From Pen & Pad to the Table Top

Dark Heresy Character Miniature

It's not just on the table top we do battle we also indulge in the adventures only available in role-playing games. I've been role-players as long as we've been tabletop gamers and boast a large and varied list of adventures from a Star Trek role-play that is on its 155th mission, to fighting the Empire as rogue Jedi and pirates in Star Wars, had diplomatic problems with Centauri on Babylon 5, we've fended off contemporary foes lost behind enemy lines in Twilight 2000, hunted Owlbears in the borderlands of D&D and gone toe to toe with Hastur and the brothers of the Yellow Sign in Call of Cthulhu. Recently we've started to play Fantasy flights/Games Workshop roleplay Dark Heresy.

As with most role-plays a visual representative of your character is a nice and useful thing to have luckily for me Longbeard had just the thing for my character. He presented me with the two metal Cadian Snipers out of his bits box.

Picture courtesy of Games Workshop

Great I thought, the job is half done, nice little rocky resin base on the one who is standing up and i'm done................... But what about the other miniature? ....It'll be a shame to waste him,

so after some time I had a thought - "How about a nice little Diorama?"

 First thing I needed to do was get a setting for the piece. My character isn't a full blown sniper, more of a sharp shooter or designated marksman so I wouldn't need to place the figure in a snipers nest or buried in the under-growth, but maybe behind a piece of available cover as if keeping eye out covering the movements of the rest of the group.

Secondly acquiring the right parts to make the diorama, I pulled a large base from my bits box - I believe it was from an old AT-43 Wraith Golgoth and started to layer some cork sheeting. Now the cover itself, i'm a fan of the forgeworld barriers but i wasn't really willing to drop that cash on a single diorama so I found an awesome resin barrier from a company called Wytchfire  and after some aquila symbols were added on the front and back it looked like it was cast in a Imperial forge.

With the aid of some plasticard, some GW barbed wire and a ton of PVA i had myself a starting point.

Next was texture; I had recently watched Saving Private Ryan and I had noticed during the scene where Private Caparzo (Vin Diesel) is hit by a German sniper there is a great wealth of information for ruins, roads, paving and mud in a warzone environment (massive credit to the set builders for that). With a few screen grabs and a spare pot of GW texture paint in a colour I don't really use I went to town.

 

Time to add some colours! First thing I did was to give it a undercoat with Vallajo black primer. After I had an even coat I drybrushed the barrier with Mechanicus Standard Grey and highlighted it with Dawnstone. Finally I washed  it with Nuln Oil to give the cracks extra definition. For the mud I gave it a generous coat of Scorched Brown followed  by a wash with Nuln Oil. When that was dry i gave the mud a drybrush of Calthan Brown and to top it of a wash of Agrax Earthshade.

The barbed wire was hit with a coat of Leadbelcher,  followed by a coat of Vallajo Rust wash to give it the look of wire that has sat for months in mud and damp conditions. I'm extremely happy with this wash and I'm going to use it on some of the vehicle kits i'm currently working on.

 I had first painted the paving stones with a blue grey paint - which is a vintage GW round pot from the Rogue Trader days - but this was far too light and I had to start over and black it out. Second attempt at the paving had me working with a 1:1 mix of Vallejo black and Dark grey and this worked well but it wasn't completely right, so after a few washes I had the shade I was happy with.

Now if you are familiar with roleplaying your character either starts off with some kit or gathers it on their adventures so i need some items to represent my characters history as a Voidborn (Person born in space on an imperial ship with no homeworld), so a large kit bag, a roll mat and some extra bits would do. I pulled an Imperial Guard Vehicle accessories sprue and noticed that had these kit bags that consist of two backpacks, a carbine lasgun, some grenades and a mug hanging off it. Not have anything else to spare I took a razor saw to the bag cutting it either side of the lasgun and green stuffing the two ends together. Happy with the result i added a roll mat to the bottom and shaved off the mug and mounted the Las Carbine to the side.

Once the backpack was set in place with small amounts of greenstuff  I painted the backpack with Vallejo Yellow Olive, the grenades got a Khorne Red and Caledor sky finish. I highlighted the areas with the same colours with just a bit of Vallejo white in just to bring the colour up a shade or two. The Rifle and the binoculars were finished with a Vallejo US Olive Drab and highlighted once again with some Vallejo White mixed in. With this base was done - Now for the main figure!

I won't go through all the painting steps I did with the figure as everyone has their own way of painting flesh and clothing. I will however show you the steps i took to produce the final camo pattern on the cloak. 

I started by looking through a few camouflage reference books and looking at a few sites like Kamoflage for inspiration. What I ended up with was three options; German Splinter camo, the US Pacific campaign camo and the Frog and Leaf pattern from the Aliens movie

Us Pacific Camo, Colonial Marine Camo, German Splinter Camo

After some consideration i went with a scheme that was close to the US Pacific Camo pattern.

STAGE 1

First was to cover the area in a light tone for this i used Vallejo Elfic Flesh

STAGE 2

Secondly some random dots of Vallejo Beasty Brown

STAGE 3

Now dots of Vallejo Camouflage Green

STAGE 4

The Final Dots of Camo Colour are a Vallejo Sick Green.

STAGE 5

Finally time to Dirty it up, to do this I simply coated the area with an Agrax Earthshade wash.

STAGE 6

Once this was all dry i greenstuffed the mini into position as I didn't want any vapours from Superglue affecting the paint in any way.

FINAL RESULT

Here are the finished minis. I'm generally happy with the results of this little project and I'm pleased to have taken it on. I hope the process has made sense. I wish I was able to convert the figures a little but due to the casts this wasn't easily possible.

 

The only issue now is we are playing Deathwatch - another Fantasy Flight RPG as well - so I'm now tasked doing  a mini for every member of the party!

posted by Sero