Firestorm Armada: Aquan Update 3

Battleship and Cruisers complete!


     These models went very fast indeed. Most of the heavy lifting was all taken care of by the airbrush. Object source lighting (OSL) with the airbrush is awesome, but I can see how too much can look a little silly. Getting the pressure setup just right on the airbrush also seems like it takes a deft touch. That's something I'll have to learn as I go. I kept the engine glow as subtle as I could, and it doesn't show so great in the photo. Much in the same way that the diamonds look slightly less white than in real life. For whatever reason, these Aquan ships make my camera's color balance a little wacky. Oh well... can't expect too much out of a five year old camera.

     Frigates are up next, and I'm hoping to get them finished before the week is up. That's a challenge, with my schedule. But I'm going to give it the old college try. First order of business will be to drill out the mounting points on the ships for the flight stands. For some reason, they're all a little malformed, and all in the same way. Nothing I can't fix.

     Here are a few more pics of the finished ships:

I turned the lights on!

 Magic space crystals propel the ship.

 And the battleship has MANY crystals.

 Cruisers have less crystals, but two of them are pretty large.

There you can see the two large crystals.

     Hope you enjoyed! I ordered some more war gaming goodies from Thewarstore.com, and should have those before the week is out. I'll share more when I have product in hand!

Command Squad Plasma Gunner, Object Source Lighting attempt

     Here we go, two updates in a single day. Wow... unusual. I finished my Command Squad's Plasma Gunner, and yes I tried some Object Source Lighting. Or as the snooty artsy crowd might say: "Painting..."

     Well WHATEVER you want to call it, I think it looks pretty cool. I'm not saying I did it bang on, but I didn't want to spend too much time on this one command squad member. Basically I just did some strategic dry brushing ever so carefully. I tried a tiny little bit of glazing with a blue wash, buuuutttt that didn't work quite as I wanted it. I certainly realize that, in order to do some good OSL, you really need to change the shading on the opposite side of the lighting source. Basically that side needs to be darker to give the proper look to the lit side. That just would have taken a little too long, and it would have made the this one figure look rather mis-matched on the table along side the rest of the army.

     I also need to give some thanks to my wife, that made a fantastic recommendation that I paint some sort of pattern on the sole of the boot. Great idea, and I think that came out looking nice. It certainly gave some nice detail to the model.

     I've also decided that I'm going to theme my army after the veterans of Meridian. If you've played Dawn of War 2 (which you should, if you haven't) then you might remember Meridian as the planet covered in a large Hive city, the Blood Ravens came to defend this planet against the Tyranid invasion. The guard was present in many of the battles, and I think I can pull that together to give a nice back story to some of my guard squads.

     Well that's enough jibber-jabber, here are some more pics of my Plasma Gunner:

     Hope you enjoyed, comments and questions always appreciated! HAPPY NEW YEARS YA'LL!!