Hive Fleet Titan, with magnets (how do they work?)

[rampancy]

After originally trying the Blue Crab scheme from Necrotales, I decided my skills weren't up to freehand painting beautiful carapace markings.

Especially since I now have a veritable swarm to paint, doing that kind of detail work on 30-60 Termagaunts is just above my pay grade. So, I've instead opted on a series of progressive washes.





I'm fairly happy with the result: if I mess up some highlights too badly, I can always lightly wash them enough to blend into the carapace.



I'm in the process of magnetizing a Tervigon and Carnifex:





Which is fun, because I can not only swap the improvised TLD conversions, but heads as well. Here's Old One Eye:



My inspiration is the series of Tyranids from The_Arch1techt, who apparently only builds big beasties:

Here are the TLD conversions on his Carnifex:


While still rough, I think sacrificing a couple Termigaunt Devourers and the Carnifex Crushing Claws look much better than the barely warrior-sized Devourer arms that come with the 'Fex:



For the purple fade, which I simply do not have the skill to paint, I'm experimenting with a mixture of Liquitex Professional Acrylic Varnish and GW Druchil Violet. Their Lehman Medium dries too opaque for my purposes.

[tripwire]

Rad.

also, glad I'm not the only one who started a hive fleet, saw necrotales work, and I was like, "I'm gonna paint them like that!" and was immediately on the first train to nope.comville from termigant junction.

-trip

[rampancy]

Necrotales does some great work, but the finished models I made with his color scheme and no carapace markings looked bland.

Some early attempts that have been rattling around in a box:



First attempt at basing tonight:



With the Tervigon in place:



In other news, static grass is tougher than expected to work with!

[blackrainbow]

Sweet start. I'm only gearing up to try wash-layering similar to this. Not on my tyranids but on some practice models. For static grass, what problems are you having?

[rampancy]

My static grass had erectile dysfunction. Mostly ended up dumping it on glue puddles.

I went back to streak painting for a bit, but think the wash method is the way to go for swarm armies. Streaking is just too labor intensive for OK results.

[mattblowers]

For static grass use a little super glue, apply grass, hold base upside downside down and tease it up by blowing gently on it.

[mattblowers]

Mar 12, 2016 10:47:31 GMT tripwire said:

Rad.

also, glad I'm not the only one who started a hive fleet, saw necrotales work, and I was like, "I'm gonna paint them like that!" and was immediately on the first train to nope.comville from termigant junction.

-trip

Yeah, that's how I feel about painting at all when I look at yours.