With a little over two weeks left before Vanquish 2014 I am working feverishly to finish my Minotaurs. Things are starting to come together but my blogging has definitely suffered as I spend every moment not at work building drop pods and prepping parts for the last stage of the painting process. 

All of the infantry are at a stage where the traditional brush work is finished bar painting the guns and some heads separately from the main models.

The Centurions are one such unit at that stage. Read on to see how they are looking now.

All of the details and highlights are now done as well as the first weathering steps using some Nihilakh Oxide to give a patina to the Bronze. Then I have made my first step into painting chips onto armour plates with this army. I have only done this to the Bronze but I am aware I should do this to some of the other areas to make it a little more realistic. If I have the time towards the end of the project I might just do this but for now I am going to steam on to getting the other models painted.

I was really tentative with the paint chipping... I have always used a sponge and to show metal underneath armour plates. However, this does not give the realism needed so I decided I should bite the bullet. Looking back at them now I am actually much happier than when the paint goes on... actually painting it seems to break the illusion somewhat.

Another new step for me is the use of decal transfers. I haven't played with these since I was a kid. mainly because the effect I achieved with them as a kid was awful. In the past I would always freehand instead but that has led me to only add these sorts of details to characters etc. 

Now I have tried some transfers I shall be using these as a core skill in my arsenal to add some interesting details to models in a quick way which can be easily batched unlike freehand. That is not to say I will never freehand again, simply that I can add more with these then I could do with freehand.

If I do say so myself these guys are really starting to look the part! It is worth noting that I used the tutorials on this blog by my good friend Joel for the paint chipping and transfers. They can be found here and here respectively.