Kaladrax In Seven Days! Buglips is Crazy! WIP

[KruleBear]

Awesome, Kal is looking like he decomposed while lying in the muck of the swamp. Lovely dark, dank, and dirty bone. I cn almost smell the feted jungle!

 

This is the type of undead dragon a Goblin could think of as family!

[chaoshead]

Looking good so far.

 

For two days work on such a large mini i think you have a fair amount finished.

 

This could come down to the wire though so I will continue to watch.

 

Keep at it buglips, i would love to see you pull this off.

 

Chaoshead

[buglips*the*goblin]

 

 

Done with this bit. There is no detail on the treasure chest at all, so I used Coat D'Arms hairy brown to roughly line out some wood-looking bits. This was incredibly awkward, so they're not entirely straight. I did a rim of metal in old pro paint steel plate with old pro paint truesilver on top. Then I went over the slat lines with some old pro paint woodland brown.

 

It's not especially pretty, but without any detail guides it'll do. This is in the back, so at best it will only even get seen once every few years. If anybody complains then, I'll unleash The Probians.

 

Also, and I meant to mention this before, Kaladrax's hollow base? Best part of the whole figure. Your hand can fit inside it, and it has lots of little nooks for fingerholes. Makes holding onto it and twisting it about very easy!

 

 

Then I did the greens around the treasure. There are some neat rock-looking bits there that are defined enough to be painted as uncut gems if a person was so inclined. I wasn't, frankly at this point I was pretty sick of the base. The butt end came all at once, with the soft skulls and that evil treasure box.

 

While I had my greens out, I went ahead and mossed the area around the sad skull on top of the head:

 

 

Then I patched up any stone bits that needed it, and now the base is completely finished!

 

 

And that's the last you'll see of it until there's a dragon on top.

 

So about 2 days for the base, not bad. Still lots of dragon to do, though, so this could be tight. All those vertebrae might prove my undoing.

 

I'm probably going to leave the head to sit a bit while I bring the rest of his bones to life. Sort of study it and plan out my highlight attack. It all has to blend together when it's put together, and if I go ahead and finish off the head now I might forget everything I did to it. So best to leave it as is for now.

 

This means the next part will probably be the center bit. I've been looking forward to this. I have a plan for his "guts".

[MonkeySloth]

This is just chugging along. I'm thinking there's an army of goblins working on this, each just painting for an hour at a time.

[angrygerbil]

Keep up the good work! Can't wait to see it finished!

[Dan Goodchild]

Buglips you're nuts, but we already knew that.

Well done so far. I particularly like the brown dicolouration on the statue; it looks like the face has been crying.

[Girot]

Buglips you're nuts, but we already knew that.

Well done so far. I particularly like the brown dicolouration on the statue; it looks like the face has been crying.

I am definitely stealing that idea...

[buglips*the*goblin]

Buglips you're nuts, but we already knew that.

Well done so far. I particularly like the brown dicolouration on the statue; it looks like the face has been crying.

 

Thematically, the base tells me that Kaladrax is so ancient he has outlasted civilizations that have crumbled into ruin. Kaladrax is an eternal evil, fit to be the penultimate villain in any campaign.

 

In the end, it is always Kaladrax. It will always be Kaladrax. Kaladrax will outlast even the ending of the world.

 

And nobody is left to weep for the dead except the ruins of their former glory.

[Grimreaper71]

Bugs I must say you do yourself a disservice; you made those skulls look great.

[Darsc Zacal]

 

Buglips you're nuts, but we already knew that.

Well done so far. I particularly like the brown dicolouration on the statue; it looks like the face has been crying.

 

Thematically, the base tells me that Kaladrax is so ancient he has outlasted civilizations that have crumbled into ruin. Kaladrax is an eternal evil, fit to be the penultimate villain in any campaign.

 

In the end, it is always Kaladrax. It will always be Kaladrax. Kaladrax will outlast even the ending of the world.

 

And nobody is left to weep for the dead except the ruins of their former glory.

Eloquently put and a very nice base it is too.

[Edsterdoom]

The base looks awesome. I was going to paint this dragon as one of my last but you may have convinced me otherwise.

[buglips*the*goblin]

Work on the body!

 

The Blackening:

 

 

 

Wish I'd thought to do this before wasting time doing those two coats of Bone Shadow...

 

Anyway, speaking of that, time to drybrush some on:

 

 

 

This fought with me a little, so I guess the Coat D'arms wasn't quite dry. Since it dries semigloss, it can be hard to tell sometimes. Kaladrax may require a spritz of dullcote when he's done.

 

So not wanting to waste time, and rather sick of painting black on bits, I decided to test out my idea for his "guts".

 

Now, when this sculpt was revealed none of us were quite sure what to make of all his filled-in bits. Some people have been thinking about cutting them out. Others, like in the pic Teskal linked, choose to interpret them as guts.

 

Now, see... I think everybody's wrong. But I'll get to that in a second. So I didn't want to chop it all out, and I didn't like the "raw guts" look. It makes him look like he's just been put on the butcher's block, all fresh and carvable and ready to serve your family a tasty, quality meal. And I knew, I just totally knew, that if I tried to paint that stuff in as guts the way it was sculpted... I'd wind up making it look like sides of bacon.

 

Now don't get me wrong, a Bacondrax is pretty awesome. I'm kinda hungry for one right now. But not really what I want. Also, never give your players an opening for wisecracks.

 

So, what to do? Well, let's look at those "guts". Now we know they're there to stiffen up the piece. But that doesn't mean they can't have a logical explanation, too. And I came up with one.

 

See, dragons have this totally weird anatomy. I mean, think about all the stuff inside us. Most of it is squishy, but it's all different. And it all serves a purpose, except maybe the appendix. So that means this stuff on Kally, it serves a purpose too. Now what would a dragon need with some sort of weird, tough inner skin that goes from the belly all the way through the neck?

 

Protection from its own breath weapon.

 

That's Kaladrax's inner hide, and to withstand all the terrible damage of a breath weapon it's got to be strong stuff. Strong but flexible. And probably so strong it takes a long time to break down. Maybe as long as his Bones. And the same kind of stuff is in his wings, because it's strong and flexible. Makes sense, right?

 

Now, given that all of our inner mushy bits are all kinds of weird colours - grey bits, and pink bits, and purple looking bits, then probably his are, too. But they've also been exposed for a long time, so they wouldn't look fresh.

 

The sum of all that reasoning was that I decided what I needed was some kind of purplish grey. That's exactly the ticket. If only I had some. Maybe I can mix some. Hmm.

 

Oh wait!

 

I do have some! Because when I bought all that Bone paint for Kaladrax, I bought a little something something for some other bits.

 

The Dark Elf Triad.

 

So here's what that looks like:

 

 

 

 

Oooh, I do like that. That is going to look killer when it's done.

Edited September 9, 2013 by buglips*the*goblin

[buglips*the*goblin]

I don't want to alarm anybody, but there appears to be some sort of Kaladraxolich slowly coming to life on my workbench...

 

 

[Teskal]

I think the guts are more sinews and muscles. In the moment I'm thinking of using a sick green paint for the 'guts' or glowing ghost green.

Or I want screaming faces, hands and arms coming out of the rips. But I'm not sure where I get the faces. Maybe Zombies. I think I have still few unused mantic zombies.

 

The wood of the chest is really good painted.

 

You pictures will help me to check if I found every skull. :-)

 

I started to paint the base and saw yesterday the first time the round objects near the chest. I think they are plates, no coins. Or coins for giants. :-)

Tomorrow I will drill a hole in the middle of the neck from the front into the chest. So I can decide later if I want to use LED's. The chest itself was already hollow.

Edited September 9, 2013 by Teskal

[Maglok]

I might have to set myself a goal of painting a big model in my vacation as well. :) This seems to be working!