Rogue Trader Character 1

Back to a little 40K this post, but a slightly different slant.  The gaming group I belong to (consisting entirely of Ancible team members) have been rolling up characters for the Rogue Trader RPG from Fantasy Flight games.  Now I know RPGs don't tend to need miniatures, but I thought it would be fun to paint up some miniatures to represent each of us.  First up (as it was the one miniature I had which could be painted up straight away), is the Seneschal, the Rogue Trader's Diplomat/Merchant/Agent type character.

According to the rulebook, he's supposed to swan about in robes, but the person playing this role is a bit more, shall we say, "militaristic" in nature, so I went for a model in a uniform - you may recognise him as the fleet officer from the Imperial Guard Regimental Advisors blister.  I went for a grey undercoat again - I have a feeling this will be taking over from black for the majority of my miniatures from now on.  You will probably have guessed that it's my usual way of doing yellow, so I won't go into that here, but if I'd done it again, I may have highlighted up further, and used the new GW Lamenter's Yellow glaze to finish it off.

The boots and other black bits were done slightly differently than normal - and it's a method I've seen across many blogs recently, so apologies if I don't give credit where it's due, as I can't remember where I learned it from.  A base coat of Vallejo German Grey is highlighted with Adeptus Battlegrey, Codex Grey and then Astronomicon Grey.  The whole lot is then washed with Badab Black, which tones everything down.  At the other extreme, the white elements are a base of Khemri Brown, shaded with Gryphonne Sepia, highlighted with Dheneb Stone and then pure white.

The red (which I'm particularly pleased with) is a base coat of Mechrite Red, shaded with Devlan Mud.  In some places this still came out a little too maroon for my tastes, so a glaze/wash of Gryphonne Sepia, brough it back to the warmer red I was looking for.  This was then highlighted by mixing Blood Red into the base coat through to pure Blood Red, and then some Solar Macharius Orange mixed in for the final highlights.    The red really stands out on the miniature, and I think it works really well with the more muted yellow.  

The hair was done in a similar way to the black leather, just with the highlights of Adeptus Battlegrey and Codex Grey added back in after the black wash, to give him that "slightly older" look (I'm going to get such a kicking on Saturday for that...).  The gold is a base coat of Scorched Brown, highlighted with Burnished  Gold and a 1:1 mix of the gold and Mithril Silver.  The skin was Tallarn Flesh washed with Ogryn Flesh then highlighted with Tallarn Flesh and P3 Ryn Flesh, trying to keep a ruddy complexion.  

The base is another of my favourite parts of the model - I wanted it to look like the paved garden of a rich trading house.  It's nothing complicated, just squares of plastic sheet cut into 5mm squares glued to the base.  The squares were painted Dheneb Stone and Scaly Green (a paint defunct even before the current new paint range) and washed with Devlan Mud.  The light stones were highlighted with Dheneb Stone and then a Stone and white mix, and the green stones were highlighted with Scaly Green and then a Green and Rotting Flesh mix.  The model was then sprayed with Humbrol matt varnish and some seriously old school GW flock (I'm talking 20 year old stuff) was glued on to look like weeds growing between the paving slabs.  This was finished off with another spray of varnish and he was finished!

I love this miniature, he was an absolute blast to paint, and it was nice to do something brightly coloured.    The base probably clashes with the miniature a little, but I can live with that.  The rest of the characters in our motley band are the Rogue Trader himself (opium smoking hedonist apparently), a Missionary (ecclesiastical nut job), an Explorator (a tech priest) and my character, the Arch Militant (a hellgun armed combat specialist).  I'm also going to do the Astropath model to represent the GM (or he'll feel left out).  Most of these will be small conversions of existing GW models, so hopefully they should get done over the next couple of months.

At the moment, our ship will be named the "Siegfried and Roy" - I'm hoping this will change...

Of course this Saturday is Salute 2012, where I'm going to do some shopping, some gawking and hopefully meet a few people (including some fellow bloggers).  If you see a fairly tall, dark haired, bespectacled, bedraggled, young(ish) man with a grey "Bag of Holding" over his shoulder, talking like a west country farmer, please feel free to say hello and offer him food if he looks hungry (he's usually hungry...).

As always, comments and criticism welcome!