Rebooting my elves

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Ravengrove
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Rebooting my elves

#1 Post by Ravengrove »

Hi Folks,

i'm new to the forum - so here is a brief introduction before i get to the topic.
I started with my high elves in '94 - so do not expect many modern minis if i ever get to post photos :D
During the last ten years i concentrated on my Dark Angels - but in general, i prefer the painting part to the playing part these days.
I hope to spare a bit more time to hobbies now - lately, my two little girls absorbed all the time that i had.
But since for some reason i never stopped to plunder ebay for miniatures, i have a large stock of unpainted minis in my basement now.

Now i have a long-term project and a mid-term one.
The latter is Amon Sul - i have started with first preparations.
The second ist a repaint of my high elves. Since they date back to the 90s when i was a teenager, the paintjob is... well... erm... :oops:

So at the moment i am fiddling around with photoshop for a color scheme. I am halfway happy with it, but not entirely:
Image

All cloth: decent green - most likely camouflage green.
Armour plates: ivory
Chain and scale mail and some details: gold (rather more burnished than shining)

Now, there are a few details that i am unsure about... should they really stand out or blend in? Details like gems.
With that color scheme, depending on the color they will very quickly become eyecathers and i am not sure if i really want that .
I am thinking about a dark red or maybe a dark or bright green (jade maybe).

Well... opinions and suggestions?
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Prince of Spires
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Re: Rebooting my elves

#2 Post by Prince of Spires »

Hi Ravengrove, welcome to the forum. I'm looking forward to seeing your elves. I love some of the older sculpts. The have a certain finesse to them that is lacking in some of the later elf models. What do you have lying around model wise?

How old are your girls? Kids do take up a lot of time. And don't leave you with a lot of energy for creative stuff for the bit of time left over :)

Plundering ebay to create a huge backlog is a pretty common feature in the hobby I think. The only reason I stopped was that my wife kept asking me with each model if / why I needed them since I had a big backlog already (she was right of course...). Though I'm slowly getting to the end of my todo-pile. So, this time next year I can start browsing again ;) There is just a lot of nice models out there. And you can always find someone who doesn't know exactly what he's selling and get a good deal (though some of the prices they dare charge are quite absurd...)

The paint scheme looks nice. A whole unit / army painted that way should look stunning As for the spot color (for gems) I would go for a bit a contrasting one. But if you're also planning on adding recent models to your collection, also pick something that's not too hard to paint. Newer elf models tend to be covered in gems. ;) colorwise I generally just try it out on a model and see how it looks.

As for Amun Sul, that sounds like a great project. I'd love to see some pictures (once you have something to show). I always like doing terrain projects. It's something a bit different from models and let's you try out other techniques. And I like that with a little effort you can get great results.

Rod
For Nagarythe: Come to the dark side.
PS: Bring cookies!

Check out my plog
Painting progress, done/in progress/in box: 167/33/91

Check my writing blog for stories on the Prince of Spires and other pieces of fiction.
Ravengrove
Posts: 7
Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2016 6:58 pm

Re: Rebooting my elves

#3 Post by Ravengrove »

Now that's a quick reply :)

My girls are 1 and 3 years old - so it will take loooong until there really is something to show paintwise.

I also just realized that there is something else i am not sure about yet. That's the rim on the scalemail for example. For now, it is white in the scetch - and maybe it should actually stay white.
Stupid me... i will just make a few mockups and show them.

As for Amon Sûl - my approach is based on Dagorlads Design (from the OneRing forum) and for the moment i am screwing up :oops: the casting molds for the statues and column arches. Besides that, i am making experiments on wall textures and later on wall colors. The current directions leads to filler-covered foam. Engraving lines directly in the foam does not produce the effect i have in mind. Engraving in plaster/filler looks better, but the texture needs some more work. I will test pressing stones (slate maybe) and balls of paper als aluminium foil in the still wet filler, maybe combined with sprinkling sand over the moist filler.
Ravengrove
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Re: Rebooting my elves

#4 Post by Ravengrove »

I've been quick...
By the way - the linked images are much larger now.

So 3 alternatives for highlights:

The first draft for red gems
Image

and then the green gems.
Image

now i realized that matching colors on rims and gems might look better and i did an all-red version
Image

None of them looks really bad for me... and i am wavering... how beneficient is a reduced color palette?
Now i think that all-green might be the color for rank-and-file while reserving red for all kinds of characters. :-k
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Prince of Spires
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Re: Rebooting my elves

#5 Post by Prince of Spires »

As father of a 1-year old girl I can sympathize with the lack of hobby time...

As for the options, I think 2 and 3 are the better choices. 2 is a very neutral, natural scheme. 3 is a bit more fantasy. Personal preference I think. And indeed, you can vary between characters and units or even between different types of units in what colors you apply to them.

Rod
For Nagarythe: Come to the dark side.
PS: Bring cookies!

Check out my plog
Painting progress, done/in progress/in box: 167/33/91

Check my writing blog for stories on the Prince of Spires and other pieces of fiction.
Ravengrove
Posts: 7
Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2016 6:58 pm

Re: Rebooting my elves

#6 Post by Ravengrove »

Thanks for confirming :)
I see that i missed a question about what i have lying around for painting.
Hard to say, since it is all stuffed away atm.
But i hope it is not much more than... consider each number a guess
  • 12x LOTR Rohan infantry
  • 5x LOTR Rohan cavalry
  • 12x LOTR Minas Tirith warriors
  • 15 LOTR fellowship members (obviously some in different versions :lol: )
  • 12x LOTR Moria Goblins
  • 10x mixed LOTR characters (Haldir, Galadriel, Witchking, Eomer etc...), some mounted
  • 8x WH40k Ravenwing bikers
  • 4x WH40k old (Deathwing) Terminators (conversion material)
  • 1x Old & 1x VERY old WH40k terminator captain
  • 1 or two landspeeders (conversion material)
  • 40x very old High Elf Spearmen
  • 20x very old HE archers
  • 20x HE swordmasters (mixed age)
  • 15x HE silverhelms (mixed age)
  • ? HE white lions
  • 8 very old HE shadow warriors
  • 4 HE dragon princes
  • 2 HE arrow launchers
  • 5 HE character models (Teclis, Tyrion, Eltharion + Stormwing, ...
  • somewhere between 20 and 40 non-GW miniatures
... and then there is roughly 5-6.000 points of painted Dark Angels and about 40 -60 RPG minis
Uh-oh... never made such a list before and thats just an estimation - i fear reality is a bit worse
Last edited by Ravengrove on Tue Feb 23, 2016 7:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Galharen
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Re: Rebooting my elves

#7 Post by Galharen »

I would say paint the first model then you can see how it works in real life, it appears relativ often that the perfect colors combo doesn't match to the model :)
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Prince of Spires
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Re: Rebooting my elves

#8 Post by Prince of Spires »

I agree with Galharen. Paint a model and see how it looks in real life. Firstly because indeed it may look different then in a picture. But also because you may find that you don't actually like painting the chosen color scheme. I found for instance that I'm very bad at painting white horses. I found out when painting my dragon princes unit. So, I switched to grey-ish horses, which saved me a lot of time, gave a better result and didn't drive me completely crazy in the process.

It's an impressive collection of models you have. I love some of the LOTR models. They're a lot more natural then the WH ones. Have you played LOTR as a game at all?

In the end, I would simply start one model / unit at a time. It will take a while. But at some point you'll look back and realize you have 25 or 50% painted. Or you have a big army all painted up.

Another option is to get an airbrush. Assemble all (or most of) your models. Undercoat and basecoat them using the airbrush. And if you're very good with one you can even work on some finer details with the airbrush. Apply a wash and then paint details. It's a fast way to get a good amount of models out.

O, and of course posting pictures here of your progress helps ;)

Rod
For Nagarythe: Come to the dark side.
PS: Bring cookies!

Check out my plog
Painting progress, done/in progress/in box: 167/33/91

Check my writing blog for stories on the Prince of Spires and other pieces of fiction.
Ravengrove
Posts: 7
Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2016 6:58 pm

Re: Rebooting my elves

#9 Post by Ravengrove »

Patience... Even the first painted model will be weeks in the future.
First, i need a large bottle of isopropanol to get rid of the old paintjob.

As for techniques... Airbrush really is not my piece of cake. And as the mentioned Dark Angels points indicate, this is not my first painted army. But thanks for any advice anyway.
Just to give you an impression on where i stand - this is about 90% of my finished Dark Angels:
http://fortressofunforgiven.homestead.c ... 040_A.html
If you browse the squads, you will see that several of my Dark Angels models also date back to the 90s.
The paintjobs quality covers about a decade - so it ranges from crappy to acceptable :lol:
Most of what i have seen here is much better than my results - but that leaves room for improvement.

Amon Sul status: waiting for the result of the first plaster casting of the statues, otherwise measuring and adjusting and readjusting sketches. Nothing to show yet. But now i am rather happy that all i could get was styrodur with an ugly texture. Happy because the filler i'm going to cover it with would just not stick to the smooth surface i used in the past and for the first tests.

Lotr: i played a few test games years ago - and it seems that at the moment i will more likely find the time for skirmish games than for large scale battles.

Horses: i really am not sure about the horse color yet. Maybe white, maybe grey... Or maybe even cream or something close to ivory as well. Even brown is still possible
Ravengrove
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Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2016 6:58 pm

Re: Rebooting my elves

#10 Post by Ravengrove »

A brief update. Usually i would not bother to post without anything to show - but there are a few learnings that not everybody might be aware of.

Amon sul / plaster casting
I made the molds for the statues and the columns with sanitary silicone. The results are better than i expected considering the extreme low cost approach - one just needs to remember applying dish washing soap on the originals.
The time for drying especially in the closed mold for the statues exceeds a whole week. The first attempt crumbled beyond recognition after 4 days of waiting.
The surface of the first cast column looks like sprinkled with acid - all air bubbles during casting. I doubt that shaking would have helped much there. Next time i will try sprinkling some water an maybe some plaster powder befor pouring the liquid plaster in the mold. It is a half-mold after al, so it may work.

Removing old paintjob
I started with the first hand full of plastic models today - not the ones i painted, i used painted ones i got from ebay.
The good news is that isopropanol 70% works quite good on plastics without doing harm. 1 hour in the stuff and a toothbrush did a nice job. However, some models were painted with something different than acrylics it seems... And those come off quite hard. The basecoat does not come off that easy as well.. But i am fine with that.
Each layer of paint comes off separately. Not funny once i noticed that some models have been painted twice :evil:
Well, that step will take some more time. I did not clean all of the first 20ish models ... And realized that my estimation on the number of models to be stripped was way too optimistic.
The amount of spearmen and archers is about 30% higher than estimated and i also found a few old phoenix guards. Anyway, 150 or 200 models makes little difference at this point. :lol:
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