Gallamaximus Decimus Meridius, Gallaxadiator

I picked this guy up for the rules more than for the model. When I finally bothered to take a proper look at the model, I was very surprised. I've never seen a model like this: practically every part of the model has a different, almost unrelated, type of surface/texture. It's actually insane. His tail has an organic-looking blade-thing, but his arm blades look like an artificial housing, with a pattern that doesn't really match any other part of the model. His tail is sort of segmented, with what looks like a protruding spine; he doesn't really have protruding bones anywhere else though. Except for the "claws" on his chest that hold... crystal balls or something? His neck alone has like three different types of textures that don't repeat anywhere else: mechanical tubing and some weird collar plates. He does have what look like armour plates on his midriff, so that's something, but they don't look all that similar and there aren't any others. His back is covered in bumps/nodules, but we don't see them anywhere else. His shoulders are muscular, but his biceps look like they're bursting out of splits in the skin; they kinda look like eyeballs actually. But the muscular areas of his legs have a different look, with a network of raised seams running across them - again, this is not seen anywhere else. His shins are covered with what looks like sporting protective gear, they don't look like any of his other armoured bits. And then of course the original model has these bizarre boney cornucopia's sticking off his shoulders.

My normal painting methodology is to pick different colours for different types of surfaces to indicate that they are made of different materials. Well, that was never going to work here. So I settled on using him to experiment with my new iridescent colours. I hadn't used these before, and I figured the model's unusual nature and origin would be a good fit for these non-traditional paints. I would not worry too much about the different textures and give him a fairly simple paint job, relying on the paints and airbrush to create visual interest. But first I would replace that crap on his shoulders with proper wings.

To start with I sanded the weird webbed layer off the bottom of his feet; I have no idea what that hell that thing was supposed to be. Then I carved the housings off his shoulders with a chisel-blade hobby knife. After some searching I found some suitable wings on a model called "Demon Hunter - World Of Warcaft" from White Werewolf Tavern. I scaled them down to 60%, pinned them to the model, and then sculpted over the join with a sort of bumpy texture to match the texture of the back.

Gallamaxus
I primed in Vallejo 73.660 Gloss Black Surface Primer using my airbrush. I then sprayed Green Stuff World 2585 Metal Filters Green Interference from around 45 to 60 degrees from below. I sprayed Green Stuff World 2582 Metal Filters Blue Interference onto the wing membranes from both sides; I used my 0.2mm airbrush and tried to avoid the "fingers" of the wings, but I wasn't too happy with how it looked. After this I sprayed Green Stuff World 2583 Metal Filters Purple Interference from above. I had some trouble with this paint; I guess I didn't shake it up enough because it seemed to have settled a lot more than I realised. I discovered this because it seems it settled on the top of the bottle, blocking the nozzle. So when I squeezed it to try to get the paint out the whole nozzle flew out and dropped a bunch of paint everywhere. I cleaned it all up, but the resulting purple coat on the model was not as metallic or shiny as I had expected.

I went back and brushed the Blue Interference over the wing membranes to make it cleaner and stronger; especially over the tops of the wings where the purple layer had covered up the blue. I also used some Green Interference to clean up the wings and create a sharper boundary with the blue.

Anyway. I brushed Vallejo 72.715 Game Air Hexed Lichen over the chest cavity, then picked out the stones in The Army Painter Warpaints Ice Storm. I painted successively smaller areas on each stone in The Army Painter Warpaints Crystal Blue, Vallejo 72.021 Game Color Magic Blue, and Scalecolor SC-54 Navy Blue. I drybrushed over the transitions with each paint to blend the colours. They were looking too dark near the end so I pushed up the brighter areas with a final drybrush of the Magic Blue.

I brushed Vallejo 72.715 Game Air Hexed Lichen over the eyes, then went over it completely with Scalecolor SC-54 Navy Blue, then covered that completely with Vallejo 72.021 Game Color Magic Blue. I rather carelessly drybrushed the Magic Blue around the area for a pretty crappy glow effect. I really shouldn't have rushed this step so much. I painted the centers of the eyes with The Army Painter Warpaints Ice Storm, then put a small spot of Vallejo 72.701 Game Air Dead White thinned with Formula P3 Mixing Medium in the lowest pair of eyes. I then applied a thin wash of Citadel Colour Shade Drakenhof Nightshade across the entire eye, then went back and applied it more strongly around the edges. The wash darkened the eyes a bit too much so I ended up re-applying the spot of Dead White.

I painted the gloss black primer back over all the areas that would be gold, and then brushed on several layers of Green Stuff World 2586 Metal Filters Gold Interference. I used this over a regular gold thinking that it might match the other colours better, but I don't know if it actually made a difference.

I also used the black primer to darken the inside of the mouth, after which I picked out the tongue in Blue Interference, which I also applied to the tail spike. I had considered doing the entire tail spike in gold, but I felt that might be too much. In retrospect it might have been the better option.

I tried applying a wash of Citadel Colour Shade Druchii Violet to the bumps on the back as a test, but I didn't like the results so I ended up shading the entire model manually, by painting Vallejo 72.715 Game Air Hexed Lichen - heavily thinned with water and medium - directly into pretty much all the recesses on the whole model. I tried to use to lightly shade the creases in the wing membranes as well, but to do this I thinned it even further with water and it ended up too watery and didn't flow the way I wanted.

I varnished first with my usual Vallejo 26.517 Gloss Acrylic Varnish, however while I would normally follow with a coat of matte varnish, in this case I decided I liked the shiny glossy look. But I still wanted another layer of varnish, so I applied a quick spray of Alclad II ALC600 Aqua Gloss Clear. In my experience this goes on completely invisible, having no effect on the surface finish whatsoever (unless you apply it too heavily, which is possible since it's very hard to see how much you've used - it really is quite invisible).


While this guy was an interesting experiment and a learning experience, I'm not really all that happy with the results. The iridescent effect doesn't really work the way I had expected; it seems the angle you spray from is important, since I sprayed from above and below he shifts colours as you raise or drop your view, but not as your view rotates around the model - which is how you would normally want it to work. The gemstones in the chest don't look as good as I had expected them to either, perhaps because I overdid the eyes?

Overall he's... OK, but I don't particularly like him. Well, I never really liked the model that much to begin with, so I guess that's fine. He does have a crazy amount of overhang in pretty much every direction; I'm not sure how hard that will make him to play with, but I know it will make him very hard to transport, so it'll probably be a while before I figure out a solution... if ever. Looks like I still need to paint some most monsters if I want to actually play full-sized games.