Azhrarn's MM Early Arrivals

[Azhrarn]

Just a few pictures of my newly assembled Maaru, the Swordtooth. Fresh from his bath and scrubbing.

Clean-up was fairly simple apart from one larger channel on the left hind leg.
I damaged the thin resin belt back there quite a bit digging the thing out. I'll need to rebuild that with some green stuff.
I was surprised to discover that his teeth are actually a separate part, this protects the long teeth, but I did not expect this.
The spiky armour plates on the shoulders were bent in place over the under plates, but the resin is fairly soft, so that was an easy thing to do.
some minor filling to be done on the rest of the model, but it fit together astoundingly well.

[Azhrarn]

And now finally, some progress on the paint.
I've used Maaru as a test-bed for my recently bought Reaper triads. The skin is Reaper Golden Shadow, the mane is the entire Blond Hair Triad, starting with the Shadow and ending with the Highlight.





Now the skin needs shading and highlighting, and then we can start filling in the details like eyes, claws, mouth and all those metal bits.

[AndyS]

Very nice! I'll have to look into those reaper triads. Hope they're available in the UK.

[AndyS]

Cool, found them at miniature heroes. Cheaper than the foundry triads I have too!

[Azhrarn]

Very nice! I'll have to look into those reaper triads. Hope they're available in the UK.

Cool, found them at miniature heroes. Cheaper than the foundry triads I have too!

Lol, you arrived there before I could finish the post below.

yes they are.
The ones I ordered came from this UK site : http://miniature-heroes.co.uk/

They list clearly which they have in stock and which they don't, but you can order any of the Reaper Paints and they'll just order it from the US, saving you the shipping cost and import costs.
Downside to this is a fairly long turn-over time on orders if they need to order colours for you.
Got 9 triads from them this way.

Got myself a nice airbrush too recently, so I'll need to get practising with that so I'm ready for the end of may shipment from Mierce.
Busy stocking up on Airbrush paints and looking up thinning recipes for my conventional paints.

[AndyS]

Well I'd recommend valejo air thinners. It's made for the job!

[AndyS]

They don't seem to hold much paint stock!

[Azhrarn]

They don't seem to hold much paint stock!

They generally don't as far as I've seen.
They probably do most of their stuff to order, rather than keeping it in stock.
Saves on storage space. They usually have a reasonable number of different triads in stock, but usually only 1 or 2 of a given triad.
And the ones that are used frequently will usually be out of stock.
But like I said, they regularly order stuff from Reaper in the US, so the turn-over on those orders isn't horrible, but it can be quite lengthy (a couple of weeks easily).

As for the Vallejo Air Thinner, got a big 200 mL bottle of that stuff ready to go.

[AndyS]

They seem to have most colours in singles, just not triads. Thanks for the heads up on these. I've not used them before. How do they compare?

[Azhrarn]

They seem to have most colours in singles, just not triads. Thanks for the heads up on these. I've not used them before. How do they compare?

Their consistency is nice, not too thick, so you'll need to thin them a bit whether you're using them for brush painting or airbrushing.
They seem quite stable, unlike Vallejo they don't appear to split very quickly, so you could probably get away with not shaking them for use, although I generally do so regardless.

Pigment density is similar (or a bit higher) than VMC, allowing for pretty good coverage with a single coat, but that really depends on what colour you're using at the time.

The Skin and Hair colour paints cover rather well to be honest (of the 9 triads I ordered, there were 5 skin tone triads and 2 hair colour triads), the other 2 triads ordered were blues and metallics, which generally cover well regardless.
Usually I don't use black undercoats, so I have no idea how they respond to that, but over the grey I normally use they work rather well.

Haven't used all the colours extensively, but from what I've used so far these paints seem quite good. I can see why people would really like this paint range.

[AndyS]

Cool. One can never have too many flesh tones! Some of the colours look really good too. I may have to make an investment!