Well, here's she is, the original grand'ma: Babushka!

Ah, nothing like a nice dark red meatgrinder of a walker. I really like this walker's design, and I thought those great gatling gun would look more striking in full bare metal.

Hell yeah! Simply stunning, Loop.

At last the walkers. Superb work as always!

Back for more! This time it's Grand'ma, which I really wanted to call by its correct name "Babushka", but then they went and and made a different walker with that name (see above). Well, here's Koshka's ride:

The pose it came in was leaning forward at a ridiculous angle, the howitzer almost touching the ground. So I cut off both her legs and superglued it in a better position, still leaning forward, cause she has a cool running pose, but something more graceful.

With the overall color I tried something a bit different. I left the base primer color, which made painting the base colours pretty fast and easy. Then I applied a very green wash (Biel-Tan Green shade), which gave the model a distinct green tone, quite different from the primer. Add a little of the usual dark chipping with metallic highlights, and that's it. Go make mother Russia proud, Grand'ma.

Loop your work is awesome as always.

Looking good, shame it's such a crappy unit in DT:D

Thanks all! Here goes another one, the dreaded SSU Ground Attack Helicopter:

This was quite a chore to paint, specially until I realized I could carefully remove the propeller blades (that really helped a lot). My friend wanted a dark chopper, so I made it a dark gray (it's actually considerably darker than this picture shows) with black parts and some red trimmings just to reinforce the russian theme. I was surprised to find that at the end I couldn't fit the pilots in their cockpits. I had to heat them up and push their arms down a lot to manage to squeeze them in.

Ok, here's another one. The "airborne walker" Nastasia, Nikita or Nina:

Really happy with how this one turned out. Because the "faceplate" was so different from the other KV-47s I decided to make it stand out even more by painting it red, and I think this solution looks very good, specially with all the chipping. I didn't glue it do the base so it can still be attached to the carrier chopper, but the problem is that the pins on the feet are not very well lined up, so I can only attach one to the base and the other one wiggles free…

PS: How the hell does a walker with 3 jets doesn't have Jump or anything like that?

Really nice!

Did you use a sponge to create that chipping effect on the airborne walker, or have you graduated to the "hair spray & salt method"?

Either way, the contrast between the red, gray and rust colors is stunning.

LotusPwn3r said:

Did you use a sponge to create that chipping effect on the airborne walker, or have you graduated to the "hair spray & salt method"?

Yep, plain old sponge chipping. "Hair spray & salt" sounds like sorcery to me…

Yep, plain old sponge chipping. "Hair spray & salt" sounds like sorcery to me…

Check out "Girlpainting" doing a demo of the technique on Youtube

The effect is so cool you would swear it was sorcery.

Or voodoo…

Wow… nah, that looks like way too much of a hassle. Plus I don't have an airbush.

This time, the russians are going old school, it's the heavy tanks! It's the Karl Marx:

And the Lavrentiy Beria:

Again, I think the real thing looks a bit better than the pictures, too much glare is hiding some of the details. Anyway, this was a fun one to do, quite differenet from the other Dust vehicles. I tried removing the tank threads so I'd have an easier time painting them, but only 2 of the 4 connections were giving away, and I didn't want to risk snapping the threads. So I had to make do with it as it is. Turns out it's an area of limited visibility, so you don't have to be very fussy about the detailing.

What I really liked about this model was the weathering. It has several sharp angles and obvious places where a lot of chipping should occur, so I had some fun with it. Inspired by the official photo, I first did some sponge chipping with a very reddish colour, and afterwards added some darker chipping on top of that. I think the rusty tone is a great contrast with the base green.

Here's the last SSU walker, the basic KV-47. I painted this one to be the Nadya, but it can also be configured as the Natasha or the Natalya:

Nadya:

Natasha:

Natalya:

I stuck very close to the official Nadya paint scheme. In fact, I think that's as close as I ever stuck to the official colours for a vehicle. The only differences were a few details like the tanks on the back, metallic handlebars and lack of white stripe and text on the arms. If my buddy buys more of these I'll do specific bodies for the Natasha and Natalya, but looking at these guys' stats, I think that might not be very likely…

The Airborne Walker Transport:

Just used the primer color for this one, with a wash and a highlight. I think the red nose detail added some interest to an otherwise pretty bland vehicle.

Your speed and quality of work amaze me!! Love your thread.

Brett

Sorry for bringing this topic back from the dead, but I have to say this is truly amazing work! As x-wing showed me that I actually like miniature games, Imperial assault showed me that I like miniature painting. Now that I have almost finished that core set I was thinking of what to paint next. Dust tactics caught my attention and especially this topic made me take the plunge. Your mini's simply look amazing. Great work, and that for a first time mini painter!
Yesterday I received my original core set that I had a sweet deal on and I also have the revised core set coming in soon. Can't wait to start painting and I can already say that I'll be using some of your color schemes, or to be more precise, your way of keeping uniformity throughout the armies, whilst still keeping the differnet squads distinctive. I think the fluff in this game really allowes you to do whatever you like, color-wise, and that's really fun to explore, I can imagine.

Hopefully I'll also enjoy the game as much as I think I will. It seems really cool, although I realise I'm kinda late to the party...
Anyways; thank you for the inspiration! Are you still playing the game..?

I'm reading the whole thread and am currently at page 5 where you just finished your allies from the core game. Excuse me if you explained it somewhere (later), but I missed a report on the highlighting. I think they look absolutely fantastic and was wondering how you finished the mini's after the washing stage. I can clearly see the lighter colors on the raised parts, but they blend so well that I think you drybrushed? And what colors did you use there? Just the base colors? Hopefully you still get to read these coments as I would love to hear from you how you did it. And hopefully you still remember as you did them more than 3 years ago!

Vascopinto - I'm in the same boat as you. X-Wing got me into Miniatures and this game just caught my eye, and then I stumbled upon this thread. I just purchased a bunch of Dust Minis and Vallejo/P3 paints. I've never painted miniatures before but I'm really excited to try it out. This thread has been really inspirational and I may even end up copying some of Loop's designs for instances where I might get indecisive on color schemes.

Great work Loop. I hope you are still painting miniatures!

Hi Vertigo1. Have you started painting? I just finished my 6 ammo crates, had the tanktraps done already and am almost done with my first squad: the recon boys. Interested in starting a new thread about our progress? Could be nice.