Projet Future Boys: the Autarch

Despite my painting related ADD, I'm still making progress on the Eldar army I started a back in Sept/Oct. Recently, as part of a painting challenge over on the Chamber Militant, I moved the Autarch ahead in the rotation. I may not have finished on time, but I think the results were worth the wait.



Note: be sure to click on the images to see full size versions. As you may be able to tell, I've also been practicing my macro photography as well.

Lots of stuff going on with this guy. Most of it dealing with new techniques (for me at least). I tired out some non metallic metal (NMM), object source lighting (OSL) as well as a new recipe for white I found. All things I've either never done before or avoided. I've always wanted to try some of this stuff, but had never given myself an opportunity - mostly because I'm always working on armies (aka large batches of stuff) and often under some fairly rigid, self-imposed style guides. Either I was aiming at consistency or these techniques simply take too damn long to do.

I figured this guy was the perfect model to try these new things on as I didn't have to worry much about the consistency of the appearance of the army. In an army of specialist unit types that all have their own color scheme, their aren't too many places to be consistent other than the tank schemes anyways. Plus, he's the only unique model in an army I'm not painting to a crazy high standard. I could basically do whatever I wanted and he'd fit in.

Overall, I'm very pleased with this guy. Probably my best work yet. Despite this, their are still a few things that bug me about the finished product - little details (many of them niggling) that I just couldn't get quite right*. But that's what happens when you spend so much time on a project and outside of your comfort zone. People are often their own worst critics.

Speaking of comfort zones...

[Teaching Moment] In my (current) opinion, there are two main things that are key to being a better painter - practice and trying new things. The later means stepping outside of your comfort zone. For brand spankin' new painters, EVERYTHING is outside of their comfort zone. As one gets better and more practiced, you have to go further to get outside of it. If you don't, you stagnate or hit a plateau. For me, this model was as much about getting outside of my comfort zone as it was about painting the best Autarch I could paint.

---[foot notes]---------------------------
*The nozzle of the fusion gun is the biggest thing that bugs me. I've looked at it and looked at it and had other people look at it. It's just off a bit. The current theory is that the Horizon line is off. I'm also not convinced on the blending either. THe OSL on the backpack turned out to be irrelevant since you can't see it. Oh well, a great learning experience and a great result in any case.