RIDING THE LIGHTNING (Painting the Thunder)

Hello all! Welcome to The Missing H, a Malifaux Hobby Podcast!

I'm your host Rudy. Ken and Al will likely also be posting stuff, but for the most part these will all be individual projects and posts. The real talk... the skinny? ... Hm... The point of this blog is to replace the hobby section of the Mistakes Were Made podcast. Because talking about hobby is boring. Looking at hobby is interesting.

SO! Without further ado, the first entry to "RIDING THE LIGHTNING! (Painting the Thunders). I'm basically chronicling the next few months where I've tasked myself with painting everything I think I'm going to need/want for adepticon while maining the Ten Thunders faction.

... There's a lot to do.

Lynch, 2 Illuminated, Finish Shen and Yu, Hungering Darkness, 3-4 Guild Hounds, Yamaziko, Izamu, Yin, Damn Serpent, 2-3 Samurai, Lone Swordsman, High River Monks, Thunders Bros, a couple Torokage, Tengu, and also convert and paint a Jorogumo, a pair of obsidian Oni, two mechanized porkchops, a sparks, and a Shadowy Emissary. OH! And a Bishop Conversion! (dumb model...)

This may not be a comprehensive list. I'm sure I'm forgetting something. But. It gives you an idea of the enormity of this goal. My plan is to spend evenings and weekends (when I'm not working, drinking, gaming, or playing computer games....) painting things in some sort of prioritized lists. For instance- High river monks are great, but not auto includes. Ten thunders bros have become very important to me. One or two tengy will be nice. All three? A bit much. So, I'm not gonna write any of that down, I'll just sort of intuit it.

That being said, Mei, McCabe and Brewie are all done, so I've at least got some stuff to fall back on. But if I don't get there I could severely cripple my competitiveness.

SO! Long wordy stupid intro out of the way, here's what I've been working on these last couple weeks:

Assembly!

Firstly, I have a lot of things from either black friday or the Guardian Games "The IRS Sucks" sale to assemble. So I put some boxes together!

 Above, you see four guild hounds, and a primed Yamaziko. Yama got some special treatment I'll go into later. To my left and write, a faceless Izam the Armor.

Here we have what will become my Bishop Conversion on the left, and a Yin the Penangalan  on the right. Bishop's not quite done, I need to add something to make her a bit more.... street fighter-esque. I use a water effect for my standard Thunder Base scheme, so for Yin I wanted to create an effect of blood in the water, seen below.

 Left is a Dawn Serpent. I'm thinking about adding in a second, magnatized base to allow it to live on a 50mm base as well. Nothing too fancy- just a click on to let it be the emissary as well as the minion. Right is tengu. They were a fun kit, save for the fiddly mace the top bird is brandishing. I hate it when two parts of the straight object have to go together...
Below is a Torokage, I got her sans an arm, but got a new one from a multi part kit. She also got a little love from a new toy. News on that later.

 Strait up Paintin'!

 Shen Long Want to do his high river monks and Yu in orange, so I put him in muted blue to show conditioning, control, and contrast. Stripes on belt indicate rank. Made that up, I did. Finally, I decided to be a bit cheeky and give him my patented friendly mutton chops. I love a good pair of friendly mutton chops.

 Lynch- I didn't (don't?) actually know what I want to go with for the illuminated effect. But I have a hat and jacket very similar to these, so I figured I'd paint more things that are personal to me into the thunders.

Couple of process shots in there. Pants go grey, everything gets highlights and shadows, and eventually washed down. I didn't want the whole suit to be the same color, so I went with an ash grey pants, and a charcoal grey vest. Did a brick cobblestone, and a slate sidewalk with ooky shit coming out of the sewers for finishing touches.

 In Progress!

I've started a Torokage, and nearly finished a sensei Yu, just need to finish them out with some colors and deeper shadows and highlights for depth. On Yu, you can see my water base effect. For the Shen Long crew, I tried to incorporate water and these small river stones I collected on my way back from Michigan to Oregon.

A quick note! I recently started using a product called "Bondic Plasti-weld". It's kind of rad. My Mom found it for me for Christmas, it wasn't even on my radar. Originally I was super skeptic. I thought it was going to be like that 3d sketching pen thing where you draw with it and it air cools.... Not so.

Essentially it's a liquid that reacts to UV Light. It comes in a little tube with a metal applicator. It's sort of like one part of a two part epoxy- tacky, but more viscous than, say, super glue, but not malleable like a greenstuff putty.  The second part of the "epoxy" is a little LED UV light on the other end of the pen. Shine that thing on it from an inch or sow away, wave it over the patch a few times, and voila, it's rock sold. Takes a bit to paint it (Needed to re-prime...), but the seams and fills were suuuper easy that way. If you look at the Yamaziko up top, you'll barely notice the large seam that's usually right down the front of her kimono sleeve. And the arm on the unpainted, re-armed torokage had a huge hole. Can't even tell. now. VERY cool stuff.

OKAY! Rambly post is rambly!

I'm gonna get out of here for now. Feel free to leave comments, either here or @schuepbachr on the twitter! If you like what you see, spread the word. If you've got constructive criticism, feel free! Again, this is mostly so we can share the hobby aspect of malifaux through a visual medium, instead of via the airwave of Mistakes Were Made Podcast. Hope you enjoyed the first post. Hope I've got the drive to do more!

Rudy OUT