With my interest in gaming renewed by finally letting go of Deathwing and picking up Novamarines as my new chapter, I decided to paint a test model up to see how much work I was looking at with the split color scheme these guys have.
Turns out, it's not too bad. Sure it takes a bit longer, but it doesn't feel as painful since part of the model is light colored and part is dark colored. It breaks up the monotony of painting all one color on a model.
Since this guy is a test model, I've only include two pics here. That and I cannot find my other pics of him to save my life. I honestly don't know where they've ended up. As for the color scheme itself, I used the images I found in IA9 for reference.
The things I like about this guy
I like the split color scheme. Looks very, very cool once done. I like the blue right now, but I fear it may be a bit too dark. Either that or too saturated, I'm not sure which one yet. I think I'm going to lighten/desaturate it slightly on my next test model.
I love the red helmet and how it came out. It pops on the model. The gun case came out well too. It's not the standard black color. This time, I copied the color plate in IA9 and used a blueish color for the gun casing. Makes it stand out from all the rest of the metal on the model.
I think I did alright with the weathering. It's two different approaches over light and dark colored armour. You can't do the same thing on the white that you did on the blue, it won't work. I want to be able to use my weathering powders to tie the model to the base and make these guys look the part. Which leads me to what I don't like.
The things I don't like on this guy
I don't like the white armour. It looks good for white, but it needs to be the bone color I used on my Deathwing. These guys are more bone than they are white and if I make their armour bone, the white veteran helmets will stand out like the red one does now. That's what I want. White helmets on my terminators. I never had that before and I want it on these guys.
I'm not sold on the base. I love the base itself, but the color scheme doesn't do it for me. I think I'm going to go with something darker to make the model stand out. Darker and reddish brown. That sounds cool. I'm keeping the style of the base, just changing the color scheme.
The biggest decision though is the shoulderpads
The one thing I'm really struggling with is do I go with the standard terminator shoulderpads or do I go pre-heresy looking (roman style). I'm leaning towards the pre-heresy style just for the looks alone. Apparently these guys have lots of that old equipment according to the book. That's kinda cool.
I'm curious to hear what folks think of this guy. He needs some work, but for a test model, he's helped me sort out a few issues already and that's the real purpose of doing test models anyway.
UPDATE: Weathering over light and dark colored armour
Since I mentioned it in the post and a couple of folks asked about it in the comments, I've included a link to the previous post where I talk about applying weathering (pencil) over light and dark colored armour. You can't treat both the same when using a pencil and it wasn't until I tried to do it that I learned about it myself.
Weathering with a pencil over light and dark colored armour
(this actually applies to weathering in general as well)
The same thing applies to regular weathering as well. Over light colored armour, things like powders and washes will appear much quicker and be stronger than over dark colored armour. You need to be very careful when working over white and light colored armour that you don't go overboard in your initial application. It's much better to apply very little and build it up than it is to try and remove the excess.
Here's the tutorial on how to paint this quartered scheme.
