From TeemuL: A Look in to Galadriel's Mirror [Sci-fi] (65 points)

"After Gimli visited Galadriel and became friends with Legolas, Galadriel has been thinking dwarfs in a less hostile view. That's way our heroes Murin and Drar are able to visit her in the sacred forest and take a look at the mirror. We hear the classic line "The things that were, the things that are and..." but then we cut the audio to Metallica's "The Thing that Should not Be"! That will be one of the shocking moments of the movie. Yes, I know the song doesn't have that line in the lyrics, it is just the title, but I'm sure we can negotiate somekind of alternative lyrics with those chaps and create our master piece. And yes, when they look in to the mirror, they see these space monsters (which should not be). That's the second difficult part with the scene, there is this British toyshop, who seems to be overly jealous of their IPs even though a blind man can see they are just poor Alien rip-offs. Well, we just need to send an army of lawyers there or buy the whole shop..."

The things that should not be or three hybrids of my genestealer cult for WH40K. I started a small Kill Team couple of years ago and it has been very successful, it just keeps on growing...

Yes, on my last post I said that it will be the last before 2023, but I was wrong. I was left alone unexpected on Friday night and then mind starts to wander. I did ask couple of friends to come and play with me, but they didn't have time. I was there, some half painted dwarfs and a few hours of time. As one does, I remembered these primed hybrids (plastic Genestealer Cultists from Games Workshop) and started to paint them while painting the dwarfs, too.

They were rather easy to paint, just following the old minis as a guide. I don't keep any diary about the colours I use, I find that this method gives natural variation to my minis... These are painted with GW acryls, the traditional ones. After blocking the colours I washed the whole mini in Druchii Violet to set alienish tone. There was not much highlightning except yellow on green. These are creatures of dark underworld, working under the dim lights. That's why it would feel wrong to highlight them neat and bright. The yellow highlight gives impression, that they are not under white day light, but something artificial, making them even more disturbing (I know they have three hands, claws and blue tongues). The grey pipes are plastic straws, enhancing the not-so-perfect feel of environment, ideal for these lurkers in the dark. The guns are painted using Black Templar Contrast, but otherwise traditional.

Then there are the other dwellers in the dungeon, the good guys, the dwarfs. When making a movie about dwarfs, you need lots of dwarfs. There are plastic Dwarf Warriors from GW for Lord of the Rings game. I had a little issue with these, since I didn't know how to paint them, what colours to use. That is part of the reason starting to paint the above hybrids. I painted one colour on hybrids, then jumped to these and painted one colour I knew, like brown leather etc. Maybe the blue and green of hybrids looked good, since I used mostly blue and green on these, too. Maybe the colours of Murin and Drar (blue and green) were hounting by subconsciousness.

These are second hand minis, they were already painted, I just decided to use Wraithbone spray on them and paint over. Originals were quite dark and like I said, I didn't really know how to paint them. But these look very different than the original and I'm positively surprised, the colours are very bright, strong and they have good "cohesion" in lack of better word. I used only Contrast paints on these, there are no highlights or anything, just straight from the bottle. These have very different look than those hybrids, these are creatures of daylight or well lit mines. I really like these guys, happily I have more of them to paint.

As for scoring, Genestealer hybrids are bit larger, if hunched minis, but I'm happy to score them as 28mm minis. That means 9 minis for 45 points and 20 points for Sci-Fi location, total of 65.

Now I bust to paint something for next Wednesday, I don't have anything started, just some primed minis and no idea if I should go to 1980s or Black + White. With these 9 minis painted I have now one less unpainted mini than January 1st... In couple of thousands of years I'll be without unpainted minis. Oh, horror!

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If SAS: Rogue Heroes can have AC/DC then I don't see why LotR can't have Metallica. 

You made good use of your free time, Teemu. Great work on these Genestealers and Dwarves. I like the vibrant colours you've achieved, and agree that some of the effects you can achieve right out of the bottle with Contrast Paints is quite something. The thing I find is not to let the colour 'pool' too much, or to brush it over large flat areas (although it goes on marvellously well with an airbrush). Anyway, these are a great result of a Friday night at home! :)

- Curt