Kill Team Kasrkin / Aliens US Colonial Marines

Today I’m working on a more contained project. Consisting of only 15 miniatures, the Kasrkin Kill Team is based on the Colonial Marines from my favorite movie of all time – Aliens.

The customer decided to go all-in and picked level 5 “Witness Me!” quality, allowing me to focus on each individual miniature and work each and every color to a nice depth and/or pattern.

I am a huge fan of Aliens. Watched the movie over a hundred times back when I was a teenager. It is great to revisit the setting and mix two of my favorite franchises…

The test miniature came through pretty nice, although not without a few details to adjust. The plan is to paint lights bleak yellow’ish white, tone down leather black strips and accessories and add character with some metallic weathering, a few freehands and decals. Then there’s the base and I have plans for some acid marks here and there. I’m super excited!

Regardless of ‘Xenomorph’ infestation within my hobby base of operations, one layer at a time on the whole squad, I’ve managed to soldier through the most time consuming layers. It seems that the ‘Colonial Marines’ are all geared up and in camo, only the most exciting parts of the painting process ahead of us.

TIP: When applying patterns on clothes and armor it’s easy to make a blooper. A good way to ‘erase’ any out of line mistakes is to wait for them to dry out, then use a wet toothpick with its tip softened up a bit – then gently scratch (or more like erase) the blooper. It always worked for me – proved to be invaluable for this particular project 😛

It’s the last straw for the UCSM team. All squad members are now painted with stencils and freehands in place. OSL and effects done. A few corrections, a few additional freehands and effects and these will be ready to seal with Matt Varnish.

In the end me and the customer decided to break down the color scheme theme with a bit of Orange effects to provide more variety, but also better set the miniatures in the 40kesque setting. I think a strong, vibrant orange compliments the color scheme, adding character and distinguishing certain important squad members from the rest. What do you think?

aaand it is done! The project is now completed, miniatures sealed with Varnish, accepted, payed for and ready for shipping…

You can find more pictures of the ‘Marines’ at: https://scarhandpainting.com/gallery/warhammer-40000-kasrkin/

Was a lot of fun to work on this one. Now time to go back to a more grand scale projects.