Well, I think I've finally got to the stage where I can legitimately say I have a second army on the go. Oddly enough it's Nurgle (bit of a departure for me, I know) but instead of the armoured miscreants of the Fourteenth Legion this time the spotlight is on the purely Daemonic followers of great Father Nurgle. I've had the idea simmering in the back of my mind to make a Nurgle Daemons army ever since Codex: Chaos Daemons came out, but literally in the last two weeks or so the inspiration has hit me hard and I figured it was time to just go ahead and start work on it.
First off, HQ - I've had a Great Unclean One assembled for a while, and added a few little touches to customise him somewhat including a toothed maw on his giant plaguesword:
...and expanding his torn, bloated gut so he has somewhat less of a melon-shaped torso and drags directly along the ground more, to better give an impression of weight; I'm also considering adding a big monocerotic horn to him, since that's such an iconic Nurgle feature. Here he is in his current state, based and basecoated:
I actually like the colours on the back of the model's own box:
...and will be using this as the guide to my own colour scheme by and large, with some small variations. Here's another shot, showing more of the work on the belly area, extending it down to the ground over a greater area and adding more torn skin with innards peeking through:
I'm hoping that the extra work I did on his belly is sufficiently well blended in that you wouldn't even know something had been done there unless you saw it next to an out-of-the-box Great Unclean One; as always, a good conversion shouldn't look like a conversion at all. There will also be at least one Nurgling added to his base, sitting on the rock to his right...and is it wrong that every time I think of Nurglings now, I hear the ...?*
I have Epidemius sitting in his box ready for assemblage, so I'll probably do what I always do with a new model I've not used before; which is blu-tack him together and then stare at him for a bit to work out what if anything to do to the model to make it a little more individual. For the Heavy Support Daemon Princes I'm planning to use two of the Daemon Prince Of Nurgle models, since once you get past (i.e. replace) the DUURRRR! heads there's a ton of really nice detail on those guys.
Now Plaguebearers are obviously the bread and butter of any Nurgle Daemons army, and the Angels Of Disease will be no exception. I've already touched on the customisation I've done on the Plaguebearers to make them more unique in the Death Guard thread but I figure that bears repeating here since this is what that work now has the most bearing on. I added a cyclopean eye to every model, both to give them more immediate character on the table and also to make them more correct fluff-wise:
Eyes are very important on any model with an exposed head, as they're the main point of contact character-wise; the eyes on the current Plaguebearer models are often very small, and sometimes very odd shapes, so I much prefer them with a nice big eye like this.
I've also added some rotting guts oozing out, replaced most of the weapons with more convincing and individual-looking items than the rather odd triangular things they come with out of the box, and in some cases thickened up the legs a little where I found them to be too weedy and spindly-looking; here's the initial test squad of 5 Plaguebearers pre-painting:
Here's the colour scheme they've had for the best part of two years, which I've grown more and more dissatisfied with as time has gone on (see the Death Guard thread for more on the in-progress revamping of pretty much everything to do with my painting):
I wanted to use a much earthier and richer palette on them, much like that on the Great Unclean One, so here's the paint test model for the Plaguebearers in his current basecoated state:
The pic itself is a little dark, for some reason, but straight away you can see that he's a lot earthier and more solid-looking, where the old paint scheme was kind of porcelain-like. If you see what I mean. Here he is next to the Great Unclean One to show the unity of the scheme:
Since a Plaguebearer is a lot smaller than a Great Unclean One it will get less light and therefore run the risk of coming out darker for a given set of colours, so I may make them one step lighter colour-wise to allow for that. I'm varying the foundation colour across the model since I want the basic skin tone to vary like the Great Unclean One's colour scheme; I figure that'll make the Plaguebearers a lot more interesting as a unit when there's 7 of them all with individual patterns of markings on their hide.
More - as I've been saying for over 3 years with my Death Guard, and will now have to start getting used to saying with these guys - when I have it
* Seriously. I actually have this mental image of happy little Nurglings cavorting around to that song. I may need professional help...
First off, HQ - I've had a Great Unclean One assembled for a while, and added a few little touches to customise him somewhat including a toothed maw on his giant plaguesword:
...and expanding his torn, bloated gut so he has somewhat less of a melon-shaped torso and drags directly along the ground more, to better give an impression of weight; I'm also considering adding a big monocerotic horn to him, since that's such an iconic Nurgle feature. Here he is in his current state, based and basecoated:
I actually like the colours on the back of the model's own box:
...and will be using this as the guide to my own colour scheme by and large, with some small variations. Here's another shot, showing more of the work on the belly area, extending it down to the ground over a greater area and adding more torn skin with innards peeking through:
I'm hoping that the extra work I did on his belly is sufficiently well blended in that you wouldn't even know something had been done there unless you saw it next to an out-of-the-box Great Unclean One; as always, a good conversion shouldn't look like a conversion at all. There will also be at least one Nurgling added to his base, sitting on the rock to his right...and is it wrong that every time I think of Nurglings now, I hear the ...?*
I have Epidemius sitting in his box ready for assemblage, so I'll probably do what I always do with a new model I've not used before; which is blu-tack him together and then stare at him for a bit to work out what if anything to do to the model to make it a little more individual. For the Heavy Support Daemon Princes I'm planning to use two of the Daemon Prince Of Nurgle models, since once you get past (i.e. replace) the DUURRRR! heads there's a ton of really nice detail on those guys.
Now Plaguebearers are obviously the bread and butter of any Nurgle Daemons army, and the Angels Of Disease will be no exception. I've already touched on the customisation I've done on the Plaguebearers to make them more unique in the Death Guard thread but I figure that bears repeating here since this is what that work now has the most bearing on. I added a cyclopean eye to every model, both to give them more immediate character on the table and also to make them more correct fluff-wise:
Eyes are very important on any model with an exposed head, as they're the main point of contact character-wise; the eyes on the current Plaguebearer models are often very small, and sometimes very odd shapes, so I much prefer them with a nice big eye like this.
I've also added some rotting guts oozing out, replaced most of the weapons with more convincing and individual-looking items than the rather odd triangular things they come with out of the box, and in some cases thickened up the legs a little where I found them to be too weedy and spindly-looking; here's the initial test squad of 5 Plaguebearers pre-painting:
Here's the colour scheme they've had for the best part of two years, which I've grown more and more dissatisfied with as time has gone on (see the Death Guard thread for more on the in-progress revamping of pretty much everything to do with my painting):
I wanted to use a much earthier and richer palette on them, much like that on the Great Unclean One, so here's the paint test model for the Plaguebearers in his current basecoated state:
The pic itself is a little dark, for some reason, but straight away you can see that he's a lot earthier and more solid-looking, where the old paint scheme was kind of porcelain-like. If you see what I mean. Here he is next to the Great Unclean One to show the unity of the scheme:
Since a Plaguebearer is a lot smaller than a Great Unclean One it will get less light and therefore run the risk of coming out darker for a given set of colours, so I may make them one step lighter colour-wise to allow for that. I'm varying the foundation colour across the model since I want the basic skin tone to vary like the Great Unclean One's colour scheme; I figure that'll make the Plaguebearers a lot more interesting as a unit when there's 7 of them all with individual patterns of markings on their hide.
More - as I've been saying for over 3 years with my Death Guard, and will now have to start getting used to saying with these guys - when I have it
* Seriously. I actually have this mental image of happy little Nurglings cavorting around to that song. I may need professional help...