Those Who Protect

Following on from animals: space cops.

pigs are a kind of animal, after all

These were all hell of great sculpts to paint, even if being armed kind of puts the 'civilian' aspect of this project as a bit of a lie. But I've done armed folks before and I will again. 

These are mostly Crooked Dice pieces from Colony 87: Wave Four, while the Judge is a Kev White sculpt from Diehard Miniatures. I'm pleased with how they've all come out, so let's show 'em off!

Colonial Police

These are great little guys. Crooked Dice have had them done in darker colours, but I saw these guys and immediately wanted to go for a dusty, Moebian look, using pale blues, pinks, and oranges and whites to try and do things I didn't usually do. Mixed luck, I think, and the orange was a real nuisance, but they turned out okay. They feel a little French, too.

I love that they have dorky little flashlights. These are not well-equipped Arbites in black body armour.

Not really a lot to say about them!

Caravan Guards

These guys were a DELIGHT to paint. I knew I wanted to go for boney, dusty robes, bland black masks and the like, and they've turned out basically exactly as expected. The trickiest part was deciding how I wanted to do the mounts.

I've got a dot-point mini-tutorial below the cut, partly to share but mostly so that I can remember if I ever want to do more like these folks.

Guard Captain

Like a lot of the folks around here, she has dark skin. They're a desert people! Feathers are from a Roc mount.

LOVE the masks on some of these guys. They're not dissimilar from the modern Necromunda wastelanders (one of which I used on a Mantis Warrior scout biker) so we'll see this sort of thing again. I loved every moment of painting these.

Can barely see his skin tone, but I aimed for a vaguely Middle Eastern, deep tone without quite hitting Black.

First Roc mount! Look at this great sculpt, hell yeah

And here's the second one! Only criticism is that it's hard to get a brush into the front detail on the rider/saddle so it's mostly 'push in some paint, hit it with a heavy wash and hope nobody looks closely'.

Love these guys. Can't wait to have them as a set-piece defending a caravan while space marines shoot each other around them or whatever.

Marshal/Sherrif/Judge

I have been looking forward to this one. She was a Kickstarter only (although she's still on the website at time of writing - so more a limited run than an exclusive) miniature from one of Tim Prow's Diehard Miniatures kickstarters. Tim's sculpts are great, but they often feel a bit large, so I tend to only go for the occasional knockout these days. This one's by Kev White and feels a bit more oldhammer-y in dimensions.

While Tim's paint job is a bit more cop-y, with whites and blues, I wanted her to be an Adeptus Arbites Judge... while also nodding to where Games Workshop nicked those guys from without even bothering to file off the serial numbers. This meant that I almost painted her belt and some armour elements in lime green but decided at the last minute (I had put green on the brush) to stick with the scheme from White Dwarf 169, in black and yellow, while nodding to the white with some ceramite accessories.

I had undercoated her white for some insane reason, which made getting the base colours down way harder than they needed to be, but it worked out because the non-dark parts are quite vibrant in the end. Incidentally, if you want an easy tutorial for all-black Arbites, check out Mengel Miniatures. See below for my notes on the red hair.

Windshield is my usual blue glaze over silver, but the really fun part was giving her red-and-blue siren lights and a brake light, because sometimes you have to make your own jokes.

That's it for these guys! I have a lot of civilians and two accidental projects on my painting table, as well as more scenery and the actual projects I wanted to concentrate on this year. But work is also keeping me incredibly busy and my son turns two at the end of the month, so let's see how we go...

Below the cut for some painting notes!

Advertisements and defensive postures

 Just a couple things.

turret and cages

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As part of undercoating a huge pile of civilians, I also built and/or undercoated some of the giant, overwhelming pile of terrain I've built up over the years. Hopefully I can push through procrastination, stress, and decision paralysis by just doing stuff. Of course, doing stuff also results in getting inspired and buying more stuff. Especially with the 28 scene really thriving lately, with tons of small games and tiny cool collections coming out. (Damn you, Ana Polanšćak.)

Anyway, here are a couple easy things. The billboards are from a Fogou Miniatures kickstarter from a while back (before he retired from model making). Not sure where they are now.

I'm not sure where the cages are from. The turret was a free gift from Knights of Dice when a friend sent me a pile of mdf as a birthday present years and years ago. I forgot the cardinal rule of painting something with moving parts, so it is now fixed in its current position, but I took that opportunity to do a lil battle damage and field repair to it, as you can see with more photos - below the cut.