And now presenting the lovely couple...

At last, Marie Leveaux and her little pet!

These are some very fun members of the Confederate Rebellion, which is one of the 4 new factions being introduced by Wild West Exodus.

They really do make a great pair!!

Bands of RJ-1027 infuse the zombie snake with unnatural life and energy.

The Bayou will never be the same!!

I'm sure he's quite deadly.

Since everything about the Rebellion is hit and run, ambush, etc., I assume that he slithers around in the swamp and attacks out of nowhere!

I forget which stretch goal unlocks this cute couple, but I am certainly hoping to get there!!!

From concept to combat

Here we see an experiment in progress... from the Evil Genius of Burn In Designs, Mr. Lathan!

He is working on a combat train that is not just a line of sight blocking monolith, but a living piece of terrain.

The design has already gone numerous modifications.  When you are attempting to make something so 'interactive', you need to constantly adjust from your original plan.

There is that critical balance between how something looks, and how playable it can be.

Does it offer multiple gun ports, can you move around on it, etc.

Even more important, what happens inside!  This complicates things even more, as you must deal with bases and base widths, miniature height, and so on.

Having the ability to place the figures inside like this is even more important for the typical skirmish games of the day, which tend to make use of every scrap of terrain, unlike other systems where it's more of an afterthought.

These next few shots will give you the best sense of scale.

Just getting this many figures to fit easily can take a surprising number of redesigns.  When you look at my terrain pieces, you see tons of these adjustments.  Usually you have to make things bigger and bulkier than you would like, as the base size takes over.

Depending on how you approach the painting of this piece, it can be steampunk or sci-fi.  This is also not the easiest thing to balance...

There are plenty of firing ports, but also some ways to actually see and shoot the folks inside.  This does not happen with a fully enclosed kind of vehicle.

This is just one of a number of cars which are under construction.  The roof is getting some extra attention, and I think that this car has even become the caboose. :-)

So, stay tuned and check out Burn In Designs for all kinds of amazing gaming and terrain pieces!!!

Giant Critter, Giant Base.

I see that is all the chaos of the last few weeks, I never shot any images of the finished base for the Great Elk!

I'm very glad I remembered before I went to place the Great Elk on this massive platform.

This is not a plinth, folks.  This is the regulation base!  Huge!

Considering it's combat radius is 3 inches, this is quite the pie plate template.

The broken machine you see is the Fire Bringer, which is a resin terrain piece made by Wild West Exodus.

I had SO much fun with the extra roots and undergrowth on this piece. Normally I would use dried foliage branches, but this more vine oriented look was great.

I wasn't sure what would happen to it as it was painted.  if the paint has too much water in it, things get soggy and start to sag.

I can't wait until the duel between the Lawman and the Great Elk takes place!

The roots along the ground worked out as I had hoped, and I have used that on other bases since.

The sprawled skeleton worked out equally well.  It sets up another one of those 'triads' of interest, between the Great Elk, shooter and skeleton.

Stay tuned for when Base and Monster are joined together at last!  Then it's on to the Crystal Brush for large creature category.

What you find in the swamp

Look out below!  Or is that above, as this huge snake towers above you.

This is the finished giant snake from the Confederate Rebellion, one of the four new factions being introduced via the Wild West Exodus kickstarter.

Hopefully the step by step images I have been posting give you a decent idea of how I went about painting this!

It's always very fun to see those WIP images next to a finished product such as this.

Next up, the Zombie Queen and her pet together at last!!

Blood and Guts in the swamp

We need some RJ-1027 glow for our snake.  Vallejo orange fluorescent paints work very well for this!  I mix in a little red where I need it to be darker... and some yellow when I want to lighten it up.

Be advised that it is a very thick, but very transparent paint.  When you mix yellow in with it, you increase its opacity.

A little bit of ivory was added for the final lights.

Between the reddish orange and the surrounding green color, those bits of RJ-1027 glow really stand out!

Last, but not least, we need some blood and gore!!

The Realistic Water serves as a 'suspender', which will give the gore a transparent appearance.  It will also give it a bit of glossy shine.

When you look at the Realistic Water on the left and see the lighter red mixed in, you get a sense of how this effect works.  The lighter red is applied first, and will be smeared around on the surface.

Here we have that first application.  Where I want the blood/gore to be thicker, I will build up additional layers, each one with more dark red included.

I also used the lighter red mix to take care of the areas of skin that had been cut open to insert various RJ-1027 elements.

On the tips of the tails, I used a very dark mixture of red and Realistic Water.  It was thick enough to pool up in a drop.

This image shows me working around the snake, adding successive layers of darker reds.

Heavy applications of deep red have been added to the inside of the mouth and the ends of the blades on his head.

A little side by side with the reference image...

He's almost done!  Just some picking out of final highlights and other details. Stay tuned for the finished images!!!