Monday 28 November 2016

Mega City - 1, the first batch

Hi all

after a little break due to mounting deadlines and a little Bushido tournament, I'm back painting the huge pile of lead and plastic sent to me by Bryan "Vampifan" Scott in his amazing giveaway!  Last time you saw the awesome ABC warrior "Hammerstein" - a 55mm giant robot, he bullied his way to the front of the painting queue because of his magnificence.  So what was next?  

Well, this time I had to clear some things up.  In among the unpainted glory was some 2000AD Indie 'clix with their factory paintjobs, this could not be allowed to stand! Now I'm not adverse to the basic jobs that the nice folks at 'clix do - usually, they are normally sufficient to game with until I can get around to adding some shade/highlights etc to better suit my sensibilities - usually.  Until Judge Fire came along and I knew I had to act....


This could not stand! I'm not sure what effect they were going for but it sure as heck didn't work. So into the stripping jar it went, however goodness knows what paint they use at 'clix because all that happened was that the base melted!!


The two Judges I chose to repaint at the same time were Judges Hershey and Dredd, these two weren't bad at all but still needed some work.  Anyway back to JF and I had to go back to the beginning, I had a choice here to either black undercoat and paint individual flames, which would be more like the comic strip of JF being a charred skeleton with flames licking up of it. But I felt the detail was too soft in places to truly get a good look going in this direction, so I thought I would go the other way and paint him as a being on fire completely and just improve the original paintjob. This isn't too far from the comic though as JF would often be consumed completely by fire when he was dishing out the hurt on a bigger scale!  So I went with the white primer.


Then going back to my usual way of painting flames, I had to think of where the source of ignition was.  This was a bit more difficult because essentially the source is within JF himself, so he then got another coat of paint this time a light yellow mix 


Unfortunately I forgot to take anymore WIP photos, suffice to say I used a orange brown to work up the flames and finished with red washes and a dark, smoky red for the tops of the flames and then pure white highlights throughout.

JH and JD had their uniforms repainted black and then a dark navy drybrush to finish. Their pads are a mix of GW's "knarloc" and "sybarite" green, washed in "thrakka" and highlighted back up. Then I used a shiny gold for the Eagle pads rather than yellow. New flesh tones to faces and a lightening of JH's hair tone and red trim around the edges of JD's helmet and voila...

base colours

all three finished except bases
 As I wasn't going to use these figures in a heroclix game, they needed to be rebased and I used some plain 25mm rounds.  I'm going to keep the bases simple in my 2000AD collection, so it was a simple sand and drybrush finish.  However having seen Bryan's excellent job on Hershey's base (see here) I decided to pinch the idea shamelessly.  Casting my gaze around my many boxes of bits and bobs I couldn't decide what to do, initially I was going to build a cantina table or something, then I thought about using the crumpled form of a defeated perp but I couldn't find a suitable mini, in the end I settled for a bit of girder made from a bit of sprue and then I added a crumpled newspaper from a sheet that Bryan had sent to me some time ago.







Hershey about to bravely (foolishly) land a kick on Fire!


so those are the first three models sorted. I have a few more on the table including a med judge and a couple of SJS judges, Zarjazz times ahead!!

hope you enjoy
dGG

23 comments:

  1. Great job, the flames have come out rather will in my opinion.

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    1. Thanks Michael, difficult with the flames as there was no obvious source of ignition!

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  2. Terrific stuff Andy, and I was especially interested in how you painted your Judge Fire. Having had a flame dabble myself a few months ago I think yours have come out very well indeed. the Judges look super too!!!

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    1. Thanks Simon, he came out fairly decently in the end, now to crack on with the other Dark Judges!

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  3. Those are well done especially the flame work!

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    1. Appreciate it Fran, I was a bit worried that he was too yellow!

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  4. Excellent work, Andy. Judge Fire is not an easy figure to paint. I'll be showcasing mine very shortly but it isn't the Indyclix version. Both him and your Judges look so much better with their repaints. Judge Hershey being raised up has come out superbly well. She is still one of my all-time favourite figures of any range and I'm so pleased to see you have done her proud.

    Oh, I'm very much looking forward to seeing your Med Judge, who I thought you'd have painted first.

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    1. He certainly isn't! I did threaten to repaint him multiple times but shied away each time. I think they look better (bias ;-)) since the repaint. The basic ones on the judges were fine as was, but I wanted to bring them up (imho) so that they were mine and consistent with the unpainted ones. Hershey's base was inspired by your own of course, so that was good timing on your part ;-P

      Med Judge is next post, I had to repaint JF first as the paint job was doing my head in....... And JD and JH were test minis for my paint scheme.

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  5. Nice work on all three figures Andy, I think you might be the fourth owner of Dredd and Hershey, as I bought them off of Ebay, then as I had no use for them I think they are the ones I sent Bryan, and he has passed them on to you as part of your prise. Nice to see them getting a repaint. Musical figures anyone?;-)

    Cheers Roger.

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    1. These were indeed the ones you sent me, Roger, so you are spot on about "musical figures!"

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    2. The music I'm glad to say has stopped with me as the WINNER!!

      Whooohoooo!

      Thanks Roger for your generosity which fuelled Bryan's generosity which will be paid forward in my own have no doubt!

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  6. Each figure is an improvement on the hero clix and so it should be. But they are a vast improvement not a tiny improvement. I also like the fact that they are now on "Normal" and not Clix bases. A minor point but that in my mind at least is a batter solution.

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    1. Thanks Clint, I intend to rebase all of the 'clix figs when they're done. They look much better imho

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  7. Nice repaints and basing.

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  8. Well, done on the repaints, Dredd looks very good but I don't like Hershey's stance, still she's another one done!

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    1. Thanks zab, I like her but I appreciate that everyone has their own ideas on what constitutes a good model.

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  9. That original Judge Fire was truly horrible, wasn't it? Your version is so much better :-) .

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    1. Absolutely horrible C6, you can see why he had to jump the queue even in front of my Med Judge!

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  10. Very nicely done, Andy. Rebasing and repainting 'clix does not only make them more useful, as they fit in with the rest of your figures, but also highlights the fact that most of them are pretty nice sculpts. Obviously, not all of them (Umar, i'm looking at you...), but the majority.

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    1. True Jez, v true. The dark judges that follow will highlight that too.

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  11. I DO wish I had that Heroclix Dredd mini. I could find an immediate use for him. Nice, really nice. Again, while we here do not follow JD in any way (though Hils did once long loooong date the guy who created him) all this Dredd mania of late has inspired us to step up our `next to do` projects list... and make even further plans for our 2017 semi clix Gotham City world-verse.

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    1. Cool look forward to seeing your project come to fruition! Blame Bryan for the Dredd mania, it's his fault I started this project and of course I'm now reading all the Dredd case files online and watching Dredd the film which is awesome of course (sequel please!) and the fan film - Judge Minty and am looking forward to the Strontium Dogs fan film....

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