Page Text: Hexfleet Virules Part Two - 40k Chaos Army Addition
Hello out there!
Back and at it with another 40k army. Been a minute since I did one of those hasn't it. Feels good, and never gets old. Let's just talk about it then.
This is part two of Hexfleet Virules. It is an army I did the first batch for a few years ago, and the owner has a very active hobby/tournament blog under the same name on Facebook. The last batch was mostly Death Guard and the core of the army. You might remember a broadly similar black and white with the neon green Death Guard army.
This time it was mostly a mixed batch of models of Slaanesh and CSM with a bit of the old Death Guard scheme to add to the original force for play. The main trick when we started out was finding a way to balance these news gods against the existing army. The old batch was black and white with neon green accent. Which worked extremely well with those sculpts, but gives a little struggle in thinking of making cohesive but different other Chaos god forces. He had suggested he really liked purple, so I worked that purple in a way that could be flipped but visually balanced with the green of the rest of the army. Instead of fungus and pipes and eyes, stick the tertiary on cloaks and cloth, and make the visual power of that purple pretty similar. Add some fleshy accent but not too much. Keep the green of the bases to tie it all in, and it worked out great.
One testament to that which was really enjoyable - at the end of the project was able to totally jumble them all up in the final pictures and it still works so well, if I may say so. When I work on these I generally do them in subgroups and like types, which the clients see but neither of us in whole until the end and that is part of the fun. When I put an army on a display for photography, it is even my own first time seeing it as a whole outside of my head. It is a huge treat and because of these months of working out color and balance, that moment was even more special. A project is sneak peeks, I see that final culmination myself, and then send that final gift off of gallery photos in whole. It is just fun and very rewarding.
Another big deal about this army and the display, this is the first 40k army display since the fire as I posted before. My first one back, and it feels good. I was so full up before it did feel a bit stagnant. There are silver linings in even the worst things.
There are things I have learned over each display over the years. As I told the owner of the army, one thing I do love about this one and it feels good to be a first coming back, is it feels like it does it's job best. It is arguably less interesting than the display I made for his last batch, and you'd have to go back and look, but this one was made to hold it. When I was talking to him about it the analogy of a woman's hand to model a ring came to mind. In marketing there are specific hand models (or at least, that is what Seinfeld taught me), but you should not notice the hand, it should really only accentuate the ring being displayed. That is something I have been working on a lot in my head lately. I love making awesome displays but the display is not the point. In the past I have had issues with that, and while the earlier display was very much more interesting, it was much less functional, and that is what is most important. This one was designed to hold the army, and then the fun added around that. Just things you learn along the way.
Anyway. Let's call it a day on this one and end it with photos. Thanks for reading, and see you next time.