Friday, 21 October 2011

'nids part 27 - DiY Mycetic Spore pt5.

Yeah, I know. It's a bit of a jump from pt4 isn't it... OK, what can I say? I've already pointed out that when I get into painting something that I have a clear process of start to finish it just flows and boy did this thing paint easily. In actual fact I think this was by far the easiest thing I've painted. The Bonewhite bits just drybrushed like a dream and the texture built into the Pot Pourri seed practically painted itself. The Gryphonne Sepia washes pooled to perfection, I used Badab black in all the joins with the Chitin armour, blending it with the Sepia in places to make a pseudo Devlan Mud.


The hardest part was the Turquoise striations in the Chitin, there's quite a lot of them and doing it all at once became a bit tedious. This baby was pretty much cranked out in an evening, after the washes had gone down, hence the lack of step-by-step shots.


The Tentacles are just simple liver highlighted with a Devlan mud wash. I don't usually do more than that, maybe I should but anyway the base was done to my usual Red Planet basing recipe but where the spore has impacted I used Early learning Centre Black poster paint to shade it. Not sure why, there's no afterburners to scorch the earth on the spore but maybe it's orbital entry made it's bottom hot, hence the scorched bits. The Poster Paint really works well for this thing, really matt and effective, maybe this might be useful for other effects on my buildings etc.

A close-up of the Pot Pourri seed and Chitin armour


Now there's a few more shots where i was messing around with the white balance to try and get better colours. As mentioned I have the Ferron Proxima battlemat in the garage while we do the kitchen so I nipped in there to take these pics. There's slightly more available light in there, I don't know how, so I think these pics are naturally a bit brighter. The main point I took them is for scale - so can you fit 20 Termagants in one? I doubt it, certainly not 9 Warriors but the original plan was just for my son's Zoanthrope which it's plenty big enough for. Anyway the Monstrous Creature base is a significant enough concession to the real world dynamics of this beast.


I've looked again at the rules for this thing and aside from the obvious nonsense I really love them. 40pts with a squad of 20 Dev-gaunts dropped in your opponents back field would be so much fun. 60 shots from the Termagants and then just have this thing with a Stinger Salvo to get four shots on folk to hopefully annoy them into assaulting. If they get through the Termagants then maybe they'll forget that as a Monstrous Creature this thing does Power Weapon Equivalent attacks - BOOM! 


So, there we go, all I need to do is Purity Seal the beast and gloss varnish it's claws and it's complete. So why do I want to do another one. A lot of heartache and delays on this but in the end I think I could crank one of these out over the course of a week if I was pushed. With them being so easy makes me wonder about the Plasma Hatchers and their future... hmm!

2 comments:

  1. Your nids look beautiful, the blues and the texture particularly on the pod look amazing!

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  2. Cheers OST, really enjoy your blog, your Dark Angels are progressing considerably quicker than mine, ha, ha! Love your effects on the ogres too.

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