Sunday 13 January 2008

Creating a Grymn Force IV

I put the finishing touches to the test sample trooper. Finished off the missile launcher and touched up a few areas.

Thanks to Insomniac who pointed out on this The Miniatures Page discussion, that I'd painted the helmet visor incorrectly, So I blocked that in better and I think the highlighting technique is better too. I'm sure this will get better with practice over 50 figures! Insomniac has a large number of inspirational Grymn painted figures up on photobook - I recommend you have a look here.

The pictures are much improved as I set up my light tent and camera tripod.
Colour Test Sample Complete:



The armour is actually a different colour to the weapon cover - the armour is done with a Slate Grey 32A base whereas the weapon cover is based in Charcoal Black 34C -but both in real life and in these pictures it doesn't show. The slate has a blue-ish tinge which i thought my discriminate with the flatter Charcoal.

I'm broadly happy with the limited palette of the colour scheme (I say limited but there are actually 12 colours of paint used on this figure - mostly grey!) but i have a little nagging doubt about whether a little more contrast is needed....?

The Grymn range from HassleFree Miniatures has around 50 miniatures. These are a mix of troopers in environment suits, some in helmets and some bare headed. I want to make my force all helmeted for a couple of reasons.

  1. I prefer my forces to be made up rank and file type troops (even when just creating a skirmish force) rather than a group of characters, so i like the anonymity that the helmets lend.
  2. Having a range of similar helmets helps to make the units look more cohesive to me than a range of differing hair styles and colours

  3. I can't paint faces repeatedly to a standard that makes me happy :-)

As a result, about half of the 50 Grymn models in my force will be converted to have either an enclosed envronment suit helmet or a visored helmet. Thankfully HassleFree provide sprues with all the bits on you need to do this.



Environment Conversion Bits:


Grymn Conversion Pack:

The missile launcher troop you see above started out in life with a bare head.

Original Missile Launcher Figure:


But again as Insomniac has pointed out i forgot to include the backpack and the airhoses on the missile launcher figure. I'll address this once I've gloss varnished the figure to try and preserve the paintjob!