Bot War – Painting Challenge 2023

Starting work on the big bot Omen.

Just a simple ugly blocking in stage at the moment working out if there is enough colour variety and part separation.

Nothing new or exciting at this stage, just a necessary step on the journey.

I did however watch “Stand By Me” on Netflix whilst painting this, there wasn’t much else on and I can now cross it off that list of films you think you need to watch.

Chipped away a bit more on Omen, shouldnt take long tomorrow to finish him off and bring those yellows and greys up.

I did add a band of yellow across the chest as the colour balance felt a little off. I’ll go back and add this onto the Command Tank as well to reflect the alt mode.

Sometimes making little changes like this mid-model is necessary as you can’t always see the final composition in your minds eye at times. In this case the extra yellow on the chest helps to break up the large amount of green armour on the model.

Today I wrapped up Omen.

I probably spent a bit too long on him but i had to try and break up some of the large areas. My phone camera is pretty poor so it’s not a great photo, his face looks a bit weird so I may go back later and tidy it up with some more definition.

Next up and nearly rounding off the Atlanticans we have the CRAB suit. This is the personal tritonaut mech armour of the faction leader King Gills.

I started off by blacking out the metal details, like the weapons and the webbing on the fins, and also et about getting a solid opaque coat down as a base for the yellows to be built up from.

As its the weekend I managed to get some decent painting time in to finish off CRAB.

All of the details were added and the yellow worked up nicely to the scale75 hykey yellow. I also added in some P3 burning orange to really go deep with the saturation in the lower parts, and some P3 Morrow white highlight on the very tips. This pushing of the dynamic range has helped the model to really pop, just like a royal mecha should on the battlefield.

Bit of a boring update, I managed to get some airbrush time in to lay down some basecoats on the Atlantican Infantry and Overlords bases. The opaque coverage of this brown mixture is so much better when it is airbrushed on (maybe I made this batch too thin), so for the Atlantican Infantry this was sprayed directly down from the top to try and minimise the amount of brown hitting the figures.

For the Overlords this was a bit trickier and was very carefully sprayed around each model’s feet with a very slow an steady air feed. I wanted to try and maintain as much of the white lateral prime on the model as possible as I intend to go over this with contrast paints.

And so I enter the final week.

Its going to be a big push to get everything completed in time, but with some careful planning and perhaps some late nights I should be OK.

I intend to knock out the Atlantican Infantry in one sitting, the UHH will help provide some background entertainment to it, and I can then call the Atlanticans done.

For the Overlords I think I will try and stick close to Boxart but bring my own style to them. I’ll group them into small groups of similar “skin” tone and try to knock out each group in 2 nights, leveraging contrast paints and some simplified NMM effects to get them done. One week left, 22 models to go ?

Long evening of painting tonight, definitely didn’t do 30 minutes, maybe closer to 5hrs.

However, I managed to get the 7 stands of Atlantican Infantry completed. These were 32x 10mm figures, batch painted for each colour.

As this was the first time painting Atlanticans without a TMM/Filter workup I just grabbed the closest off the rack colour I could find that sort of matched the colour I’ve been working with, and using the trusty PaintRack app I was able to pick Vallejo Game color Scurvy Green.h

Scurvy green went on the legs and bodies, and then yellow armour was blocked in with vallejo game colour extra opaque heavy goldbrown then highlighted with Scale75 hykey yellow.

Skin was painted with P3 Meredius Blue.

Weapons and boots were painted with vallejo model color black, and the weapons were then given a coat of scalecolor emerald alchemy before being washed back with P3 Armor Wash.

Cloaks were painted with vallejo model color purple.

Face makes and cloak highlights were picked out with scale75 mystic colors sagittarius fuchsia.

The photo is pretty poor on my phone, but there will be some properly lit photos taken at the end of the challenge with my good camera. For now though, Atlanticans are done!

With the Atlanticans now complete it’s time to move onto Overlords.

To get through the 16 Overlords models I have decided to split them into some manageable chunks;

Blue Group

• Hammerhead
• Goremouth
• Chomper
• Lockjaw

Green Group

• Gorger
• Saur
• Ripper

Turquoise Group

• Smalleye
• Deepsea
• Piranha

Singles

• Thresherlord
• Maw

Overlords

• Gorg
• Krog
• Glug

The 3 main colour groups will all be painted using a similar palette, the single characters will then be painted individually, and the Overlords will have a unified scheme as well, but 8 may add some unique colourations to make each distinct, haven’t worked that out yet.

To get the Blue group underway, over the black primer with a lateral highlight of white ink, I brushed on a desaturated mix of Citadel Leviadon Blue and Apothecary white contrast paint. Over the slightly mottled white ink basecoat this helped create some contrast and organic looks to the skin. Once this was dry I then applied a second thin coat of the contrast mix but then wet blended in P3 morrow white at the high points in muscles and fins.

Armour sections and other details were then blacked out with vallejo model black, before being  basecoated in a green-grey colour which was achieved by mixing up scale75 abyssol blue with vallejo model color German green. This colour was then applied to all armour sections and weapons with the intention to create an alien material similar to titanium. Vallejo model colour luftwafe uniform mixed in formed the first highlight colour and then my favourite extra opaque blue-grey for second.