Painting Jump Packs

The first finished Death Company model.

Writing has been done on various areas (e.g the right pauldron) which required a very small brush and wash-consistency paint. The writing is not dark - I used Rhinox Hide (base) instead of black, but it could probably do with two coats. Watering the paint down I find easier for writing words, with the tradeoff being that it's very light when it dries. Might do a second coat, or just use black next time.


The jump pack exhaust area was originally going to be quite a plain, stock standard, metallic appearance. Deciding that this was too boring, I contemplated some kind of scorched effect surrounding it, but in the end went with the glow of idle thruster exhausts. Blue was the choice of base colour for this, simply because I thought it would look better than red/orange/yellow, and offset the large amount of red already on the model (the weapons, purity seals, and gems).

The exhaust glow was painted in the following manner:

• Kantor Blue (base) around the entire exhaust area.
• Alaitoc Blue (layer) as a "thick" highlight around the nozzles.
• Teclis Blue (layer) highlight, thinner than the previous layer, and leaving some of it showing.
• Lothern Blue (layer) highlight, again slightly thinner along the edges. It was given some more emphasis in the middle.
• Ulthuan Grey (layer) fine edge highlight, and "core" area of the nozzles.
• White Scar (layer) very fine edge highlight, just to really make the edges shine. It was also watered down for the "core" areas as well.

Quite a pleasing effect overall, although the final white highlight could have been thinner. Note that while quite a few blue paints were used, this is mostly for convenience - the same could just as easily have been achieved with mixing white into the base blue, and building up the layers with more white added each time.

-- silly painter

Moulding Shoulder Pads

As a continuation from the last post, I've managed to play around with instant mould (see also oyumaru, same stuff) to see how it would fare against a green-stuff mould. On the whole, it's much better, and I definitely recommend it to anyone trying something similar.

The instant mould is fairly easy to use, reusable, and doesn't stick to green stuff. The last point is particularly useful - it makes getting the press out of the mould quite easy. So if any mistakes are made, they're easy to fix. The popular trick of aligning front and back halves of a mould is to use lego as a kind of temporary casing - this works rather well when creating the mould, and can be useful later when actually using the mould too.

There is plenty of information out there on using instant mould, so I won't bother going into details about it here, but I will list some things I figured out on trial runs.

• Instant mould is flexible. This helps to get things out of the mould, but be careful when letting things dry. If clamped together too hard, the mould will warp slightly and ruin the press.
• Don't use too much green stuff. This will create a extra thickness at the boundary between the front and back halves of the mould, and while perhaps not ruin shoulder pads, does make them less than perfect. Trial and error are required to know how much to use.
• Mould lines. These are extra lines to push out excess green stuff. They can also help pull the press from the mould later on.
• Patience. Letting the green stuff properly cure means it won't deform when trying to remove it from the mould.

Above are two trial runs. One is painted to see if it would really look any different to a pastic shoulder pad, and the other is straight from the mould. Later presses are much better quality and have less flashing, but that just comes from experience. On a painting note, the blood drop will have to have some kind of dark outline to differentiate it from the shoulder pad base.

Please note that the cost for all of this is actually more than if I could buy the shoulder pads directly (at least for 100 or so). I don't actually like the ones they do offer - the wings just aren't as appealing. If anyone is thinking they could replicate their own entire model, then think again. Plastic models will be of higher quality and give you less trouble to work with.

Lastly, a Death Company marine is just about ready - just some lettering and "scribbles" on scrolls left. So expect another post before too long, detailing the finishing touches there.

-- silly painter

Tidbits

This post will start where the last finished: green stuff shoulder pads. No photos, mostly because the camera and lighting conditions aren't favourable for photographing cured green stuff, but it doesn't matter much.

Using vaseline and a brush to prevent the putty from sticking to the plastic, I made a mould of the front of the desired shoulder pad. The idea was just to try place the winged blood drop onto existing, blank shoulder pads: the blank pad and small amount of green stuff would press into the mould, after the mould was brushed with vaseline. Care must be taken with the vaseline though - it must be evenly applied, but also very thinly, otherwise it tends to gather in corners and ruin the shape of the pressed putty.
In terms of detail, it worked rather well. The insignia turned out very clear, and it was a promising start. The problem with this method, and with the Blood Angel insignia in particular, is that it can get very close to the shoulder pad trim. The excess must either be cut away, or the entire shoulder pad trim must have an extra layer on top. The former is far too time consuming, and the latter ends up causing thickened shoulder pad trims that would unbalance the look of the marine.
The original mould also wasn't intended to include the trim, so it runs into problems - particularly at the corners. A different approach was tried: make the entire shoulder pad from green stuff!

Making an entire shoulder pad would remove any problems with thicker trims, and the only excess to cut away would be flashing lines. As I already had half of the shoulder pad in a mould, albeit with issues at the shoulder pad corners, I decided to make a mould for the other half to save myself a bit of time (I just wanted to test and see if the idea would work for me, not form a production line). Long story short: yes, it works, and much better than trying to apply an insignia to an existing blank pad. Still have to be carful with the vaseline - you don't want the green stuff sticking to the mould. With this in mind, I'm now making a new mould that should give better results, including plastic sprue lines that should help lift the green stuff out of the mould when it's cured some.

I do plan on seeing how well oyumaru (or instant mold) works too. It might be more useful for making the mould because I hear that green stuff doesn't stick to it too easily.

Painting wise, there's not much new happening right now, other than taking far too long to paint the Death Company. On the plus side, they are starting to look much nicer, and they are more detailed than your average tactical marine.

I have adjusted slightly painting the Blood Angel symbol, compared to how it was done on Dante, by using a grey to layer the wings with. I don't have my notes with me at present, but I think it went Caledor Sky (base), Administratum Grey (layer), Ulthuan Grey (layer), and using a fine brush to paint the feathers individually. The tip uses just Rakarth Flesh (base) followed by White Scar (layer).

Another week and I'll hopefully have the Death Company finished. Well, the first five models anyway. A squad of tactical marines will likely follow on, as I want to try shading and blending with red.

-- silly painter