Monday, June 23, 2014

Kabal of the Bleedin' Eye

I think having an army badge and unifying theme is essential to creating personality for your army. The army badge is crucial. It helps tie the elements of the army together immensely. For my Tau, I fell back on the GW supplied army badge, but this time for my Dark Eldar, I want something of my own choice.

After mulling over different things, watching game of thrones, googling heraldry from the Middle Ages, I came up with the idea of doing something with ravens and bloody eyes. I quick sketch in my notebook here:


And my idea was born -- The Kabal of the Bleedin' Eye. Wonky Eyes for short. Pink-eyes to those who would belittle them. 

After that sketch, I went about combing the internet for more ideas. I found this: 

Here I like how the eyeball is hanging and bleedin' but the crow's head needs some work.

The theme will be repeated across the army on banners, vehicle sidings and so on. I think I might even do some alternate heraldry - humans heads with bleeding eye-sockets. Something like the Bolton heraldry of the flayed man from Game of Thrones. 

Here's a group of Kabalites I've been working on in the evenings. Lots sloppiness on some of the models, especially the glow effect. For rank and file troopers though, I'm pretty proud of them . 

Confirm kill. 

13 models at once. No task to be taken lightly.

Heavy gear for a spindly elf.

This model really makes me wanna do a fire team of Trueborn snipers with Dark lances. 
The plan is to get these bleedin' eyes done and move to some reavers. I expect that the color scheme will look great on the bikes. Then I've got to convert a flesh-moulder. What do you think so far? 








7 comments:

Skye said...

Do you use an airbrush for the white? I'm doing a similar light color scheme for my Dark Eldar and trying to figure out a way to speed it up.

Tim said...

I did use an airbrush for the white. If you do not own one and need to paint a whole army, they are a sound investment. However, they will look very different from the ones you painted with a traditional brush.

Skye said...

Yeah, I just purchased one a few weeks ago and am trying to bone up and try lots of different colors. Especially the difficult colors like yellow, white, and red.

Tim said...

Here is the way I did it.

Primer: Black
Basecoat (airbrushed): Vallejo Air: Dark Seagreen
Mid tone (airbrushed): Vallejo Model Color: Deck Tan, thinned.
Highlight (airbrushed): Vallejo Model Color: Ivory.

These were all applied in a way that left good color modulation and shading.

Then I took out a traditional brush and painted Dark Seagreen+black, thinned, into the recesses, very carefully.

Once that is done, I did line highlights with white on the armor.

its actually quite time consuming, maybe you can cut out some steps. Like I don't think the line highlighting is 100% needed.

Skye said...

Tim, this little discussion as encouraged me to restart a blog and see if I can be consistent. Thanks man!

Dan (nyhil) said...

Tim, the combination of airbrush fade with traditionally brushed details, works exceptionally well. Helps produce the illusion of realism.

But the next time you say 13 models at one time is a difficult task, I'll be directing you to my 460 list and the damned assembly line from 2 years ago... That almost killed me.

Tim said...

Haha! Actually when I wrote that I was thinking about all the people like you who assemble entire armies, then paint all the infantry as a single batch. I could never do that, it would kill me too!