A jump into the infinity

 The day has arrived! After many years I've dared to dive into Infinity [you may insert a scared emoji at will]. I played Aristeia earlier this year, and I totally got the itch for the Infinity universe.

A pal of mine got the Code One: Operation Kaldstrom box, and he commissioned me to paint it. The challenge was highly motivating, as I had been toying myself with the idea of getting into the game for long. I guess there's no point in highlighting the obvious, as everybody knows by now, but... Oh, the minis! The minis!

They really are like nothing I had painted before. The whole design itself, the proportions (oh, why are those heads so small? Why are those hands so tiny? How come the guns fit into those hands??), the level of detail... It's everything about them.

The core box comes with two forces, Panoceania (galactic superpower) and Yu Jing (upcoming fierce rival). I decided to paint Panoceania first, just to get acquainted with the models.

Just seven of them. This can't be that complicated, right?

Oh my. I truly had to reinvent myself as a painter. I'm sooo used to Games Workshop, and specially to old models, that these were a totally unknown challenge to me!

First thing was to find out the correct proportions for colours on my mix. I came to this basic combo:

Crude colours, just to get my mind oriented to the final result

The minis asked for proper highlights, and it took some time for me to get them right, but in the end I was happy with the general direction of this thing:

Seriously, this guy is pure GI JOE. Change my mind

After endless trial-and-error days, I finally declared myself satisfied. This is how they were going to look like:

I finally found an use for that 00 brush!

I gave little concession to metals on the weapons. I knew I didn't want them to look like WH40K bolters, with a lot of bare metal everywhere (in fact my first instinct was to leave them totally black), but in the end I painted the magazines, barrels and so in metallics.

There are more hours involved here than those the pic suggests

Operation Kaldstrom is supposed to take place in a winter environment, so the bases should be covered in snow. However, my pal told me he didn't planned that, but urban bases, just to match his boards. Then I had to face a particular issue. This mini came with a metal piece for the base, which clearly represents open, irregular field.

Don't know what it is, but it doesn't look specially urban

So I had to improvise a solution:

No, I don't have a clue of how that beam ended there, or why. It simply exists

BTW, a pic of the cloak, to show the Templar cross (I'm currently not sure if that's accurate, please any background expert can tell? I've just read it's the Order of the Hospital?)

Still need to read everything about their fluff

But well, I think this covers pretty much all I did here. Let me show pics of the finished models:

Fusiliers

Orc troop (not a Greenskin at all) and Nokken (SpecOps guys)

Knight of Justice and Infirmarer

Here you have them all:

I may still add some detail to the bases. Rubble or stuff. But for now this is it. Quite an experience! I'll breathe some air before I start the Yu Jing guys, but I don't want them to stay on the bench for long...

Bots on the blog

I'm sure all of you fellow bloggers will be thinking of the same thing when you read the title. But don't fear, I'm not here to rant about those ******* bots that write those annoying messages or those that forced you to put measures on the comments on your blogs.

No, today I'll talk about decent bots. Rogue Trader robots, in fact (monocle on).

I mean this

The only bots worth of our time

I'm working on another project (will show soon!), but wanted something simple to paint, something I could start & finish in a few days in the meanwhile. I had these beautiful robots and felt like spilling some paint on them.

Not looking impressive yet

They are a Cataphract and a Colossus. You can see I had some bits missing and had extra right arms instead, so I had to provide a couple of arrangements to make this work. The Colossus is usually seen with a huge hammer on its left arm, but I didn't have any, so I used this Thunder Hammer from a modern Terminator. Here you can see the bare conversions:

Not the same, but will do

Dreadnoughts' little cousin

I thought of cutting and repositioning some arms, bending the elbows or something like that, but cutting just the first arm for the hammer was enough for me, so I went for the unmodified poses.

I know that nowadays everybody uses subdued palettes and desaturated colours, with tons of oils, pigments and so, showing all the minis like really battered and with heavy weathering. But really, what's the point of having Rogue Trader minis and doing that? I had a clear vision in my mind. 

Oldscholars fear not colour

OK, I'l let you a few moments to breathe.

You good? Let's keep on. I'm boldly going where no one has gone in the last twenty years. Some washes and highlights later, they looked a little bit better:

The hammer looks more convincing now, I hope

I've been always fascinated by the fact of these monsters bearing a mere bolter

Now that I had started my path, it all was a matter of adding details. I painted checkers here and there and made the riskiest decision of this project, which was painting fierce faces on the lascannons. Many dioptres later I got some cheesy, stupid faces. Not what I aimed for, but at table distance you won't see the difference, trust me (I hope so!!)

Damn, that area is small

Kind of Super Mario Banzai Bill vibe

Well, little else. I thought I could use some Adeptus Mechanicus decals, and I made some extensive use of them! This is the final result:

The author cannot take responsibility for any viewer's epilepsy condition

Decals, decals everywhere

Oh, no decals! Quick, keep turning!

Oh, there you are again

A final size comparison shot:

How come that guy looks so grey?

I don't know how I'll use them, but the first thing that comes to mind is the retinue for a Rogue Trader. I'll give a thought to that.

In the meantime, praise the Omnissiah!

Eru-Kin

 This was supposed to be a quick side project, a palette cleanser I could handle in a week or so, two weeks top. Then life got in the middle and here I am, just a month later. Ouch.

All these were part of a kickstarter campaign by Diehard Miniatures, too many years ago. I've been postponing them for too long, but I finally managed to put them on the bench. This Space Lizards have of course nothing to do with Slanns in Space and it's of course far from my thoughts to establish any relation between these concepts or Rogue Trader setting or whatever. No, seriously, they are enormously cool by themselves, I'll let you judge.

Jules and Vincent

My first move was priming them white and keeping the bodysuits and armour like really white. Then I painted the common elements, such as straps, skulls, clothes and so.

I was avoiding to paint the skin for no particular reason, but in the end I think it's due to my previous work on World of Twilight stuff. That project purposedly involves bright skin and eye-harming patterns, but this didn't need to be like that, I could use some gaudy colours, sure, but some earthy tones as well. So I did both.

I should have added an epilepsy warning

The models are enormously satisfying. They have an old school aura that makes them quite appealing to me.

What's not to love about this guy?

He looks like he's gonna enjoy kicking your butt with this

I had some dilemma bout the eyes. Making them just black (as the pic above) looked good, they were quite menacing, but in the end I tried more lizard-y eyes.

I found that this tone of green suits every other colour I used on the skins

I wanted (I really wanted) to paint some glyphs or Slann-like decorations on the clothes, armour and weapons, but my poor eyes and my poor pulse voted against it, so I just settled for some very simple geometric patterns. I fear that MidLifeCrisis.exe may be on the edge of trying to install itself on the system, but I still resist. The ophtalmologist just refused to put some glasses on me last week, saying it still wasn't worth of it, but I'm afraid I'm beginning to find it hard to paint some details on the minis. The good part of it is that I can put the blame on that, instead of poor painting skills!

OK, enough ranting, let's go for the finished guys:

Tech-Mage

Warrior leader

With a fabulous feathered shield

Yet carrying a gun, just in case

Another more tech-looking leader

With essentially the same shield, without feathers

Mag-gun wariors

Still no idea of what profiles I'll use for them or their weapons

I still have some concerns about the palette. I think I may have been bewildered by my idea of painting them in immaculate white, both bodysuit and helmets. I feel like the minis would have benefited of some more colour variation between both. I painted the weapons in bone/beige to provide more colour, but I still have some doubts about making them all so white. Anyway, that's the way they are now, so I have to move on.

Colour! More colour!

No matter how much they run, I still have the same feelings

Finally, the Mag-staff guys

I tried to make them look specially uniformed

Which is kind of difficult if people start to came to work with these helmets on

Yet they look professional

I'm using these last four as bodyguards, as they look quite suitable for that. The VIP Very Important Lizards they are scorting are these other gorgeous fellows, one from the Colony87 ranges and the other a conversion from World of Twilight:

Ambassador and Merchant. Or vice versa

So this is how all my Space Lizards (to date) look:

I know, I need a proper backdrop. I have to solve that!

I hope I can resume my normal hobby rate soon, stay tuned!

Mining dump truck

 Ha, I guess you have already forgotten that I have a Genestealer Cult in their own mining settlement! Well, I still don't have a proper mining settlement, but you know, I'm slowly building it. But never mind! I have a Genestealer Cult and it keeps on growing. With that idea in mind I got this kit some time ago. It's the Humpt1 Dumpy by Miniature Scenery.

I had never purchased anything from them, but the pics on their web were awesome and I had read some nice reviews, so I gave them a chance. I'm tremendously happy with the quality of the kit, lo please let me share :)

Like any other MDF kit, it requires some patience to assemble. I have to say that it's not particularly complicated, but it takes some time, as it has quite a lot of pieces everywhere.

Well, these are just the tyres. You can certainly get tired too soon

But if you endure, you can get some more complex shapes

And they eventually turn into something that finally makes some sense

The assembly instructions expresely recommend you to paint the cab now, as it will apparently get more difficult to do later. Experience in life has taught me that, if a manufacturer gives you any piece of advice, it is wise to follow it. Kind of a fortune cookie sentence, I guess, but true nevertheless.

So let's paint it then!

I thought it also was the right moment to add a driver. I couldn't build an accurate 4th generation hybrid with my current bits; you know, the kind of bloke that can take the risk to expose himself among regular Imperial citizens. Well, this will have to do:

Anyway, no one pays attention to the driver

No one will even note his feet

I decided that, if I had to paint this part, I could as well paint the rest as I assembled it.

So here you have the basic shape

Miniature Scenery produce some other variants of this kit. They all share this basic structure and vary on the rest. It's very cleverly designed (which you can see in the sprue too) and I guess that having different models also enhances a WH40K feeling, as they all look like part of a common Standard Template Construct, just like it happens with different variants on a Rhino or a Chimera chassis.

In this case, it's a dump truck (you may have guessed that by the name of the kit). The dump body itself is amazing. Once built it hardly looks like a MDF kit.

Some hours involved

Painted in regular custard yellow

There's a joint on the side that reveals the MDF pieces. I simply glued a cardboard on it on which I painted the usual Fodinae Conlegium ('Mining Guild') sign. My handwriting with brush is awful, of course. I should have designed it on the computer and printed it, but I was on my own personal rush, you know how these things happen.

It will have to work

OK, time for heavy weathering! My usual recipe is to give a brown wash (why on Earth is it called 'wash' if the model gets dirtier?), then some darker brown stains and finally a burned brown layer with a sponge:

OK, now it looks like being used on a mine in the Dark Millenium

The plate is a decal from a model kit. The 'DOG' is from this kit and had me laughing for ten minutes

I could have added bits or stuff, but I think it works nice as it is

However, I still think I could add some rocks or something in here

The truck is a real monster, let me show you a size comparison pic alongside some regular infantry and my other special stuff of the Cult:

I seriously need a proper backdrop to take pics

Well, this is it. The kit is highly enjoyable and reasonably easy to assemble, so if you were thinking of getting some stuff from Miniature Scenery, I definitely encourage you to do so. The only thing you may have to consider is shipping. In my case, I could expect that sending stuff from Australia to Europe would involve some custom issues (minor setback, I expected it to be much more expensive). But, foreseeing that I would have to pay customs, I wouldn't of course just order a single kit, I took the chance to purchase some more stuff. So... you can expect some more MDF kits in the future ;)