Here’s my final entry for the Monster March painting challenge being run by Swordmaster over at Path of an Outcast. As I noted yesterday when I posted up the giant Burrower, I had to shelve the idea of getting that Dracoliche and Bone Giant finished this month when I got sick, and so turned to a pair of models that didn’t need quite as much finesse to paint. The first was of course the Borrower, that I shared a couple of days ago. That one was painted start-to-finish, by virtue of being a rather simple model.
This one, while equally a big bastard, is actually a lot more complex. Or to put it another way, allows for more of a complex paint job, while still keeping it rather simple. You could easily get away with a straightforward spray black/grey and drybrush the hell out of the thing, and end up with a decent looking model. I tried that initially, but it didn’t do it for me. Or more precisely, I didn’t think it was appropriate for this model – for me, anyway. More on that a little later.
I originally picked this thing up several years ago with a thought to using it in Kings of War, using a “Giant” Profile or some such and running it alongside my Orcs. As such, I’d planned to give it a square base and so forth. I actually started to paint it in December, with a thought to using it as a personal “Stretch Goal” for Painting Decembuary, but given how December turned out, it didn’t get finished, and then just sat around for a couple of months, occasionally having a bit more done to it before I put it aside again. I had it based on a large oval base at one point, as I think that’s how the reissued version from Forge World comes, but I wasn’t entirely sure at the time, and so ordered a bunch of large bases from Reaper. When they arrived in April, I wrenched him off the oval and glued him down to the large circle, and it slowly took shape from there.
On not wanting to keep the paint simple, I have a rationale – See, this model is a great big expensive chunk of Forge World resin. If I’m going to (yeah, foolishly) pay that sort of money for a single model, then I want to make sure I’m really doing it justice. There are a whole lot of glyphs carved onto the model. Some of the original studio paintjobs pretty much ignore them, but the current Forge World paintjob overdoes the colourfulness of the model, if not the glyphs. With this in mind, I painted them with thinned-down transparent paints from Warcolors, and finished them later by drybrushing my top-layer stone colour over them to make them stand out a little less and give them an old, worn look.
After all of the rock painting was done, it was time to sort out the sculpted-on moss. I really hate sculpted-on moss. It tends to look shitty if painted. (The moss on the new Forge World studio example is positively glowing). So you’re left with pretending that it’s stone and ignoring it, painting it green and trying to ignore how bad it looks, or trying to do something with it by covering it – which is what I’ve done before and attempted again here. I’m not 100% sure if it’s the right choice, but it looks better to me than the other two options (that happened to be stages on the path to this.) Now he looks a bit like Moss Man from Masters of the Universe. So… hrm. So yeah, I wish they would skip the sculpted-on moss.
The plan was to post this guy up yesterday, but it was close to midnight when I got the last of the flock onto him, as it took several applications. The stuff then had to dry, and, well, you get the idea. Easier to let it dry properly and then post him up in the morning. In the end, thanks to this painting challenge, I’ve gotten motivated enough to finally finish this model, giving me a second large beastie worthy of the moniker “Monster March”. There aren’t really any easy 40k stats for him (maybe a Greater Daemon without wings or spells?) but he’ll be usable in both Kings of War and Age of Sigmar. Right when I get around to playing either of them again.
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
You’ve done a great job, methinks.
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Thank you. 🙂
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Pretty cool job on the glyphs – though I wonder how someone was able to chisel those? Rock giant tattoo equivalents maybe? The moss to me really ties it together – so from someone who never saw this model before, please know that it really works. I’d love to see this dude on a tabletop. Ok, I’m going to say it…this figure ROCKS….😁
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They’re kinda randomly scattered across the model for a lot of them. Almost like the Rogue Idol was built out of other carved and sculpted rocks/boulders, and then it had some more glyphs and icons carved and chipped into it once it was “built”.
I might try to set up a game of AoS that pits Orcs and goblins against Nurgle Daemons. That way both of the biggies can face off. I think the Orcs will need some reinforcing first though, at the rate the Nurglites are getting done!
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Awww Mark stole my joke dammit hehe. Heres another one though. He’s so good looking he could star in Boulder and the Beautiful. 😊😉😂 He’s great mate. I’ve never seen him before. PS I loved my Moss Man He-Man figurine and he always reminded me of Danny Glover.
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That’s because Moss Man is Too Old For This Shit. Thanks though, now that I’ve had a couple of days distance after that frenzy to finish him in time, I’m actually really happy with him.
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Maybe it could be used as a Squiggoth in 40K? Not sure what the size comparison there is. But I like the idea of a bunch of Boyz riding around on that thing and bolting on ‘Eavy Shootaz and stuff.
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I have one of those, which (might be) slated to finally receive paint this year. I think the Squiggoth is significantly larger (and I don’t even have the real big one!) The problem is just what you said, as I looked up the profile while writing the post. The Idol makes a great King Kong type, but he’d have to be a while new rebuild (with a howdah?) to work properly in 40k as a Squiggoth.
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Moss and glyphs look absolutely brilliant. Great job!
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Thank you mate! Much appreciated. 🙂
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Nice one – the glyphs are nice and subtle and you’ve done a great job fixing the moss.
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Thank you – I wanted them to be noticeable but not stand out or look too garish. Like tattoos.
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That turned out great! I think the moss is a particularly good touch!
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Thanks! I needed to do something with it as the sculpted moss looked a bit awful. I should have taken a WIP shot of it!
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The best I can do is echo all of the above comments! I think you’ve done a simply brilliant job!
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Thank you very much, mate!
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Yep agreed. I tried something similar with flock on the MoM miniatures giant dwarf golem but your efforts eclipsed mine. Looks amazing.
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Much appreciated. I’m going to go see if I can find your post on the MoM giant. It sounds familiar, actually…
Fake edit – Found it, and it seems I haven’t seen it before!
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I think you’ve definitely made the right call about adding flock on top of the sculpted moss. It works really well — better than sculpted on plant life could have, arguably. Ross over at Tales from the Aaronorium recently experimented with adding actual lichen to some of his treemen – maybe that might be a fun detail to try here and make the model even cooler?
Paintjob’s looking ace, in any case. You’re a one-man painting factory, you are! 🙂
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Thank you! I saw the lichen on Ross’ post. I have used lichen in the (distant) past but I found that it doesn’t hold up very well to models that will be handled, though – and tends to squash up and disintegrate. Some might work in sheltered areas, like between his legs, though. I’ll have a look and a think.
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Hey man,
not really a proper new comment, but I just wanted to let you known that some Russian sex site ( at least by the looks of it) seems to have liked my latest comments on your blog, along with some other comments as well. You’ll probably want to get rid of those links ASAP — although I am pretty sure you’re already on top of this 😉
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I saw one of these had spammed one of my comments on Iron Sleet this morning, and as I’m typing this one has hit one of my comments on SP’s projects. Interestingly, I’ve not gotten any notifications of them happening to my own blog – your comment here is the first I knew it was happening to mine. I’m not actually sure how to nuke them. I’ve been busy with Easter stuff with family for most of the last couple of days, and have friends arriving here in an hour or so. I’ve just emailed WordPress support to let them know about this, and ask them if they know how to kill them off.
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I imagine it’s similar to the fake outlook email follower spam I’ve been getting for the last week or so. WordPress auto-nukes them using some form of algorithm, so I’m sure they’ll figure out a way to kill off this latest bullshit soon enough, and I’m sure they’ll let me know if there’s a way to manually clean them in the meantime.
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Yep I’ve had loads on comments and blog posts. Some of them are actually likes from genuine blogs but the name has been corrupted so it shows up as a Russian site.
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Yeah, this is a new type that I haven’t seen before. The spammers are liking other people’s comments on the posts on my blog, but I’m not getting any notifications that it’s happening on my own blog. I also can’t remove them manually as I can with fake followers.
The only times I get notifications are when my posts on others’ blogs get liked by the spambots.
I’m sure WordPress will be able to write a script, etc that will kill them off pretty quickly. There’s a couple of fairly consistent features that they can flags on most of them.
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Another great mini! I agree with the comments on the moss, you have nailed that perfectly!
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Thank you, Mike. I’m glad I went with it in the end over a little bit of reservation when I saw how thick it went on initially.
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I’ve always loved that model and you have done it justice. It looks properly weathered, and the plant grows on it seems very natural. I like the glow on the eyes as well, having used a more contrasting colour would not have worked so well I think. He does look like the dull brute he is, spot on.
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Thanks Subedai. I thought the green glow on the FW model looked a bit too bright (besides, I’m using green on my Nurgle daemon eyes), and going with red would have been too boring – and besides, GW’s Orcs/Orks aren’t evil – They’re just brutal!
So once again, Nihilak Oxide came to my rescue. I love that stuff for all kinds of things!
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Gorgeous stone coloring. Moss looks realistic af. A masterpiece!
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Thanks mate. I’m just happy I happened to have that container of AP Steppe Grass flock sitting in my basing materials tub. It’s got a nice natural look and managed to brighten up the model nicely without looking garish.
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Honestly, not crazy about the mini. That’s just me. But what you did with it, is pretty dang amazing. Especially when I clicked on the link and was reminded of what he looks like on the FW page. Holy @#$%! Yours looks a zillion times better. The moss was a very smart move, your painting (as usual) is spot on, the glow effect on the eyes is nice and subdued. But everyone else has pretty much mentioned that. The one thing that really popped out at me, was the consistency in stones. FW has different colored stones in their model. Sure it’s an interesting approach, but it looks weird. Especially compared to yours. Great job, oh Az one!
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And in my wordiness, I forgot to mention that I got a good chuckle out of the image of Moss Man. Somehow forgot about that guy! 😀
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Thank you mate! The funny thing is that I had picked out a bunch of the rocks and shaded them differently – mostly by wash-shading and I also gave them all a unifying drybrush at the end which unifies them again. It’s just a lot more subtle than the FW one who seems to have painted a bunch of the rocks pink for some reason. Moss Man FTW!
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Sweet work on that and appreciate the Moss Man reference 😀 Your paintjob is miles ahead of the official one!
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Thanks Mikko. I appreciate it. It’d be funny to make a Moss Man in this scale. Maybe by covering a Reaper Bones figure in it…
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Do it man!
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I’ll keep it in mind when I’m going through my Bones models. I need something appropriately sized, and also with a MotU body. 🙂
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Very cool mate – the glyphs are spot on, and I love the moss! Have you thought about using him as a Gorka(or possibly Morka)naught? Have him chucking shit instead of shooting guns – looks about the right size & style to me 😉
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Thanks Alex. That might just work. I’ll have to check the stats and make sure the Gorkanaut has attacks that fit in with chucking stuff. Although I guess magical psychic power firebreath isn’t out of the question.
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