I have another updated tutorial for you this week, a refreshed versionof my Basic LED Soldering tutorial. It now includes better images, extra links to recommended equipment, and some additional technical details. This is part of my effort to update all the old tutorials from 2018 when I first began uploading them to this website.
Please take a look, and as ever, feedback is welcome!
I’ve updated my LED Circuit Design tutorial. It now includes more detailed explanations on circuit design, extra links and additional tips. The previous version was from July 2018, so a refresh was definitely needed.
So please take a look and let me know what you think!
If a man dedicates his life to good deeds and the welfare of others, he will die unthanked and unremembered. If he exercises his genius bringing misery and death to billions, his name will echo down through the millennia for a hundred lifetimes. Infamy is always more preferable to ignominy.
Fabius Bile
This week I’ve finally finished Fabius Bile, a project that I started in March this year! This is the second part of a (now very overdue) birthday gift ‘commission’ for a friend. The first part was the Surgeon Acolyte, that you can see in an earlier post. Rather than helmet eye lenses, or weapon muzzle flares, the LEDs in these miniatures are being used to represent ominous glowing vials of daemonic ichor and the potent poisons of the Xyclos Needler. My friend, who will shortly be the owner of this miniature, specifically chose the colours for the LEDs.
As with many of my LED techniques, I was looking for a uniform glow from the point of interest – in this case the various vials and cylinders. I’ve written a short-form tutorial for how I achieved the glowing vials in my previous post on the Surgeon Acolyte, and I used the same technique for the Needler. The only specific difference worth noting is the shoulder-mounted ichor vials on Bile. The lower halves are made of 2mm resin rod that I cast myself, which conceal the LEDs. The top halves are made from 2mm transparent acrylic rod, to give the effect that the vials are only half full. All the LEDs are 3V 0603 SMD chip LEDs powered by a single coin cell battery and switch in the base of the miniature, as described in my Simple LED Muzzle Flare tutorial.
When it came to painting the miniature, I largely stuck to the official colour scheme and the specific paints recommended by the Citadel Colour app, as I didn’t have any good inspiration for an alternative. The only real difference was that I made Bile’s face look quite pale (using Flayed One Flesh and Pallid Wych Flesh), and then made his hair grey rather than white to better frame the face.
So there we go, Fabius Bile is complete and off to his new home. I hope you’ve enjoyed this slightly different project. Thanks very much for reading today’s post, and please remember if you’re on Instagram, Threads, Twitter/X, Bluesky or Mastodon you can also find me posting my work there.
I’ve updated my Resin Casting for Special Effects tutorial. It now includes a much more extensive list of materials, links and step-by-step photo instructions. The previous version was from August 2018, so an update was long overdue, especially as the correct type of resin components are vital to many of my LED tutorials.
So please take a look and let me know what you think!
Today we’re looking at the first model that I’ve assembled and painted from the 10th Edition Warhammer 40,000 ‘Leviathan’ box – the Screamer Killer!
My personal Tyranid swarm, Hive Fleet Cerberus, has been plaguing the galaxy for decades. In fact, they’re the only army I own that has – in some form or another – consistently seen the tabletop in every single edition of Warhammer 40,000. They took part in the global Ichar IV campaign back in the 1990s, so it has always been my ‘headcanon’ that Hive Fleet Cerberus was a splinter of Hive Fleet Kraken, skulking off to terrorise the Eastern Fringe in the aftermath of that epic conflict.
This army has soldiered on with some of the original Tyranid models for many years now (as shown below). These were among the first xenos models I ever purchased, and they will always hold a special place in my nostalgic gamer’s heart. For the last couple of new Warhammer 40,00 edition release boxes, I’ve sold the non-Marine models, but the arrival of Leviathan convinced me to not only keep them, but begin the long-overdue revamp of my Tyranid army. As the classic Screamer Killer was always one of my favourites, I decided this is where I should start the project.
The most prominent feature of my Leviathan Screamer Killer is the LED bioplasma effect. This was achieved using the techniques described in my Simple LED Muzzle Flare tutorial, only with a blue 0805 chip LED instead of the yellow one listed in the tutorial. Additionally, the acrylic gel was given a blue glaze instead of the yellow.
These days I like to pick a limited colour palette of LEDs for army projects, just so the finished force does not look like a bunch of Christmas decorations with a huge mish-mash of different colours and lights. For Hive Fleet Cerberus I’ve settled on blue for energy weapons and psychic powers. I’m not sure what other colours I’ll use yet, but I’ll decide that as the need arises.
It’s often said that it’s best to start a new army paint scheme with the rank and file models, and not the leaders or large centrepieces, but as mentioned above I just couldn’t resist starting with the Screamer Killer. When it came to picking the colours for this revamp project I wanted to stick fairly close to the original scheme, so that meant red for flesh and bone for carapace. After some thought on what colour bioweapons should be, and considering both green and a beige ‘flesh’ colour, I eventually settled on blue. This forms a triadic colour harmony with the red and the yellowish tint of the bone. As an aside, I find this free Colour Wheel website a useful reference for choosing complementary colours schemes for painting projects.
You can see some examples below of classic Tyranids from Games Workshop publications painted in a red, yellow, and blue scheme. This colour combination definitely has a pedigree!
I decided to paint the Screamer Killer’s face blue for a number of reasons. Firstly, it was traditionally painted a different colour to the rest of the flesh and carapace on the classic model, so I felt that should be the case here as well. Secondly, as mentioned above, I’d settled on blue for bioweapons, and for this Tyranid, their face is the weapon! I added the purple mottling to the top of its head to provide some visual interest for what is otherwise a large, flat area.
I also made the sinews on the arms blue, as you may have noticed. This was because they felt distinct from the surrounding flesh, and in need of picking out in another colour. Again, as the claws are weapons, the blue seemed appropriate. Also, it adds some visual interest to what is otherwise a very large area of solid red when the model is viewed directly from the front.
When I list my painting recipes on this blog, I’m not only recording them for those of you who are interested in using them, but also as a reminder for myself! Below are the paint recipes for Hive Fleet Cerberus, and I’m sure I’ll be referring to this post frequently as the project progresses. All paints listed are from the Citadel range and are applied over an undercoat of Citadel Wraithbone spray.
If you’re after tabletop ready models quickly, then I don’t think you can beat Contrast and one or two highlights as the best compromise between speed and acceptable quality. For projects with fewer models, like my Flesh Eaters space marines, then I do prefer traditional painting methods. But when you have to get a load of models done, especially highly textured models like Tyranids, then I just don’t have the hobby time these days to paint them in the traditional way.
That’s it for today, I hope you all found that interesting. Please check back soon for more miniatures from the Leviathan boxed set. As always, thanks very much for reading, and please don’t forget you can also follow my work on social media at Twitter, Mastodon and Instagram.
Chris Buxey Paints 