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Hey Jon, how do you do your battle damage effects? I really, really like the way they look, I just am baffled as to how you got such a nice look.

_Tim?

Glad this thread is getting more comments and views now; so deserves it. Looking great. I'm pretty confident there'd be plenty of people in the swap shop etc. after the bat-wings so you could always trade them (potentially for more feathers)...

Really nice weathering, and those wings look very nice!!

How I paint my vehicles and armor:

1. Basecoat with Tamiya Coral Blue spray.

2. If you’re painting glyphs on the model do that now since all the weathering will go on top.

3. Spray with flat matt varnish (Tamiya, Mr. Color or Mr. Hobby).

This step is important because it lets me wipe off the weathering easily with a bit of rubbing alcohol if I make a mistake. Typically the mistake is to overdo the weathering.

4. Mix up a dark gray color (I use Adeptus Battlegray + Chaos Black).

5. Use a piece of foam or sponge with “fine grain” to sponge on splotches of the dark gray to simulate paint chips. A detail brush is also useful for touching up and adding smaller chipped areas.

I use the foam from Sabol pluck and pick trays since I’ve got lots of it. It looks best if you can make it look semi-random. I concentrate a bit more on edges and places where I think more wear and tear will occur (like the handrails of the Ravager).

It’s surprisingly hard to get the semi-random look right. On my first Ravager I found I had lapsed into a regular pattern of “blotches” about 2 cm apart. That was when the coat of varnish helped since I could actually just wipe off the mistakes or even just scrape parts off with my fingernail.

6. Once all the chipping is done, paint all the other parts of the model as usual.

I do the chipping first since it’s a waste to get everything nicely painted and then find out you’ve put a gray blotch over your nicely painted white hair.

7. Highlight the edges of the model with skull white mixed with a tiny bit of blue.

8. Spray the model with flat matt varnish again.

I usually don’t do this for infantry since I don’t usually mess up the next step on them.

9. Mix up some weathering powders (I use MIG Old Rust and Rust) with odorless mineral spirits (found in most art stores).

I’ve tried all kinds of weathering powders but have found that the MIG ones work the best. Their depth of color just seems to be better than anything else I’ve tried. If anyone knows of a good online store that carries the MIG powders and ships worldwide please let me know. No one sells them here in Hong Kong.

I bought mine in the Yellow Submarine hobby shop at the top of the Radio Kaikan building in Akihabara, Tokyo. Those powders are probably the most useful souvenirs I’ve ever bought. This is in contrast to the box of Chessex dice I bought in Paris which seem to have an aversion to rolling hits for Dark Lances…

10. Dip a brush in the mixture and touch it to a join between armor plates. It’s like using a wash. The capillary action will naturally draw it along cracks. Also paint on some streaks parallel to the direction the vehicle travels in. Again, the varnish lets you wipe off any mistakes.

11. Apply a final coat(s) of varnish to seal everything in.

12. Enjoy one turn (or deployment phase at least) of glory on the tabletop before a stiff breeze (or two twin-linked psybolt autocannons) explode your open-topped paper airplane!

I once had two Raiders, a Ravager and a Venom exploded in Turn One even though they all had Flickerfields and/or cover in a 1250pt game. It was those French dice again…

Thanks for the tutorial! I can really see how the coat of matt sealer would help a LOT, especially when you are doing weathering over white, and any mistakes mean you have to spend HOURS reapplying white paint...(I'm bitter because I tried the sponge effect on my Hammmerhead, and went a little crazy, so now I have to go back and re-apply white to a lot of it...)

Cheers!
_Tim?

Glad the tutorial was helpful!

I got less done tonight than I had planned, got caught up playing Persona 3 instead of painting. I did get the other wing finished though. I'll wait until I have some more progress to put more pictures up. This wing looks just like the one I put up earlier. Just imagine it mirrored!

On an unrelated tangent, I've been getting some complementary PM's on my Mechanicus army that I put up about a year ago. PM's instead of comments since the thread has been locked. They made me regret not blogging that army as I built it. This way is much more fun and motivational. Good thing I got off my ass and started this Dark Eldar blog only four months or so in!

Cheers,
Jon

Awesome, I saw these on display at fun artelier. Infact, this army inspired me to start dark edlar! Hope you win the golden deamon HK! once again, amazing army. Also, when is the tourny on?

Very nice!

Any chance of a step-by-step picture tutorial? It'd be really good to be able to see how the model progresses from each stage to the next.

Tonight's progress. This is one step from completion (apart from the base), shows how things look before the rust is applied. I'm liking the scheme and I think I'll go ahead and get the rest of the squad started!

Looks great as ever man; love the helmet and the wings contrast beautifully to the rusted, grubbier armour of the Dark Eldar; beautiful work as ever man. The little black sprues behind him really bring out his eyes too.
Apologies I can't provide anything constructive!

When I first saw the paint scheme, it looked so....well, in my eyes, bad! But, then again, when I clicked on the link, the first picture was the trueborn before the wash and highlights, bad example.

Looking back over the army as a whole...I love it. Especially with the whole "showing off the craftsmanship by the time it takes to rust" thing. The whole thing looks twisted and tribal, very angry and still the kind of...almost unregistered sadness that I love about the Dark Eldar. They are the very evil they hate, and this scheme almost shows that they ignore even simple ideas if it meant getting in the way of their arrogance and hatred. They are cold and brutal and overall, competitive. Even though their competition drives them further into oblivion.

Heh, got kinda philosophical there near the end, sowweh. Great job dude, love the original feel to the whole thing...

I've finished my first Scourge! These are probably my favorite GW models to date!

Yeah, I loves me some scourges. You make me sad.

I guess I'd better get off the computer and learn how to paint.

That Scourge is offically one of my favourites now, I love the wings, contrasting but not excessively so.

The squad is going to look amazing

I actually saw your army in the flesh
Looks amazing
Thanks for the inspiration

Again, thanks for the comments! I know how easy it is to just lurk or click away into another thread, I was doing it for years on Dakka. This thread and my previous Mechanicus army thread are sort of my way of giving something back to the community after just taking inspiration for so many years. Its still kind of weird (but also cool) to see some of my stuff on the first row of the first page of the Gallery when you search for "Dark Eldar" there though!

I got a bitz order in this weekend, got distracted by the new shinies inside and so didn't make any progress on the Scourges. Instead, I converted and mostly painted a test model for another squad I wanted to try out. I'll put up some photos next week. For a hint, let's just say I'm not too thrilled with the GW beasts models, neither the limited variation in the sculpts nor the price points.

To flamingwalnut if you find those aspects of the Dark Eldar compelling you might enjoy the Prince of Nothing series by R. Scott Bakker. Here's an excerpt that could be used to describe the fall of the Eldar, basically how some went insane as a result of living for millenia:


"their memories of mundane life fade first, leaving only archipelagos of spectacle and intensity, the confusion of a soul hanging without foundation. And how their redemptive memories gradually follow, stranding them more and more with disconnected episodes of torment and pain, until their life becomes a nightmare lived through mist, until all love and joy sink into oblivion, become things guessed at through the shadows cast by their destruction."

- The White Luck Warrior, R. Scott Bakker, 2011


Emo space elves indeed!

All of your Dark eldar Look fantastic, especially your Raider and Jetbikes

The background on this conversion is the Dark Eldar experimenting on Tyranids. The idea here is a Haemonculus is fascinated with Genestealers' ability to infect living creatures and is experimenting with it in a "safe" manner. i.e. After some early out of control infestations the Archon decided to ban infections on anything that:

a) Had an intelligence above a certain level, i.e. pretty much anything that was self-aware; and
b) Didn't have a "kill switch"and a strictly limited lifespan if the "kill switch"didn't work.

In this case the Haemonculi wrapped the muscles and nerves of an infected wolf-like creature around a metal skeleton. When they aren't fighting on the battlefield the bones are taken out and they're kept in nutrient vats. Even if they go berserk on the battlefield or in the arena, they don't have stomachs etc. and can't survive for too long outside the vats.





Admittedly kind of disgusting, but I had fun thinking it up! I deliberately made it look like a Khymerae so it would be clear what it was in game terms.

Wow, some fantastic job from top to bottom...

That blue hue is amazing...

I am less enthusiastic about the Khymerae, but everything else is among some of the best things I've seen lately!

I really love the conversion (musn't steal the idea, musn't...) but I'm not sold on the bright blue of the arms, it seems a little out of place to me.

I like the Khymerae, especially the fluff. Did you scratch build any part of it? The head looks a little... flat, maybe (?), in the last picture but overall I think it's a damn good conversion.

Nice work again pal.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
One thought, maybe you could add the second 'claw arms' from the 'stealers just behind it's front legs to add a bit more to the tyranid feel. I don't think it'd detract from the model, but it could enhancethe background that you're putting across.

Just a thought - hope you don't mind it

Beautiful.

FTL

Your army is beautiful! I'm absolutely subscribing to this! Could you make a tutorial on the bird wings? or maybe just the colours used?

I like kitch's idea of a second pair of claws behind it's front legs to add a little bit more to the model. Maybe you could freehand a design on it's forehead? It's small, but there looks like there's enough room and it would help to break up the brownish skin color some. I like your story for them though. Don't get me wrong either: overall they look great and the army in general looks fantastic.

Great ideas! I don't have any Stealer arms right now, but I'll try to trade with some 'nid players down at the shop. I'll definitely be including a second pair of arms on some of the pack. The head isn't scratchbuilt the flat heads are just a flaw in the original Dire Wolf models. I cut down a Warrior head carapace and found that it fits pretty well!

I've also repainted part of the torso to make it look like the infection is slowly spreading into the skin and muscles. The bronze bones also weren't quite fitting in with the rest of the model so I repainted them in a more standard scheme. The model hangs together much better now! What do you guys think?

Not sure if it's in-character for DE to have equipment in such a shoddy state, but great paintjobs regardless!

That looks a thousand times better in my opinion. The infection breaks up the brown skin color and the carapace addition on the head looks awesome too. My favorite addition was what you did to the eyes; it gives them a really wild, experimented on look.

Awesome work.

YES! waaay better. Those nid arms make sense now.

Looks even better now, great job!

Absolute - f*cking - legend!! That's brilliant, and I love the "infection spreading" thing, that adds so much to the background and really ties in with the killswitch that you were talking about. Truely Epic my friend \m/ :-D