Warhammer 40k

Thanks! Yours are looking solid. I modified the official GW scheme for Ymyr Conglomerate to be a little higher quality, and because I really like deep shading on armor and metallics. I think you could get a lot of mileage out of doing some more shading on your armor. You could do a coat of darkoath contrast on your armor, then build it back up with your base mephiston red, then do some edge highlights with tuskgor fur.

Here is my whole process/recipe in order:

Zenithal prime - prime whole thing in dark grey, then spray white from above.

leathers - base coat vallejo cavalry brown (warmish red leather)

-metals: base coat all metals with vallejo gunmetal metal two coats. then pick our brass bits with brassy brass, gold areas with gold

-undersuit: base coat GW stegadon green

-shade all gunmetal with nuln oil

-base coat armor plates in mephiston red two coats

-apply darkoath contrast paint to shade all armor panels, all bronze and gold metallics, and leathers

-apply a second coat of darkoath contrast to the armor

-metallics: highlight all metallics with their base color to bring them back up in the shiniest areas. I imagine Squats take good care of their gear so I tried to keep the metallics looking pretty clean.

-undersuit: highlight with GW dark reaper

-undersuit: highlight with thunderhawk blue

-paint black bits with black templar contrast paint - gun cases, boots, face plate (optionally elbow and knee pads)

-highlight all black areas with medium grey. another highlight with lighter grey.

-leather: highlight with base color mixed with a little white. Add some scratches with this highlight color to simulate scratches on holsters, etc.

-armor: build armor color back up with base mephiston red, thinned a bit with lahmian medium or water

-squad markings - paint on cream colored markings on helmet, shoulder pads. mix 50/50 flayed one and cadian flesh toen

-highlight cream color with original mix with a little more cadian flesh tone added

-armor - edge highlights with tuskgor fur

-armor - 2nd edge highlight with cadian flesh tone

-glowing stuff - paint eye lenses, lenses on sensors and guns, lamp on chest, and plasma blades pure white, 2 coats

-mix light blue 25/75 with contrast medium and wash all lenses, lamps, etc to create glow effect.

-plasma blade glow - layering/glazing to get gradient. start with pure white base, glaze yellow 75% of blade, orange to 50% of blade, red glaze just on the edge, clean it up with intermediate glazes, white edge highlight, go back in to where blade meets the metal part of the weapon and paint pure white.

-paint the skin and hair. I used a mix of flesh tones. I plan on doing each squad a different matching ethnicity to represent that each squad are clones from the same genetic stock.

-paint gloss varnish where you will put waterslide transfer decals

-apply decals

-add scratches and chipping - for chips, do a blob of blackish brown, then add a bit of metallic inside this blob to represent paint being blasted away by impacts. for scratches, do thin lines of blackish brown, then do a thin highlight underneath that line with tuskgor fur to make it look like a raised edge from being scratched.

-bases in lunar grey, white drydrush, heavy nuln oil wash. glue on little tufts of grass. dark grey base rims.

-final topcoat of matte varnish to protect and flatten out shininess.