hakoMike

It's pretty common to put more than one giant rat on a base too. It gives them a more swarmy look, and avoids the weird looking "single tiny rat on a base" syndrome.

Here is the completed model, ready for submission at the Ann Arbor Warhammer store's one-year anniversary competition. The theme was "hero" and had to be mounted on the base that came with the model. I'll admit, I stretched the base part a bit. As for the hero part, I love diminutive heroes. They don't always hold muster in actual game play but the aesthetic is so cool.

I went through and painted the base coats on the details, and it definitely gives the Trog some more color. I painted one side with the multicolored stripe and one without, then did all the decorations so I could compare sides. The non-stripe side still looked really sparse so I put the stripe on both sides. I still have all the shading / highlighting to do on the red ropes, the claws and teeth to finish and a ton of cleanup work to do everywhere but I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, which is good because the painting comp this is for is this weekend!

After some searching for images of lizard color patterns, I thought I would try a line of different colored scales down his side. Not terribly wide, but a variety of colors. The end result is probably more like stained glass coloration than I expected, but I think it adds some color to a fairly drab scheme. He still leaves most of the color saturation on the base and with the rider, so maybe I'll paint the ornaments and see what I think after that. Teeth and claws still need color too, so that might start to make it feel more complete.

I spent a fair bit of time today using blue liner to draw in the scales that had no definition due to injection molding limitation. I also went through and highlighted scales in lighter blue-gray. Now I'm concerned that he's super boring looking. Seriously. I'm going to image search some lizards and see if I can rescue him from gray town.

The local Warhammer store is having their 1st Anniversary painting competition, so I'm painting up a Troglodon for the event. The theme is "hero" so the Skink Oracle on the back is the hero. So I'll be entering Skink Oracle (Suitably Aztec-sounding name), the Unflinching Gaze of Azyr. The oracle's body is the stock model from the Troglodon. I swapped the head for an old metal Skink Priest head. The head for the stock model suffers from the injection molding process, and doesn't have a lot of character from the side. The metal one has cracked lips and a more grizzled appearance. As much as I love the whole "bifurcation" thing this model has going on (fate's path diverges... the skink has a split tail, the Troglodon has a split tail, the divining rod the skink holds has a split end) I wanted the model to be a little more savage than that. Maybe he tells the future by bifurcating your skull and reading your spilled brains, I dunno. Here he is with his skink champion club. The feathers are regular paper, stuck into a small hole I drilled in the club and some very thin superglue wicked in for rigidity. For the base, I wanted a little drama, so I put a vignette of two skinks taking down a plaguebearer. The stones and fallen idol are sculpey, the plants and vines green stuff. The plaguebearer is a Plague Drone rider (I used the plague drone as a manticore for my nurgle sorcerer lord) cut up and reassembled to lay moderately flat. The plan was to make the plants by the plaguebearer withered in response to his proximity, but I haven't found a good color scheme to portray that. The darts are also intended to glow, but the yellow I chose just blends in too well with the colors of the plaguebearer. I'll probably switch to blue to make the osl noticeable. I decided on black eyes for the lizards with 1-2 white speculars. I think it makes them much more vicious looking than big pupil anime eye lizards. Contest ends in two weeks, so expect some Troglodon pics soon!

I submitted a couple entries for this painting comp, but never posted WIP here. Neither scored more than a vote or two but it got me painting my Nurgle models again, so I'm calling it a win.