Rue The Line

So, chapter 2 in the painting of Shadowrun minis saga. Which I admit is less a saga and more of a miniseries. But I've been busy with other things, so sue me. I will get around to doing more at some point. But not until after I've recovered from painting this last lot.

The other blister pack I picked up on ebay after the Angels Of Death was a set of Black ICE Icons. These, I confess, enthused me initially a lot more than the angels. I had a great idea for how to paint them. Since they were all blocky and angular and from the internet I'd do them up up like wireframe models!

You know what I said last time about finding 25MM a tricky scale to work in? Yeah, should have thought that through a little more really shouldn't I?

A Samurai icon first. This was actually the second of the three that I painted, so I was getting the hang of it, however that didn't make it any less fiddly. The basic idea is to just trace around all the edges with a bright colour. Then when that's all done I drybrush silver over the top to make it look a bit shinier. I think this gut was actually the least fiddly of the three somehow, despite being the smallest.

The third of the three, a big cat of some description. Can't really call it a panther when it's done in bright green can you? Again nightmarishly fiddly but actually came out pretty good. I reckon. Although he's bigger than the Samurai that really just means more and longer fine lines that need carefully adding in.

And this is where I started. Wonderful thing hindsight. Now the Spider was the largest of the three, so I figured it's be easier. Not appreciating at the time that really just meant more lines and angles. Since this one didn't have an integral base I had the "cunning" idea to mount it on geometric shape of some description and do it up as a matrix node. I ended up getting 2 small pyramids from Black Cat Bases. I flattened the tops and pinned them together with a thick bit of copper wire. The Spider was then pinned to the side, although not until after the painting was done. Then once everything was undercoated I could then truly come to appreciate the depths of my folly. ALL THOSE STRAIGHT LINES. My god, it took ages. You don't normally worry about painting straight lines. Your following edges and contours on the mini itself. Not so here. Each edge was put in with blue, then I drybrushed a bit of bright green over the top to try and make it look more... internetty? I filled out each face of the upper pyramid with a design or some text looking stuff. I suppose transfers may have been a better option, but I kinda like doing it all by hand, even it was a bit painful. The spider was edged about in red, and then I did a blue drybrush over the tips of its legs where they meet the lines of the node. The basic idea is that the icon is forming out of the node in response to an intrusion, although I'm not sure how well that comes across. But still, I put a lot of work into it, and I'm fairly satisfied with the result.