So, a couple years ago I found PiperMakes, fell in love with her sculpts, and got some Fire Gobys printed up and painted them for wargaming with OPR. Great move. I had a new airbrush and got some pretty great synthwave-influenced paint on the models. Then, over time, I learned better about airbrushing and inks and started to get into more colour theory and interesting shadows. At the same time I was learning how dogshit the resin quality was of the prints I’d purchased; they were high-resolution meant for prototyping and didn’t hold up to handling or dropping at all. Every one of the initial batch has snapped at the ankles multiple times, etc., etc.
Now I’ve got bendy prints thanks to a 20% doping with Siriyatech Tenacious, and a much better grasp of colours. So, I’m tossing the old models and reprinting everything. And, since I’m subbed to Piper for her FishMech reruns, I’m also getting every model from that line, so I may as well print myself a whole army. First up, a re-do of my synthwave infantry, WYSIWYGed against the OPR 3.5.1 ruleset. That means I’ve got a grunt leader with a squad of tactical grunts and two squads of security grunts. All of whom need bases.
First off, while Custom Miniature Maker does a Tau-themed texture, I wanted something a bit more synthwavey. Their cyberpunk roller did just the trick. Then, because I wanted some base bits and needed to pose some of the models a little more dynamically, I needed some computery things I could print and saw and glue. Print Minis’ Computer Consoles was cheap and effective. Some sculpey, some glue, and I had the bases I needed.
Next, the models themselves. Now, what I should have done, in retrospect, was pin the models to the bases after I’d painted both, but I forgot that clay flaked easily. So I pinned them to the unpainted bases. It came out okay in the end, but I could have saved myself some time if I’d worked out the order of operations a little better. Sanding and glueing 15 minis with separate legs, torsos, and heads was a little bit tiring. And, in the painting stage, I found a bit of sprue left over here and there, so it wasn’t a perfect job. On the other hand, having reached my “looks okay at arm’s length” paint job quality a couple years ago, and having experienced the pain of “I’ll paint each of these 40 orks with brush, no shortcuts” in the past, I’ve found a psychological path to “it’s okay if these models look a little imperfect here and there, what’s important is that I like how they look, that they look good in a group, and they pop on the tabletop.”
In order to get them to pop, I went high saturation. No OSL on these because there’s so many, but I could get some low lows and high highs along with interesting shadows by using blue shadows, a directional light blue spray for diffuse overhead light effect, and magenta over top for a purple base.
With some bright pink edge highlighting, I felt really good about my colours. I then tried to get an eye-searing pink on my guns. Which is when I remembered that magenta doesn’t cover for shit and I needed more than the four base layers of black, dark grey, light grey, and streaky white underneath to get a decent looking gun. I eventually gave up, and the ninth coat of paint was a black to hide the catastrophe, with a silver drybrush to make it look metallic. I could have airbrushed a single layer of primer, but nothing besides stripping would have saved those guns and I wasn’t gonna redo all the other work.
Nice turquoise eyes and some yellow/orange weapon orbs round them out visually. I feel confident abandoning the old 70/20/10 colour ratio rule because of experience now, but I’m still pushing “mostly purple, little bit of blue, splash of yellow” and I’m happy with that. The bases finally got some love. Black, then a silver drybrush, then a magenta drybrush over the silver for that sort of synthwave “magenta grid” look. The computers got an off-white “90s Compaq plastic” followed by a dark brown wash and dark red features. I realized later this made a visual statement about classic Tau Vior’la, but that’s as much a happy accident as the fact these little suckers are repping the bisexual flag as hard as they can. Which has given me some fun ideas for other units in this army. After all, the DAO aren’t Tau, nobody says my army has to have the same colours- that’s just tradition! But I could do bisexual pride infantry, and demi/ace stealth units, and NB heavy assault. And since their bases will stay the same and they’ll all have some purple on them, that’s enough visual coherence for me.
And to immediately contradict myself, none of that pride stuff is going to stop me from giving my grunt leader a sweet ass synthwave sunset cape that looks just gorgeous against his armour. Stomping on a human skull because why not.
