Someone Call for a Flame Slinger?

     Heavy Flamer COMPLETE! He looks pretty good. Interesting fact: This is the first Heavy Flamer of any sort that I've painted. None of my Space Marines have them. Oh wait... ummm... okay so Ork combi-skorchas are technically the same weapon profile as a heavy flamer. Bah whatever.

     So I liked the respirator on this guy. The respirator doesn't really fit the guard models very well at all. Essentially you'd have to model all of the guys wearing the full respirators in the same head/torso position. It would look very static indeed. I decided to just cut the little hose off and leave it with just the mask. Even then I actually had to do some rhinoplasty to make it sit right.

     I moved along pretty fast while painting him, right up until I got to the tanks. I had to think about that for while. What color would the tanks be? I felt that black would just make the overall model too dark. Red was the obvious choice but I've gone through all the work to make them all wearing camo, so bright red tanks on his back seemed a little silly on second thought. In the end I did the Boltgun Silver. I darkened the base coat really heavily with a wash. I then took my Fine Detail brush and did small scratches with the original Boltgun color. I then mixed some Mithril Silver in and repeated that, and finally just pure Mithril. I added in a few scratches of Kommando Khaki and Graveyard Earth. I figured this would give a slightly more worn look to the tanks. Came out alright, I think.

     The nozzle on the flamer was another challenge I had setup for myself. I had seen some other flamers out there where the painter had shown some "blueing" on the metal. I liked the idea. First I tried using very thin coast of Ultramarines Blue. That wasn't turning out exactly how I wanted. I then decided to try layers of Azureman Blue wash. That did the trick. It might not be as obvious as it was intended, but I'm happy with the experiment. I finished it off with a little drybrushing of black, and then an even lighter drybrushing of the original basecoat of copper.

     The last challenge on the model was the right shoulder pad. The plasma gunner that I just previously finished had a nice custom shoulder insignia. It was a chevron with a nice little starburst to represent the he was a veteran and a plasma gunner. Seems like a cool idea. But for some reason the heavy flamer arm did not have this logo. The regular flamer DID. So I decided to freehand my own! I'm trying to stretch my free hand abilities a little more each time. Turned out pretty well, I think, and it helped build some confidence for some ideas I have for upcoming models.

Here are some more pics:

     I still have a broken computer. Two RMAs and two broken boards sent to me. I'm beginning to think that they just have a stack of these boards, all with the same problem. A new broken one comes in, they just throw it on the pile and grab another one and send it out. For all the testing they claim to do, they certainly can't be doing more than simply plugging the power up to it and make sure it merely accepts power... not if the thing actually BOOTS!

     That's it for now. Hope you enjoyed it and I'll be working on my command squad's Melta Gunner next. See you then!