The Golden Demon Awards

The first part of the project is to clean and assemble the mini. Archaon is a rather large figure - he's alot bigger than a 'man-sized' figure, even compared to a regular chaos knight. This is good as it provides large surface area's to get to work on and it's easy to clean up any flash.

We now come to do the undercoat. Some people swear by black, I prefer white - black is great for speed painting, or if your painting dark colours, but here I wanted to 'map' the figure and I feel white just offers that cleaner canvass.

The next stage is to apply the base coat - This can be the trickiest stage of all, as your looking to match colours perfectly on a piece. Too much and you'll swamp out the detail, too little and you'll have a piece that looks bland and blurry as detail fades away. you also have to work out contrasting colour - what colours work well with each other. Lastly - as it's Golden Demon, you have to make sure that what you do stays within 'ethos'.

Once that's done the next section is to wash everything. Normally I'd use a one-colour-fits' all wash, which essentially darkens the miniature, and puts ink in the hard to reach places that help provide definition. In this case though, given the complexity of the paintjobs, a wash at this point wouldn't do anything - as there would be many components colours to just one piece of armour! Instead I wanted to trail the SENMM and apply washes in very small confined area's to increase the 'control' of the flow of ink.

Now we get to the tough bit. It's time to highlight, but now were not only thinking of metallic reflections in 3D, where thinking of metal reflections in 3D of surrounding that I cannot see. So, where would the lord of chaos be standing? well, I figured him to be standing in a clearing in forest, with mountains rising in the background, standing atop a pile of corpses, The victor of massive carnage!

I start the painting process on the armour plates covering his hips. These are the nearest plates to the vertical axis, and the flattest so would reflect the whole environment in one piece part. you would see the trees, mountains and sky, and I used this image as painted on this one plate to morph around the rest of the miniature, working out lines-of-sight, and applying curve distortion as the plate itself curved.

As I work my way around Archaon, I'm constantly trying to catch the colours of his imaginary surroundings, and of course colours that reflect from himself! Where the inner lining of the cloak folds in it itself, that would tint the SENMM paintjob by the colour of the cloak! So not only are you paining a 3D invisible environment, but also capturing the reflections of the figure in the figure itself. It's starting to get complicated!

I reached a point where I feel that the SENMM is about as done as it's going to be. so far I'd put in the region of 20 hours in trying to get that look right. It's time to take a break and move on to the cloak. bristling fur was a nice change. I didn't want to go too OTT, so just though of colours that you'd find on a wolf or bear. I did think of making a bold statement with the cloth of the cloak, using some kind of image or picture, but I decided that time was slipping away ( I still had paying customers to serve) and I didn't want to detract from the armour.

So I fell back on a "natural" colour, but with a quality feel to it. You can imagine a leather, or skin cloak, something earthy, yet lined with a vibrant velvet. something which said, hey I'm rich, but I'm also a hardened campaigner (and wont show the blood too much!).

The device on the back of the cloak is the 8 pointed chaos star. Remembering the Ethos, Archaon is the lord of all chaos, so at the end of each major point, there is the symbol for each respective chaos power: Nurgle, Tzeentch, Slaanesh and Khorne. A simple design, not overly complicated, but at the same time structured and easy to read.

The sword was a challenge. Obviously as a demon blade it had a life of it's own. I googled a couple of images to see what others interpreted it as. I settled on a volcanic feel. The blade a cooling metal, yet white hot in the middle. So, at the top of the blade the face and eyes appear with an unholy luminescence, whilst the blade nearer the pommel is obviously cooler. I really liked the way this turned out.

The last part of the miniature to be painted & put in place was the shield. I wanted this piece to merge the "demonic" with the real. To merge the colours and life of the sword, with the cold harshness of the metal. The first thing I did was sculpt moaning faces in greenstuff on the back (inside) of the shield. With the coldness for the SENM-Metal on the shield front - The demonic essences manifests itself on the 8 pointed star on the face of the shield. The only downside is when putting the shield on, alot of the detail behind it is lost! But hell this is a Golden Demon project!

The last part is to put him on a base that reflects his power. So what does a chaos lord like to pose on? why, a pile of skulls and bodies of course! Well, were are into the final week before GD now, I'm fast running out of 'real' time and this is only one of several projects. I dig out my undead plastics and start to pile on the skulls.....Given that the Archaon figure is standing on a rock out crop, I threw in a bit of grass (as he is standing on the plain, to match the detail of the SENMM) and finally, mounted him on a wooden base.

Now he's not perfect. I think I fluffed the palette of colours used in the SENMM, too much green and too much blue, but I think it works well. This chappie made it past the first cut, and onto the judges table, but he lost out in the end. Of course I was a little disappointed, but Single miniature is the hottest contested category in Golden Demon, and although a rare and unusual figure, there was no custom sculpting that alot of judges look for. I wouldn't say I was robbed, but there are no prizes for fourth place!!