Middle-Earth Goblin warriors and a lost robot

 

Just to take a little break from my 54mm projects and as a speed painting test, I've assembled 18 goblin warriors from the Hobbit range to see if I could paint them in a single sitting and hence have feral creatures to use in pretty much any setting I want.

This set is quite amazing in a not "in your face" way. It comes with 2 sprues with 18 models on each meaning you have 18 different models, requiring no assembly apart from sticking them on a base so prep time is unbeatable. There's very little copy/paste of parts amongst the models too which is very nice and not so common these days. And the fact they're mutated, twisted and all makes them perfect to be regular goblins of course but also feral alien creatures in Stargrave or any kind of low level canon fodder.

With that in mind, I wanted them fairly neutral in terms of colours and more than anything, I wanted them to be fast to paint, like VERY FAST, using the most straightforward techniques, nothing fancy or time consuming, nothing requiring a small brush.

So my approach picked from several painters, the main part being from Artis Opus, it goes something like this :

- Zandri dust prime coat : I wanted the prime coat to do most of the job for me already

- Cream drybrush : any bone/cream colour will do, just trying to give some smooth and quick highlights on the skin

- contrast paints : this is probably the most careful part of the job, I picked the loins, bags, hair and wooden parts of the weapons in contrast paints, one coat to do everything, the metallic parts were picked with some steel colour

- the next step was a wash over the skin and metallic parts, a mix of blue and agrax earthshade thinned heavily in medium, making sure to limit excessive pooling

- Then I just had to pick the eyes and teeth with an off white followed by a black wash of nuln oil 

- the final step was to pick bubons and some parts to either glaze or wash and tint the skin and add some nuances

And that's all, a little under 5 hours to do that in 2 sitting within the same day, starting from the primed models.

The result is obviously up to the simplicity of the steps so no crazy blendings or special effects but I reckon they're pretty good for the time and energy spent. Sometimes the most satisying projects are not the most spectacular but this one really was immensely rewarding.

Of course there isn't much (if at all) variation in colours or anything, they're pretty much all the same but each sculpt is unique so I guess that's enough to make them look good.

I'm not going to show the backs of all 18 but just to show how the backs have nice little textures that take washes so well.

Now, something different here but a few months ago, I ordered some Stargrave sprues from Northstar and gott this objective marker, a broken robot holding its own head preciously, it's a simple yet brilliant little model that you want to build whole scenarios on (well I do)

It's really given me the will to paint plenty more. Objectives are like NPC's, they're something I want on my tables, it sets a scene as much as terrain itself and it's often very rewarding painting wise so hee you go, a few more pieces to create the world in which I want my characters to be !