#ToMB2 The Thunder (Ben Sime) Month 1

What have I done?

That is right I have decided to do possibly my least favourite Master for my Tale of Malifaux Bloggers.

No I don't think she is good. Yes I still love Mei Feng. And No, no way is Misaki as good.

Now that is out of the way...

Why?

To answer this is to delve into the mind of a madman, maybe it's like the quote in Attack on Titan "To rise above monsters, we have to abandon our humanity". In this case the monsters are the "people" who think Misaki is remotely good.

Maybe I plan to take her, play and lose a lot and then report "see, she is well rubs".

To be honest though, none of these are the reasons why.

First of all it's because regardless how poor she is she is still a Ten Thunder, I own all the plastics for the Thunders and outside of the Foundry I have painted none of it.

If I did not do Misaki for my Tale I don't know why I would ever bother to paint her.

Secondly, the model is all right. I still think Misaki looks good, though it's more the crew box, however I don't rate any single part of it I still think the models are great and deserve a decent paint job, or at least a paint job I can do.

Lastly. It's funny isn't it, to watch me suffer. Right?

What's the plan?

The Thunder box is the start I will have, being an older plastic box it actually leaves me with a bit more cash to spend than most others.

At this point I am not completely decided on whether I will actually do Misaki as Thunders or go for Outcasts.

Thunders Pros:

• I already own a lot of Thunders
• After this project they can be used with other masters I own
• Ninjas are cool
• Ten Thunders are one of my favourite factions
• Lots of plastics

Outcasts Pros:

• Lots of cool new plastics
• Mercenaries are good for the future
• Some things are dual faction
• Puts me more in the role of what ToMB is about
• I own a couple of Outcasts already

Due to the fact I am so uncertain as to going Thunders or Outcasts I have a few options to go with:

• Yamaziko
• Oiran
• Ama No Zako

These three are available for hire by Misaki regardless of faction at no extra cost, this means either way I decide to go painting them isn't completely pointless.

We will return to my decision in a bit.

Time for some painting.

Get some paint on it.

So with the Thunder box built, something not quite as difficult as people make out but not a "beginner friendly" box to say the least.

Starting with the Torakage I had to decide what style I wanted to go for.

I was not up for the classic Yellow but I did want to implement orange as the faction colour somewhere on the model.

However Ninja's should not wear Orange suits in my opinion and as a side note I do not like Naruto for those who care.

As always I look at video games for theme ideas. Really I wanted to stay dark like a ninja "should" be.

So I went to Ninja Gaiden for inspiration.

The original Xbox game of this was one my favourite games (probably in my top 5 for that console) and it always springs to mind.

What Ryu Hayabusa the protagonist wears in this game though, black and metallic may look cool but I wasn't feeling it, especially for painting.

This meant I leaned on what Ryu once wore, in "Shadow Warriors" over here.

Blue.

I would use blue but keep it dark, looking at blue I did start also considering Strider another fantastic video game and character, but maybe another day for him.

Hayabusa (he's also in the Dead or Alive games) has even worn the blue costume as an alternative.

Even Yaiba from the recent (not very good) game wears blue.

This was more like it, I could keep the blue dark, and have patches of black, it would dark and stealthy but not impossible to see.

I took some "artistic license" in the fact I didn't want the red or to have it on the arms and the orange implementation would be the masks.

I will also admit to taking a lot of inspiration from Mako's Thunder crew, check it here.

Ototo would follow this colour scheme too, however his hair was something I deliberated over for a while white felt striking and would tie into some other ideas I had.

You may notice only two Torakage have been painted, am I cheating, skipping on the third.

No, as I have done with other sets of three in the past the third I had decided to play around with doing another scheme, another Video Game ninja.

Shinobi.

More specifically "Revenge of Shinobi" the classic Mega Drive game was my inspiration.

White and red, not particularly stealthy but a striking colour scheme

Looking through images of the original sprites and some images from the newer games I figured I'd do red arms, red scarf (like the PS2 game) and yellow for the mask, mimicking gold ( like Shinobi on the 3DS).

This lead me into Misaki.

I will admit I did enjoy painting parts of this model, but I am not keen on the pose whatsoever.

For Misaki I wanted her to stand out amongst the crowd and having the plan for her totem in mind and just painting the Shinobi Torakage I knew what I wanted to do.

Oops, I still need to sort out that foot. Awkward.

White costume, orange bits and the blue on anywhere else that needed a third colour.
I think she came out fine in the end but she may be the one I am least happy with.
I just hate her I guess.

Lastly, the worst totem in the game?
Shang. Clearly a Kitsune from Japanese folklore is a very cool model, the nine-tail fox would make you suspect me to lean on Pokemon.

Not this time, I have gone for an all time favourite of mine.
Amaterasu of the PS2 game; Okami.

Now I will admit I am not the first person to have done this. Good friend of mine Chris Tomlin of The Black Sun Podcast has done the exact same thing for his Nippon army project.

Check out Chris' and many other awesome Warhammer projects here.

Simply, paint Shang White, keep the recesses extremely black to emulate Okami's sumi-e ink painting style.
Then try to copy the red markings.

I did hope to make Amaterasu's weapon, but nothing I made myself really fit the bill.

The "Little" Extra

Going back to my choice of additional box to purchase, my decision was actually made fairly quick.

Oiran I think are mostly poor and I didn't know really if I'd have the time to paint three extra models.

Yamaziko, I like this model a lot, in game I feel she has some uses but after painting The Thunder I didn't feel this would be interesting enough for me to see it through.

This left me Ama No Zako.

When delving into Ama I searched the Internet as I usually do for inspiration, nothing really popped out to me and I was pretty sure I wanted orange or yellow on the model again.

In my head I bounced around ideas for Orange skin rather than the red most do.

However when researching the Amanozako from Japanese mythology, I never saw a real reason why she would be red.

Also reading that one translation was "Tengu Deity" made me consider that Ama's skin would be something I'd consider painting the feathery Tengu models whenever they were released.

As is the case with a lot of models, I just got out my brushes and paints and went at it.

In the end the darker Blue (though lighter in this case) would be Ama's secondary colour and I ended up going for a grey flesh.

Once mostly finished I realised that the colour scheme I had done on Ama was very similar to a popular Anime series main protagonists outfit.

This did help me decide Ama's hair should just be black all though I was told by Aaron to go for Super Saiyan hair.

Even though in this form Goku would have normal eyes I wanted to do the glowy effect which I had first tried on my Rogue Necromancy on Ama.

Although Dragon Ball fans may have said to do it teal like the eyes of SSJ2 Goku (that's like a level 2 power up for non-fans) I went for yellow. I wanted the Outcast colour somewhere.

As seen here on Kid Goku, a lot of the time Goku has some Kanji on him, as do many other characters.

Sometimes it's on the back but I wanted to do a chest logo and gave it a go.

The Kanji I went for was "Oni". Amanozako is three characters so this felt the most appropriate.

The final touch was Ama's lantern, which I've not glued down as I'm still unsure she looks better with it, for this, I made it resemble a Dragon Ball itself.

The first two stars I painted I felt came out well, the third, bottom left, came out a bit chubby.

All about That Base

For basing I decided to keep away from the traditional, "let's make Thunders have really Oriental basing".

After all, these lot are infiltrating Malifaux, not earthside in the Three Kingdoms.

On top of this, it wouldn't be best going with extremely Oriental basing if I was doing Outcasts necessarily.

In the end I made my own bases.
This was my first attempt at doing bricks/ paved bases simply using green stuff, a modelling knife to make the pattern and then, just paint it.

I could add to these, maybe a some tufts, but I have had something I haven't used for years begging to go on some bases.

Fallen leaves. Element do have these but are out of stock. 

Mine I have had for almost a decade so I cannot begin to remember where I got them from.

Probably off of Mike Asquith (@moustache_rides) to be honest.

This would be the equivalent to how you may place tufts or clumps of static grass.

Simply it breaks up areas, but makes a lot more sense on a street that grass growth (not that that could not happen).

Overall the leaves would big in small patches but also drift onto curbs as they do.

You may have noticed in the end I didn't simply just keep the basing just paved, I also went for near by "gardens" or "parks" to give that real feel of the ninjas sneaking in.

That's Month 1

Well I hope it was worth my pain painting the worst master in the game and possibly the weakest starter box.

Overall I'm happy with the models however so I am happy this Tale has gotten me to do so.

Strangely, it's re-lit my painting fire and I've done the entire Dark Debts box I should've done during the original #ToMB, so if you enjoyed this I shall be posting them up soon too.

Also please note, if some of this blog seems disorganised or the pictures and text are different that is simply because I started this before finishing the painting (stupid I know).

Byeee

- Ben (@psientologist)