Round Two Report from Rogcollectibles

Rogzombie writes:

Again a sincere thank you to The Miniatures Page and i-Kore for the figures and the great challenge. It's been a blast so far and very enlightening.

The beginnings of a VASA army or a contest entry?

That is the question. After seeing how cool this figure really was, I noticed I also had some VASA miltia females that I really loved. So I checked out the entire line and after seeing the Arch Angels, I decided to put together a small VASA army. I love the clean lines and dramatic poses as well as the unique armor and unit options.

So I decided that rather than attempt to sell this figure on Ebay, I will let it be the beginnings of an army. At this point I had to decide, would I paint it as a contest entry or as I want to see it and the rest of my army. It became a little of both. I based it on the color scheme I wanted for my VASA figures. I decided to go with the purple power armor, but the rest of the figure had potential for some interesting work. I knew the coat would need to be an important element as well as the armor.

First up was priming the figure. I used a mix of Folk Art Glass and Tile Medium mixed with Vallejo Model Color Black paint. This is a great quick primer, it goes on nicely and dries overnight or sooner. I covered this with thinned down Citadel Black.

At this point I always start out with the base. I came up with an idea that would require the figure be rebased but it seemed like a simple enough fix. I wanted the base to have a high-tech metal look. I was generally working off an idea I remember from the GW Inquisitor game. The idea was to make a pitted metallic base. Since I didn't have any materials with a pattern of holes as needed, I made some myself. On very thin sheet styrene, I used my old artists circle template to draw a circle the size of the base top. Then using a one-hole paper punch, I punched out a regular pattern of round holes within the styrene as shown below.

After punching the holes, the circle is cut out and glued to a fresh 25mm round base. I wanted the ground to look war damaged, the inspiration being Terminator III. I cut some grooves into the base using my Dremel drill and cleaned up with a modelling knife. After priming it (as I did the figure), it was time to paint it.

Looking for a burnished look, I drybrushed each step in the following paint order:

1. Vallejo Game Color Tinny Tin
2. Citadel Boltgun Metal
3. Citadel Chainmail
4. and then Citadel Mithril Silver

I made sure to keep it on the darkish side. Next, paint in the cracks black followed by white, setting it up for a biohazard look, also inspired by Terminator III! In order to create a glowing energy source breaking thru the cracks, I started with Vallejo Model Color Andrea Blue, highlighted with Vallejo Model Color Deep Sky Blue. To finish, I mixed white with the sky blue, painting this sparsely for highlights.

I had to cut the fig out of his original base, cut off the base tab and drill a pin hole into the fig's foot and the base. Using superglue, I pinned the fig to the base. I made sure not to obscure the detail involving the glowing energy.

Next step was painting the metals - The swords, sword hilts and gun's metal areas. For the blades, I basecoated Boltgun Metal followed by careful drybrushing of Chainmail, and then lightly with Mithril Silver. I made sure to catch the edges just right when drybrushing, in order to pop the highlight edges. This achieves the highlighting while maintaining the burnished look drybrushing gives.

For the gold areas, I basecoated with Vallejo Game Color Brassy Brass, followed by edgelining with Vallejo Game Color Polished Gold. These colors are really nice for doing golds, bright and easy to highlight.

The hair was done next. I decided on brown as to not distract from the face mask (which should really be the focal point). Blonde hair, in my opinion, would be distracting. I was lazy and didn't want to go for a bottle of light brown, so I mixed a little red into black and came up with a nice brown which I simply drybrushed over black. Painting a highlight over black seems to work better for brown hair than a brown basecoat, which usually makes the hair too light.