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!