Escher

Welcome back to the ongoing saga that is my Escher gang! If you have read part 1 and 2, you know all about my process in converting and preparing my gang to be painted. Having a few under my belt now, I have a solid process that I plan to take into the rest of the gang, and will share that with you now 🙂

I decided to start with my Tank Girl inspired ganger, aptly named Buck (Tank Girl’s name being Rebecca Buck). As a side note, it made me happy to be able to arm her with a shotgun, going for the double reference. Buck helped flesh out a lot of the gang color standard that you will see through the rest of the models. There are four standard transitions that I used here; skin, chest, boots/shoulder, and pant/knee colors. The boots and shoulders, except on a couple models, all receive the same color progression. I started with a base coat of The Fang, followed by a wash of Druchi Violet. Once dried I highlighted with The Fang once more, followed by Russ Grey for extreme highlight areas.

The lighter purple that you can see on the pants, shins and boots of Phantra, to the left, were a progression of Daemonette hide, druchi violet, a highlight of daemonette hide with warpfiend grey as the extreme. Their loin cloths, meant to be made from their prison world garb, were all done using deathworld forest as a base, athonian camoshade to shade, elysian green as highlight and ogryn camo on the extreme edges. Belts and straps were rynox hide, agrax earthshade, gorthor brown and then baneblade brown. Bone saw a traditional Zandri dust, seraphim sepia and then ushabti bone highlight. Eye makeup was simply Dark Reaper, while Phantra’s mask was a layer of

waywatcher green, gauss blaster green highlight with  evil sunz scarlet for the freehand. The tops/chest armor was a progression of glazing and shading to get the blending seen. Incubi darkness went on as a base, with carroburg crimson going on the under shade area of the chest to give a richer shade. Thin glazes of kabalite green and then sybarite green went on to form gradient highlighting, with coeliac greenshade used to tie in transitions. Skintone started with Bugman’s glow, followed by Riekland Fleshshade as a wash. Cadian Fleshtone started the base highlight, with kislev flesh forming the extreme highlight and, in areas like noses and knuckles, flayed one flesh used for a higher extreme. lips were simply bugmans glow with carroburg crimson washed over.

The faint shaved stubble on many of their heads, as seen on our sneering Juve, was achieved through glazing a 50/50 combination of mechanicus standard grey and kislev flesh, then changing it to a 2:1 ratio, heavier on the flesh tone. Flayed one flesh was used to give a scar here and there on the scalp. Eyes were nothing more than fleyed one flesh with rynox hide as the pupils, and eyebrows saw rynox as the color of choice, as well.

This covers most every color scheme on my Escher, thus far. Please feel free to comment or ask any specific questions, if I didn’t cover something that you want to know about. Thanks for reading 🙂

When I built my gang leader, I did it with aesthetic in mind. Her weapon loadout wasn’t created with any sort of point value calculated. With her done and my focus moving toward the rest of the gang, I needed to get that piece figured out so these were not only good looking but viable on the table.

My champion was next in line for building. I gave her the combibolter that is normally seen on the gang leader, in stock builds, due to a lower cost. While the chem weapon option seems great, I opted to go cheaper and then outfit others with grenades to make up for the loss of template. The build was more straight forward, simply giving the coat and gun to her, while removing the whip. For some added difference, I covered over the chest to unify the plating and decided to give her a half mask. The idea popped that she uses it to cover the scar that she has. Also that if she has a scar like the leader, then it could be something ritualistic within the gang, perhaps a method of removing their penal  world identification tattoos.

 I decided to skip to my Juves next. My list called for three of them, so I did them all in a bit of a batch build.   These are supposed to be the fresh blood of the gang., so I imagined that they would be pulled from the population on Necromunda and not from the penal world; so no tattoos. Scarring would happen later, if they live long enough to seemembership. To make them seem newer, I used some heads from Victoria Miniatures again, as the hair isn’t as wild as the Escher. Like the champion, I used greenstuff to give more of a cloth look over the chest.

I hit a small wall when I started my gangers. The first two I decided to give some IG shoulderpads, keeping in theme with the looted armor that the leader had (the two on the right). otherwise the build was rather plain on them.

The farthest left used what I had learned while making the leader; using witch elf torsos. At this point I had covered over every models chest to make a “uniboob” torso. I decided to go the opposite, here. I have always been a fan of Tank Girl, so this was sort of inspired by her. I used greenstuff to fill out the bikini on her while trimming and smoothing out her head to give the shaven head look with just a couple bangs in the front left. The ganger next to her is when I started to add some humor to them. I found a space marine scope in my bits and thought it would be funny to put it on a shotgun. This eventually turned into making her a blind sniper, having double optic lenses to see, in addition to the scope. I stole a leg plate from the Goliath kit to add a little extra to her.

Then there was the final ganger…. if you follow my twitter feed, you probably saw her.

I made her on Monday’s stream. I had an idea to make a ganger with a gut, like Kiki Bulldozer from Raging Hero’s JailBirds. It was then suggested that she be made pregnant. I initially fought the idea but then, after finding it more humorous, decided to start sculpting it. I then remembered the cigars from the Goliath box and decided she needed to be smoking as well. The nun habit just seemed like natural progression, at that point, which was then added with greenstuff as well. It is a direct result of bad influences and feeding off from them. That being said, I love her and can’t wait to make her a focal point of the gang.

With her done, the gang build was complete.With assembly and sculpting finished, it was time to finish their story and put some paint  on them. Who gets painted first? That is part 3’s job to tell us.

Until then, thanks for reading 🙂

Soph

Like many in the gaming community, I was ecstatic when news dropped about Necromunda’s release. I was an avid player of the original, playing mostly Escher and Redemptionists. I truly loved the look of the models when I saw the new box but, as per usual, wanted to find ways to make them my own and to have them stand out from the basic kits. I finally got my hands on a box on release day and quickly set to do just that.

I started with my leader, who in my mind should be the most flashy model to stand out from the rest. Having done multiple female builds at this point (with write-ups coming, super promise) I had a few options, when it came to bits. My eyes focused on the Age of Sigmar Sorceress model, having picked one up a while back to use for my Amazon team created from witch elves. I thought she could work nicely as a thrower at the time, but slowly the idea faded and she waited on the Warhammer Quest character back burner. The extended arm would work well for holding a pistol out, I had thought, so I started dicing her up and came up with an initial outline. The torso, once sawed off from the Sorceress, lined up perfectly with the Escher legs that were freed from their host. I had wanted to do a segmented leg, to give a different boot look, but the idea didn’t fully pan out and I went with the traditional leg for that portion of the kit. I used some greenstuff to do any minor gapfilling needed in order to join the two halves together. The extended arm was simple; I just cut the sorceress arm off at an angle to line up with the end of the glove. I was already falling in love with this pose and it started helping in fleshing out who this person was and what this gang would be like. I envisioned this woman staring down her plasma pistol completely relaxed and uncaring of what layed on the other end. The pose, with head tipped back would lay the foundation for the next ideas to pop in my head; the face. Fortunately, the faces for all the witch elf models are separate from the heads. They are far too angular for a human look, something I ran into when making my Amazon team. I needed something that would work well with this pose and this build. Fortunately, I didn’t have to look far. I had purchased some female heads from Victoria Miniatures to be used for my Sisters of Battle; the Guthrie female heads, to be exact. I had bought them after I learned that Armies on Parade did not allow 3rd part bits, so I had to find another solution. From these heads, I found the perfect head for her.

The head was smiling, which I thought was a fantastic addition. Now I had this gang leader grinning as she eyes her target. I quickly thought of this mentally deranged gang who were escapees from a penal world, which was building off the generic penal inmate idea I originally had. I wanted to make them look unstable and give some looted gear, like it was lifted off from imperial guards during this escape. I was also leafing through the rulebook and absolutely loved the look of the Belladonna character art they put in there. It became a partial inspiration for where I headed, deciding I wanted a feather headdress for my leader.  To build, the head was cut and filed to fit the head with hair being glued in place around it. I had to file down both her chest and the cadian plate piece heavily but after a bit of work, it fit. I also gave it some bullet holes; the blows she would have given the poor guardsman she took it from. The feathers would come from the Tzeentch Acolyte kits. I had them on hand, so it was an easy grab in order to get feathers; nine total. I made a crown from the iron halo from Saint Celestine, as I had a spare sitting around, and sat it overtop the feathers already in place. After the crown, everything else was downhill; a powersword clipped from a Sisters of Silence kit was fit onto her right hand and then I used greenstuff to sculpt the back piece for the vest. I decided to add some scarring on her right cheek and neck, to make her a little more weathered as a ganger. The result:A really fun build that took me about three or four days of work to do. I cannot wait to get some paint on her. We have ten others to build, however, which I will show you in part 2. Thanks for reading 🙂