Two-Clan detailing

Personalized warmachines

At this point all the Points started moving more clearly to their own routes, when each had their own canopy shapes and numbers, and their weapons were arrayed in who knew how many different ways. Doing this was of course not that bothersome as the members of the same unit had the same approach to their cockpits, and the Jump Jets were all done the same way as I could not be bothered to go for specific paintjobs for all the subtypes of devices.

Hell's Horses

Energy weapons

Most of the barrels o' fun in this batch consisted of different flavours of Medium-class Lasers, the Cougar had two Large Pulsers, while the Pack Hunter carried the gang's only ER PPC. Apart from the PPC all the tubes were relatively small, which was typical on the Light and Medium 'Mechs, and made painting them somewhat more bothersome than on their Heavy and Assault class colleagues. Still, it was funny that the Cougar and something like the Stone Rhino both carried the same weapon that was modeled so much differently on the minis.

For the sensor lenses I had started some little time ago using yellow or yellowish colour to keep them apart from the energy weapons. My reference (the earlier linked Canon Cockpit Painting Compendium I) reminded me that Pack Hunter had no cockpit viewports but just sensor packs, so that affected this section noticeably. In addition to those head-mounted lenses the Cougar had a couple in its arms, the Huntsman as well, but I didn't regonize any on the Fire Moth.

Jump Jets

On the first round I only had time for a couple of blue shades on the nozzles, which was where these couple of photos were from. The next time I thinned some white into thin wash, mixed in a hint of blue, and used that to highlight the Jump Jets.

Both the Huntsman and Pack Hunter had Jump Jets that clearly looked the part so there was no guesswork needed there. Being an older IWM miniature, the Nova was a bit more peculiar so I decided that the grilled boxes in the lower torso and the shins were now the nozzles.

Cockpits

As we noticed at the sensor packs, there were only four sets of viewports to be painted. I was flip-flopping between blue and green for the colour, as the green had worked so nicely on the red-based Shilone and Morgan Kell's Archer. Camospecs had both colours, UCC recommended green, and ultimately I went with blue.

With the jeweling dry I applied gloss varnish on them all.

While I was going at full throttle I painted flames on the front edges of the hex bases. At this point I left the thought of adding the diagonal hazard stripes over this to simmer in the back of my brain.

Jade Falcon

Cockpits

My grey-green Jade Falcons have been been painted with red cockpits for a long while, as the previous paintjob of the Nova showed. The bloody red got lightened with sand(ivory) for a couple of layers. Finally the off-white highlight dots were painted in the brightest bits and as opposing reflections. With these eyes and object sizes it was a bit of a hassle again.

Energy weapons and sensor lenses

There was just one lonely ER Small Laser, a few of the Medium and Large types, and two of the Particle Projector Cannons. No Jump Jets for these Surats.

Of the three minis here just the Kingfisher had something that looked like sensor lenses in its head, so that was to be done. Maybe the underhanging bit below the Right Arm's Large Pulse Laser could have a targeting bit.

All the chosen sensor lenses got painted orange (VGC 72008 Orange Fire) with the same one or two lighter layer approach. When those had dried I applied gloss varnish on each and every jeweled part.

Caution stripes

To make the camouflage even more sensemaking on a three-storey high walking tank I added the hazard markings. I started by painting rectangular strips in good-looking areas with yellow ochre. The dark stripes were done with black grey. The thinness of the stripes got decided by the size of the part and the angle I had to hold the mini.

Unit markings

Following some sort of an assembly line approach I painted white circles onto Nova Cat's front thigs. On the Right Leg I did the sphere-piercing jade-coloured sword for the glory of the 3rd Falcon Talon Cluster, on the Left Leg I added the jade-coloured Jade Falcon over the planed for Gamma Galaxy. I also attempted to paint some kind of Clan Jade Falcon insignia somewhere higher and more prominent, in this case it was both ball-shaped shoulders.

 

Crossbow had a weirder shape so I did the same for the lower insignia in the front shins. Finding a space for the Clan emblem was a bit of a bother, in the end I put them on the sides of the missile launcher -carrying arms,

Both of the Kingfisher's lower markings I painted now on the knees. Thanks to the difficult shapes of the torso and arms, I painted the Clan marking in the crotch plate.

All three got their low-vis numbers in dark grey, I didn't take photos of those separately. Just before packing for this post I painted the front faces of the hex bases with thinned down Jade, and then the hazard striping with dark grey that I also used for the remaining edges.