Monday, February 11, 2013

Painting the Gears of War: part 3

The Drones, the Boomers, the Theron Guard, the Kantus, and the Berzerker. Primed and painted. I started with them Saturday night, did a bit more Sunday, and finished up tonight. How did it go? I think it went along pretty decently!

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The Drones were a lot of fun, but trying to figure out what I wanted to do with them took a little bit. There was a little temptation to try and individualize them a bit, but I figured that on the whole they should be pretty uniform. I did a little variation – some have distinctly more arm coverage than the others, but on the whole they’re the same.

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Overall I kept the black primer visible, dry brushing a 10 metal/4 black. This gave a good look to the armor, but without making it look too nice. I followed up with the boots, and on a few of them? The knives. I overall made it darker than the guns, which were fully brushed metal. Adding in brown for the leather belts and on the legs was an after thought, but I’m pleased with it.

Boomers

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Ah, the cheerful Boomers. I took some time with them; while following the same pattern as the Drones. I went heavier on the metal with them, but given how much firepower you have throw at them, it makes sense to me.

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Adding brown to the leather straps made sense, and I used a bit of gold on the various hoops and such on their bodies. I wanted them to look a little less run of the mill – that more resources were spent on them.

Theron Guard

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I’ll be honest; I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with them, exactly. I looked at the character art, and wasn’t sure how I wanted to do it. There was really only a top shot of them. I decided to focus on the fact they’re supposed to be the elite of the Locust, and worked with that.

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As such, there’s an element of elevation, methinks. I tried to show that in the use of the gold paint for the helmet, the collar, buckles, etc. But, they’re still soldiers, so there’s still the use of metal for parts of their armor. Also, brown was used for the skirts around their legs; seemed practical, yet ornamental. I’d imagine that leather would be sort of hard to get for a subterranean species...

Kantus

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The priests of the Locust, I think. I can’t quite remember off the top of my head! But, yeah, I can’t ever recall being happy to see them. Partly because they’re tough, but also because I’m not terribly effective at using the Gorgon pistol they drop.

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Again, due to their status, I focused on gold. The flowing robes gave me trouble at first; I had the idea to mix gold and red together, but the red pretty much dominated the gold. I eventually brushed brown over it lightly, trying to blend it a bit at towards the bottom. I’m okay with the results, but if I was to do it over again? I think I’d go in with a better plan for the color scheme.

Berserker

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And the final one for tonight? The Berserker. Probably one of the scariest things I came across in the game before you started getting to the “holy crap!” level. It would scare the hell out of me because it would pretty much gib me if I screwed up. There are bigger, uglier, nastier enemies in the game, true. But the Berserker was more intimate terror, and I really wanted to convey that.

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The basic coloration is the same as the other Locust. The Berserker had no armor or anything, just the chains on around its fists. While large and menacing, it wasn’t so much larger than the Boomers that size in and of itself was scary. The lack of armor didn’t mean much, even though you could see it had a rather thick carapace.

So, you can see what I came up with. Red. Lots of it, but mostly on its extremities. The fists and the feet; where unfortunate COGs would find themselves. Splatter on the chest and other parts along the front. I really wanted to convey that this thing, this monstrosity, was a killing machine that the typical COG should be really, really afraid of.

Family shot

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Next up? The COGs themselves. Cole, Baird, Dom and Phenix.

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