Hello there! A little bit of painting to share with you all today – some troops for my new Eru-Kin project. The Eru-Kin Kickstarter provided a wealth of cool and unusual sculpts to choose from, including a batch of 4 sculpts that form what I look on as ‘core’ tactical troops, (‘Braves’ in the RT Slann background). I’ve got three of each sculpt, and decided to batch paint them one group at a time, (so the next few posts are going to be broadly similar I’m afraid). In the interests of trying to make them look a bit more individual, I have incorporated some of the old RT fluff regarding skin colour & patterning and exotic animal hides – there is some rather extreme colour experimentation along the way… I’ll be honest, there are some colour combos that don’t exactly rock my world, but hey-ho, it’s an army of space-frog-lizard-men things so who am I to judge! I’ve finished the first batch so let’s take a look:
I repeated the grey-blue armour with the odd red panel here & there, as per my test subject last week, but with different skin colours & patterning for each… I suspect that they would’ve looked much better if I had stuck with yellow flesh, (as per the test mini I did last week), but then they would have been practically identical so it’s pros & cons really. I also picked out the loin cloths in different colours & added some exotic animal print patterns – again, a call-back to the RT Slann fluff, (I suspect that the base colour of the cloth might be used to mark out different units as the army grows).
From a sculpting perspective, these guys look much less ‘Predator-esque’ than last week’s test piece… The similarities are there, but I feel like there is a different design ethic going on here… I originally had my test piece pegged in to be the General, but these latest guys are actually far more typical of the range so I may end up changing my mind on that… I suspect that the Predator dude might end up being a sniper/assassin specialist type in the final army, but we’ll worry about that further down the road. Here they are together:
Anyhoo, that’s it for now dudes – short and sweet today, but worry not – there is more to follow :-)
Leadballoony - It's a lead thing 
I actually like the different colour schemes you’ve gone with Alex. The beige weapon’s work a treat too! It’s funny with painting patterns on skin that if you veer too far from reality, even though it’s in a fantasy setting, it will look “unbelievable” to our eyes. John Blanche pointed that out in a Eavy Metal tutorial decades ago. Stuck with me ever since. Noted that I can’t execute that theory into practice mind you :p
Top stuff mate, looking forward to more :)
Cheers dude, glad you like ’em – I must admit, the lack of reality on the skin was really bugging me right up until I put the gloss on the skin… once it was glossed, it all sort of clicked a bit really! Weird :-)
Great to see these guys getting painted up. This was a Kickstarter that got away for me, so I have to live dangerously through your posts here. The riot of colours works for me, that’s just what the Slann call for in my book. I still have the Bizaza Guard to paint up, will be looking for inspiration.
Thanks mate, they certainly are an eye-full, aren’t they? I’m glad I kept the armour a bit subdued otherwise I think they might have induced headaches & nausea! :-)
Good luck with your Bizaza Guard – I’ll be keeping an eye out for them!
Cool Space Frogs, mate. Especially like the green skinned one.
Cheers dude, and yeah, I think Mr. Green is probably my fave out of these three – he came out really bright! I’ve got another three in progress with the same colours, and then I’m going to experiment with a few in blue, purple and brown :-)
Blue should be quite easy to pull off too. Only “problem” when experimenting so much with their skin colour is that they loose a bit of coherency.
Yep, that is definitely a risk, and I’m hoping that a structured approach to armour & gear will help to mitigate that… we’ll see! ;-)
Looking good mate. I know what you mean about the crazy skin colours but I reckon it works, the uniform armour and weapons tie them together as a single squad whilst the varied skin colours hides the fact that they all have the same pose.
Cheers dude, that’s what I was hoping for ;-)
Those colours are fantastic, they totally suit the minis. Damn nice job!
Hey, thanks Suber, glad you like ‘em mate :-)
They look great, Alex! I was expecting something less great when I read your first paragraph before seeing the models properly. Perhaps you could make a squad each of each “type” of Slann skin variations – a squad with predominantly green skin patterns, one with purples, one with oranges?
The Mass Effect-style armour looks great once again! Keep it up!
Haha, thanks mate – you’re right! On re-reading it, the intro is a bit negative… I guess it’s just the weirdness of the project that has me spooked – I usually try to keep a fairly ‘realistic’ palette :-) I don’t know about organising units by skin colour… I’ll end up with a good 8 or more basic skin tones I reckon, and I think I want it fairly jumbled up & chaotic… we’ll see ;-)
The bright skin and cloth colours are perfectly set off by the neutral gun casings and midnight blue armour. I confess I’m not a huge fan of multiples of the same (or similar poses), so you did the right thing by mixing up the skin colours. I suspect once you mix them in with the rest of the spawning, I won’t even notice the duplicates!
Dunno why that posted anonymously!
Oh no! My commenting woes are contagious!!
:-) Cheers Jon, I’m glad the crazy frog skin is working as intended – I’d rather not have duplicates either, but it is unavoidable in this case… All the bright skin tones should make for quite the spectacle when it’s all done!
Lovely colours! You get them to look quite different even though they are the same sculpt. And yet they match. The kids these days miss out on so much creativity when they have too many poses to choose from :D
Thanks dude, that was my hope. You make a good point about folks being spoiled for choice these days – I had never thought of it that way, but I think you are right, people had to get creative with a very limited set of casts back in the day – the RTB02 Space Orcs spring to mind…
How did I miss this? Grrr. I love the frogs eyes.
Cheers dude! 8-)