Forgeworld Avatar with Spear

With the release of the brand new, 28 years in the making, plastic GW Avatar just this week - I had to finish up and post how I went with the Forgeworld version. 

This guy was completed about a week or two back, and the pending release was a good push to get it done. I bought him about 2 years ago and despite having him primed about 12 months ago, the progress was fairly slow through the middle stages. Firstly - it's a big model. Secondly, the plates that make up the skin are numerous, awkward shapes. Third - the 'reverse' highlighting process of putting dark colours on upper surfaces and bright colours into recesses means breaking some muscle memory from painting many other models. 

I know resin kits get quite a bad wrap - for Finecast in general, that is definitely deserved - although I've found the FW kits to be mostly free of bubbles, the resin isn't quite a brittle, and the details are generally good. This one (apart from a good wash) generally had zero flash to remove. I started by pinning together the legs & torso, and filling a slight gap at the waist. Cheating version - it's super well pinned, so this is only a very thin line of blutac forced into the join and covered with superglue. Greenstuff would have been a more professional finish. 

Similarly - the right arm and head have been pinned with paperclip and glued into place. There is a fair argument for painting these parts separately, but I think that should still give me plenty of access without having the whole model in bits. 

The feet have also been pinned, left arm and spear assembled, while the hair and loincloth will be much easier to get at individually. The brass rod for the spear is solid, but not particularly easy to attach to resin. I drilled a 2mm hole a bit deeper into the two end pieces to try to add more stability. 

Everything gets a vallejo grey primer followed by a layer of dead white. The priming was done so long ago that the Mephiston in the background was finished about a year ago. 

I'd read a few tutorials for doing molten axes/weapons and wanted to mimic the vallejo colour choice that people have used there - starting from an almost white-yellow (hot) near the core and working outwards. This took a couple of coats to get coverage and... didn't really work. It looks more like a dead pastel colour than a white hot area. 

The rest of the colour progression should be a lot more lively. Bright yellows to dark red/browns. 

I figured at this point I'd try to do the reverse - blacken out all the upper surfaces and then work the yellow/red mixes into the edges. Painting each of these black with a thin vallejo paint took 2-3 coats and a couple of hours of picking out sections carefully. 

At this point I felt the crevices really needed a brighter yellow, so went back to an averland sunset for the cracks. This also took quite some time - the forgeworld sculpt has some very fine holes deep in the crevices, so I had to keep watering down the yellow and stippling deep. This both destroyed a relatively decent point on one of my brushes and took another few hours just to work in. Despite trying to be careful now with the black, yellow had splashed in a few areas too. 

At this point I was getting happier with the overall basic effect but felt like a lot of work for not much progress - so he went back onto the bench for a few months while I worked on some other squad projects that felt like they would move quicker. 

When I finally came back on a wet weekend late last year, I had a bit more patience to try to blend the colours through red; starting with the legs and knees. This was one of the more time consuming processes, which I'd probably varied slightly over the course of the model... but would be roughly:

- 2mm or so on all edges get a vallejo model colour scarlet (red)

- Layer of vallejo red ink on about half of the scarlet and into the black to blend them

- Mephiston red over the middle patch of the join to blend them further

- Evil sunz red on ~1mm of edge

- Stipple trollslayer orange onto the very edges

- Vallejo yellow ink over the area, then another layer of red ink on the darker colour again

I probably mixed or changed those steps on different areas of the model depending on how big and accessible they were. The thighs, knees and legs I'm pretty happy with - these came up quite well and the armour sections are big enough to get a hint of all the colours. 

Having put pins into the legs also helped if I wanted to put the model down for a bit to let the paint dry. Comparison to a standard guardian and he is at least 4x the height... dominant centrepiece in any army. 

I often have issues shading & highlighting white well - for a model of this type I should just do grey all over and build the layers up, but wanted to try out the apothecary contrast paint. It sort of works, but can give a slightly dirty looking effect on bigger or more complicated pieces. Will try to fix that in post. 

I'd been putting off the feet for a while too - the plates that make up the 'shoes' are very small areas to try and get several colours in. And if working up to black, it's very easy to get black onto yellow and then it takes several layers to build the yellow back up. 

Final result on the feet isn't too bad - the edges aren't perfect, but at a distance the yellow is still pretty dominant and looks like there is heat inside. 

At this point, as I started to do the same colours for the arms/hands, I managed to drop the left arm about 6 inches and snap the spear end off. While for most resin models you could just superglue and carry on, this particular join is with the brass rod, which has a rough end to it. I really needed something else to marry up the join properly. 

The resin spear pieces themselves are less than 0.5mm thicker than the brass rod, so drilling deeper into those for the 2mm rod would leave a wafer thin tube - or, more likely, if the hole is a fraction off, just chew up the resin. So my alternative was to cut a strip of plastic tube from a cotton bud. The plastic is much easier to sand/file down compared to brass rod, and has a narrow hole already drilled inside it that I could then put a paperclip pin into.

The spear head now has about 1cm of paperclip securely superglued into it, the cotton bud shaft covers it and is glued securely into place. I then snapped the superglued fingers back off and repositioned the end of the brass and the end of the plastic tube so the join is hidden by the fingers. 

Way more secure, although there is about 2-3 degrees of lean - if you look really carefully down the length of the spear there is a slight deviation at the middle. Have to live with it. 

While I had the airbrush out for some Blood Angels work, I added a very light touch of black to the base around the feet, then red ink and finally grey primer with a hint of yellow ink inside that area. The effect is passable. While at it, the spear and the areas on the handle also had a fade sprayed on from black to yellow-white.

Before painting the armour and details around the head, I wanted to try and get a gradient effect on the antlers. Traditional colouring would be a red-yellow-white, but I'd been thinking about using some more of the model to get Biel tan green & white into play. This was done by some careful masking off with blutac & gladwrap, white paint first (since it is more likely to speckle) then vallejo green ink over the top of it. 

I noticed that the green ink is very 'pure' green - most of my Biel Tan models have some moot green which has a hint of yellow. To try and get the antlers to match a bit more closely, I went back over the green with a careful and light spray of yellow ink to push the green towards a lime colour. 

After pulling the masking off I wanted to see how the work in progress looks alongside my old model. The 1994 Avatar is still a classic, and so much of the design has carried over to the forgeworld version (as well as the new GW one).

The forgeworld one is at least twice the height of the 2nd Edition version, but they are clearly part of the same family. 

With essentially all the main armour done, I have started to go back around and do the decoration details. Most of these have been picked out with Vallejo old gold, although for really big areas (like the forearms and shins) I put a little heavily thinned vallejo black on the areas furthest from the bright edges. Basically I wanted to darken the 'deadest' parts of the limbs with something similar to a black wash, as well as give a bit more depth for picking out the gold runes. 

While numerous and detailed, these didn't take quite as long to do as I was expecting. The gold covers really well in 1 coat - as long as there are dark recesses to contrast against, the colour stands out well. 

I went over the loincloth at the same time. Bit more work to work out exactly how I am going to paint all the warlock robes in future - although this version seems to work. Caliban green over everything, a thin watered down black as a wash in the dark areas. Warpstone glow for the upper third, then a very very thin glaze of warpstone glow over the join to blend it into the darker green. Repeat 3-4 times to soften the transition. 2-3mm highlight of moot green, then glaze over that join with more highly thinned warpstone glow. By no means perfect, and there is some slight banding - it looks ok at table distance.

The thorn designs were added with corax white, thinned and painted in 2-3 passes. The corax white is just a touch towards grey, so a 'pure' white (in this case white scar) can go over the top on the highest points of cloth to give a subtle highlight. A little wiggle of the brush for the triangles gives a hint of thorns. These need some work as well if I ever plan to use them for vehicles and wraiths. 

Similar colour greens used for the hair/mane in classic white & green.

The other small details to be picked out were the runes on the spear. I carefully added 2 washes of cassandora yellow to give some definition within the orange/red spectrum - black would have been too harsh, while painting the edges of the runes with green would be very prone to making mistakes. 

That way I could go around with caliban green and warpstone glow with the brush held at an angle - colour the top surface of the runes without having to paint the sides. 

Everything starting to come together now, and several small details were worked on pretty quickly. The KISS style makeup on the face was also picked out using black paint on a brush held sideways, then all the gemstones basecoated with black. 

Several of the gems, including the one in the centre of the chest, I wanted to do using the purple/pink that I am using for power weapons and features on my aspect warriors. While they are small details on the avatar, it's nice to try and use the same colours throughout the army. 

The waistband ribbon has been done in green and white stripes, however I've then mixed some random colours into the rest of the gemstones. Some are blue, some are red, a couple of the small ones are green. 

The rainbow may not be the most aesthetic choice, but I have always seen the avatar as something of a 'prism' that captures elements of all the aspect warriors - so at least in my mind he should have a bit more variety. That could be a choice I regret later, but I guess repainting a few gems isn't that big a deal if I really want the change. 

The various aspect runes at the waist were also picked out in shrine colours - a black wash to define the edges and recesses first, then a white upper surface for brightness underneath the final aspect colour.

One of the last details to get to was the bloody hand - my 1994 version has a really bright red, covered in a thick layer of PVA to give it some physical depth. I still like it, although don't want to add the same bulk to the new one with the PVA. I started by giving the whole hand itself a coat of evil sunz scarlet, stippling the edges to run down the underside of the arm. 

2-3 coats of blood-for-the-blood-god (Khorne... Khaine... all the same), and we have a pretty suitable gory effect. Arguably could be a darker tone - the red is *really* bright... think it works, albeit the hand is now more of a focal point for the model than I originally intended. 

Couple of layers of gloss varnish and then a Biel tan rune to finish off the loincloth. Having been used to marine shoulders, I put this on pretty carelessly, then nearly tore it a couple of times trying to move it back up and out of the recesses of the cloth. 

Some brushes of microsol to fit it to the plastic, then a layer of ardcoat to seal the surface. I also put a thinned down wash of biel-tan green over the decal to just fade the bright colours slightly and make it look more like aged fabric and less like a sticker.

All the parts laid out for final assembly. 

I had originally drilled a hole in the mane & the stalk on top of the head and was planning to pin the hair on - like an idiot I eventually realised that the hair also makes really good contact with the collar and you don't need to rely on only 1mm of contact on the stalk. Glued at the collar it is really secure. 

Tabbard blued on, and then onto the base. Really good contact on the feet and this feels very secure. The tabbard is a little riskier - if you pressed the bottom of it with a moderate amount of force, it will probably pop off.

Finally the spear arm as well and we're all done. For size comparison, the bottom of the spear is about level with the top of the old model. 

While it is a little dark in the cabinet - I'm happy the greens have carried over well and it looks like part of the same army. 

I'll need to do some better photos with a camera/booth setup at some point - but done with the painting job for now. 

One amusing size comparison I made while playing around on the kitchen bench - the tip of the spear on the forgeworld model is effectively the same length as the full sword on the old one. 

Finally feel like I've got a 'monstrous creature' sized version after 28 years. 

So - the plastic GW Avatar is being released this week. 

Will I be getting yet another Avatar? 

Yes.

Will I be painting another Avatar this year?

Less likely. 

I've still got a queue of Blood Angels gear - 3 drop pods, 2 dreadnoughts and a techmarine (although all of them are progressed, and the drop pods are days/hours off being finished), as well as some Eldar walkers and tanks that really need some progress first. 

2022 is looking to be a massive year for the Eldar releases. Literally more models are on the cards than at any time since 1994, and I think I can feel the pull to collect a bunch of them.