Saturday, May 29, 2010

First Clanrats!

Well here they are! The beginning of my mighty army of scurrying greatness...


...or 15 of them anyway.

From Skaven


From Skaven


From Skaven


From Skaven

...and it took me a week of evenings after work to get them done, so yes, I am a slow painter, but this was a really good experience for me.


Some thoughts and lessons learned at this early stage:


1. These old clanrat models are awful - and I mean AWFUL!
I am not a sculptor and so I probably shouldn't comment, but as a consumer...

  • ...the poses work out almost all the same. You'd have to do a lot of cutting, filing and "greenstuff-ing" to get some variation.
  • By the Holy Horned One the actual sculpting in places just looks weird. The feet are basically gigantic slabs of flesh, and as others have said, they don't actually look like Skaven, more like monkeys/ rat mutations. (Ronkeys? Clanmats? etc.?) I mean, a Skaven army made of these guys couldn't sneak up on anyone - you'd hear their feet flapping from miles away! (Compare these to the latest Skaven plastics - which have fantastic details!)
  • BTW - For a really good look at Skaven models over the years, take a look at the excellent article over at My Wargame - I agree with everything the author says about these 4th generation models. ("Urgh")
  • Related to that...

2. ..."Caveat Emptor" (Buyer beware.)

  • Always carefully check the images and descriptions on ebay if you are buying Skaven. If you don't like these older clanrat models be careful, because they can make up the bulk of many of the Skaven armies that are on ebay.

3. I'm gonna have to learn to speed paint!

  • It takes about 3 - 4 hours to do 5 clanrats for me at the moment, including basing. I would think that these are "Tabletop quality" so they are good enough to use on a battlefield but nothing more than that.
  • At this rate, it will take me 5 years 4 months and 13 days of painting every evening after work to finish my current army. (JOKE! I couldn't be bothered to work it out, but you get the point...)
  • I could probably speed up the whole process by having some of my clanrats with black fur (i.e. just leave the fur as the black undercoat...).

On that note...


4. Drybrushing works just fine...

  • I experimented by using simple drybrushing of the base fur colour over the chaos black basecoat and that seems to look fine for tabletop quality. (i.e. when the models are viewed from a distance.) Add another, slightly lighter colour via drybrushing later and it will look even better.

5. Washes are your friend...

  • Devlan Brown. 'nuff said.



Step-by-step guide on these models to come. What do you think of the Ice Blue scheme?


*Neek*

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