Tuesday 17 September 2013

Goblin Clown Cannon!

Greetings one and all! Today I shall share with you one of the most bonkers models I've ever created. My version of a Doom Diver, the Bitter Moon Clown Cannon:


This was actually painted at while ago but there's a bit of a gap in the regular output (sodding wrist is acting up again) so I thought I would fill it with nutcase goblins! I originally posted the work in progress shots up at the Beard Bunker so I won't go over the details of it's creation, instead, we'll talk painting!


I mused for ages about whether to paint the woodwork and barrel to be the sort of bright colours that a clown cannon would be. In the end I decided against it because this would fit better into my fairly "realistic" toned Night Gobbos. The splash of cartoony-ness would come from the concept and the sculpts. Not the paint scheme. The woodwork therefore got the usual treatment of Val Beige Brown with Val Deck Tan stripes and an Agrax Earthshade wash to create a nice woodgrain that the camera has utterly failed to capture, heh. Indeed, all the metalwork was also shaded with Agrax and this bound the piece together and allowed the eye to focus on the goblin. This is despite their being lots of little details for the eye to roam over. There's the barrel of "Boom Stuff", an unwisely located fireplace cooking some nameless stew and the initial spark of flame and puff of smoke as the touch hole catches ready to propel El Gobbo into the sky.


Speaking of El Gobbo's, it is worth noting that the old school doom diver models I am using are old enough to be seriously out of scale with the new lads (there's actually three eras of goblin in this model). Weirdly, this seemed to work. The big dumb bruisers can both wrestle their way to the front of the queue to have the one way ride of a lifetime and are dumb enough to actually get in the darned cannon in the first place. The others will shrug and pretend to be wearily resigned to only getting to fire the enormous gun and launch bully boys into the sky...


Speaking of launched. Given that the job of a doom diver catapult/mortar is to create not-so-smart bombs you have a marker model in the form of the flying gobbo to show where the impact is. Oddly this is in the rules now that it is the base of the flying stand that the gobbo is on that is the marker, not a standard blast template, if they change the flying stand do we get a bigger boom? Weird. I had something of a rush of blood to the head while painting it and realised that this model would only be used to indicate which people were hit. The cartooniness of the whole composition reared its head and moments later...


This way every time I fire it I get a cartoon speech bubble of the poor victim screaming "Incoming!" followed by the inevitable Kapow! Silly? Hells yes, but, y'know, goblin!

For those wondering where the Eldar have gotten to, unfortunately I've had to step away from the painting table for a while. I got the early warning signs of the RSI I picked up two years ago returning. Rather than do the stubborn thing of pushing through the cramps and tightness - and creating worse paint jobs as a result - I've stopped until the inflammation goes away and freedom of motion is returned. Should only be a few days (edit: this was supposed to go out middle of last week, it is still not right, grr) but I'd rather that than a return to the terrible, burning pain that was the result last time. Gosh, sense, who'd've thunk it huh?

Until next time folks

TTFN

2 comments:

  1. The Eldar always seem to give you a WRULD. You should seriously consider saying "No." to Eldar in the future.

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    1. Oddly enough they are my weakest link. My style doesn't immediately leap to making the space pixies look good so I need to almost reinvent things when I paint 'em.

      This time I think the wrist problem has been "It's been two years and I've slipped back into bad habits". I've caught it early and am heading to the doctors to see if they have any uber-anti-inflammatories to supplement the wrist brace.

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