Rasta Tailspike

I’d based the model on the 2nd edition illustration, so did the same with the paint scheme. One thing I has changed was make him more like modern skaven with less fur, it had a tendency to look too ape like. So he had more bare skin and the shading of the fur he did have was more extreme.

The other colouring was green armour and clothing with small areas of black for things like his gloves along with silver metal and brown for belts and straps. The stone slabs he’s standing on were painted classic grey to resemble atrogranite.




Hubris Rakarth

I had previously made a conversion of him from a 40K eldar model and gave him the colour scheme of a dark elf team I’d done. However I was never that happy with that model and wanted to better match the illustration since he looks really cool in it.

The hardest part to get right was his skin tone, I like the grey skin some fantasy settings have for their dark elves or Drow, but GW tend to go for a more natural look. Though it does vary somewhat and some stars are considerably healthier looking than others. There certainly is a grey tinge and they do tend to be pale, but it’s still flesh. It took a few attempts to get the tone right, matching a 2D illustration to a 3D model always presents a challenge. I am proud of how it turned out and in particular the parts of his shaved head worked out just right.

The other difficult part to get right was his purple armour. It needed to be bright as the rest of his clothing was a mix of dark browns or grey, with small amounts of bone or silver. I ended up mixing some blue in to avoid the highlights being too mauve. The grey skull on his belt also added a much needed contrast to his dark clothing.




Guffle Pussmaw

I’d been deliberately painting stars from different teams to give myself more variety, but thought I could save time by working on batches which were similar. There were 4 Nurgle stars to go and so I worked on them at the same time.

The first of these was Guffle, he was the very first BB16 star I converted, before the Nurgle Spike even came out. That’s why he doesn’t resemble the illustration as much as some of the later stars.

His colouring was pretty standard for Nurgle, grey skin (actual grey this time) with green armour. I did want to try out 2 new techniques for him.

The first of these was scuffed leather, I’d seen other painters do this on Instagram and thought it would be perfect for Nurgle. Normally I’d highlight leather the same way as other clothing or armour, but this method was less smooth and had lots of little sharp highlights to represent cracks or scratches. It turned out ok on his boots, but still needs a little refining.

The other technique was OSL (Object Source Lighting). I’d tried this once before on Willow and wanted to have a real try on the warpstone ball he is holding with his monstrous mouth. I was very happy with how the lighting effect worked, in particular on the tongue. The only bit that didn’t quite work was the ball itself, I found it really hard to get the highlights for warpstone right.





Bilerot Vomitflesh

It was painting him that showed me the dangers of batch painting something like star players. Normally this method works best on a team or squad where you want some uniformity. With his illustration giving him black armour, greenish skin and a grey top he was already pretty bland. I then gave him the same green for his trousers and used the scuffed leather look for his boots and loincloth.

This ended up with a very muddy looking model, fine for a normal player, but not really what I was looking for with a star. In hindsight he certainly needed something lighter for his lower half rather than just the stitching and leg bandages. He’s certainly the least favourite of the stars I have done this year, both in painting and converting.





Bulla Shardhorn

After the disappointment of Bilerot I made some changes to Bulla. He already had grey/brown skin along with brown horns and the rest of the illustration didn’t give him much colour aside from reddish pustules.

To that end I took some artistic license and swapped in brighter colours. The clod brown scuffed leather of his glove and clothing was replaced with a warm brown coloured glove and dirty white clothing. His shoulder pad was highlighted with yellow rather than bone for warm as opposed to cold green too. Finally I went with a much brighter shade of purple for his tongues.

His horns remained brown, but I added some quite extreme highlights to these for added impact.




Tolly Glocklinger

The final Nurgle star was Tolly, he had a lot of pale bare skin and this was a nice contrast to his green armour.

My first attempt had made his armour too light and grey, so I repainted this again swapping yellow in for grey with he highlights, then adding a touch of rust/dirt round the edges.

His loin cloth and glove again was scuffed leather, but the warm shade of brown. Even though grey/brown would be more suitable for nurgle I have always liked that shade of brown.

His bell is a very prominent part of the model and I added multiple washes of turquoise for the oxidised look. I think I went a tad overboard on this and should maybe have kept a brighter brass finish.




With all these complete, I have painted up all Spike 3’s players and stars from BB16. However some of these are pretty old and the paintjob and photos don’t match my current standards.