Reaper Bones Black 44011: Monstercrown Ogre Juggernaut ….Orc! #Monstermarch6

Reaper Bones Black 44011: Monstercrown Ogre Juggernaut

Although I haven’t quite finished sharing my February models, I thought I’d just drop a quick interrupt in here to share the first of my models for this year’s Monster March Painting Challenge being run by Swordmaster over at Path of an Outcast. I’ve managed to participate in several of these annual challenges and they’ve always been both fun and a good motivator to get some of the monstrous stuff sitting around Casa Azaza painted and completed. We start this year’s models with the completion of a Reaper Bones model from a couple of Kickstarters ago – the Monstercrown Ogre Juggernaut – but with a couple of improvements to remove most of the goofiness!

Reaper Bones Black 44011: Monstercrown Ogre Juggernaut

I started this guy awhile ago, then restarted it, then it sat around forever as I tried to figure out what to do with it. In the end, I ditched the silly Ogre half-skull and searched through my plastic orc and Ork heads for something that worked, eventually choosing this head from …I think Flash Gitz Nobs or something like that. I liked the pissed off expression of this head more than the armoured heads.As far as the painting went, I ended up playing with it a fair bit, using the large metal panels as a kind of study of light and dark and dirty on the aged armour plates. It was pretty fun, actually just playing with the paint for awhile.

Reaper Bones Black 44011: Monstercrown Ogre Juggernaut, Reaper 50153: Berkeley, Zombie Survivor

I also glued down a classic Orc shield over the coffin-shaped tilting shield originally on the model’s shoulder. The decorative skulls I left alone. This pic alongside Chainsaw Girl Berkeley shows us that he is indeed a hefty boy! I actually managed to complete two models for this challenge over the weekend, and there’s also a bonus entry from Marouda just about ready, so we’ll have those up in the next couple of posts…

Reaper 50153: Berkeley, Zombie Survivor

Reaper Miniatures 50153 Berkeley Zombie Survivor

A kind of random model today. This was one that Marouda and I picked up from a gaming store a few years ago because it looked cool on the peg. Then it naturally sat around for a long time, before evventually being opened, started, and Neglected for …I dunno. A couple of years?

Anyhow, I found it recently, and so stuck it amongst the masses of models on the painting desk, and there, it stood. Still neglected as I worked on other models. A couple of weeks ago, I wasn’t feeling much on the models I was working on, so I asked Marouda to pick out a couple of models for me to finish from anything on the table (with the caveat that I can always say “nope, not painting that one right now” if I don’t like the choices). The two that she picked were Berkeley, and one other model that’s still WIP.

Reaper Miniatures 50153 Berkeley Zombie Survivor

Pretty straightforward model, all things considered. I went for a nice triad of main colours with red for the hair, white for the top and blue for her jeans. A couple of shades of brown for her other kit for a more realistic overall look compared to a lot of the Warhammer stuff. In particular, I’m really happy with how her jeans came out (especially in hand). I was in two minds about adding tattoos, since the model’s arms are really fine, and I didn’t want to muddy them up. On the other hand, she looks like she’d have some ink, so I compromised and kept it to a couple of really subtle, part-hidden ones on her person. I wanted the chainsaw to be realistic, and wanted to go for orange for the plastic casing rather than use red or yellow. That’s also where I used some Contrast paint as well with thinned Gryph-Hound Orange over VMC Light Orange. For me, this is how I see the most use of Contrast paints working for me. After I was happy with the orange, I had to figure out something to do with the chain cover, since the plain off-white looked boring, so it was google time to find a brand that fit, since the names I’d most likely use have their own standard colours (Stanley uses Yellow, Bosch uses green.. that sort of thing). I found Echo, and they also use a font that I was able to reasonably replicate at that scale, so that’s where the branding came from.

It wasn’t until the model was completed that I actually noticed that the long strip of torn denim hanging from her leg to the ground that kept annoying me was in fact, a dismembered zombie hand. At that point I wasn’t willing to clip it off and have to repaint the mess it’d make of part of her jeans, so yeah. Long strip of ripped denim. Just unsee it! 😉