My apologies in advance for the somewhat bad-quality pictures – my camera is not that awesome. I’m sure you’ll notice the color bleed from the minis to the white background.

Tzeentch Demons

I painted the Tzeentch ones first. Partially because, as I said before, it’s the one I like best in the board game at the time being, but also (admittedly) because I imagined the Horrors would have to be somewhat easy to paint – mostly a drybrush job.

Lord of Change, Back

The Lord of Change on the other hand was tougher; I wanted his robe to be white-ish with blue hue, with the inner bit being darker than the arm pieces, and there were all the gold details. I added highlights by washing the lower edges of some trims with black, and it seemed to work out well – I continued that with the other models.

Finally, the Warp Stones (green-yellow stuff) took a bit of time and quite some iterations to get right. I wanted these as close to the game’s tokens as possible.

Slaanesh Demons

Next, I painted the Slaanesh demons. Arzo, my wife, pointed out that the Demonettes weren’t purple enough at first, so I washed their corsets or whatever-that-is with purple. I took some care to make the claws of the Keeper of Secrets a different purple than its (more pink) body, so they’re clearly distinguishable.

I’m not absolutely happy with the way the Demonettes‘ bodies turned out. The color is fine as it is, but the drybrushing strokes are too clearly visible, particularly to their left (as seen from the front).

Khorne Demons

Khorne came next. I googled a bit for the exact coloring of the Bloodletters; I didn’t remember the exact color of their horns. Turns out I couldn’t actually possibly remember it, as there’s all kinds of variations between red and black horns. Still, inspiration was a good thing, it made me color them slightly more orange to try and get some of that “hellfire” feeling.

While painting these, I had to resist the urge to stand up and shout something along the lines of…

Blood for the Blood God!

Nurgle Demons

Finally, my favourite Chaos God, Nurgle. Lots of details on these models, with all the worms and blains and all – another reason (apart from me wanting to save the best for last) why I took them last, after having warmed up. The skin of the Plaguebearers took quite some layers until I was happy with the sickly-rotting green-brown mix.

Note how the Lepers, the Plaguebearers and the Great Unclean One all share the green base color, but have different color nuances themselves – giving a coherent picture while maintaining distinguishability. At least that’s what I tried to do

Are you painting minis as well? Any comments or suggestions?

The cultists are already done:

Cultists of all Chaos Gods

I’ll upload the pictures to Board Game Geek as well of course. Here’s a few mug shots of each of the four groups:

Khorne Cultists

Bloodsworn, the cultists of Khorne, the Blood God. He mostly lusts for battle, thus cultists (who do all the corrupting and pillaging for the gods) aren’t as interesting to him. Since the game really plays differently with the different gods, this means that it also provides less cultists for him (and more demons to beat stuff up with).

Nurgle Cultists

Lepers, the cultists of Nurgle, the Lord of Pestilence. Interestingly, he does most of his victories through corruption, which in turn is the main purpose of the cultists in this game – and he has less of them than Tzeentch. Ah well, he has more and cheaper demons instead. Nurgle hits a soft spot for me, I always loved his fluff. My all time favourite Chaos God

Tzeentch Cultists

Acolytes, the cultists of Tzeentch, the Changer of Ways. He’s the god of magic and intrigue, a control type character. So I think the mage style robes work pretty well. The demons will be in a lighter blue. Tzeentch has most cultists, and he teleports them around the board in a pretty unpredictable way. Currently my favourite god to play in this game.

Slaanesh Cultists

Seductresses, the cultists of Slaanesh, the Prince of Pleasure. It is interesting how these are the only cultists that are supposedly female. Not sure why “Seductors” wasn’t chosen. I added another layer of light (purple mixed with white) drybrushing here after thinking they looked too similar to the Tzeentch ones (before trims), I think they’re much more obviously purple now and it really brings out the detail in their robes.

Teaspooned Tzeentch Cultist

Interestingly, what took me longest with these cultists are the little trims around their hoods and sleeves; they’re just so tiny that it’s a lot of work to get these right. To the left here, you see one of the Tzeentch ones in a teaspoon for size.

The demons and greater demons will be next, I’ll do those one god at a time. With the cultists, I thought it made most sense to paint all of them at the same time: The steps I took with each of the Chaos god’s deluded followers were very similar, even though I tried to make them convey different moods through more vivid (Slaanesh) or muted (Nurgle) color schemes. Since the demons look really different for each faction, that approach really doesn’t make sense for them.

I am not certain whether I will keep the Politblog. Maybe one of the reasons why I didn’t feel like posting anymore was that it started feeling too much like work. What do you think? Should I keep it?

So, this was one of my first “dear diary” blog posts in this blog. Back to more interesting more random subjects again soon

If you notice any issues, I’d be glad about a comment here. The FTP upload had some hickups and corrupt files that I fixed, and might well have had some that I didn’t.

(Oh, and nope, the diploma thesis is not done yet )

I’ll get back to blogging after that. So the blog is not quite dead yet

In unrelated news, I’m sure you know this video.

Anyway, something completely different: The financial crisis explained with a really nice visualization (and its homepage), very worth posting -- it’s both informative and well-made:

Via purzlbaum.ch.

Update 2009-03-06 13:49: Similar, but in German and using a bar metaphor, and found on Rogue’s Blog:

But I’ll take things slow

Oh – never, never ever snowboard or ski without helmet or back protector. I was wearing them, and I wouldn’t want to know where I’d be now without.

The Cyberdemons and the Spider Queens didn’t make it, but rushing them (or the marines) would be a pity, I’ll rather paint them well with ample time after the weekend.

Without further ado, here’s the whole bunch of the marines. I took Space Marine Scout miniatures from Warhammer 40k for them, as they just have waay more detail than the ones that came with the game itself.

Doom Marines

All the details did take their toll, time-wise, I spent close to 20 hours on them. But considering they’re the good guys and the only minis the marine players will ever control, they better look good.

I made individual pictures of the three strike teams (red, green, blue), have a look at them here:

Red Marines

Blue Marines

Green Marines

Note how they’re quite a bit cleaner (looks-wise) than the other minis – I didn’t drybrush a bit here. That and the strong color palette emphasizes a bit that they’re the good guys, I hope.

Time to relax now

Still, here they are, in all their glory. They’re one of the strongest monsters of the Doom boardgame, and I tried to make them look the part. Six Hellknights.

6 Hellknights

Now the next thing definitely has to be the marines, as the Cyberdemons don’t appear until the second mission of the game, and the Spider Queens only show up in the expansion levels – and that’s the only three things left to paint for the game.

Hellknight

Hellknights Progress

The others aren’t exactly as far, as you can see in the picture to the left. Right behind them, the line of paints, are the colors they’ll get from this stage onward – the bodies got a deep red base (after the black coat) and some washes already, next will be two layers of skin drybrushing, a layer of skin wash, and then the dark red drybrush for the head. The colors to the left of those mentioned I’ll use for detail work (eyes, mouth and teeth, base).

Hellknight Back

On the Hellknight’s back, you see why so many layers make sense, too. In some spots, the leather-y color from the first skin drybrush still shows through, while in others the more pink second skin drybrush is more prevalent. The crotch area is darker than the surroundings (it’s where the mud wash was applied), and the red base still shines through in less deep skin trenches.

I hope to finish the others later today.