Basing and painting for Hive Fleet Balor.

Very cool and inspirational model by The LeadHead.  See also: the making of.

Hey all, Chaosheade here again.  I've kind of been neglecting my blogging lately but it's mainly because I've been getting a ton of modeling done which is pretty awesome.  Also my nice big LCD monitor went belly up so I'm working with an old CRT monitor until I can afford a replacement, but that's another story.  Back on topic, I finally decided how I'm going to base my army and I have a slight tweak in the paint scheme that I think will work better with the bases.  Details after the jump.

First off: basing.  When I was considering which basing scheme to pick my main concern was finding something that would go well with my painting scheme but fluff was a consideration as well.  Jungle/forest bases could go well with the fluff of my army since it is mostly a pod army and would likely be landing on unspoiled worlds ready to be stripped of all their biomass.  Unfortunately, greens and lots of crazy colors would probably not work well with my color scheme so that idea was scrapped.  A couple other ideas I had was a desert scheme that would sort of match the slightly beige tone of the skin or a gray rocky ground that would be more of a neutral color.  Both of those ideas would work but I decided to kick it up a notch with something really cool and decided to go for snow bases, probably on top of the gray rocky ground.

I have always thought that snow bases were really cool (Hah! Get it?) but I've also been a bit intimidated by the idea for some strange reason.  Don't ask why, I don't know, and after looking up a few ways of making snow bases it doesn't seem too hard and can be done very inexpensively.  It will work well with the updated paint scheme which I will get to shortly and, although it isn't specifically fluffy, it's not unfluffy either.  Instead of landing on a lush jungle world with lots of biomass to consume they land on an ice world that also has biomass to consume.  As long as there is biomass to be consumed the Tyranids will be there to consume it.  The picture at the top of the post is great inspiration for snow bases although most of my models will not be on top of huge rocks, and that's all I've got to say about that.

This is my paint scheme.  There are many like it but this one is mine.
Actually that's not entirely true.  I'm going to change it up a bit so this will not be it exactly.

In the above picture you can see my original plans for my paint scheme.  I still really like the blue carapace with purple fleshy bits and the yellowish-green eyes.  As I mentioned previously, I am planning to make my basing and painting work together rather than just being thrown together without regard for each other.  Almost everything you see here will stay the same but after deciding to go with snow bases I also decided that instead of going for colors that work together on the model, I wanted to go for an overall "feel" for the army.  To further explain this last point, I currently have the cool tone blue and purple purple working together since they are analogous colors with the warm tone off-white flesh with the yellowish-green for contrast.  My new plan is to change the skin color to gray and go for a very cold feel to the army using only cool tone or neutral colors but keeping the yellowish-green to make the eyes and other various details really pop.  Something more like this:

And here's my attempt to use Photoshop to show what the model might look like with the new paint.  It's not the best picture but it should give you some idea.  Not pictured: snow basing.

Obviously there will be more shading than the picture shows since it's a quick photoshop chop job and not an actual painted model.  I ordered a set of Iwata airbrush paints with a wide range of grays and will be doing the same zenithal highlighting technique going from a darker gray underneath to a lighter gray at the top and I will be adding a payne's gray wash which is a gray-blue color to get into the crevices and help define the different parts of the model.  Probably 3-4 different shades of gray with the wash sprayed on before the final very thin layer of the lightest color sounds pretty solid to me.  I think I have finally found a painting and basing scheme that will really work.  I might make a couple tweaks once I get some paint on a few models but I'm pretty sure there won't be any more major changes.

That's all I have for today.  Coming soon: Zoanthrope tutorial, a big hobby progress update, and my first FAILcast experience.  Please feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think of the idea or just let me know just how generally awesome you think I am.  Thanks for coming out and I'll catch you on the flip side.