[This post was originally posted to Otherverse Games & Hobbies as part of a series called Plastic to Painted, or P2P. You may see logos or references to this site and series]
Also known as the “Children of Thanos” in the MCU
The Marvel: Crisis Protocol box was glaring at me, making rude comments about not being painted, while I continued to buy models instead of working on any of them. I had purchased Guardians of the Galaxy minis for my wife. I wanted something badass, preferably something cosmic, to go up against them. I instantly thought of Thanos and his pose of alien weirdos. Cool Bonus: the MCU has shown me that they can easily cause trouble for my Avengers collection as well. So, the decision was made.
Admittedly, I know very little about Thanos. Of that, the only thing I know that I didn’t learn from the MCU movies is that he’s that purple skinned guy from space. Lucky for me, the MCU had introduced me to the Children of Thanos already in the third Avengers movie. I liked the look of all those CGI bad guys, you know the skinny magic guy and the Hulk wannabe, the other two in dark costumes wielding spears and such.
Funny Story: Robert and I just published an article we wrote together about our combined Marvel: Crisis Protocol adventure. I didn’t even notice it at the time, but my Black Order models were not present for my expansion collection image. For unknown reasons, most likely hastily made bad decisions while tidying up, the models were sitting in a dice tray within the sideboard we put our terrain in. I’m sure it made sense to someone (probably me) when it was done… Anyway…
Black Order – v1.0
Thanos was the most impressive miniature of the Black Order Affiliation, but, he was also the one that gave me the most grief. I left his chest armor off to more easily paint the blue of his armor. It was that blue that gave me trouble, as I did it about three times. First, in a dark contrast blue, which totally overwhelmed the zenithal priming I did with my airbrush. I then tried to use various blues to adjust how the contrast looked, and finally gave up and painted over it. Luciky, I had used thin enough coats that it didn’t seem to matter. I am happy with the comic book style highlights on his impressive muscles and the contrast between the blue and gold looks great. I was happy in the end.
As a side note, I have misplaced his throne. I’m sure it’s somewhere, but, where that somewhere is is unknown to me at the moment. Seems silly; we live in an apartment, so there is only so many places it can be. My hobby room is not so vast that I should be able to misplace it. When it gets located, it will get painted up to join the other models.
When I got to Ebony Maw I realized that my zenithal priming had failed me again, as there was too much black left in the recesses. I was forced to use acrylics to cover up the black primer in order to get the vibrant white and yellows I was looking for, as well as his blue/gray skin tone.
While Ebony Maw was tough to impossible for me to do with contrast, Black Dwarf was done with all contrast paints except the metallic colors. I laid down a couple different contrast colors for his skin, thinning all but the first down with medium to glaze different areas. Oh, regular acrylics were used for the boney protrusions in his skin and his forehead horn thingies. The size difference in these two models is fantastic.
For whatever reason, I held off on painting Corvus Glaive and Proxima Midnight until the very end. I cannot explain what it was that held me back, but, I was wary of them. In the end, they came together fine and rather quickly, again using mostly contrast. Once again, the metallics and the white areas were done with standard acrylics, but everything else was contrast. I used the gray and the black contrast paints to get the differing shades, and touched them up with acrylics after getting the gold on the models after the inevitable slip-ups. I am happy enough with them, even if they are not my favorite models in the team and got barely above minimum effort.
What’s next? Well, Atomic Mass Games has released two other members of the Black Order. I don’t know who Supergiant and Black Swan are, as they did not appear in the movies, but I want them to finish off the team again. And I need to get a seat painted, of course, wherever it is…
I will update this article again when I add to the Affiliation.
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Tyson
Obsessive and neurotic collector of little plastic men, novels about the same little plastic men and paints to make the little plastic men pretty. Married to Kera, who puts up with him and pretends that she doesn’t hear him speaking to the little plastic men in between making pew pew noises in the hobby room. Requires adult supervision. A menace to himself but rarely to others. More beard than man
