8 months to finish this unit

 

[Farmer7574]

@Sessioni Yeah! Great work on that block of skeletons. These guys have always been one of my favourite looking units in the VC army and always will be.

8 months is no small amount of time but your hard work has definitely paid off. I won't be painting mine red but I still like seeing the red armies with the white bones - looks even cooler with the black basing you've done. Nice posing on some of the minis too, not so static and gives them a bit more character.

Regarding that orc... I've got no idea where he's from but he definitely looks quite old

Keep up the awesome work buddy!

 

[Sessioni]

@Farmer7574 Thanks! Yeah, I also like the skeletons very much. I'm thinking about getting another unit of them, only this time with spears. Gamewise the spears are not my No.1 pick, but they look very cool. But they will have to wait, I have plenty of infantry waiting for some painting. 40 ghouls, 40 grave guard and zombies. Currently I am painting my block of 40 zombies, they have waited long enough to be finished. They won't be anything special as I am speed painting them, you'll see them finished next week I hope.

 

[Borgnine]

I am seconding Farmer, red color looks really nice on them, especially coupled with white bones and black metal Definitely try doing some with spears - skeletons are awesome Good luck with all those hordes of infantry

 

[Farmer7574]

Most people play sword n board skellies but the spears look too awesome to leave out.

 

[Sessioni]

Thanks to you too @Borgnine ! "White bones and black metal" sounds like a metal band

Now it's terrain time! Working on with some trees, here's a bad quality pic showing different stages:

Last one is finished, altho I don't know which color to paint its base. I try to make them fit for my swamp themed gaming mat. I will eventually place all the trees on a larger template for making it easier to determine forest areas for gamewise reasons.

If anyone is interested how they are made;

1. Twist some iron wire for desirable shape
2. Prepare 50/50 PVA-glue/Water
3. Dip toilet paper in previous mixture and start covering the trees with it
4. Let it dry and place the trees on a wooden buttons, at this point I made the trunks (or stumps??) with modelling mass.
5. Paint the trunk
6. Add the foliage, I used foam rubber, painted in different tones of green.

A friend of mine told me a better technique about making the foliage. He used a blender to shred the devil out of foam rubber, and then mixed them with glue and desired paint. Let that mixture dry and then you can just rip chunks of "leaves" out of it. It will look very good, unfortunately I noticed my blender was broken when I wanted to try out this technique.

 

[Tawg]

Seems good. Although I am unfamiliar with what you are referring to when you say "Foam rubber" exactly. Perhaps it is a regional thing, or term anyways?

Also, bringing back Papier-mâché, très bien. I use to always use popsicle sticks to build things when I was a kid, maybe I should bring that back :ghost:

Are you going to make them removable from the larger base? Because I loath not being able to fit units in terrain because it is in the way of moving forward. Although I'm all on for AoS so that's less of a concern for me now.. but I still like being able to manipulate the terrain while playing :ghost:

 

[Sessioni]

I must admit, I had to check the correct word through a translator. Vaahtomuovi in Finnish, Foam rubber or foam plastic in english, but anyways, this stuff:

I am going to make the trees removable from the "tray" so units can actually move in to the forest like you said. I'm not sure if I make round holes for the tree-bases in to the larger base, or just a flat main base.

 

[Borgnine]

Cool trees, and the way you described it - very easy to create Maybe they could use some more foliage, but such as this they are also good. Is the paper-mache convincing as a tree-bark?

 

[Mad 'At]

Nice looking trees.

Personally I prefer making a flat main base for trees. I've made a few forests with cut-out holes for them (and a whole lot of the other kind) but it looks a lot better with just the flat base. At least as soon as something enters the forests and you start moving the trees around to fit the unit.

 

[Sessioni]

@Borgnine I will add more foliage to the other trees, so the trees vary from each other. They are quite easy to make, altho I don't like the paper-mache (new word to me, cheers) covering part, it will break so easily. It is also very messy phase
@Mad 'At Okay, thanks for the info. I will probably go for the flat main base, it is easier to make and to think about it, it will probably look better as you said it will.

Today I bought some aquarium plants for my swamp areas, as you can see, they're too bright as they are, so I will paint them up. And I mean the lower plants, bush type, for swamp surroundings. I hope they don't look too exotic, what do you guys think? After all, I'm going to paint them a lot darker green.

Any tips for using water texture? I have never used that before, so I'm kinda exited to give it a go, but tips are welcome.

Edit. @Borgnine And yes, I think it is quite convincing tree bark Looks good enough to me, altho one makes better looking bark from FIMO or just using modelling mass, so you can sculpt yourself the "bark lines"

 

[Mad 'At]

@Sessioni: That is some very cool aquarium plants. We've gotten some ourselves to make jungle forests, but the one you have there is much cooler. I don't think it will look too exotic, this is the warhammer world after-all, things can be a bit wacky.

I have a jar just like that one with water effect at home. Haven't used it much but from my small experience I can say that it is pretty straight forward to use. It is pretty thick, so you can smear it where you want it and even create surface texture with it. When it dries it becomes completely transparent. You can add some ink or other paint to it to colour it a bit, but be careful, you don't need a lot for it to get a strong colour.

 

[Sessioni]

@Mad 'At Thanks for the tips!

I painted the aquarium plants a bit, and now I'm very happy with them. I have now completed the swamp/lake -base and soon I will add the water effect. I will definitely add some green ink to it, I hope I don't over do it. Oh well, I guess I could take this as an experiment, I won't be angry if the outcome isn't perfect

I apologize about my zombies, terrain projects came on their way. But it is nicer to play with proper terrain than with white plastic cards "FOREST" written on them, etc. Also making terrain is very refreshing every now and then. I'm afraid I didn't capture the swampy/dead/sylvanian feeling on my terrain pieces. They look pretty basic actually, but nevertheless, they look good to me.

Anyways, here's the base I made for the forest. The picture is extra crappy, I don't know what's going on with my phone. The colors are a lot darker IRL.

 

[Sessioni]

I guess now we play the waiting game. The water texture was harder to handle than I expected But I managed to create some kind of waves, altho I don't think they look clever on a small pond like this one here. I should've anyways make it bigger. Meh, maybe next time.

 

[Farmer7574]

@Sessioni Those aquarium plants definitely work well for eery and haunted scenery. The pointy leaves and dark paint scheme go well.

I've never used water effect but it looks fun to play about with. In a normal swamp, those waves would look weird and unnatural, but remember you're going for Sylvania here! Those waves could easily represent some deathly wind storm kicking up or some evil creature in the depths.

Some definition here wouldn't hurt though (as you've mentioned); nothing a few washes and highlighting won't sort out. Maybe something emerging out of the water too for some fun

 

[Borgnine]

I didn't knew it looks like this before drying, interesting And while the waves really don't fit the swamp style, it could be some boiling pond of evilness Nice work there with this terrain

 

[wheeljack]

You making cakes now @Sessioni? it looks like a cake with green icing atm lol. Can't wait to see it finished, and I want to make terrain pieces now thanks.

 

[Leithel]

@Sessioni Hey Man I love the lake. They are strong little waves but it just serves to make it look like a windy area or like a dragon is flying overhead. Are you painting the water any further than the green ink? I've never tried to paint water before.

 

[Sessioni]

Thanks for the comments!

The pond hasn't even dried yet But the waves really don't bother me anymore, only thing that bothers me is that the drying progress twisted the main base a little bit, and now it's wobbly. I think I'm going to make another base under it, this time using proper wood. But hey, at least I learned something. @wheeljack hahah, my friend told me the same thing, it sure looks like a yummy cream cake, 'not sure about the taste. @Leithel Nah, I'm going to leave it as it is after drying, it wouldn't be transparent if I painted it. I will post some picks tomorrow. @Farmer7574 Damn, why oh why I didn't think about adding zombie hands (or GIANT HAND :|, thanks for the idea) emerging. Well I'm going to make another anyways, this time larger.

Today I started making a birthday present for my girlfriend

I'm going to make a diorama with this lady here riding along with a knight. It will be so romantic

 

[Farmer7574]

@Sessioni Giant hand... better idea! An ETC spirit host could work pretty well too, painted to match the water to look like some watery spirit being summoned out of the depths.

That's a cool gift man. Girls love stuff that you make, more sentimental and personal.

 

[wheeljack]

I think your suppose to use that water stuff in little layers, building up after each layer dries. I made a Star Wars diorama once of the trash compactor scene and had a deep pool of trashy water in it. well it was to deep and never did dry it was always squishy and seeped when I pressed it lol.

 

[Sessioni]

Thanks for the comments fellas! Sorry for no update for awhile, I've been busy. But I am working on a couple of very interesting undead projects, and I hope I am able to post some pics soon. I hope I'll find my 6th edition Blood dragon vampire, since it is very important in one of my projects, I know I have it, but I have no freaking idea where it could be Today I scanned my whole apartment trying to find it. I asked if a friend of mine has accidentally took it after a game. But anyways, stay tuned

 

[Sessioni]

Okay, now for some updates. I have to finish this monster in three weeks for a tournament here in Finland. I think this is even too ambitious project, but we'll see. So WIP pictures of my Vampire lord with his imprisoned Dragon. Story behind this whole thing is simply the fact that I love the Warpfire Dragon. I just had to order it, and I want to also use it in my games. The Vampire and Grave guard handlers (there will be 2 GG) aren't glued in the base yet. But what do you think about them pulling a flippin' dragon with chains? Does it sound too silly? I will twist the chain around dragon's neck and wings eventually. The picture is maybe too shiny, but good enough for a sneakpeek

Please, give me advice, tips, ideas and above all motivation to finish this bad boy! I thought about posting a pic of the finished thing, but I realized you guys have been motivating me to finish other projects too, so WIP picture is maybe helping me

 

[Farmer7574]

@Sessioni This is really cool, I like the idea you've come up with of having a restrained dragon next to it's master rather than going down the usual route of having him ride it.

I think if I were to go for this idea I'd want the 'handlers' to be wraiths or at least be painted up like some kind of powerful ethereal entities to show that they aren't just revived skeletons. Grave guard and wraiths both make good candidates for this.

Another idea would be to use a bunch of standard skeleton warriors (since they're marching forward), and they could probably have their arms arranged so it looks as if they're pulling the chains.

Anyway mate, your idea is cool and let's see this beast painted up!

 

[Leithel]

What a great idea. It's a nice dragon model. Are you planning on painting the dragon as alive or dead? If alive, I rekon some nice gory wounds, especially where the chains are attached would be fantastic. How about the wings? a little conversion to make them even more ripped and damaged?

The focal points I think will be the vampire, the chains and of course the dragon head and wings but that rock where the tail is wrapped around will also get some good attention. I love how it wrapps around the rock.

The contrast on the horse is high drawing my eye to it, is it attached to a chain also or just part of the base? If it's just base, you might consider blending it in a little more to draw attention to the important parts.

Fantastic idea and great start, I'm REALLY keen to see the result especially if you're working full speed ahead on it.