Solun's Tabletop & Board Game Miniatures

[tinfoil]

Outstanding work. Somehow your painting creates really vivid effects without being too cartoony or over-the-top. Well done.

[Solun Decius]

Love the eyes on those termies. I did the same on my 5th company. But yours really POP.

Thanks, the Termies' eyes are a bit larger and easier to do than regular marines bit I strive to make them just right because eyes can really make or break a model.

Outstanding work. Somehow your painting creates really vivid effects without being too cartoony or over-the-top. Well done.

Thanks! I appreciate your comment, I think it's exactly what I'm aiming at.
I'm trying to do sharp bright highlights so they stick out on the tabletop but also make the colors gradient and smooth for closer views and photos. The termies are my best shot at that yet.

I'm very close to completing the tree last termies. All I have left are the grey and yellow edge highlights and some mithril silver to spice up some of the metal parts. The faces on the two Termie Champions are also still unpainted, some lack of inspiration there.

I'm also looking forward to the Lord as it's a stand alone model, sort of, and not bound by matching other models in a unit. I think the process can be more creative and fun, so I might be able to finish it in one sitting

[Solun Decius]

Alright! I must confess that I have failed my deadline. I couldn't bring myself to rush the Lord just in order to use it in this tournament.
Instead I changed my list a little. I'm using the Icon Terminator Champion as a Lord in Terminator Armor with Lightning Claws, Mark of Khorne and personal Icon for 145 pts. Out of the army go the winged lord for 160 pts and the Icon dude as a Termie Champ for 80 pts. That means I have 95 pts to spare and that my termies are no longer Khorne marked.
I split up the bigger CSM squad and added an Aspiring Chamion with Power Fist and Plasma Pistol, added a CSM model with Icon of Chaos Glory into the Lascannon-Missile Launcher squad and took a model from there into one of the CSM squads. I had both those models although I didn't mean to use them in this particular army. They fit in well enough though and the list is still 1499 pts and completely WYSIWYG.

Here is the complete squad of Terminators:



My ad-hoc photo-studio:



The Terminator Champion with Lightning Claws and Icon of Khorne:



Similar photos of the rest of the squad follow in another post.

[Solun Decius]

Terminator Champion with Reaper Autocannon and Chainfist:



Chaos Terminator Champion:



Chaos Terminator:



Chaos Terminator:



Tournament tomorrow. Wish me luck!

... and please point out to me if you see spots I missed or what not.

[bluebugs]

Wow, that terminator squad is beautiful! You do the models great justice. And that banner turned out perfectly. In your first pic, your GS had fingerprints in it, but you covered it up very well.

[Mr Feral]

Very nice indeed, I have nothing constructive to say so a thumbs up from me!

[alexh]

Good luck in the tournament Solun. If there is any justice, you will win 'best painted army'. I'd never really been a fan of extreme highlights until I saw those terminators but that yellow looks fantastic against the red.

[Titan Wolfe]

Solun ...."GO GET EM DUDE!!!" if you dont get the best painted army ,the one that beats you will have been painted by Leonardo Da Vinci . The Terminators have got to be the most mouth watering models I have seen in ages . Photography is done to the same standard .. ......Look forward to seeing more of your future projects .

[Anardakil]

I think the banner is too big but otherwise - great terminators!

[Blizer]

Yes. I have to say it too. Those terminators are just so awesome!

The trmie banner is really well made. how dod you get in so smooth and thin?

/Blizer

[Solun Decius]

@bluebugs: Thank you. There's quite alot of thick paint underneath the final paintjob. I think the primer would have covered the prints well enough but I wanted to make sure

@Mr Feral: Thanks, Thumbs up alwas appreciated!

@Anardakil: From the start I set out to get as close to the "ridiculous" line as I could with the size of the banner, without it being clumsy. I can easily understand that some people may feel I crossed the line.

@Blizer: Thanks! It's no rocket science. i just kept my fingers wet and squeezed it into shape. When I felt it was thin enough and the right size and shape I hung it onto the banner pole. It took a few attempts before I was happy. I tore the edges of the banner while it was still wet but I fixed the parts where it hangs on the pole with new green stuff later after it had dried.

@Titan Wolfe & alexh
Thanks guys! Actually, due to good weather and summer vacations I guess, not enough people showed up to do the tournament properly (So also no best painted armie vote). Instead five of us used the game room to play sort of an Apocalypse game. No super heavies but huge armies. Two players woth Space Wolves and Ultramarines could make their armies 2250 points each and play a 4500 point side, setting up at the center part of one long table edge (of a 6'x80' table) and the rest of us with Chaos (me), Tau and Tyranids set up 1500 point armies at the three remaining parts of the table, making them have to defend from three sides.
It looked something like this:

[Solun Decius]

This game took at least over 5 hours but it was really fun.
The baneblade is used as a 2 point objective, scattered after deployment. There were 3 other 1 point objectives. We almost managed a 1-0 victory but a squad of Fire Warriors fled in the last turn so we lost the baneblade to the loyalists and lost the game 1-2.

Thanks, everyone for looking, C&C and all that!

[Dictator]

Awesome battle shots and great looking terminators. I really like your style of painting.

[alexh]

Actually, due to good weather and summer vacations I guess, not enough people showed up to do the tournament properly (So also no best painted armie vote).

Never mind, there's always next time. It seems like you had a great time anyway though even if you did lose in the end (stupid Tau ).

[SplitJoin]

Hi,

I've been following this log for a bit now (in *ahem* no-account stealth mode as it were) as a fellow CSM owner.

Deeply envious of the crackling power weapons on your terminators - I certainly don't have the finesse for that level of detail. Also true of your helmet eyes. Do you have any special tricks to painting that detail, or is it simply a case of a very, very steady hand?

Also kudos to the lack of railings on their backs. I can't stand how the trophy racks look on them - as if they accidentally fell into a fence and couldn't be bothered to remove them afterwards.

What next perhaps? A Defiler?

[LordKhaine]

loving the terminators! and that banner is great, just one problem with it though


i bet you have fun trying to transport it lol

[Solun Decius]

@Dictator: Thanks dude, I appreciate the compliment. My painting has improved lately. Who knows, I might sometime be confident enough myself to take on FW models (with FW price tags, don't want to ruin those with a sloppy paint job).

@alexh: Yeah, we had great fun, and the game was decided more or less on one unlucky leadership roll

@LordKhaine: That problem is very real and I don't feel particularly good when that model isn't safe in it's spot at home. I'll buy a proper army case soon and just sacrifice as much foam space as I need for it to be safe.

@SplitJoin: Welcome to the forums and thanks for the kind words.
Actually I don't have a very steady hand (not rediculously shaky either). The trick (or at least my trick), with details like the eyes and also the crackling power weapons is to thin the paint down enough so that one pass won't be enough to get the color strong enough. That actually means I have to paint the eye more than once, giving a greater chance of missing. It also means that if I miss by a small margin it wont be very obvious and if I miss alot (but not always in the same direction) the point I want strong will be strong and then I'll have a gradient of less prominent color around. It also means I dont have to trust my unsteady hand to put a perfect dot in one spot. Instead I actually paint the yellow in the eye by dragging the brush repeatedly from the corner of the eye to the spot that I want to be the brightest.
The same goes for the power weapon detail. If I draw the same lines a few time with weak color I'll get a little gradient. Using two or three different shades of blue in the detail also help give an impression of light and gradients, even if they are not neccecarily highlighting each other directly.
Bottom line: hours and hours have gone into these models!
The trophy racks I found rather generic chaosy as well. It didn't fit my vision for the army veterans.

Well. I have to paint the Winged Lord. Since I was down at the store yesterday I also bought one bloodcrusher, for the juggernaut model, and one loyalist Space Marine Commander. I wish to use this to make a Chaos Lord on Juggernaut with Single Lightning Claw and twin linked bolter.
I also have a defiler from the army box and thought I might make some nice conversion out of that, maybe using the bloodletter from my new bloodcrusher box to make it properly daemonic and Khornate. Also the Rhino still only has the interior painted.
Plenty of stuff to do here but when I finish the Lord I'll probably chill out on painting for a while and do some modeling and converting.

Anyway ... enough of this constant blahblah...
Thanks for checking out my stuff, please come again

[Solun Decius]

Well, long time, no...thing!
I'm still working on my HQ problem. I've finished this 1500 army, all except a proper HQ unit. Instead of painting my winged lord like I should have, I started some modeling work on a different Lord. Actually it was nice to take a break from painting and do some assembling and modeling for a while.

Unpainted white metal and green stuff is never easy to photograph or see what really looks like and these are probably also too many photos of the same thing. That said I'm giving alot of angles on this so you can sort of see what I'm going for and have something to base your criticism (please ) on.

I'm doing more detailed green stuff stuff on this than I've done before and the gun hand is also pinned so I will paint 5 different guns and have a selection (I'm very WYSIWIG so this is the only way for me to have options).



Green stuff always looks like gore and goo but this is meant to be like roughly hewn metal trims or such, probably to be painted in reds and golds.



Heres a photo of the two pieces. I'll probably leave them apart and just place the lord on the juggernaut's back when I play games. Also pictured is my primary sculpting tool, a bunch of toothpicks.



So ... people! Should I just finish the base, prime this and get to painting, or could this model use a little more time in the modeling phase? Does it have what it takes to be LORD and not just "spiced up space marine"?

[synapse]

that terminator standard bearer is awesome! great colours too. a bit brown (not red enough for me) but very well done!

and that rearing jugger is really cool (i sure hope thats pinned to the base!)

[Solun Decius]

Thanks.
Yeah, it's actually only pinned, not glued, with part of a metal spure glued under the base and reinforced with green stuff and superglue. My first pinning/glueing actually wasn't quite sturdy enough so I tore it apart and put a steel pin into the hoof, from one of the pinboard tacks you see in the right of the bottom picture. Now I can work seperately on the Juggernaut and the base.
I also have to give props to warflag for reminding me that I had to do this model.