The beginnings of an Emperors Children Army (pic heavy)

[Ap0k]

Hi folks, it's been a while since I posted here (not least due to the fact the boards were down for a good while), but I've recently been working on my new EC army. It's ever so slowly coming along, but I'm pleased with progress so far. It's planned as a display army, running along the lines of 'Every man a hero' (well.. villain), so there won't be any unconverted mini's in it at all. For anyone who may be interested, I've been blogging the progress over at the Relicnews forums, so a link to that can be found here

 

Anyway. The project started off with me building this pleasant chap. A combination of WHFB boobworm parts, some khemri swords for the twin bladed axe, and menghils sword from the Dogs of War. There are various other easily identifiable pieces that I won't list.

 

http://www.xanadu-community.com/sfh/494/updatedlord.jpg

The image above shows the current position of the Chirurgeon arms, since I had some feedback on the old position (shown below) and the fact that it made him look a little too top heavy.

http://www.xanadu-community.com/sfh/494/conv1.jpg

 

And an older shot of the scale compared to a normal marine:

http://www.xanadu-community.com/sfh/494/convscale.jpg

 

He's been sitting just below my monitor for a while now, since I want to leave painting him until mid project. This gives me the opportunity to add any additional details I think of between now and then, and allows me to get a little further into the theme of the army. Additionally, it means I don't suffer the 'Ha, I've done the mega character, now I can half-ass the rest of it' syndrome.

 

Next up, my first Noise Marine.

http://www.xanadu-community.com/sfh/494/noise1fini.jpg

http://www.xanadu-community.com/sfh/494/noise1fini2.jpg

 

The blue tubing has since been defined a little further, so it looks something similar to how the most recently finished ones tubing looks.

 

And the next (and most recent) one.

http://www.xanadu-community.com/sfh/494/noise2fini1.jpghttp://www.xanadu-community.com/sfh/494/noise2fini2.jpg

http://www.xanadu-community.com/sfh/494/noise2fini3.jpghttp://www.xanadu-community.com/sfh/494/noise2fini4.jpg

 

The apothecary bit represent his power fist, but I haven't really gone out of my way to define him as an Aspiring Champion in the visual sense. I figure that doing so gives him a big 'shoot me!' sign, and also because I don't want to raise the bar too much from my normal marines, otherwise I'll have to do something huge as far as painting the Lord goes (eventually).

 

What you see above represent about 4 weeks work so far. Each marine taking around 15 hours (give or take) from undercoat to completion. At this rate it'll be a while before they are finished, but hopefully they should look great on the table as well as individually.

 

I've also built the 3rd marine.

http://www.xanadu-community.com/sfh/494/noise3wip1.jpghttp://www.xanadu-community.com/sfh/494/noise3wip2.jpg

 

He'll be recieving his undercoat shortly, and then it'll be time to get stuck in. Apologies for the long post, and hopefully I haven't broken any image related rules in posting this (I checked, but couldn't find anything regarding maximum number of images).

 

Looking forward to hearing some comments and/or criticism.

[blamb]

i love that paint work. and the lord looks cool

[Grimdarkness]

Wow

 

In the hands of a skilled painter the pink on the noise marine looks right they look great.

 

Grimm

[Brother Christian Koehler]

I must say, I am thoroughly impressed. That is some absolutely fantastic work.

 

While the first figure seems a tad bit spindly, it is all in the snake-like body that the Chaos lies, and because of that, completely makes up for it. (That was a horrific sentence.) The Noise Marines are incredible. Inspiring and colorful, yet dark and brooding thanks to the pink highlights and dark purple. I'm jealous. :P

 

Keep up the good work!

 

BCK

[Frozenflame]

That's an amazing start to an EC army. The colour scheme is a little different than normal as well. Good job

[angel robertson]

stunning.

 

how are you painting your gold?

 

cheers

 

AR

[Obliterator]

Sweet noise marines! The pink and gold are stunning! The rocks are also very sweet :jaw:

 

Just a minor crit though: I don't like how some of these guys are balancing on a few small rocks (your first noise marine for example), it looks like they scanned the battelfield for the easy areas to stand on, skipped those and looked for a few unstable rocks to fire their big guns from.

[Gorin]

Gorgous :jaw:

 

I really like your pink, looks great much better than the "traditional" one IMHO

 

Keep up good work

[Brother Renn]

I'm not a big fan of the EC, but I have to say that your color scheme is superb. Your blending skills are excellent, and I really like the dark pink scheme.

 

Great job.

[khorneberzerker]

I already seen these on Relic about a month ago but amazing work.

[Raziellycas]

Coool!!! :jaw: I love your master, bad-snake-like-demon :jaw: and your paint work is great, very effective gold and nice idea purple instead pink. A great work

[firestorm40k]

Outstanding, I think they're awesome conversions and very well painted! :jaw:

[BigJon]

Nice work, care to share a step by step on the paint job, I would love to know how you got the purple looking like that.

 

BigJon

[Commander Biguss Brutus]

Fantastic work and really inspiring me to sort my EC out. Great scheme, amazing models cant wait to see some more :blush:

 

I too would like to ask about how you did the gold

[the_raptor]

Those are the best EC I have ever seen. You actually make the purple work, normally it just looks clownish.

[Ap0k]

Woah, I wasn't expecting this much of a response! Thanks very much all for the kind words. It's greatly appreciated.

 

As far as the painting goes, I hope you don't mind if I copy the relevant sections out of my blog, since some of the steps are a bit elongated, so it saves me having to type them out again :blush:

 

Purple.

At the start of the project I concocted a 50/50 mix of Chaos Black/Liche Purple, to use as my 'base' coat (since I work everything up from shadow, rather than a mid tone, then shading and highlighting).

 

I'll name this 'Chaos Purple', for the purposes of the example.

Basecoat - Chaos Purple

Highlight 1 - 1:1 Chaos Purple:Liche Purple

Highlight 2 - 1:2 Chaos Purple:Liche Purple

(this stages gets me to the very dark purple you see most prominently on the lower legs. Basically before I start doing actual highlights).

Hightlight 3 - Liche Purple (The first edge highlight, generally of decent thickness, but very transparent. Takes a few layers to bring the colour up)

Highlight 3 - 2:1 Liche Purple:Tentacle Pink (The first of my extreme edge highlights, basically just to help the blend from Mid Purple tone to hard pink)

Highlight 4 - 1:1 Liche Purple:Tentacle Pink. (The final, and very extreme edge highlight. This builds on the previous layer, giving me a slightly brighter look).

 

Gold.

The Gold areas were first basecoated black. I put on a few thin layers of Shining Gold after this. Didn't overly concern myself with an even coverage, since the Purple Ink that I applied next would sort that out. Once the ink was dry I went back over, more carefully with a thinned Shining Gold, until the colour was smooth. Highlighted first with a 50/50 Shining Gold/Mithril Silver Mix, and then finally pure Mithril on the edging.

 

The blue tubing is first given a coat of Regal Blue, which I then highlight the outside facng areas up into pure Ice Blue. I don't have a hard and fast ratio for this, since normally I just mix ice blue into my pallete until it's obviously lighter, then line it in. Usuall takes about 3-4 steps of consecutive highlights. Once all this has been done, I hit the whole thing with blue ink, which helps tie the blends into eachother, and defines the recesses, and once the ink is dry I do a final highlight of pure Ice Blue on the raised sections, to bring the highlight back up a little.

 

 

I think that about covers most of the main colours, though I'd be happy to go into further detail if needs be.

 

As far as Oblit's 'standing on conveniently placed rocks' statement goes, I agree with that. I noticed it after the first one was finished, so I've been trying to use more tiles on the bases now (as is a little more apparent in the most recent conversion) to try and balance the squad out as far as basing goes, and make it look like they are standing on the ruins of an old building. Though who's to say the first ones platform isn't buried 5 feet under the ash, which might make it quite stable indeed :huh: Lame reasoning aside, thanks for pointing it out. The trick now is to prevent myself doing it again.

 

 

Longish post this time, so I'll leave it at that. Again everyone, thank you for the kind words. It's great to see them recieved well.

[Thunder_god]

That is a very striking looking army. Your highlighting on the purple is most well done.

 

I like the sepretine champion as well. That really ties in the Slaaneshi feel of the army.

[Grand Master Braxx]

:blush: :huh: :D Man, your work is incrediable dude. I've never seen an EC army look that good. That's inspiring me to take my time painting my iron warriors so they look good. If I can paint them even half as well as you paint, i would be happy. Great work dude. Not sure about your lord though. He's impressive, but the whole snake thing just doesn't work for. maybe I'll have a change of heart when he's painted.

[refuse]

Sweet noise marines! The pink and gold are stunning! The rocks are also very sweet :blush:

 

Just a minor crit though: I don't like how some of these guys are balancing on a few small rocks (your first noise marine for example), it looks like they scanned the battelfield for the easy areas to stand on, skipped those and looked for a few unstable rocks to fire their big guns from.

They are so bad arse that the ground rises up to meet them.

 

Or they are so evil, the ground retreats under them, leaving only rocks (incapable of moving) to walk upon.

 

Think of foot prints of bare spots (i.e. rocks) that they ahve touched.

 

 

All that said,

They are an honor to Slaanesh.

[Obliterator]

All that said,

They are an honor to Slaanesh.

 

Aye, that I agree with...

[Doomed Dice Thrower]

The lord and the marines are e x c e l l e n t.

 

May I ask how you made the purple on the marine armour? My guess is purple wash on black. But I thought that there is no more purple wash selled by GW...

[Raziellycas]

:huh: excuse me but there is a thing that I never understand, why the emperor children marines are called noise marines? I can understand why plague marine are called in that way, they are rotten, decaying, sickness bearer, but why noise marine? they also have sonic weapons that I can't real understand :blush:

[-][-Danek-][-]

Those are without a doubt the FINEST EC's I've ever seen.

 

The subtlety of the runes on the armor.

The richness of the purple and gold.

 

Awe-inspiring.

 

The Lord is an absolute BEAST.Very intimidating and masterfully done.I think the re-positioning of the Chiurgion arms was a good idea.He seems ready to pounce.

 

 

Please keep this up to date as often as possible,and welcome to the B&C.

[Cabal]

This is truly fantastic. Beautiful work!

[Doomed Dice Thrower]

:devil: excuse me but there is a thing that I never understand, why the emperor children marines are called noise marines? I can understand why plague marine are called in that way, they are rotten, decaying, sickness bearer, but why noise marine? they also have sonic weapons that I can't real understand :blush:

 

Ah, you see, the EC, like all worshippers to Slaanesh, are very extreme. In a way, you can say that they're perverts. They love all that is extreme, extreme pain, extreme agony, pretty all sensual extreme impressions.

They're not only giving it, they often receive it happily. They enjoy even their own agony.

Noisemarines have sonic weapons which cause extreme, deadly frequenzies. To be a victim of such an attack must be horribly painful (I've been on enough Heavy Metal and Hard Rock concerts to approve that.).

Now, it's generally known that the Noise marines aren't immune to their own weaponry. In fact, they do everything to improve their sensitiveness for acoustic noise to have this sensual impression as extreme as possible.