Thursday 12 January 2017

From SamuliS: Da Jestaz (60 points)

Time for another entry. Blood Bowl Orcs from the new plastic box set from GW. I had originally planned to get these done before New Years, but as it would turn out these were deceptively simple looking and took way more time than expected. I almost got them ready for last week, but couldn't get the decals and basing done in time. Well at least they are ready now!


Thinking about colour schemes I decided to go with my local hockey team, Jokerit (Jesters), which is currently playing in the KHL as the only Finnish team. They used to be one of the top teams from the Finnish league, but a couple of years ago they signed up for the Russian equivalent of NHL. First two seasons went pretty well with them being one of the top teams from the league, but honestly this season has been pretty embarrassing. I was thinking between this and the team I played most my years in junior hockey, but in the end decided to leave that scheme for the human team. As Jokerit was the local rival back then for us it felt better to picture them as the brutes.

For Greg Jokerit is the team which brought you Teemu Selänne ;)


As I said they ended up much harder to paint than expected. As they are push fit models with connecting points in visible areas they really had to be put completely together before painting, which made reaching some of the detail extremely difficult. My method of painting them was also pretty suboptimal. I normally paint all the areas with a base shade before washing and then doing the highlight layers, but I guess on these picking a proper order and doing an area from the start to finish starting from the recesses and working up would have been far better. There were countless times when I messed up some area I had already gone over when I tried to do something in a small crevice and had to go back and touch it up again. Also the combination of red and yellow was far from ideal. It's pretty unbelievable how you can get a shade that doesn't cover a lightly washed version of itself  in under 4 coats of paint. Needless to say they were a pain at times to paint.




I was thinking quite a while about adding weathering on them, but in the end I ended up with leaving them cleaner and with a more cartoony look. Just seems to suit Blood Bowl minis better. Plus if I get fed up with it it's always easy to go back and add scratches etc. on them. However to break the monotony of the armour I decided to paint the checkerboard pattern that somehow is so iconically orky. Another thing that got left out was the team logo. I tried to freehand a suitably Orkyfied version of the Jokerit logo on them, but my brush skills just weren't up to it. Luckily it was easy to remove the shabby tries from a varnished surface.The logo will be added at a later time when I've gotten around to ordering suitable custom decals for them. It's just so much easier to design it on the computer and get it printed out. I'd do it myself, but I want it to be white and haven't  found any place where I can use a printer that is capable of printing white. Luckily Fallout Hobbies does custom decals for a reasonable price and I've used them in the past and liked the quality, so I'm gonna get a sheet from them when I've figured out the logo for the human team as well. Player positions and numbers are from the normal GW sheet that comes with the box. As a more ideal team composition would have 4 Black Orcs and 4 Blitzers I left my player numbering empty for them in preparation for the future whenever I end up buying reinforcements.


With these done it's back to Flames of War for the last couple of vehicles I need for the end of the month. I've also got the two Blood Bowl referees about half way through, but probably won't be getting them done in time for today as it's already late in the evening here in Finland. Hopefully next week I'll have more than one entry ready then.


Inspite of the difficulties you had, These orcs turned out great, Samuli!
The colors suit them very well "wif all dat letha an boot letha!" I think my favorites are the blitzers, I really like those masks they sport. Games Workshop Orcs are 28mm heroic, but honestly they are so massive anymore that they do make spacemarines seem like small children. I'm fairly certain that the snow lord will let me pip you up smidge for these green bruisers so we will call it 72 points







24 comments:

  1. No wonder those took a long time. You have done a stunning job!

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  2. Great job - always have time for sum Orkz. Between my son and I we have 4 of them :-)

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  3. Splendid painting with bright fresh colours. I admire the fact they are based (Loosely) on a regional team.

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    1. Thanks! And picking a real team colour helps as somebody has actually thought up a colour scheme that works :)

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  4. Lovely job on some great looking orks, it's yellow really isn't it? I always find painting yellow difficult, I've yet to find a good and fast way of doing it. Tempted by blood bowl and I have 3 ancient teams sitting in a box in the loft, I'm tempted to dig them out now!
    Best Iain

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    1. Yellow is probably the worst shade to paint that I've encountered. For reds I've found ones with good coverage, but with yellows I'm still searching. The GW's Averland Sunset from their Base Colour range is what I used on these guys, it covers reasonably well. On light grey or white a single layer might actually suffice. For other yellowish shades I usually start with an Ochre baselayer and start building up from that.

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  5. Great bunch of players, Samuli, and just the kind of colour scheme which really pops on the tabletop.

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  6. Thanks for the comments everyone!

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  7. Nice work Samuli. Nice to see a hockey reference snuck in. ;)

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  8. Very colourful team. Well done Samuli!

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  9. Great looking Bloodbowl team, I can feel myself weakening thanks to this and other posts

    Ian

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  10. I love the colouring you've achieved with these bruisers. Everything is clean and crisp and vibrant, a really first rate result.
    It's interesting to see how much mileage GW got out of the basic Ork sculpt, I recognize many of these poses in their W40K guys, just some basic tweaks to the basic design.

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    1. Yeah I guess it speeds up the process a lot to use older stuff as a basis. Benefits of 3D sculpting I guess

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  11. Despite all the fuss you had with these, the result definitely was worth the effort! Actually I quite like the clean look you went for. A small amount of pigments to the feet would imho give them the last finishing touch.

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    1. Now that you say it I think I should have done that straight away :) Will be adding that this evening as the pigments are out for another project anyways

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  12. That is a very vibrant Ork team! Wonderful work Samuli! I think all your hard work paid off big time.

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  13. Great orc team, very cheerful as they smash your face off

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  14. Love the colour scheme! This must be a record number of BB teams.

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