Luke's very slow Salamanders

[Luke]

Getting feedback from strangers seems to help my brain associate painting with feeling good, so let’s start a little hobby blog!

I’ve been keeping tabs on a variety of 3d printing patreons for a year or so, and OnePageRules’s saurians finally pushed me over the edge into buying a resin printer and starting up an army. I bought a Photon Zero, started printing, and got to figuring out my paint scheme

I’ve been pretty happy with GW contrast paints over a zenithal undercoat, so that’s what I tried here, starting with terradon turquoise and then drybrushing with a couple greens to get a bit of a gradient. Metal is pretty basic brass, and assorted doodads I picked out in whatever colours I had on hand. Pretty happy with the result! The scales basically paint themselves, giving a ton of depth for so little effort. I think the yellow on the throat is interesting and helps bring the focus towards the head, but I don’t love this execution. Gotta work on that.

The Zero is 100% a budget machine, so you can easily see the aliasing effect from the screen’s low resolution. The minis still look pretty good, but I decided if I was going to pour hours into painting them, I’d be happier with a sharper product, so I upgraded to the Photon Mono.

The current pile I’m working through - two regiments of Ancients, two Lekelidons, and some failed Scorchwings.

Some Ancients under UV light. The Mono definitely gives sharper results.

I decided that the halberds were too “phalanxy”, so I edited them down to be hand weapons in Meshmixer and printed a batch.

Here are my two Lekelidons after the zenithal undercoat and a coat of gryph hound orange. I wasn’t exactly sure where I wanted to take these things, but I definitely want to use the monsters to work more fun, bright colors into the army.

Here they are now, about 80% complete. I’m not sure where I want to take the basing yet, but that will need some work, and I want some more dynamics in the colors. They’re far enough along that I glued them down though, so the chance of breaking more toes off has dropped dramatically!

Next up is snipping off the Ancients’ halberds and replacing them with the hand weapons so I can get started on them, plus playing around with basing a bit to see what direction I want to go. Stay tuned for very slow progress!

[MarkG]

Amazing full spectrum hobbying! Atm 3D printing is a step too far for me!

Nice colour scheme and artistic choices on the minis.

Is there a practical reason for the red resin/plastic?

[DreadNort]

I like seeing the journey! There seems to be so much more choice in minis that is opened up when you go the 3d printer route, although I can’t see myself doing it anytime soon. The attraction of printing your own terrain is strong though!

[Boss_Salvage]

I think OPR’s kroxigor / tyrants are my favorite of that release, but I’m a fan of making an army from one sculptor, and OPR makes that easy with how deep they go on a faction! Good luck with the new printer and the new army, looking really good so far.

[Luke]

Thanks all! The red was just some cheap stuff that was in stock, but I will definitely not get it again in part because it is extremely difficult to photograph! I also need to investigate some tougher stuff, as this is prone to breaking off small details.

@DreadNort unfortunately minis and terrain are really suited for different 3d printing technologies, as resin is vastly more expensive than (most) filament. It’s very cool, though definitely its whole own hobby/headache.

@Boss_Salvage Heh, I’m actually leaning towards Raven Twin’s caimans for Tyrants. They remind me of Woogity’s Kroxigors, and I’ve always loved those.

[Boss_Salvage]

I’m 110% on those sculpts, not just because I always wanted some Woogigors and never got any I actually bought those sculpts, but I’m pretty sure they aren’t presupported, which means I’m hesitant to print them - my supports rarely work very well

[Luke]

There’s one in the welcome pack that I printed, indeed unsupported. My test print lost some of an arm and most of the lower jaw, but the holes in the mesh that I’d read about weren’t an issue. I’m slowly getting better at doing supports, but pre-supported stuff is sooo much nicer.

[WoofBird]

Pre-supports from patreon are often sketchy. A lot don’t know what they’re doing and still charge for it. There’s veriifaction programs you can use to check for islands if you’re unsure. I’ve had good experience using Chitubox’s auto supports with 80% density and light supports. I run it on pre-supported stuff as a safety net and usually get an extra support here and there. If you’re printing off bigger things and especially hollowed things make sure to cure the living hell out of it. Nothing sucks more than painting something awesome and finding it cracking on you a few weeks later. I’ve become a fan of translucent resin and curing in a water bath, gets those internal supports rock hard when they’re other wise difficult to cure fully.

OPR are great, I’ve been printing off a bunch of their alien hive stuff. Very tempted to use them as Twilight kin’s summoned beasties, the stalkers are too cool as beast like creatures.

The models look nicely painted, the colour scheme works well. Are you planning to use contrast on bigger beasties too? Could get messy with the larger surfaces so maybe worth finding the same colour in a non-contrast form for those bigger dudes? Either way, looking forward to seeing this army done. Those models are great and you’re painting them great.

[Luke]

Small update, getting my Battle-Captain on foot (Path of Fire is such a cool upgrade) going. Scales are contrast then two layers of green drybrushing, bone just has a brown wash so far, and the metal is just bronze with a brown wash. Bit of highlighting on the metal and bone and it’ll be pretty much ready!

[konrad2709]

Hey, I’m new to KoW and also 3D printing (I’ve ordered an Elegoo Saturn).

The OPR Saurian’s also caught my eye after Luke from Geek Gaming demonstrated his Empire of Dust army build from OPR.

Can you please assist me with associating the Salamander army units with OPR Saurian models or any other models you’ve used?

I did just ask OPR if they planned on expanding to meet KoW options and it was clear from their response and previous responses to others that their focusing on matching the AoS Setaphon list.

[Luke]

Sure! The saurian warriors make good primes and ceremonial guard, and I’m planning to mess around in meshmixer to make left-hand versions of the hand weapons for unblooded. The raptor riders are perfect kaisenor lancers, and the gators are great tyrants. You’ve got a fire drake in the tyrannosaur rider, and some ghekkotah from geckos. The guards can be ancients, though I don’t like polearms for units without phalanx so I’m cutting their weapons down in meshmixer.

I’d definitely encourage you to use an ABS-like resin so they’ll survive some light conversion work - a bit of cutting and drilling goes a long way. It’s also worth watching some YouTube tutorials on Meshmixer, because it’s pretty powerful.

Any particular units you’re after?

[Stonehorse]

The OPR stuff is absolutely gorgeous, really puts GW’s Saurus Warriors to shame. Great paint job on them, they seem to paint up very well.

3D printing is going to drastically change this hobby, if I had the space, money, and ventilation for one I’d most certainly jump into getting one.

[Luke]

Thanks! They really do take paint very well, all the texture makes it dead easy to get nice results. As for 3d printing, space has definitely been the tough one for me - setting it up in a cramped corner just makes it so much more of a hassle to swap things out and keep clean. Thankfully I’ve recently moved, so it will soon have a good little workspace.

Speaking of…

It’s extremely difficult to photograph, but that’s 12 ember sprites printed last night. New resin, and my first print in months, and it went great! I have a little under eight weeks until our first GT since covid started, and I have ~11 units to do, so this thread should get a lot busier!

[Luke]

Rhinosaur captain and ember sprites! Captain needs the sides of his base cut down to fit 50mm, but otherwise almost ready for paint!

[Luke]

Sorry for all the pictures of prints, paint soon, I promise! This one is just particularly neat - I only got translucent because grey was out of stock, but gosh it’s neat in the light.

[Luke]

Got my Rhinosaur Battle-Captain about 90% over the weekend.

Zenithal basecoat with Vallejo Desert Tan as the midtone. It gives the contrast paint more warmth and saturation, which I love for vivid Salamander colors.

Blocked in with contrast, gryph hound orange and terradon turquoise. The base was thinned-down black contrast and a grey drybrush.

First drybrush layer, some medium orange and green

Second drybrush, yellow and a pale green. Also blocked in the brassy metal and saddle

[Findol]

Looking awesome @Luke! I’m really looking forward to seeing that in person. The orange and green really pop together.

[Luke]

Next up, Scorchwings! The Archvillain models are honestly too big, so after much posing and deliberation I ended up here

The rightmost model can be removed from the base so its frankly outrageous wingspan doesn’t have to be a problem. The right and middle models both sit on trees, so I grafted them together into one large base. But then, disaster struck

The aforementioned outrageous wingspan caught my pocket as I was walking by and dropped them on the ground. Fairly clean breaks thankfully, not too bad to reassemble.

Threw a bit of paint on one last night. I don’t like it very much! Not enough saturation, brown too orange maybe, I’m not sure, it’s not working for me. I’m probably going to start with the big tree and stone ruin - once I have those blocked in I can compare colors a little better. I’d love to hear color suggestions!

[MechaSturgeon]

Hi @Luke. The solution to saturation is to increase contrast. Darken the shadows and bring up the highlights.

You could try a selective purple wash in the recesses of the scales (not all over). Maybe a 1:1 mix of purple and black? Then highlight up to yellow like your clan lord. Shouldn’t be saturated then!

[Boss_Salvage]

Impressed you went with the AVG flyers, even more so that you made them work Disaster and all