Wednesday 21 December 2016

From ByronM: Kingdom Death - Monsters (24 Points)

Ok, another day another entry!  Sticking with the Kingdom Death theme I worked on the first and second monster that most players with fight, the White Lion and the Screaming Antelope.  However, in typical KD style there is nothing normal about these seemingly normally named creatures.  The Lion has strangely human hands and the Antelope has a mouth where its gut should be.

The 28mm WW1 figure is just included to show the scale of these figures,
there is nothing small about Kingdom Death!
(including the game itself which weighs in at 17lbs for the core set alone!)
Although the Lion is called the white lion, I decided to paint him in a more normal colour scheme, but did fade him down a bit to more of a tan / grey than an orange / brown.  This was done for two reasons.  First of which is that Kingdom Death takes place in a world with no sun, a perpetual nightmarish hell, so he has no need to blend in with grass on the savanna. Secondly using a more natural colour scheme and a bit more desert based I can dual purpose him to fit in with my Arena Rex miniatures as a beast in the arena.

All of my Kingdom Death figures are going to be played with and I want them to be very visual, so a lot of the highlights and shadows are a lot more pronounced than most of my painting.  This is being done on purpose to show up and emphasis the details from tabletop.  While not as clean looking in these close up pictures as some of my figures, they do really pop at tabletop distance better than a lot of things that I shade in using more subtle colour variations. 


The images show some glare, and again not sure why as the figs have been dull coated and have no shine at all. I had issues with giving the lion a face that portrayed some feeling and some realism, it took a few attempts but I am happy with the final result.  I added a black nose, faded in some pink, and blended in some dark lines from the corner of the eyes.  I left the eyes without pupils to give a more menacing appearance.


Next up is the Screaming Antelope, and I would be screaming too if I had a mouth there!


The entire antelope's gut has been replaced with a mouth, including teeth around the edge, and tiny human hands bursting out of the muscle around the area.  The rest of the antelope is almost entirely flayed!  This is natural to them in Kingdom Death for some reason (maybe another reason they scream?), so I painted the muscle in dark reds and browns, and then highlighted up the raised areas. 


I chose to leave everything very dark again, since there is no natural light source in the KD world.  The fur and skin on top are dark browns shaded up to light tans to give high contrast.

I started both of these using the airbrush for the base colours right after work today and they took about 4 hours from start to finish, which is pretty fast for me.  Without the airbrush to block in colours and do the first highlights (with a 0.2mm tip) they would have taken a lot longer.

While again not my normal style, I think the overall effect came out pretty well.

I really have no idea what these are worth though, so defer to Curt's judgment.  I know that Kingdom Death counts as 40mm scale, and included the 28mm figure to show just how big they are, but have no idea what that makes them worth.

Thanks for checking them out everyone!  I am now going to go start a test Dropfleet Commander cruiser and work on some Epic 30k, I should have more to post sometime this weekend.

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More KD badness, awesome work Byron. I love the tawny warm colours of the Lion and the effect of the raw, exposed musculature on the Screaming Antelope is excellent (it looks very, very painful - I'd be screaming too). I've played against the Lion but I look forward to facing the Antelope sometime in the new year. Knowing the brutalness of Kingdom Death it will probably all end in tears.

As to points I'm going to put them at 12 each, so 24 for the pair. Great stuff Byron! I look forward to seeing the upcoming cruiser and the 30K Epic figures.


 

25 comments:

  1. The highlights and shadows are very effective. Only 4 hours work - amazing! I am looking forward to seeing your Dropfleet Commander painting. I have not started building my models yet.

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  2. They are terrible in the best sense of the word :)

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  3. Love the lion and fear the antelope, what a great pair they are.

    Ian

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  4. 2 fearsome looking beasties. I do like the Lion a lot. I like the antelope a little less but I think that is because I don't really understand the sculpt. But that takes nothing away from the painting at all.

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  5. Really, really nice work, they look very scary indeed! And I thought no plan survived contact with the painting table, but you're doing a very good job of proving that wrong with two entries in two days..... what's the secret?!?

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  6. dam boy are you even sleeping at the moment, great work again

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  7. Very strange creatures!! Great painting Byron.

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  8. Those are much bigger than I had anticipated!

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  9. Impressive and horrifying... excellent work

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  10. So great to see so much Kingdom death coming forth.. I really need to dig mine all out then to give it a whirl for painting also! Inspiring stuff here!

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  11. Those are some mean looking beasties! Really nice work.

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  12. That's a very nice beige on the lion, looks very realistic.

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  13. Very nice sculpts and good brushwork on them both! I really like the antelope and he does seem very nightmarish without the adition of the torso mouth!

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  14. These are inspirational. I'll be coming back to look at them when I paint mine. Nice work!

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  15. Very good painting work, very realistic.

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  16. You are making me want to boost my KD stuff up the painting queue. Fantastic stuff!

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  17. Wow! These are some truly massive beasties! Awesome painting Byron... even if that Antilope probably will haunt my dreams tonight.

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  18. Fabulous work all around, but especially with the lion.
    I am never ever visiting the land of KD.

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  19. That screaming antelope...zoiks! Great painting Byron.

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  20. Yup the antelope gives me the creeps but I am baffled about the brilliant way you've painted it in: superb!
    The Lion kinda reminded me of Aslan from Narnia and is a very nice sculpt as well as paintjob!

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  21. Lovely look to these, very KD!

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