Get Him to the [Village] Green: the Road to An Atrous Myre pt2

To recap: I was previously leaning towards - and had prepared - a mixture of blood and/or bone models to fill my undead ranks. So far we had two very bony skeletons, plus a skull-faced fish demon and a cheeky little graveyard guardian, both of whom could probably double up as either blood or bone models. This was about a week and a half before I was scheduled to fly out, so I had a couple days to build any remaining models, then a couple days to paint them (I was still actively painting the horse revenant to lead my force shown off in part 1).

I was elbow deep in my bitz box making Ratking models out of AoS Gutrippaz sent to me by Terry at Hive Scum and figured I could hack up a cool ghoul-looking blood guy out of one of the duplicates. Obviously, he would need a skull head to a) make him less orcish and b) blend him in with the other models I'd committed to thus far. I found a few skulls that fit well enough, but later stumbled on a PERFECT head from a used glaivewraith stalker. I had acquired said stalker in a bitz box, given it to my buddy Mike for a project to get him his hobby mojo back, but snipped off the skull for my own uses first under the pretense of forcing him to do some cool kitbash work with it (but truthfully because hooded horse skulls are metal as fuck). That tangent to say, the cloth elements on the base Kruleboy and the Glaivewraith skull lined up almost perfectly. There was even a little sculpted seam run down the hood of the orc and the skull in the same position. I had to shave away some of the shield to give the illusion of cloths draped overtop of it, then with a couple rounds of sprue goo it was perfect.

The bone and cloth were easily rendered in colors I had already used across the warband. For the skin, I started layering up some sickly greenish tones using mixes of these colors (namely, Abyssal Blue and Bleached Bone) with Nurgling Green added for the midtone. Unintentionally, I think I channeled a bit of my buddy Matt Cantor's (@squared_paints) ghoul skin tones...which had the added effect of making me try really, really hard to paint and blend the skin smoothly. It's certainly not going to beat Matt out for a Golden Demon any time soon, but I think it too the most of my painting time out of this project and I am commensurately proud with the results.

After priming but before painting, I also added some spikes I copied using oyumaru/blue stuff molds of a beastman shield and some milliput. Helped smooth out the texture of filing down the Orc details.

Speaking of time spent on this project, let's ignore the skull-headed, serpentine elephant in the room and INSTEAD talk about:

With less than one week to my flight abroad, I figured it was the perfect time to procrastinate building and painting the warband with another extraneous element: a display box. I know the New England War Council rocks up to all their narrative events with these bad boys and, while I'm not on the council, again I wanted to give it my all for traveling so far for this shindig abroad. I picked up a cheap box at Michaels and drew up some concept sketches for my plan of attack.

At this point the event details were public knowledge, with our gatherings descending into once-flooded ruins in search of treasure, glory, or evil knowledge. I wanted my display to depict models at the edge of once such submerged opening, descending in catabasis into the tunnels and tombs below. I mocked up a sketch of some steps leading below as well as an abandoned aquaduct or loch for my fish to be traversing, almost a vanguard for the force. As Martin McCoy's art was a big draw for me into this game, I wanted to feature one of his art pieces from the rules in the background, as though we were looking at a zoomed-in vignette of the Endless City sprawling into the background.

I deliberately cut my foam shapes on an angle to make the most of it's surface area on different tiers for stacking models with different base sizes, so wider and narrower bases could stand side-by-side without wasting space.

I added some arches to house models, mocked up some stairs (which didn't make the final cut) and added layers of foamcore stone brickwork.

You can see here how, much like an ancient builder, I got carried away at multiple stages and either had to rebuild areas where I ignored the old "measure twice, cut once" adage or added additional facades of stonework over the XPS foundation.

As I had based the fishy undead as though it were slithering onto half-sunken stonework from a receding waterway, I needed one area of the box to have a similar floorplan. I broke away chunks of stone from the surrounding archway to give the impression of a wall burst through from the other side. I carefully milled off layers of the floor to make room for a pool where I would later add UV resin for a water effect to match the base.

Still in denial at this point about what my list would look like (or maybe wanting to show off my wholly original sculpts and kitbashes) I started mocking up a second set of foam ruins to go on the shallower, lefthand side of the box's lid where I could store my other gathering of Blood models. Whereas the righthand side would show the force descending from the outside into the subterranean Myre, I hoped the lefthand side would be a sort of cross-section into those dank, twisting tunnels.

Here's how the lefthand side of the box turned out; I still intend to go back and resolve my far grander vision of an undergrand temple with arches and more levels...but done is better than perfect and time was of the essence. While I didn't end up bringing a backup warband in the case, I did bring these Ratking models (part two coming soon!) as a test run which worked out fairly well with the less developed layout.

You can see in earlier shots how I was tempted to go for sort of a blood red sky filter over the black and white book art. Based on the highlights and cold undershading on the minis I had already completed however, I decided to go with a dark blue filter instead. I carefully cut the backdrop into place, then used a glue stick underneath and some matte mod podge overtop to affix it. The mod podge seemed to white wash the piece quite a bit unfortunately, losing some of the more wispy buildings and monuments looming out in the distant background.

I debated painting the interior walls black, but wanted to restore some of the faded art and extend it onto the side instead. Using a lot of stippling and trial-and-error mixing dollar craft paints, I added some looming spires and wizardly towers to the left and right panels to match the vibe.

The finished tower on the righthand panel. I manually painted back in the towering necropolis on the back piece of art, as well as meticulously adding a big skull shaped monolith in the corner. It came out passable I think.

For the section of broken wall where the snake would be emerging from, I hand painted a background to give the illusion of depth like there were tunnels paved over leading to some deeper, darker ruin. With the foam facade over top of it, it looks really convincing.

The finished box interior! But doesn't one of these models look a little less...finished?

The joy of completing the box and getting some clear coat on it with only a few hours before my departure soon evaporated, replaced by the realization I still had to paint snake-skull-fish. The mini I was most inspired to bring in the beginning was now staring at me, waiting for my attention with nothing else to procrastinate on. With minimal bone and cloth to tie it in to the rest of my gathering, it felt intimidating figuring out how to incorporate colors into its scales, fins, and underbelly while looking cohesive with the other models.

First I tried carrying the pale bone colors onto the belly with the pale green from the Kruleboy skin on the fin tips, which just didn't look right to me. I tried a dark sea blue tint in the scales, also wasn't impressed. Reddish cloth was vibrant but too different from the rest of the gloomy warband, so I switched to black to contrast the bone. 

In retrospect, the light blue tint on the fins actually looks fine and I could have saved a lot of stress by going with that. Probably just needed to push it out of the ugly phase to match my more intentionally highlighted/blended models.

After lots of waffling about, I added some black washes and contrast to the scales to go for a glossy, eel-like look (England approved) and figured I'd finalize the details along my trip.

Stay tuned for the final installment where I recap my trip across the pond with some quick batreps and shots of the warband in action.