Some more commission work, this time a trio of Dark Eldar Raiders to flesh out a client's transport section for his insane sex maniac elves. Note to self: never, ever do three of them at once again. Not only are you signing up to paint a relatively intricate small vehicle, but you also paint the squad of DE that's riding on the bloody thing, and that's an incredible pain in the ass. Honestly, I don't know how you DE players manage it, much less keep the things intact for transport with all those spiky bits and things sticking out. Honestly.
The perk of doing three at once is, of course, that you can mix and match the hangers-on to your heart's content (within the limits of the parts, anyway), as well as the trophy skulls and other oddments. I had a witch barge and an all-helmet barge going, and I'm pretty certain one of those weirdos is swinging a net, too.
I had a wild impulse to combine some spare sails and put them out to the side, Jabba's Sail Barge style, but the client nixed that idea, preferring to have them stock. It would have given the things a much cooler silhouette, but oh well.
You'll recall seing WIP pics of this before Mecha Month started. When the client ordered a set of keel blades and other knifey bits from the Raider sprue, they really brought the model together. I'm only sorry weren't any good bits to use as missiles, but oh well. It has a really sleek, pod-fighter feel to it, now.
Did I mention how awesome Dragon Forge flight bases are? Because they're awesome. All I had to do was stick a rare earth magnet in there to secure the fighter, and away we go. I may have to start on an air force for my AdMech army.
The Eldar Falcon was hell to cut apart, and even worse to trim down with all those curilinear surfaces. One of the ideas I'd had was to mate the two halves together and make a delta-wing style craft, but the thing looked too much like a Jedi Starfighter, and this one has a lot more of a mean, weaponised look to it, while keeping the lines of a racer. Those keel blades really set off the design, though, especially the rudders on the main drives:
There's also a set of large blades underneath, coming off of the nacelles, which the craft sits on when it lands. Yes, they'd dig into soft ground and sink the whole craft, but what the hey, the thing probably moors in a claw at Comorrach, and they probably never land when on a raid. You can see them better in the front-on pic:
Yes, the thing ended up looking a little like the Batwing. Somehow that's more acceptable to me than the Jedi Fighter. Looking at those underside blades, I'm sure the crazy-ass pilot goes skimming along through crowds at ground level, too. Of course, you're risking getting the fighter caught on, say, a tank, but no one accused the Dark Eldar of being safety nuts.
Arguably, you wouldn't need big blade rudders when you have thrust-vectoring flaps on your engine nozzles, but they really unite the design and tie it in to the rest of the Dark Eldar fleet. Plus, without them the ship's a little control surface-light, and I wanted it to feel really nimble.
He got a box of Kaballites, too, and some Wyches and Incubi to round things out. I wish I could have spent some time to take detailed pictures of them, but I finished them on game night, and had just spray-enamelled them before getting ready to meet the client there.
I really love the new Wych sprue. They're really excellent sculpts for plastics, although those one-legged running poses are really, really fragile. I can see them breaking off in the transport case, but luckily, that's not my problem. Some of their weapons are a little too frail too, such as the chain-like razor flail mini. Again, it looks nice, but how long can it last being transported around? I guess it's good that he does a lot of hosting and not many away games.
Since April is going to be Mecha Month here on M3, I thought I'd get the non-mechanical part of the latest commission job out of the way. You'll recall the WIP Razorwing I posted earlier; these are the rest of the Eldar models who were turned to the dark side. Well, minus the Talos. He's coming next time to kick off the heavy metal festivities.
The above Haemonculous started out as an old Warlock model, and has undergone some body modding, as they apparently do in the rape pits of Commorragh (or however you spell it). If you'd asked me to build one from scratch, I probably would've used more Daemon and mutant parts, but these are meant to be from his bits stores, not mine. Is he floating, or is that an actual pole up his ass? Only Mat Ward knows for sure.
The Wyches were the real labor-intensive part of this package. Sawing the heads off of a bunch of Banshees was a royal pain in the ass, and they're considerably overdressed as Wyches go. The client had limited leftover parts from his old boxed set (hence some of the fugly crone faces), but I think they manage to pull off the evil murder-hooker look convincingly. I probably should have given the helmeted ones Cobra masks, too, but oh well. According to the fluff DE are hundreds of years old and drink other peoples' emotions (really? They're anti-Care Bears?) , so they're bound to be a little nasty looking.
The upswept dreadlocks on the Scourges were a last-minute decision which ended up working out, visually. On the prototype I sculpted these long, trailing things, but they ended up victims of gravity that would've required an armature to stay right. The compromise was using the elongated heads of the Swooping Hawks as makeshift forms, and playing off the rather gothic-looking grill-masks. Presumably the actual Scourge model will look a lot more predatory, as they're also body-mod freaks, and not Eldar pussies in winged armor.
Lastly, another crop of 20 Sybarites to make up the body count on the battlefield. I spread out the remainder of the old-style DE parts as best I could, and avoided using the standard Eldar fiddly bits. This brings his total of DE warriors up to 40, so presumably he'll focus on the other parts of the army list for his buying decisions instead of more Sybarite models. More's the pity, because I wanted to work on some of the new plastics, but oh well.
Coming up: The Talos, Jetbikes, and Venom.
My regular SM client had a bunch of Eldar stuff, and we thought it'd be cool to make him a Dark Eldar army out of it. Here's the Falcon from the battleforce box, cut up and repurposed into a Razorwing fighter. As you can see, there's still a great amount of greenstuffing that needs to be done, but I like the way it's come out so far.
What's making this a real challenge is that there are no actual DE bits, and any jags or huge fanged things I add to this only detract from the overall design. Plus, I need whatever smallish blades I have in my own bits stores for the Venom and Jetbikes in the box, so I can't go crazy making this thing a barbed nightmare. Sigh.
Still on the workbench for this project:
20 Kabalite Warriors
6+1 Wyches (Banshees)
3 Scourges (Swooping Hawks)
3 Jetbikes
1 Talos (Oh, this one came out really fucking cool. Trust me)
1 Haemonculous (A Warlock with a few extra arms and green stuff robes)
1 Venom
And it's all for cash, so I'll be back-burnering my other projects, including my Knight Warden, which makes me very sad. On the other hand, thanks to the shit economy I haven't had a steady 9-5 since '09, and I really, really, really need the money.
Speaking of which, I've just put up a resin Super-Deformed Aliens kit on eBay.
It's a neat little item, and would make funny addition to someone's Nid army. The model is cast in yellow resin, and when assembled is about 3 1/2 inches tall by about 2 1/2 inches wide; perfect MC size. If you want a weird Hive Tyrant or just need a bizarre new buddha for your house shrine, then this one's for you, and it's a steal at $20.
Happy Monday, People.
