Tower of Skulls Painted Commisssion by Old School!

Old School here with an update on the Tower of Skulls! With the exception of the inevitable touch-ups inherant to a Super-Heavy job, this bad mamma-jamma is done. If you remember when I built this beast, you also remember that the client couldn't pay to get it painted. Now, 8 months later it is done!

So, like I said the client isn't rolling in dough and he originally had it commissioned to play at the Gladiator at last year's Adepticon ... until they revised the FAQ and made it illegal. He lost out a tyranid army, but gained a tank. I lost many hours of my life, enjoyed the conversion and in turn built a Nid army that has only lost once!

Now, just because the client isn't rolling in the dough, doesn't mean I'm not going to paint the best super-heavy model I ever converted. This has been one of the biggest regrets of my wargaming life, letting this beast walk away without paint, so when it came back and he told me the price he was willing to pay, of course I agreed!

So, the client wanted it to look like the Apoc Re-Load Tower of Skulls and that seemed like an easy enough and eye-catching enough paint-scheme that I decided to latch one. I love the black, brass and silver - it reminds me of my beloved Black Legion. So I dry-brushed the seems and bolts with codex grey, painted all the brass parts Bestial Brown followed by Dwarven Bronze. Hit the skulls with Folk-Art Titanium White followed by a wash of Gryphonne Sepia, then another drybrush of Astronomicon Grey.

All metallics were washed in Devlan Mud and then touched up with some highlights. I leaned back on simple techniques because the strength of the conversion would fill in for anything not done to NMM or crazier techniques.

The pool of blood doesn't resonate in photos the way it does in real life (stand by for the video) but I used three shades of red, two coats of Baal Red and one coat of Ogryn Flesh in between, then I mixed blood red with Liquitex String Effects to get a translucent, glossy layer of red to make it all pop, then dappled it to make it look more realistic.

Once again, the viseo will look much better, but this is what I have for you to look at now.

Here is a shot of it in the two peices I made it in for ease of transport. The tower fits nicely into the slot and it really looks good on the tabletop. I cannot wait to see it on the board during apocalypse games or during the Gladiator Tourney Craftworld Lansing plans to hold in the future!

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Comments and feedback appreciated. I will have the video up soon!