Tuesday 20 July 2010

Tyranids for SALE

Hi Folks,

a friend of mine asked me to help selling his army as he plans to move to WFB.
The following is a rough list, there is some more (+5-10%) , so I'll update later. All of the minis are mostly unpainted, most have even no primer on, a lot of them still on sprue. Assembled pieces are made nicely/prepared for painting (de-flashed etc).
The seriously interested should drop me an e-mail.


What the army includes

1 Hive Tyrant 
1 Hive Tyrant OOP
44 Termagaunts 
45 Termagaunts on sprue
12 Hormagaunts on sprue
72 Genestealers
20 Genestealers on sprue
13 Warriors
24 bases of Swarm
3 FW Areal spore mines
8 Hive Guards, 2 in box
6 Carnifexes
2 Converted Carnifexes
1 Tyranid Trygon
1 Mawloc
1 Bivore
3+6 Spores
2 Lictors


Teaser pictures (assembled minis only):
















Saturday 17 July 2010

Scout paint scheme

This week I was thinking about the best colour scheme for the scouts, these are the trial pieces:




The right one of course resembles the Sentinels' colour scheme more closely, whereas the left one for some is more pleasing. Which would you rather chose? Or perhaps a variation? lighter tan or darker grey? Please comment!

I also thinking about the chest eagle. Just have seen an excellent blood angels tutorial over All Things 40K and got totally hooked on that shoulder pad. Do you think that a chest eagle like this would look better? Please ignore the paintjob, I spent just about 5 minutes painting the whole thing.

Saturday 10 July 2010

Homemade decals - Astartes numerals


My first homemade decals are finished, in the last two weeks (apart from a small holiday) they were my primary project.

First I started with the drawing board and Adobe AI. Thanks to my earlier designs, the first draft was created rather quickly. After this the proper sizes for the individual designs were determined and checked against actual minis and shoulder pads. There are multiple sizes, different for scouts and terminators and vehicles.
Once I was satisfied with the result I printed the vector design on decal paper.
Please understand that these are not real decals, and therefore they have limitations. Firstly I cannot print white without access to an ALPS printer. ALPS printers are no longer in production, so buying one - even if buying one second hand is possible -combined with the increasing accessory prices do not make the business case viable. (other possibility could be screen printing, but for such small insignia, and so few copies it doesn't worth it.) So, since I cannot print white, I have to print on white. This means that to avoid a halo of white on the edge you have to print a halo with a colour matching the base colour of the mini or vehicle - in my case VMC Dark Prussian Blue.

For the best results after applying the decals the traditional way overpaint the edges with the base colour. This will crate a smooth gradient. By the way I almost always overpaint decals a little, so that they would look less uniform.

Secondly, professional decals come pre-cut. As I have no idea how it is done, so one have to cut out the decals usig a very sharp blade.

You know by now, that I'm a shameless promoter of my very own Sentinels, you can freely download the decal sheet in .pdf format. Please note that it is in letter format.

Since you never seem to get enough numerals on GW transfers, I also created my own number sets. As I previewed in my previous post, the numbers are fully vectorized. As making these astartes numerals was very time consuming, I won't give them away that easily... but they are of course available for all followers of this blog. Please e-mail me if you'd like the file.
Later, upon individual request I plan to produce custom decals, numerals in other colours, and even sell them in printed form, though it may take a little time.
I'm quite happy with the way the transfers turned out, but I was less satisfied with the Holi decal papers I was using. It was rather too thick to my taste. I have to find a different manufacturer for better results. Any suggestions?