The Martians are Coming!

After having received the goods from the Kickstarter almost 6 months ago I'm now starting on working on the Martians from All Quiet on the Martian Front. I've previously painted up a handful of the human infantry and have some more on the worktable but I've avoided the Martians as I hadn't really figured out a scheme for them yet. Since I have 6 of the metal drones I thought I'd try out a paint scheme on one first.

I debated between doing a glossy black or an all chrome effect but wasn't really sure if I could reliably pull either one off. I expect I would get really bored or frustrated doing either one. I decided to try out a scheme with  a little more Victorian/ Steampunk flavor and opted for a metallic blue-green and brass.



With my recently painted villagers.

The metallic is pretty straight forward as I painted a base coat of Vallejo Gunmetal mixed with a bit GW Coelia Greenshade ink. (As an aside I've had good luck with the new GW inks but not really as inkwashes. They don't have as much coverage or sink into the crevices as much as the old line but they work really well as glazes or filters and also as color mediums to add to paints. The new names are terrible and impossible to remember. I had to check the pot several times to make sure I wasn't misspelling it. For normal ink washes I've found Army painter's tones to be really nice.)
After that was dry I gave it a wash of the same ink. I drybrushed it up with Vallejos natural steel next and then another ink wash of the blue green. Finally a drybrush of Vallejo silver on the edges to bring back the metallic glint.


The drone with an actual All Quiet infantry figure. The All Quiet range is really closer to 20mm than 15mm.

The brass followed my usual pattern of Vallejo Bronze, Strong tone wash, and highlight with Vallejo Brass. On bigger surfaces it will get a Vallejo Old Gold final highlight. I went with an orange for the eye and after some debate the tentacle arm was painted up in grey since it doesn't really look like its made out of metal.

If you look closely you can see that this drone has run afoul of a dastardly stray hair attack.

 

I like the look so next up I'll have to try out one of the larger walkers and finish up the rest of the drones.