Big Orange Trolls

So I figured i'd start a gnoblog to help motivate me into seeing my Trollbloods project through to completion. Also I hope to get some feedback and suggestions on how to improve them as I go so all comments are welcome people!

I've got a lot of Trolls recently from a trade so this is going to be a fairly large blog me thinks, especially as the only finished one so far is my Impaler. Going for a completely different look to normal, as the name of the blog suggests, bright orange trolls. Anyways here's some pics of that finished Impaler:





Accidently made the 2nd image a bit small when editing in Photobucket.

Anyway as you can see they're going to be fairly bright on the skin with quite dull and weathered metal and dark leather. I'm quite pleased with the way the first model has turned out but if anyone has any tips for improving that would be great! (bearing in mind i'm a fairly slow painter, and not so good with the more advanced painting techniques )

Working on Madrak next as he's my main warcaster at the mo. He's almost done so should have some pics up of him soon.

You know, whacko as I am, I think I would have painted the other half of the base blue, to match the model better 

Only thing I'm able to point out is the chicken on the hip. It's a bit flat, dull in the color maybe. Could do with some shading, which I see you've managed to do superbly on the rest of the model from what I can see. That also includes the straps holding the chicken. Looks plain black to me.

What I foind works good for highlighting black is to drybrush with white, then use black ink all over. Not the best effect, I'm sure you can do better, but it did give my ponytail some more life.

I see what you mean about the chicken, it does seem a bit block colour, will go back to that and see what I can do to shade it.

Also I think I may have had my eyes shut when I was painting that entire area, i've only noticed the straps are black since you pointed it out! lol. They were meant to be leather or rope but I completely missed them, will definitely go back and redo them

Ty for your comments mate

Hey man, you made it on then

Only real comment is shiny, shiny pics, might have to look into a way of counteracting that somehow... catch you sunday

I'm loving the colour scheme   I'd suggest taking pics against a white background and not using a flash though - you can colour correct for the white in a ppicture editing tool then to make the pic look natural without losing detail. 

when i saw a thread called big orange trolls I immediatly thought of Vyvyan though (as he's a ginger)

Hey, does anyone see a resemblance to Ripto from Spyro 2?

I see what you mean about the chicken, it does seem a bit block colour, will go back to that and see what I can do to shade it.

Also I think I may have had my eyes shut when I was painting that entire area, i've only noticed the straps are black since you pointed it out! lol. They were meant to be leather or rope but I completely missed them, will definitely go back and redo them

Ty for your comments mate

Happy to help

Just finished Madrak about 10 mins ago so thought i'd get some pics up for you all to see. Should be a little less shiny (I haven't gone mad with the daylight bulb this time) but the quality of the camera still isn't ideal.




As you can see I chickened out on painting a tartan pattern on his robes, just not confident enough to try it and make it look good so thought i'd leave it for now. Will most likely revisit though and add it in at a later date.

Also the Impaler now has shaded chickens! (mmmm shaded chicken) but i forgot to take a pic  so will have to do that in the next update.

I'm thinking of working on the Champions next, the first unit. They're a mainstay in my lists so I figure they should get quite high priority.

Thanks for the feedback so far guys, really appreciated i'll try a white background with the Champion shots Wildcard, should improve the images some more. Stonedog i'm probably gonna be stealing your camera one Monday as it's way better than the one i'm using at the mo. I had a look at a picture of Ripto Vyvyan, can see the resemblance, it wasn't intentional though lol.

 - Angron

good to see u here at long last madrack looks cool.

Mmm, shaded chicken...  These guys look good, I love the orange! You could highlight Madrak's robes up a shade or two more, although it would probably be only for the camera, I find that shading that looks good IRL doesn't show up well in photos!  I'm not sure that painting the front of the bases orange works so well, it draws the eye away from the model and detracts from the pop of the orange on it.  Perhaps a more muted colour? Anyway, really nice work.

Thanks BeastMum I understand what you're saying about the front of the bases. I will probably have the champions as a bit of a test and paint the bases a different colour on a few and try out just a line either side on the others, they're only there for front arc line of sight markings so I could tone them right down, after all the model should be the focus.

Not sure how long the unit will take to do (lot's of metal rather than orange so should be fairly quick) but will get some pictures up with the alternate bases as soon as they're done.

 - Angron

Ok it's been a while since the last update but in that time i've managed to get the Trollkin Champions and the Dire Troll Mauler finished.






So that's the Champions, with blue bases now rather than orange. Really pleased with how these guys came out except for a couple of the stone weapons where the drybrush has gone a bit too heavy.





And the Dire Troll Mauler. Again please with how he ended up, was very worried about the method I use for the skin applied over such a large model. Really like the stones on his arms and back, drybrushing came out good that time

And a group shot of everything painted so far:



Really pleased I took all of your advice people and painted the front of those bases blue, looks a lot more subtle and still ties in nicely so thank you for the suggestion of doing that .

So big post this time, next unit to be done is the Kriel Stone Bearer and Stone Scribes with unit attachment. They may take a while though as I have boring, non-model related, sensible things to do over the next couple of weekends (about the only time I get to paint bar Monday evenings). Also getting a game in against Circle on Sunday for our campaign so the next update will have a report on how they actually perform in a game!

 - Angron

The big troll looks cool! nice army mate!

Looking really good!  The champions look great, and that Mauler is really something else!  You've done well with the shading and the drybrushing did work well too!  You're right, the blue bases are much better - now the models do the talking! We'll wait for RL to get out of the way so you can give us another update!

Makes me want to start painting up my trolls. Only thing I'm not looking forward to is assembling the dire troll. It looks like it will bring along heaps of frustrations.

Now these models look firmiliar Thanks again for those Tyranids.

The blue on the base looks so much better then the orange. I'm really liking the orange skin tone. There is a ton of skin to get right on those big trolls. It is intimidating to start painting them but as you have shown it can be done. Very nice basing. Can't wait to see more.