From here to Infinity

The wind rushed past in a tunnel of blurred trees as the Su-Jian sprinted effortlessly through the forested terrain. This is what he loved even more than the rush of combat. Though he couldn’t “feel” the wind, protected as he was by the Immediate Action Suit, he could “sense” it. It’s speed, temperature and even chemical composition all collected via a myriad of sensors and fed directly into his nervous system gave him a level of awareness that far surpassed what he might feel outside of his suit. At the moment these heightened senses let him know that a fierce skirmish continued nearby and he used the sound of it to guide his path. He’d been ordered to circle behind the opposing force, identify their command structure and disrupt it.

Swiftly he pushed onward, the feline like form perfectly adapted to moving among the trees and brush, until he was sure he’d passed by the enemy lines. With little more than a thought the Su-Jian changed direction to cut behind their foe. This would have been more difficult in an established front but the fire fight here had been unexpected by both sides and its rapid escalation had left little time to enforce the flanks or provide a rear guard. That weakness would now be exploited.

A red blip appeared on his hud along with a brief message from the Lieutenant “Command and control signals triangulated to this location. Engage and destroy.” Shifting his path slightly, it only took a few moments to get visual contact and close the distance. As the Pan-O officer became aware of the approaching threat the Su-Jian launched into the air, easily clearing more than five times its frame size in the leap. While still in the air the feline form shifted smoothly into its humanoid aspect, a two foot long blade clutched in one hand ready to strike…

The Su-Jian and Mowang are, in my mind, two of the coolest models in the Yu Jing range and are a big part of what drew me to the army so I’m really excited to be painting them. First up is the Su-Jian which is actually two models in one (to represent it’s mobility and regular form). Given its obvious cat like nature and the forces overall winter theme I decided to base the color scheme on a snow leopard. Looking at some source images they are a lot less white than I thought they’d be, having a significant level of browns and greys in their coat. So with that in mind I chose to do the more mechanical parts in bronze (to represent the browns) and then split the armored areas between the same white the rest of the force had and a more greyish blue (Stormy Grey – 09088, Cloudy Grey – 09089 and Misty Grey – 09090). My thought is this should keep it fairly tied in while still being a bit unique.

Ironically despite this being a larger model it was actually easier to paint in many ways. Since it’s a mechanical suit it doesn’t have a lot of the details the smaller models do (things like hair, faces, boots, gloves, packs, etc) but what areas there were did need a lot of color coverage. Since it’s two versions of the same model it also meant matching things up between the two models. I’d originally planned to add some spots to accentuate the leopard like nature but in the end decided to leave them out and let the association be a bit looser. I may also add some transfers later so this leaves me clear white areas to work with.

So with that done only the Mowang remains. Still need to figure out what I’m doing with his design…hummm…