Sniper and Ghillie suit

With the CHARON and the landing pad pretty much completed, I prepared the characters.
For this I mounted each on a small rod, that I can mount on a piece of wood.

Really helpful for spray painting the base coat.


Since I really want to know how the sniper turns out, I started with him.
First was a quick brush of Terracotta,

followed by Bronzed Flesh,

and Scorched Brown, as well as some spots of a 1:1 Scorched Brown and Chaos Black mix.

The rifle was based with Snakebite Leather and then a pattern of Tanned Flesh, Elf Flesh, and Scorched Brown.

The base color for the skin was Dwarf Flesh, and the shows as well as the respirator received a coat of dark grey.

With these base colors I wanted to see if/how the Ghillie camouflage would work on the Dencara landscape.

For this I used the baseplate of the THANTALOS diorama ( http://fischers-design-shop.blogspot.com/2007/12/contest-entry.html ).

Besides the Sniper is the Sergeant of the Dencarian storm troopers in his camo.

I think the Ghillie works perfect, doesn't it?

I still have to work some more on the shadows (giving him an inking of Devlan Mud),

and once dried I will ink some spots with Gysiphone Sepia,

and then work out the details.

But all in all I'm satisfied with the Ghillie suit.

Cheers

klaus

Little Black Bird (2)

Thanks guys :)
Well as I mentioned, I kind of dreaded repeating the tigers face on the other side. So I decided to give the custome decals another try.
I took a very good photo of the painted face, mirrored it, and then printed it on the decal paper and sealed it with the decal film.

And then I applied the decal to the fuselage.

Worked out very nice. It is a bit more yellowish, due to the lighting,

but in the end the two fit together very well and saved me a good two hours of work :)

Then I added another decal :)

And with this the basic paint job was pretty much done. I added a quick wash of Grisiphone Sepia.

And then I started the paint chipping. For this I selected a grey-blue as the base color of the CHARON, so the chipped black paint would reveal that blue undercoat.

As the scene is happening towards the end of long battle campaign against the Dencarian Orks, the "Tiger Taxi" is quite worn and ridden.

After the applying the blue shapes, I started to add the highlights of these shapes - simulating the raised corners between the lower blue and the higher black paint.

Its rather tedious, but I think the result proves it worth.

And after the highlights, there need to be lowlights, simulating the shadow of these corners.

Then I removed the masking tape on the doors, to check for any mismatches and missing paint.

There were several spots I had to fix, but that was easy business :)

And then, to even things out, I applied a coat of varnish over the whole chopper.

The result was very pleasing...

...but a hidden desaster had stuck the CHARON!

When I realized it I was close to throwing the whole project into the trash can!

After the varnish coat had cured, I removed the masking tape from the windows...

GASP!

Since the doors were open, some of the drizzle went into the chopper and settled on the inside of the windows...

I couldn't believe how stupid I was!

This was soooo f*ked up!

I had no clue how to fix it, or what to do.

To calm myself back down, I decided to continue with the diorama base.
So I taped the envisioned markings off.

and applied the basic grey paintjob with some wear and tear as well as basic shading.

And with the CHARON it looks like this.

In the next step I taped off everything but the planned markings and sprayed these in yellow.

Then I applied red stripes with a brush.

And after de-masking it looks like this.

I applied the chipped paint patterns again

And besides the ATHENA bridge section, it shows that the two are just made for each other :-)

This result calmed me down enough to tackle the window issue.

So I started off with cutting the windows back out.

And then I carefully replaced the windows.

Also taking the chance and adding a little damage to the windshield.

Since I broke several pieces off, and I had to remove the pilots door, to access the side window, I took the opportunity to re-mount the door in the open position.

Even though it wasn't originally planned this way, I realized that the work on the cockpit and pilot were completely lost with the closed door.

I think this was the right decision.

And then it was showtime again, placing all the pieces together on the base.

Despite the setback with the windows,

it comes together quite nicely.

So, that's it for today - 44 images :)

Cheers

Klaus