Hordes Minions - Swamp Gobber and Totem Hunter

Painted

Last of the Hordes stuff for awhile. I painted these back in 2008 mainly to go along with Circle Orboros I've been showing lately and these round out the warband. Actually, maybe I'll try for a shot of the whole group so maybe another Hordes post coming soon after all.

I really like these gobber models and their fog effects in the game. Really happy with how they turned out. The rich green is thanks in part to P3 Necrotite Green, so strong no ink is needed! I did your classic red/green contrast thing here putting a number of different rich, reddish shades on them along with the obvious bandana, but I'm always really careful not to get anywhere near that Christmas feeling. I also try not to overdo the turquoise corrosian effect on copper but man, what a perfect excuse to do it here and it it's so easy to make it look great!

The totem hunter here is a rare Werner Klocke figure I've got few complaints about. In fact it's all good until you get to that skull, which I'm really kicking myself I didn't replace entirely. Well, that and his eyes on entirely on the side of his head, which makes him really ill suited as an, erm, predator. Man, and that's me trying to say something nice about the guy. ;) Anyway, pretty much followed the book illustration on this one. The weird blade gave some cool opportunities to blend with metallics and show some real contrast. I studied it under a strong light before painting and then followed what I saw.

These are on flickr per usual.

No one knows who they were, or what they were doing...

Painted: Druids of Orboros

Manufacturer: Privateer Press
Line: Hordes
Faction: Circle Orboros
Set: 72015 Druids of Orboros
Release date: 2006
Date painted: 2008

More of my Circle Orboros force to share with you today. I think these guys are pretty cool overall and they were an obvious choice for inclusion.

Conversions

I just really didn't care for the heads, which are way too round and way, way too large. That and PP couldn't even be arsed to foot the bill for six different ones. The heads are separate except for the leader, which is convenient in a way as you don't have to saw off the old ones, on the flip side the head pieces also include a fair bit of neck and even part of the cloak, so I had to fill in a fair bit and sculpt a few details. Below you can see the conversions. The black mist is because I was in a rush to prime these in the fading afternoon after getting home, and remembered just a second too late that I had wanted to get pics first. In addition to hoods and facial hair I also gave the old guy a bit of a paunch to set him apart from the skinny guy with the busted lip, and this meant redoing his oversized belt-buckle-armor-thing. I gave the leader a beard that juts out a bit like Leonidas is portrayed in the 300 graphic novel. The yelling guy turned out even better than I hoped, I really get the sense he drawing down the power from the heavens and eyes rolling back in his head he barely has it contained. Overall I'm really pleased with these, especially how they each have their own personality now—very unlike the originals!

Painting

I've already said some things about how I approached the painting of this force and these were done in the same way. When it comes to black, I recommend thinking about what material is represented and how it reflects light in real life. A rough black cloak is reflects a fair degree of light and appears fairly dull and light under the sun. I made the highlights fairly neutral but a bit on the warm side, giving them a more natural feel than the comic-book blue-for-black style Privateer made popular. The armor was meant to look burnished in a way similar to Celtic charms and trinkets I've seen in real life, and was done with the P3 Blighted Gold as a base, which is a dark green-gold and a unique color you'd be hard-pressed to get another way. The weapons and flesh were given a number of very thin glazes of brown ink with matte medium to really saturate/enrich the color.

Also I just want to throw this in somewhere that I much prefer the way the armor detail was sculpted on these figures than what became the set way later on in the range. Also, these are about as layered and encumbered as anyone can be expected to believe, but the later range kept weighing the druids down with silly stone things, glass baubles and weighty garb. Oh well.

For those interested there are many more individual shots in the flickr.

P.s. pardon me for the Spinal Tap reference, I couldn't help it, and anyway he did it first.

Stone Beasts

Painted: Woldwarden and Woldwyrds

Immoren is a dangerous place and my boy Baldur doesn't go far outside the neighborhood exept under the protective gaze of these golem-like constructions of wood and stone.

Manufacturer: Privateer Press
Line: Hordes
Faction: Circle Orboros
Figure: Woldwarden
Release date: 2006
Sculptor: ?
Date painted: 2008

Manufacturer: Privateer Press
Line: Hordes
Faction: Circle Orboros
Set: 72023 Woldwyrd
Release date: 2007
Sculptor: ?
Date painted: 2008

Let me know if you know the sculptor of these.

The paintjobs are canonical and the main area mine differ from the studio paint jobs is mine are a lot warmer, with richer tones as if under a summer sun. In a wicker object wicker is naturally going to be very dull, but I wanted the wicker parts here to seem supple and vigorously alive, and I also wanted them to contrast nicely with the green tones. So I made them very red, starting with Vallejo Back Red as a base, under the logic the beast creation recipe called for a special red plant, whether it was a kind of rattan or reed or what have you, and that further the life giving creation magic imbues this plant with an even greater luster, as if, giving it's life for the stone beast it dies in a way but nonetheless becomes more alive than ever. You know, that Lacanian thing, the death drive.

The ropes, meanwhile, were done greenish to represent hemp.

I also glazed the woldwarden with mossy green tones starting at the feet and fading upwards to make him more an element of the environment. He spends most of his day standing silent and watchful, and it should show as weathering.

The woldwyrds are easy to paint but that orb in the center is a clear focal point and needs a bit of care to get it right. A plain sphere is not the easiest thing to create forced highlights on so I recommend photo reference in cases like this. I spent a little extra time on these hoping have it look like they were focusing their energy to a single point from which a laser blast was about to be released. That's the whole point of these guys, after all, they fly around and shoot lasers.

At first I wanted to have one or both woldwyrds flying on flight stands, but thee thin and fiddly nature of the bottom of the figure made this a challenge, and I just wanted to get them painted as these were the last ones to get me to a finished force at the recommended mid-range points value. What was that at the time, 500 points?

The woldwyrds are stock but I did tweak the head of the woldwarden. The stock head is longer and has less depth. This was just an aesthetic choice. I cut down the chin and built out the back of the "skull," and then I had to dremel out neck cavity it rests in considerably, which took some time.

This is also a good chance to call out the bases. These guys are from the wood and more than most factions I see these guys fighting on their home turf, so forest bases are particularly fitting. I wanted the forest to be lush and dark, like you're under the canopy just at that window of time in the year when the ferns and mosses are their greenest, like the redwood forests surrounding my mother's house which I feel a particular affinity for. What I see as the success of the bases is due to a few factors. One, the temptation when painting ground is to drybrush it, to highlight all the little rocks etc. In the forest, however, the soil is moist and draws in the light. So first of all I used mostly concrete patch (which has a fine gritty texture) and fine sands. I then liberally put in patches of larger rocks (Woodland Scenics talus and course ballast) and debris (little bits of sage brush from Sweetwater Scenery Products, which sadly looks to have closed it's doors). The ground bits were painted a dark, rich brown (Folk Art Burnt Umber, and then brought up only to a slightly brighter hue, a really intense, warm mix of Folk Art Burnt Umber and Raw Sienna. This gave a good match for a redwood forest bed. The branches were picked out in a duller brown and some with greenish highlights as they were new-fallen, and the stones were done with Ceramcoat Hippo Grey (one of my favorite terrain colors) and then highlighted, probably with Ceramcoat Mudstone (another must-have terrain-grade paint). Next up, foliage, done with Noch static grass and AMSI foams of different shades. Many of the little bushes were then given rich green brushovers ("wet-brushing") with mixes including the awesome and electric p3 Necrotite Green (which also figures predominantly in the greens of the beasts themselves).

You'll also see I put faint stripes on the bases to mark the 180° field of vision, which is important in the game. Some folks like to draw attention to this on the bases and quite frankly I think it looks terrible most of the time. Instead, I like to use a dark color you can see easily when you're looking for it, but only when you're looking for it. In this case it was P3 Thornwood green, which is a highly recommended dark, warm, neutral.

As always, these and all my figures are on flickr.

Out for blood

Painted: Tharn Bloodtrackers

I mentioned the Ilyad War Wolf was the #1 reason I started a Circle Orboros Hordes warband. These savage ladies are reason #2. These hottie barbarian girls by Kev White are some of the best figures made for the game and they got the seal of approval from the GF, who favors Hordes generally above the other figures I paint but ones by Kev White over all comers.

I'll try not to overdo it with too many pics here, but I did take individual pics of all the girls which you can see in this flickr set if you're curious. Here are a few selections:

Painting

At the time (2008) I was painting commissions and really giving my all to each piece. With this personal project I was trying to be a little less demanding on myself and just go with the flow. That attitude kind of broke down painting these girls, though, as I had an extremely particular vision in my mind of how they should look, and in the end I exceeded even my hopes for them, but it took several times over the time I had hoped to spend on them and nowhere was I "going with the flow."

In a perfect world it would often be nice to be able to do a mockup of an idea one has before committing to it on a unit of figures. But that's not a luxury I can afford. Thankfully however, there is so much great art and so many photos that can be used as reference that I can often find a picture that matches what I have in my mind's eye—or exceeds it—and that was the case here. Here's a picture from Ashley wood I used as the inspiration for my flesh tones palette:

There was another picture I used for the overall palette, the greens and browns, and while I have my Circle Orboros inspiration gallery intact in Picasa with ~150 pics in it, that particular picture has gone missing.

At the time I always used a black undercoat, but because I wanted the flesh to really glow I went with white for these. I think that decision was one reason it took me so long to finish these. I would see these French painters come up with a beautiful result over white and I would balk when they said how short a time it took them. For me starting white has always meant more time and less predictability. At any rate, I couldn't be more pleased with these and it just goes to show that despite wanting to make it easier on myself for the personal projects, sometimes oneself is the toughest critic of all, and the hardest to please!

Some brief notes about the paints. The flesh was GW Elf Flesh first and then shading down through Bronzed Flesh to Dwarf Flesh and I believe P3 Khardic Flesh. Then a number of glazes of GW Flesh Wash (these are ~2005 era GW paints) with matte medium, and back up through Elf Flesh to P3 Menoth White Base and Menoth White Highlight, more glazes, more highlights etc. until they really glowed. Glazes made with GW Bestial Brown and GW Snakebite Leather (which is really yellow, and particularly great for glazes) figure predominantly all over the figure (including in the glazes for the flesh, come to think about it), and I also used some of the great P3 browns like Battlefield Brown and Bootstrap Leather (which is much more a subdued middle brown as compared with GW Snakebite leather).

As always, the collection can be viewed in its entirety at flickr.

Circle Orboros Warpwolf / Ilyad Warwolf

Converted and painted: Ilyad Warwolf to Circle Orboros Warpwolf

Next up is one of my favorite figures from my collection and the reason I started a Hordes Circle Orboros warband. As I was getting into the game when it first game out I went for Skorne first, but after getting bogged down in painting scheme, helmet swap and decal printing quandaries I decided to a smaller force that I would have fewer hangups about. Reading up on the Circle I liked quite a bit but didn't care for the Warpwolf model. However, I was immediately reminded of the awesome War Wolf figure by Ilyad, and Ilyad was on my brain already as they were going under and this would be my last chance to get the awesome "Vorag" barbarians and minotaurs. I lucked out and got pretty much everything I wanted on sale shipped from France (though despite the sale they wound up being more than I typically paid for figures of any kind).

But man, Ilyad figures beautiful, and the resin castings a joy for the most part. And by today's standards what I paid was pretty modest for any store-bought figures. Resin is one of those mediums that can be second-to-none in the hands of professionals like the original Armorcast team or Ilyad, or be a disaster like in the hands of Forge World, GW or the new Armorcast team. The detail on the Ilyad figs can't be beat. Gluing the arm of this beast on with no pin, no greenstuff, just CA glue alone, was a first for me. After gluing I could hardly see the join at all. Mold lines were virtually non-existent, and the gritty resin material files and sands down so much easier than any other medium. The Ilyad resin is light weight but sanding exposes some trace glints. I don't know about resin to tell if that is some kind of mixing agent like metal. There was one significant bubble area beneath one of the knees that I had to fill with greenstuff. Having looked over my other figures my thought is that a figure might pass QA if the bubble was in an easy to fill area on a larger figure. I haven't found any problems with detail areas. Faces, and armor, etc, the detail is simply better than metal, especially with regard to the pressure used to fill the mold. The volumes of the figures are fully fleshed out and don't have the squashed look that metal figures often have. And when you have a flat surface there is no concave surface like you have for Forge World, etc. All in all, superior to metal for this particular figure.

The finished figure:

Pardon the fuzzy focus on the head in some shots. Even with the f-stop as high it would go the heads juts a bit too far forward to get the whole thing in focus. Should have made sure I was focused on the head.

I was painting a lot of commission pieces around the time and in a commission piece I tend to want to make a crowd-pleaser, and I'm thinking about balancing the colors, creating a clear focal point, and giving it something a little extra to grab some attention. This one was just for me, and so I could make it just how I wanted without worrying about the critics (and as a side note in some ways when it's just for me I'm a tougher critic, but in other ways I'm a gentler one, it's a funny shift that way).

When it comes to wolves I've always liked black ones ever since I had recurring dreams of them invading my dream winter manor as a young child (courtesy of the book the Wolves of Willoughby Chase, but the wolves are sadly all but forgotten mid-way through the book, whereas in my dreams they would come time and time again).

Anyhow, painting nearly all black is a fair challenge in and of itself and I went with a warm neutral tone in the highlights. As usual I used photo reference which was crucial to get how the hair on the back can be brown and the chin white, and the color of the gums. The pale green eyes are also after a particular wolf. And despite the finished product being more subtle and minimal and not having the bells and whistles I decided to see how it would fare at Kublacon (2008 I believe) and I was really pleased to come home with a Best Conversion and Bronze Master Kubla.

Here are some WIP shots of the conversion. I don't have any protips for doing armored detail. I just kind of muddled through and am pretty pleased with them though think I could do better given another chance as I've honed my sculpting craft a bit since then. I also made shin guards but decided the concept of shin guards on a wolf was a little goofy. You can also see how nice the Ilyad resin is, along with how I filled a bit of a hole under the left knee.

As always, the collection can be viewed in its entirety at flickr.