Gates of Antares paintalong
Recently completed my first Gates of Antares commission and completely forgot to take any pictures as I painted it however I then discovered another box which I had missed and resolved to do a quick painting guide. The box contained the C3 strike troopers seen here. I wasnt a big fan of the boxart colour scheme and decided to change it a bit to something similar but with a more vibrant green.
The minis were undercoated a darkish brown mixing Styynlrez brown with a bit of vallejo black primer and then I used VMC Dark Yellow as the first coat. If I had wanted a whiter armour I would have started with German field grey as explained here https://www.firstcommissionpainting.co.uk/single-post/whiter-than-white but as i wanted an ivory finish I started with a yellowy brown and sprayed in a sort of zenithal style with the top parts of any panel getting more paint leaving the lower sections darker.
This initial coat was followed by VMC Dark Sand and as can be seen below VMC Ivory, all nicely thinned down for control and easier build up of layers if you want to avoid mistakes.. Once done you should have a version of white armour which has some nice shadows but also is decently strong at the top.
Next it was brush time as I Used VMC Military Green and Black to block in all the parts which would be nice and bright after spraying. This is quicker than spraying and puttying off white areas and as a commission painter time is literally money.. The figures were matt varnished at this stage as well so any careless spraying in the next stage could be cleaned up quickly.
Spraying here was vmc Military Green with increasing amounts of yellow. To avoid the worst of overspary onto the white I generally use my finger or a ball of blutac to create a barrier but where that doesnt do the job I can quickly clean off due to the varnish protecting the white. You can see a couple of bits of overspray on the drones below.
Two stages here, firstly went over all the bits that were going to be dark with black and then did the blue light bits. These were vmc Prussian Blue base, then vgc Electric Blue and finally white.
Helmets and dark bits were highlighted up with vmc French Field Blue with a bit of Black then a little edge highlighting in vmc Sky Grey. You could do much more edge highlighting with these but I did not want to have them look like Infinity models of which I paint many...
Red lights were now added with a vmc burnt red then Flat Red and finallyVermillion. There were a lot of these.... I also added a white dot for emphasis in the final stage.
Last stage was the faces of the 2 squad leaders and a little bit of black lining here and there. Again I wanted a fairly utilitarian final look so kept this to a minimum. Basing was my usual cheap sand and PVA method explained here https://www.firstcommissionpainting.co.uk/single-post/basic-basing followed by the application of Static Grass using my applicator that i received for Xmas.
Happy how they turned out with good contrast but not too overly detailed. The minis were easy to put together but the edges and cuts were not as sharp as on the more recent Bolt Action plastics for example. Overall an enjoyable change from the Infinity miniatures that I paint lots of. I hope the transition to V2 and Skytrex goes well and more is produced for this interesting rules system.