Tuesday, January 07, 2014

Hive Fleet Colour-Scheme-a-thon!

Well, instead of painting as I said I would in my previous post, I ended up going to the really awesome Online Tyranid Painter (link included) website and playing around with some of my scheme ideas.

Over the last few weeks and months I have scoured the net for inspiration and found a lot of amazing colour schemes. I would love to link to all the cool stuff I saw, but there was just too much. Simply Google "Tyranid Colour Scheme" and use Google Images to scroll through lots of inspiring work.

I chose the following schemes based on a) my general preferences, and b) what I felt would go well with my 3 proposed Hive Fleet names.

Without further ado, the candidates after the break.

Hive Fleet Orochi:



While I do really like this organic green/olive scheme, I think out of the three options it is my least favourite. In choosing this scheme for Hive Fleet Orochi, I felt that the natural tones would be a good representation for the mythical Japanese 8-headed and 8-tailed dragon. Nature plays a big role in Japanese culture and this scheme exemplifies the (deadly) beauty of the natural world.

Hive Fleet Porphyrion:



Although Porphyrion is the name of a mythological Greek giant, the term porphyria is derived from greek and means "purple pigment," however I was not interested in purple Tyranids so I took a bit of creative liberty. 

Coming from a medical background, the term porphyria has a different context in my mind. In medical terms, porphyria is a type of disorder related to certain enzymes in the body. There are different types of porphyria, but one subtype is known to cause extreme sun sensitivity, which can cause burning and blistering of skin even with minimal sun exposure. This imagery led to the scheme above, giving the flesh a deep red, extremely sunburned look. The scheme itself is basically a reverse of Hive Fleet Kraken, except without the yellow, jaundiced look that GW tends to use in their representations.

Hive Fleet Ceryx:


I think I am leaning toward this scheme the most at this point in time. I think it looks suitably "alien" and quite intimidating. While there is no true relation to the name Ceryx and the colours used, I picked this scheme because Ceryx sounded very dark and ominous to me. If I go with this scheme, I will attempt to walk a fine line between too light and too dark, as I want the details to be visible without being bland and washed out. Hopefully some nice shading and highlighting will help accomplish this.

Of course, I have yet to even get the models in my hands, let alone trim them off the sprue, clean them up, and assemble them. This is just my long-term vision. I do plan on getting an airbrush to aid me in painting the 100+ gribblies that will eventually make up this army, but hopefully I can plow through some of my other Projects in the meantime.

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