Alpha Vorbak Complete!

I'm happy to say I've finally managed to complete my Alpha Legion Gal Vorbak. Alpha Vorbak, if you will.

Hopefully there's still a few surprises in store in this blog after my extensive WIP posts. Lots of new details to see...

First let's talk about this guy. I love this guy. This is the model that made me buy this kit. From the moment I saw him at a FW event I was hooked. Such a beautiful model, and unsurprisingly I painted him last (and in my humble opinion best...). I also went a bit nuts with the OSL and just tried some new special effects I've never tried before. I can't complain about how it turned out!

Okay so this guy is the one most people like the most. He's kickass and super dynamic. I loved painting this guy with his crumbling armour and bursting flesh and bone. A neat detail I almost missed on the first pass is his bionic eye lens which is popping out of his head as his face mutates. Such a labour of love from the sculptor, kudos to you sir, you are an artist.

Now this is a possessed marine, am I right? Smokes all the possessed models GW have ever done in the past, so many amazing details, such a vivid image of daemon coming out of man. You can really get a sense of it making him bulge in bestial ways while keeping that one arm of normality to keep in touch with the marine he used to be. Those 4 eyes are beyond awesome. A face even a mother would struggle to love, but I'm obsessed with it.

I love this guy's skull plate. It makes me think some kind of explosion is going off in front of him and he is bracing against it as the daemon reacts to shield his brain from shrapnel. I painted this guy first and I admit I kinda love him. Some really pretty details all over that armour and some beautiful subtle runes which I used some OSL on (which came out better than on any of the other models if I'm honest). Even my exceedingly cantankerous and frustrating airbrush didn't complain as I painted this one. No spitting at the critical moments, no stress.

Last but not least this guy bursting out of his armour really helped me figure out those large areas of flesh and difficult armour-to-flesh-to-bone transitions and was a great learning experience. I had a lot of fun with the scroll-work and the book on his shoulder, just couldn't resist sneaking in a little alpha and omega :)

I have to admit that was a serious bit of painting and it's been a good learning experience to help me up my painting game in general. After a long hiatus painting what is essentially a bunch of character level models all in a row was exhausting and occasionally mentally taxing but I enjoyed it throughout. This is my kind of painting, much more fun than grinding out ranks of infantry and I can really focus on one model at a time.

Each model basically took me the equivalent of a whole day of painting, the first two were spread out over weeks and weeks but the last three were back to back on holidays - let's say about 8-12 hours a day. I'm definitely not the fastest painter but I do like to keep a high attention to detail. Proud of how they turned out but I can already see where they could improve! That's probably a good thing right?

Syra out.