Fully automated gay space communist robots (PiperMakes Tau proxy for OPR)

I am done!

The featured image is the OPR Dao captain with a couple of grunts. In the gallery we have a trio of Grunts avoiding some enemy fire, then a couple more grunts having secured a human shipment, four more having heard something moving inside their captured shipment, an ethereal floating with his glowing sword, and then a couple shots of the gun drones ready to unleash hot pink laser death on the enemies of the Union.

I’m very pleased with how these all turned out. The 20 orks took two months start to finish. These robots- whose bisexual and trans flag colour schemes were entirely but happily accidental- took a single month for 5 fewer models but 2 more entirely different paint schemes. I learned much from the orks, clearly. I’m even a little surprised, in that “stumbling off the escalator because I wasn’t paying attention” way, to be done. Despite my ethereal snapping off a sword handle and a leg during painting because holy shit fuck brittle resin, I think I’ve got reasonably playable figures- as long as I stop dropping them off a table. I should buy a shag rug, too, for miniature safety.

Anyway, from start to finish I primed the fireteam and captain in black, airbrushed not enough white for the small guys (just an overhead not-really-zenithal), enough white on the commander, then undershot cyan and overshot magenta to get the nice smooth gradient and the purple in the middle. I edge highlighted with pink made from white and magenta, did some lenses on heads and steel details on non-heads where I saw ’em. Black panel lining with some mineral spirits and oil wash. Then I tried a subtle OSL on gun barrels with white and then red, thinking I was going to get red but stopping when I realized I’d managed a nice hot pink. The fireteam grunts came out with much darker blue than I’d planned (though it still shows up okay against a black base), but that does help the captain stand out more. The captain got a digicam patterened cloak that probably could have gone brighter, but it looks okay when you’re close up to it.

The ethereal was primed in white. They got that very pale green overshot and red undershot for the soft vaporwave look, then I did some armour panels in pastel blue and pink. The scarf (which matches what’s on the captain’s gun, for a bit of implied storytelling) was a pale lavender with some shadows in a little more saturated purple and edge highlights in a paler lavender. White panel lining on the sword (and the captain’s weird doc ock tail thing), plus a brief white airbrush, before some of that red for a pretty neato hot pink glow effect again. Panel lining was in a grey because black would have overwhelmed it a bit.

The drones were primed white, then got an all-over in pink because yellow and orange suck to get vibrant without some help. Yellow from above down to the sides, magenta from below up to the sides, and some careful work getting just a little bit of blend past the corners so it didn’t look as knife-edged.

Everyone got teal lenses and red weapon-gem-things to help tie things together with a little more than [synthwave intensifies] theme.

Mmmyep, that’s it. These folks are done and I’m going to switch gears for a couple of weeks before I charge back into painting again. Rough plans are a week of baking, a week or two of leather stuff, and then my replacement killa kans before switching away from armies and to knocking out a whoooole bunch of fantasy enemies. I’ve got a third kickstarter coming in and I’m finally at a level of skill where I feel comfortable that I won’t be “wasting” the bigger models I’ve got even if I could learn to paint better. My goal was ever always “tabletop” and not competition, and a couple of armies has helped my speed a lot. So, yeah! Expect more non-painting posts soon, all zero readers.