Airborne horror

Today I'm making the update early in the day, lest I be late again... as said last Friday, here are the fell bats.

My bats are, as you see, pretty unorthodox. I told you last time about my thinking phase when working on a mini, well, these are the result. I'm kinda proud of these bats, them being one of my most ambitious projects to date and I'm at least partially happy on how they turned out.

Even before thinking about what exactly did I want for my fell bats I'd known the standard GW bats are out of the question. These minis are not very high-standard, with very oversized heads and generally a poor design. Second of all, I definitely didn't want a 'flying' model - I had the experience of 'flying' bases before, broken lugs and all... besides flying models look terribly cheesy to my mind.

After much pondering, I decided to go with something akin to gargoyles. Having no gargoyle models handy (in fact the only gargoylesque-looking mini I could find distributed in my country was the Reaper Crypt Bat, pictured left)... not at all what I was after. It seems to me that mini designers always tend to forget about proportion when it comes to wings. The pinions always seem to be undersized, looking more of a decoration than capable body part.

I wanted something different. The wings on my gargoyles aren't the right size as well (to be honest, the should be at least twice the size), but I think they at least look right, they convey the feel of being capable of flight. At some point I thought about using the ghoul bodies instead of strigoi vampire ones, but I simply like the strigoi much too much to leave them out of this project. I knew I just had to include these models somewhere in the army and I think I've found a perfect spot.

These models are also curious to me in one more way. On these was the first time I've used the Vallejo Game Inks and the new GW Foundation paints and both turned out to be working very well. The inks - Vallejo ones, forget the GW - are a great way if you want a quick shade, without being too accurate and caring. The Vallejo inks give a matte finish, without that ugly GW sheen, therefore are very well suited to painting masses of rank-and-file models; in fact I'm using them on the zombies I am currently working on.

Now, the pictures above show the bats-gargoyles as they were originally based. Barring the snow (which was the reason for rebasing), I've used ruined columns on the bases to get a feel of the creatures dwelling in some sort of crypt or ruins. The column bits are manufactured by a local hobbyist from dental plaster and are a very decent product. I definitely will be using them in my upcoming Warmachine Cryx project.

I'm not exactly happy with the wings' look. If only I have waited another fortnight or so, I'd know about the upcoming Chaos space Marine Possessed frame, which contains a splendid set of wings. These are a tad smaller than the fell bat wings I've used here, but look much more gruesome and menacing.

Oh, and you can see the redone bases here:

See you next Friday!