A cheeky Afterlife Project -Spring Cleaning.

As the project blurb suggests, I have a project hidden as private that will act as the base to an Elysian Imperial Guard army that I have yet to start.

These Unity council Council Marines from Anvil Industry’s game Afterlife have been the perfect test models for one of the two schemes I intend to use for that project. I’ve also been looking into expanding my Afterlife collection as a result of this little excursion from my other projects. Love the models.

I’ve started off with a small unit of 5 Marines including an officer( No idea where the head came from) and a medic. These guys are backed up by two Stim hounds.  I’ve sidelined the other 5 marines and stim hounds for Another day.

Here they are in their current state…..

Sorry about the sideways photos….i can’t work out why they up load that way.

Using the officer photos above: The Fatigues are painted as follows:

1. Base Coat-2:1- Vallejo Model Colour-Black-70.950/Vallejo Model Colour-White-70.951
2. 1st highlight Layer(Everything apart from the deeps of recesses and creases) –1:2-Black/White
3. I then added a fair amount of glaze medium to the last mixture and applied it all over the fatigues just to smooth the lines a bit. Make it thin enough that the dark base is still visible. It looks fine if it lightens the recesses a bit. If it’s too uniform make a thin glaze out of the first step and only apply it to the recess and creases.
4. Edge Highlight- 1:3 or 4 Black/White. You only really need to apply this to the hard edges of his collar and any other hard edges…elbows maybe.

The DPM pattern is next.

1.  Start with BLACK and thin it enough for a solid colour but nice easy flow. Using the fine tip of the brush make some DPM like shapes on the fatigues. Try and make them as different as possible and not too close. Note: I didn’t do it here particularly well but I will be trying to make it look like the patterns continue under the body armour and webbing next time. I think they are a little too centered to the open spaces here.
2.  I’m not convinced I used a Black/white mixture for the next part of the pattern…. I think I used Vallejo GAME colour- WOLF GREY-72.047. In much the same way as step 1 make a DPM shape near the black shapes allowing it to overlap/cross the black shapes in places. TIPS: Make sure you allow the Base Grey of the fatigues to show in as a ‘background’ & try to make sure the shapes don’t look the same when close to each other.  
3. Lastly, using the WHITE again, make the odd small dot or cluster of two or three dots near or to/on the Black/Grey areas.

Just a quick note. I’ve left the vests black as I think it breaks the model up a bit. They’ll get some subtle highlights later on along with their boots.

Now for the body armour, webbing and the receiver of his weapon:

1.  Base Coat-1:2-Vallejo Model Colour-Black-70.950/Vallejo Model Colour-Olive Grey-70.888.
2. Wash-Citadel-NULN OIL.
3. Layer-Vallejo Model Colour-Olive Grey-70.888. All surfaces. Leave recesses.
4. Layer/Highlight- 1:1-Vallejo Model Colour-Olive Grey-70.888/Vallejo Model Colour-Khaki-70.988. Make sure this step is pretty thin and apply a heavy highlight to the edges of the kit. Where you reckon light will be hitting the guy more predominately build a few more coats of this step over the surfaces.
5. Highlight- 1:2 or 3 -Vallejo Model Colour-Olive Grey-70.888/Vallejo Model Colour-Khaki-70.988. Apply a finer highlight to the edges of the kit.
6. Highlight- Vallejo Model Colour-Khaki-70.988. Just highlight the corners of the edges of the kit.