Showing posts with label Blood Angels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blood Angels. Show all posts

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Captain Homer and Mojo WIP

Last May I spent some time working on one of my most drawn out painting projects, Captain Homer and Mojo, and posted an updated about them here. After writing about the progress I'd made, I went on to spend another evening or two later in the month working on Homer and Mojo before once again setting the pair aside. While the painting itself had not advanced very far, the noteworthy accomplishment was in finally attaching Homer's head to his body. Woo-hoo! Having left the last time with Captain Homer still in a headless condition, tonight I thought it would be worthwhile to update this project, even though it's been a while since I actually sat down to work anymore on it.

Before gluing on the helmet I finished bringing the white areas of power armour up to a pure Skull White. I tried to keep the paint thinned enough so that the white wouldn't buildup too much, but I then wasn't able to entirely prevent it from running into some of the darkened lines which define the various armoured segments. I'd like to tidy that up somewhat, in particular on the should pads and a few other more noticeable places. Otherwise I plan on leaving the rest as is due to the likelihood that trying to fix anymore would just lead to new mistakes in need of further correcting.

Once I was satisfied with the white areas around Homer's collar, backpack, and should pads, I evened out the yellow of the power armour and added a layer of highlighting on top of that. I would save the final round of yellow highlighting, however, for after having glued in place the helmet. This seemed reasonable to me should the final positioning of the helmet would alter which lines I wanted to emphasize the most. Additionally the blue legs are now either finished or else close to it. They could probably use one more pass of highlights so as to pick out the uppermost edges of armour as they catch the light. Lastly Captain Homer's power sword is the result of lots of trial and error until I finally had an effect that looked decent enough to me. Well, so long as I didn't look too closely it seemed alright. :)

At the same time that I was working on Captain Homer, I also made some more progress on his buddy, Mojo the Helper Monkey. At this point everything is blocked out in the basic colors and has received at least one round of shading and highlights. I'm rather pleased with how his face and other fleshy bits turned out. He seems to me crazy and dangerous, just the way a monkey with a flamethrower should look. There's still some highlighting and detail work to do but I think this monkey is close to finished.

I don't know when I'll return to work some more on Captain Homer and Mojo. One reason I've been hesitant to go any further is because I haven't yet finished planning out the design for Homer's back banner. Also I'm nervous about freehand painting a design onto such a relatively large area... that a mistake there could really botch the whole thing. Nonetheless I'm pretty sure that once I have the details sorted out to my liking, I will be ready to paint the banner if only to have that particular step behind me. And besides, how hard could it be to paint a big donut and some beer cans?

So that's all I have for now with regards to these two miniatures. Hopefully it won't take another three months before I'm ready to put together the next progress update on them. I'm not getting my hopes up, though, as these guys seem to have become permanent residents of my WIP shelf. Nonetheless it would be really nice to finally move on to the next batch of Stonecutters. Ah, someday... someday.

Goodnight!

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Captain Homer WIP

Hobby time has been sparse the last couple of weeks and I feel as though I've been in sort of a painting funk as well. There have been some exciting developments for my family concerning our desire to move to North Carolina which I will explain once things have been finalized, but in the meantime that is what has been taking up most of my spare focus and energy. I have therefore just been working on a few small projects whenever I've found both the opportunity and motivation to do so. There are quite a few half painted minis on my desk I can choose for such tinkering, none of which have been sitting there for as long as Captain Homer. I therefore decided a few nights ago it was time I went back to work on him.

Well what can I say? I hate painting white. It drives me crazy and is the reason I waited so long before returning to this miniature. Yet there's no way for me to realize my vision of Captain Homer without him wearing the blue and white power armour. As expected it's been problematic and I am not entirely satisfied with the results so far. I am happy nonetheless to finally be making some progress on this guy even if it has been at times frustrating. This should be however only the first of my Captain Homers as I plan on making several other alternate models of him for use with my Stonecutters army. Also, having been inspired by the story from Treehoue of Horrors XIII, "Send in the Clones," I would eventually like to make a squad of Homer clones with the same color scheme for use as the army's Death Company. I therefore should have numerous additional chances to practice working with white paint and hopefully I'll soon find a technique that feels more comfortable to me.

That happy little fellow pictured to the left of Captain Homer is his buddy, Mojo the Helper Monkey. Simpsons fans will remember Mojo from episode #5F15 of Season 9, titled "Girly Edition," in which Homer acquires a service monkey to do the various chores and duties that he is too lazy to do himself. Once I saw this miniature from the CoolMiniOrNot Limited Edition Series of a monkey armed with a flamer thrower, I knew he would make a perfect Mojo and had to find his way into the Stonecutters project. The approach for 40k that I've chosen for this is to treat Mojo simply as a marker denoting Captain Homer's weaponry, thus abiding by the standards of WYSIWYG but otherwise having no in-game effects. This particular Captain Homer will count as being armed with a power weapon and a hand flamer, making him a fairly cheap HQ option relative to most of the others that I expect to have with this army.

I am excited about the prospect of having this miniature painted and complete. It marks the long awaited beginning of the actual assembly and painting stages for my Stonecutters army, having been previously stalled in the conceptual and planning phases for far too long. If my schedule cooperates I think I should be able to finish Captain Homer and Mojo in the next few days, although I still have not made up my mind what I'll be doing for their bases which might have to wait a while longer. I'll try to get another WIP update posted soon once I've made some more progress. So until next time... happy gaming and painting, everyone!