Smog Riders (first blog post)

First blog post! And it’s to chronicle a painting experience completely new for me. I’ve been playing Warhammer and other GW games since about 1995. I played my first Warhammer tournament in 2002 and since then most of my hobby time has been building and painting armies for playing in tourneys. I’ve gotten fairly decent at it and have been fortunate to pick up a few best painted army awards over the years. A few pics of my Orcs and Goblins (possibly my best work) have been posted on this blog by Rich a while back, maybe one day I’ll take the time to photograph the lot and make an uber blog post of picture goodness.

Recently, as Warhammer has been winding up heading towards a new edition and also with the birth of my son (actually, he is definitely my best work) I’ve not had the motivation or time to embark on a new army project.

For something a little different (inspired by Joe Ward and on his recommendation), I took a look at Smog Riders. Get this- a range of miniatures that you paint, but there isn’t a game that goes with them. That was new to me. I love painting, often more than actually playing games, so this wasn’t a problem. Check them out here: http://smogriders.com/galleries-2/?lang=en

My first foray into Smog riders would be Kelly Kraken and Charlotte Page, both from the newest wave of figures. I thought that the blue and purple hues on KK would be  something different to paint, and CP because the sculpt, in particular her dress and face, looked like great fun to paint.

The scale is a bit bigger than a warhammer model, with great big cute faces . The models are cast in resin and the detail is fantastic. Clean up in terms or removing mould lines was fairly easy. KK had a bit of mould slip line round her head, so that needed a bit of green stuff filling.

Here are the girls before any paint went on.

I decided to give KK a black undercoat, as this model has a very ‘dark’ feel and this would get me there quicker. CP was to get a white undercoat as I didn’t fancy getting that red dress and large face up to the desired brightness from black.

I thought it would best to focus on one model at a time so first up will be Charlotte Page.

All the Smog Riders come with a little booklet with a painting guide describing how to achieve the effects shown, which is nice. I read through these and got a good idea of what was involved. All the colours mentioned in the guide were from the Scale 75 brand, which were unknown to me. I really like the GW paint range and have tons of these, so decided that I would convert what I was reading to the colours that I know and love (as far as possible).

With the model undercoated I thought I would tackle the dress first, as this makes up a large area of the model and once this was done I could avoid any possible mishaps getting red paint on the face and hair later. In fact the dress, hair and face are the three areas that I’ll spend the most time on and so are the areas that I’m going to describe in more detail.

I’m actually a big fan of GW’s reds, and it’s a colour I really enjoy painting- I decided to keep with my go to basic formula for a nice deep red;

• ·         Basecoat with Mephiston Red ( a couple of coats required over the white undercoat)
• ·         Shade in the recesses with Carroburg crimson. I normally slap washes all over what I’m shading, but I just stuck with the creases to save having to re-do the Mephiston red. Carroburg Crimson is probably my favourite GW shade. I love how it adds a bit of warmth to the red but also settles in the recesses to an almost black in the deepest creases.
• ·         Highlight the main areas with Evil Sunz Scarlett. This should be the main colour and will take a few thin layers to get a really nice red going.
• ·         Highlight the highest creases with Wild Rider Red. This is the final highlight and just goes on the top of the creases/edges.

No mixing needed, just straight colours and I think it gives a really nice effect. The sculpt is ace and lends itself to a really nice effect. I think the outcome looks pretty good and I’m quite happy with it:

As you can see in the pics I whizzed through some of the other details, and made a conscious choice not to go down the NMM route as described in the painting guide. I’ve never done much of it in the past and I’m not a big fan to be honest, so I just stuck with what I know and went with normal metals.

Getting the face right was something I really wanted to achieve. Faces are one of the main focal points on any miniature, but Smog Riders are similar to things like Super Dungeon Explore, with their caricature features and over sized heads and faces. Normally when highlighting a miniature it only takes a few brush strokes to brighten up the cheeks, nose, forehead and chin to begin to bring a face to life. With such a big surface to work on however, I would have to make smooth highlights and transitions to get the effect I envisioned. This would be the most challenging part of the miniature.

• I started with a basecoat of Bugmans Glow (yep still sticking with the GW colours). This is a very pinky flesh tone which would give me a warm base to build the colour from. My final highlight would be an almost milky flesh tone, but I wanted to build up to that through warmer tones so this is where I started.
• Next layer was a 50/50 mix of Bugmans Glow and Cadian Fleshtone mixed with a decent amount of Lahmian Medium to keep the paint thin, something like a milkshake consistency (not a McD’s milkshake mind, more of a Nesquik consistency). I was careful to leave some of the base colour peeking through around the eyes, around the nose and under the bottom lip.

• Highlight layer of Cadian Fleshtone mixed with Lahmian medium (50/50ish)
•  Next up was a highlight layer of 50/50 Cadian Fleshtone and Ungor Flesh (again mixed with Lahmian Medium).  I can’t stress how important the medium is in these steps, it helps keep the paint as thin as you need it without going weird as watered down paint does as it dries. To be honest I’d never used medium so much before, but I wanted to transitions to be super smooth and to try and avoid visible brush strokes.
• A final highlight of Ungor Flesh on the very highest areas, but only a little amount.

I’m really happy with the outcome. It took a while (couple of hours maybe?) to get the effect I wanted, but I think it was worth it.

The hair was pretty straightforward, but probably equally as time consuming;

• ·         Basecoat Vermin Brown (old GW colour, not sure of the modern equivalent)
• ·         Layer Ratskin Flesh
• ·         Layer Deathclaw Brown
• ·         Highlight Vomit Brown (old GW colour, not sure of the modern equivalent)
• ·         Final highlight, 50/50 mix of Vomit Brown and Screaming Skull

And the finished model:

 

All in all, I’m very happy with the outcome and really enjoyed the 6 or 7 hours I put into it. If you’re looking for something different to paint and a new challenge I’d recommend picking one up.

You’ll find them in stock at Model Display Products here:

http://www.modeldisplayproducts.co.uk/index.php?route=product/category&path=156_183_184

It looks like the latest wave isn’t up on the site yet, but I’d recommend getting in touch with them (that’s how Joe got these for me, but he is a Smog Rider guru).

I’ll be back soon with another blog post chronicling how I got on with Kelly Kraken.