Kill Team's release has continued to get me excited to paint small batches of various troops and factions, giving me a reason to do a deep dive into old models that are gathering dust on the shelf. Go take a look at your collection for some old hidden gems that are desperate for a paintjob. I'd never painted Catachans before, so I am thankful Kill Team gave me the excuse - because these guys are fantastic! The old Catachan imperial guard figures are simply hilarious looking. They're a cross between every bad 80's action movie (and by bad, I mean Awesome) and over-the-top video game. This seemed a natural fit to make a Kill Team out of Awesome Action 80's All Stars.
Catachans are basically three things: Camouflage, Jungle, and huge sweaty muscles. I used a camo technique of airbrushing a basecoat of medium green (vallejo's American Uniform green), then using a 0 size brush to make small repeatable lines, of vallejo Black Green, vallejo Goblin Green, and splotches of Flat Brown. One thing to keep in mind when doing a 3 or even 4 color camo pattern on clothing - do not worry about "realistic" or precise camo patterns. Because you'll also be applying an oil wash for shadows and a light green color for highlights, much of the camo pattern will be in the background of the clothing. You just want to make the color separations take up roughly equal real estate on the figure - the precision of the lines of that real estate isn't important. Think forward to the final product as you're doing it - it may not look perfect now, but after the oil wash and highlight steps, it'll look good.
Catachans' cartoonish musculature is good practice for your skin blending and highlighting techniques. As for the sweaty muscles in the jungle heat, I applied a final layer of satin varnish (though it was tempting to go all-out gloss!) on the skin. For the jungle bases, look no further than the Aquarium Plants section of your local pet store. The kinds of bizarre plastic flora they have there make perfect Catachan plants for cheap. Adding a little here and there to bases goes a long way; I plan to do a series of dedicated jungle scenery bases in the near future with more detail on this.
But in all honesty, the MOST important piece of putting together a Catachan Awesome 80's Action Kill Team is the names! The Kill Team rulebook's name generator doesn't go nearly far enough with all of the over-the-top cliche 80's movie references you can come up with!
Catachans' cartoonish musculature is good practice for your skin blending and highlighting techniques. As for the sweaty muscles in the jungle heat, I applied a final layer of satin varnish (though it was tempting to go all-out gloss!) on the skin. For the jungle bases, look no further than the Aquarium Plants section of your local pet store. The kinds of bizarre plastic flora they have there make perfect Catachan plants for cheap. Adding a little here and there to bases goes a long way; I plan to do a series of dedicated jungle scenery bases in the near future with more detail on this.
But in all honesty, the MOST important piece of putting together a Catachan Awesome 80's Action Kill Team is the names! The Kill Team rulebook's name generator doesn't go nearly far enough with all of the over-the-top cliche 80's movie references you can come up with!
Sgt. Dillon 'Action' Jackson and Corporal Chest Rockwell
Cadillac Cooke and Lincoln 'MAC' Steele
Doc Dolph Braddock and THE Bill Duke
Brock Hardstone and Sgt. Lorenzo Lamas
JJ McQuaid and Sgt. Ray 'Double Deuce' Steele
Johnny Blades and Captain Max Stryker (a.k.a Lord Humongous)
Frank TJ Lazer and Major Slade Dudikoff
The possibilities are endless; need to paint more guys just to give them names...
When ever I see catwchan jungle fighters it reminds me of predator the film. Great job once again on these awesome minis.
ReplyDeleteI love all of the diversity on this team! If only we could have some women as well represented (we know how ferocious they are lol - one would probably be leading the unit!) though I know if GW had female (and trans!) models included you would do an equally excellent job on them.
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