Hello everyone !

I doubt anyone will remember me since I have barely been posting anything in years, and anyway my account name was "Athmos" at that time. I have been an epic player and painter since the second edition ("Space marines 2"), although I'm mainly a painter now, didn't get to play a game in years.

I was registered with an email address that no longer exist and never could reset my password.

Please bear in mind that as English is not my first language, I might maim some people grammatical sense quite repeatedly without even knowing it. I am actually a froggy .

Like many people, I tend to phase in and out of the hobby every few years. This winter I started to come back again. I have not done much since then (assembled a few nice FW minis, started a new terrain piece, that's about it), but I've been gathering my motivation, getting some paint that isn't dry in the bottom of the bottle, and I figured it was about time I finally posted some pictures on this board, since I've been lurking and ogling at other people work here for the best part of a decade now.

It's time I started a "hobby blog" in my very own thread, so as to hopefully get something done. All the cool kids are doing it !

My girlfriend, wanting to see me take up the brush again, did find some wonderful incentive, in the form of this new toy I got for my last birthday ! I've always been wanting to try that stuff on epic minis :



Yes, I DO love my girlfriend.

However, the few marines I painted at about EA release time, which I was very proud of at the time, now pale compared to most people work here. So don't expect to be impressed. To boot, I am absolutely crap at taking photos of my minis, and apparently can't prevent the camera from eating my highlights, and the lamp to throw a ghastly yellow hue on everything. Will learn in time, but for now it's crap. Be warned.

So, without further ado, some pics. My workbench first :



I don't know if you're like me, but I have a hard time not buying any brush whenever I enter a hobby shop :


The few minis I painted in 2003 (hell, I'm not getting any younger it seems) :


And some more detail shots (as much details as I can convince the camera to actually get, that is) :

Tac formation (basing never quite finished in all this time) :

I was specially proud of my shoulder marking :


I actually think I was among the first peoples going crazy enough to apply that to a whole army. I was quickly humbled down by mageboltrat mortifactor however if memory serves, so I'm taking this occasion to mention that his work did very durably impress me from this time (and still does).

Some dreads; still need some detailing (on the purity seals notably) after all this time :


A single warhound titan :





The camera is eating all my highlights, but anyway I think it was the model that took me out of painting at the time : I spent an horrible amount of time on this mini, and then, not only I did the mistake of adding infantry to the base (the marines poses are much too static compared to the titan, and the tree would have given enough scale alone), but specially the varnish got horribly wrong : it was probably too cold when i sprayed, and it ruined the surface of the mini, and stuck dust on it. Awful.

Anyway, I currently have restarted a number of projects. Among them, a Warlord titan, early WIP here :


Speaking of Titans, I will redo a full titan Force if I ever get my hands on some of the very nice proxies I've seen around here, specially in true scale so as not to be dwarfed by FW planes. I have some friendliness to build up first, though

I also have a Phantom in the early WIP stage too :


Terminator detachments, waiting love since an age :


FW thunderbolts, very nice and about the size of a warhound :


FW thunderhawk, very nice model too, and of course huge :


Those were build last week and still need some work with putty before getting primed.

And also, i am working on a piece of terrain, that I initially made to display my currently painted minis, but in the end it will probably be very impractical for that job. I LOVE building terrains, and I aim for best level of details I can manage to make for this one. This is still a very early WIP but here are a few shots :





On my agenda, a number of items : finishing this warlord, this phantom, and the second warhound of the pair (who is sitting idle, at the "primed" stage, since 2004). Finish building, and paint, those 2 terminators formations.

Then, finally complete this marine army (at least 6 rhinos, 4 land raiders, 2 Assault formations, 3 thunderhawks, and character stands. I have much, much more minis but that's the bare minimum i need to paint) and proceed to the eldar army that is waiting. I expect the eldars will help break the monotony of painting large infantry formations with their colorful aspect warriors.

I also have orks, nids and chaos to paint, and even some 28mm (For the last SH edition).

But first, we'll see if i can simply finally complete all those stuff i have just started, learn how to take acceptable photos, and re-learn how to paint.

PS : I also tend to be very sparse on smiley and such things, but I'm trying to add some more so as not to distress the venerable L4 too much.

Kick ass!

Very cool, I especially love that terrain piece!

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Thanks for the compliment

I am quite ambitious concerning this terrain piece; i still need to detail/sculpt the cliffs, fill up some more and smooth out the part that'll end up covered in water, add texturing, gravels, sand, fallen blocks of rock, prepare trees (I like trees, I love trees, but they're very time consuming for me), and finally paint all this and cover it in vegetation. I still feel like theses cliffs need some more love, but I'm still not quite sure how to make them look like what I'm envisioning.

I actually managed to 'bleached bone' the 'graveyard earth' on my phantom since the first post, so the start of this thread already caused me to actually use a brush, which didn't happen since last summer (start of that phantom). I want to go fir a kind of Dark Alaitoc scheme, with very dark blue and bleached bone as main colors, for my eldars. Kinda like a Bluish Ulthwe actually.

As I don't play anymore, I think I will lean toward not painting a lot of mini, but trying to do my best with them. Kinda conflicting with the tens of 1000's of army points i have in store, but that won't be my first contradiction.


edit : as i am finally unlurking, i figured i might as well upload an avatar. For the record, this is actually a picture of your humble servitor. Yes, when I'm not busy having regrets about not painting minis, i do occasionally spit fire.

About the WIP warlord : this was the not-quite-satisfying result of an experiment with 'under-painting'. This is a technique i once saw applied with awesome result,probably on an article on CMON, applied to flesh tone IIRC. the idea is to paint shadows and highlights in shades of grey, then slap a wash of red. It worked, but in fact the shadow were not pigmented enough and the highlights came much harsher than i thought.

I decided to paint the model as i would normally, although with a nicely pre-contrasted base-coat. I finally got around to slap some scab red on it an hour or so ago.

Prompted by E&C encouragement, i also got some work done on that piece of terrain, essentially rising the sea level and planning the tree implantation.

I tend to think about terrain much more as diorama than as gaming pieces, thus i stick trees directly on it.

Since an old illustration (from Codex Titanicus I believe), showing some orks observing Warlord titans walking through a forest, I've wanted to picture forces (and specially titans of course) on a board or diorama in that ways. So we'll have trees -loads of trees- in this thread before long.

Inspirational stuff Athmospheric!
Nice detailing and the base on the Warhound is very cool.

Looking forward to seeing more as you get it done.

Cheers.

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Nice work!

I am awed by the tactical arrows on the marines... my patients would not last long. The base of the warhound is really great aswell. Cant wait to see you T-hawks up and going those are beautiful models.

Looking forward to seeing more.

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Wow, fantastic stuff.

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"I don't believe in destiny or the guiding hand of fate." N. Peart

Welcome (back!) aboard mate! Look forward to seeing what you've got in store for us all :-)
R>

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When I get around to fiddling with the white balance in my photos, I'll try to show some more of the work i did on my marines all those years back. Though I don't find them very good now, every single one of them is converted, with at least a loin cloth, but there are heavy bolters, lascannon, flamers and plasmaguns in there, and various modifications/repositioning on sergeants.

Since the weather was fair today however, I spent most of the day trying to learn nice tricks with my inline skates. So, not much progress to report; at least, I managed to add some basic shading and do the base coat touch up on the phantom titan. I think this scheme will work quite well ! I still need to decide what color I'll use for the gems and the front part of the "head". I'm thinking deep red.

A little progress :
Some work on the warlord metal, a bit of preparation for a large batch of trees, and I started the detailing on that piece of terrain, mostly adding fallen blocks of rocks and some gravel. I think i will need at least 2 more detailing session to get it to ready for some paint.

Some more WIP shots of this terrain piece (the small hole are where trees are gonna go. Yes, it will be forested) :





I hope you like it

That is some cool looking terrain.

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Great work on the terrain piece, it looks absolutely fantastic, I can hardly wait to see it painted up and with trees and such like.

Haarken

Ooooh yeah, nice terrain , nice work space , nice minis ,enjoy getting back into the swing of things.

Hello back, there wasn't much progress lately; I've been waiting for a terrain material order, and then real life came to cut into my time. Anyway, that order is now here, and i will be getting back to that terrain ASAP.

Sadly, it won't be finished very soon as i still need to do some experiments with resin before the final stages. I still have a lot to do before coming to that, though.

An other news : the illustration I was referring too concerning my vision of Titans wading through a huge forest (while orks are observing them, in the foreground) was in fact from waaargh the orks (although it has probably been re-used here and there) and you can see it here :



To me, it always was one of the most inspiring illustrations from that era.
I'm planning to do some kind of step by step for this terrain piece in this thread, are there people that might be interested by such pics and possibly explanations or should I just skip WIP shots and save the space ?