Mini Painters

Cryx work in progress shots

Thanks to the four day weekend, i've spent a bit of time working on my Cryx scheme and trying to decide whether I like it or not.   Although I like the purple, I decided that the armour didn't look good purple so i'm going to go with plain metal for most of the armour, but make it very rusty.

A favourite Cryx tactic is to jump off ship, sink to the ocean floor and walk to shore to attack and, since they're all technically dead, I decided that they wouldn't really take much care of their armour so i'm going to make it very damaged and rusty.

I'm happy with the way the eyes have come out (they look a lot brighter and more obvious in real life), and I think they actually look like they're glowing green and since this was technically my first attempt at source lighting on a model, i'm quite pleased with it.  You can also see the rusting effect on some of the armour plates.  This was done with the rust colours from the Tensocrom Lifecolor sets which are acrylic paints designed for model railway enthusiasts, but work just as well on models like this.  The range includes other colours like Kerosene and Petrol which aren't as useful, but the Smoke makes for a very realistic smoky effect for warjacks and the like.

You can see the original armour plate in the sort-of metallic purple which I really don't think works very well.  I'm much happier with the rusted armour plates now.

A close-up of the armour plate showing the rust effect in more detail.  I think a bit of thinning on some of the colours to use them more as a tint, some more stippling with them and some other techniques (as well as more damage on the armour with a knife or the dremel may be in order) could serve to make the effect even more realistic.  As a test of the scheme though, i'm happy with it and don't feel the need to give him a green bath just yet

Next up is going to be shading on the "skirts".  I think the colour I have on there at the moment is going to be as light as I want to go with the base colour.  I want these models to be quite dark and moody so bright, sharp highlights aren't really going to work with that idea.  We'll see though.

I'm also going to find another colour to use on the armour as an accent on the edging and patterning.  Maybe another metallic, like the tin or copper vallejo paints or maybe try them in purple, but really beaten up.  It's all a bit up in the air at the moment, but that's the point of a work in progress