A Murderously Malevolent Mechanical Mockery

Obviously this guy was always going to be high on the list. It helps that I like the UCI monsters more than most Destroyer factions. As with previous homage models, I did look to the older movie versions of Mecha Godzilla for inspiration, going for a full metallic look with orange glows (applied sparingly). I did add a bit more variety to the metal by tinting the "inner" areas in warmer tones, and I think it does a good job of adding more visual interest.

I originally considered trying to use chrome paints for the whole model, but decided to stick to standard metallics; I guess I wasn't feeling all that ambitious with this model. Which I think shows; I didn't put a whole lot of creativity or experimentation into this guy, opting for basic and reliable colours and painting techniques. Which I think is fine; he still took quite a lot of time and effort on account of all the edge-highlighting required. I did notice something a little unfortunate towards the end of the painting: the glows are pretty hard to see when looking down on the model from above, as you would normally do. Well, I don't think there's very much I could have done about that without overdoing the glows, which as I've learned in the past would risk making the model look unfocussed.

Cyber Khan:
I primed the model with a solid coat of Vallejo 73.660, trying to make sure all the recesses had solid coverage as I wasn't planning on using a dip or anything, so I didn't want and brighter areas showing in recesses. I was originally trying to get a solid smooth layer to serve as a good base for chrome, but it seems even applying the primer a fair bit more heavily than usual wasn't enough to get a smooth coat on some of the metal areas. Luckily I decided against the chrome in the end.

After the primer was dry I established a zenithal highlight by layering Vallejo 71.073 Model Air Metallic Black, Vallejo 71.072 Model Air Metallic Gunmetal, and Vallejo 71.063 Model Air Metallic Silver RLM01. The highly square and angular model did not take the zenithal the same way that more organic, curved models do, but it still give him more depth.

At this point I shaded the silver parts of the armour by painting Citadel Shade Nuln Oil directly into the recesses. After this I painted Citadel Shade Agrax Earthshade over the bronze areas, tinting the metal and also shading in one step. I had a bit of difficulty deciding on a highlight colour for the bronze; I tried some old Citadel Layer Runelord Brass, but it was too close to the underlying basecoat so I ended up mixing Citadel Layer Gehenna's Gold (a rich brassy colour) with the Vallejo Silver RLM01, which gave me a warm and fairly bright but somewhat desaturated colour that I felt worked quite well for the highlights.

The silver armour was then painstakingly edge-highlighted with Scalecolor SC-66 Metal N' Alchemy Speed Metal. I usually find Speed Metal a bit hard to work with for some reason, this time I ended up thinning it quite heavily with Phoenix Artist's Acrylic Retard Medium (which is a very thin drying retarder), and that seemed to work quite well. I did try to make the teeth, claws and horn stand out by building them up in solid Speed Metal, I'm not sure how well that worked out tbh.

For the glows I basecoated with Vallejo 72.008 Game Color Orange Fire, then glazed on some thinned Vallejo 72.007 Game Color Gold Yellow to try to create a bit of a smooth transition. At this point I used the same Gold Yellow to drybrush the surrounding areas, which worked really well over the metals to create a bright yellow glow. Next I built up the brighter areas with glazes of thinned down Vallejo 72.005 Game Color Moon Yellow. Then I shaded the areas around some of the glows with Vallejo 72.709 Game Air Hot Orange. I dotted the centers of the glowing areas with a small dot of Formula P3 Morrow White thinned with the drying retarder, and finally gave the glows a light glaze with Citadel Glaze Lamenter's Yellow (mainly just to tint the white).


Overall he looks... appropriate I would say, very metallic and still contrasty. The use of very bright metals meant that the orange glows don't stand out very much, but they still look OK, thanks in large part I think to how well the yellow drybrush worked over the metal. The glows inside the mouth gave me a bit of trouble; I did want the glow inside the mouth to look reasonably bright and cast light, but I didn't want the teeth to look like a yellowish metal from the outside. The result doesn't look too good from the wrong angle as parts of the teeth have light cast on them, and other neighboring parts that should have a yellow tint actually don't. But I don't think it looks too bad from most angles, and I'm not sure I could make it look better, so I left it there.


Overall I think he looks OK; I don't know if I could have made him look much better without losing some of the connection to his cinematic inspiration.