#TOMB2 Month 1: Painting the Crew

Whew, what a month. I knew the first month would be brutal from a painting perspective and I was right. On the bright side #TOMB2 has definitely succeeded at forcing me to get more of my stuff painted. This post will focus on the hobby side of my Zoraida crew as I have not managed to get a game in with her so far. By the time this post is up I am only part-finished my Zoraida model so she will be a part of the next post where I will also cover my plans for Month 2. 

Hobby

Let's start of with a shot of the built and unpainted crew. I'd already started my waldgeists by the time I took this picture and they weren't part of the starter box so I ended up leaving them out of it. Oh well. Also, I apologize in advance for the poor quality of these photos. I have neither a proper camera nor decent lighting in my room. I have also just purchased some Vallejo still water effects but haven't had an opportunity to use it yet, so you will see that some of the bases have blue/green paint representing water at the moment. Eventually this will be done with proper water effects, but as I've only just got the bottle and I know it takes multiple coats, it will likely not be until Month 2 that the water effects will be finished.

One of the main reasons I initially got into Malifaux in 1.5 was because I was sick of painting the same colours and models all the time (Having solely played Tyranids in 40k for several years). Therefore I had no interest in a matching/themed crew and instead wanted to paint things however I felt like at the time. Especially since to me it would make no sense that the Neverborn would be homogeneous looking. You could see this in my Dreamer crew especially, and I decided to continue with this philosophy with Zoraida. That is why my silurids and waldgeists would all be different.

Let's start with the Waldgeists. I love, love, LOVE these models. They were a blast to paint. I decided I wanted them all to be different trees with obviously different colour bark. In the end I went with a light brown, a reddish-brown and a dark brown (which ended up being more grey than I originally planned but I love the way he turned out). I also glued the head on the dark waldgeist upside down, which I didn't notice for about a week when I finally saw someone else's picture of him on twitter. The head fit perfectly that way and I really like how it turned out so I guess that's an unintentional win. 

For the Silurids I actually decided to base them on existing lizards/amphibians so google images became my friend. After looking at a ton of cool poison dart frogs, salamanders etc. I selected these three images as my starting point.

I ended up sticking very closely to the first two pictures (although I decided not to add black spots on the blue for the first frog as I thought he was dark enough as is). 

The final silurid I ended up going away from my initial idea as the basecoat came out much greener than I was expecting and by that point I decided I wanted one silurid who wasn't heavily patterned. Instead I went for more of a classic look of a green frog with a pale underbelly. I think he turned out adorable, really happy with him. In the end I'm quite happy with how different and characterful my silurids ended up.

The Voodoo doll was a lot of fun to paint, even though I went with a very simplistic design, just highlighting up from a medium brown to off-white. I always prefer the look of puppets with mis-matched button eyes so I went for green and blue (and painted the pin heads to match). I went with red scissors because I though the iconic red safety scissors would be cool.

Bad Juju is really the only model that I kind of stuck to a traditional paint scheme like on the box. I figured it made sense to keep him with shades of browns, greens and grey (for the rocks). I did highlight him quite a bit more than the box imagery and than I initially planned because I just really enjoyed the look of the more vibrant green. This model was a blast to paint, one of my favourites (alongside the waldgeists) that I have painted for Malifaux so far. Sadly, in the course of moving him around in my case, the branches sticking out of him proves slightly too tall and delicate and both snapped off :(. I haven't managed to glue them back on yet as I first need to figure out a way to make sure they don't snap off again.

And here is a final group shot (sans Zoraida). I still have Zoraida to paint (the main project for this week) and I haven't gotten in any games with this crew yet, so I will have a second Month 1 post up next Monday on deadline day (March 9). In that post I will also be looking forward at my plans for Month 2.