Bit of a strange one on the blog today, I thought I’d talk about designing an atmospheric photo. if you’ve seen any of my posts on this website, you’d have noticed photographs that wouldn’t look out of place in an official publication. Occasionally, Games Workshop actually asks me to submit these photos for inclusion in White Dwarf or Warhammer Community. Let’s have a look at how I make this happen. There’s also a bonus tutorial on painting Sekhetar Robots at the end.

Firstly, it all starts with a conversation. There’s a brief outline from Games Workshop about what they want featured and then I share an idea or two. In the case of the Sekhetar’s, my idea was these guard robots are protecting a sorcerous crystal that the Wraith constructs of the Aeldari are trying to stop a warp rift with Tzeentch Daemons pouring out. It’s machine spirit vs spirit stones, I thought it had a poetic ring to it. Games Workshop loved the idea.

I have plenty of terrain and I have plenty of Tzeentch Daemons. So was sent the Wraithlord, Wraithguard and Sekhetars. When the models arrived I had 17 days to paint and photograph everything. That’s 10 models, all of which are bigger than a Primaris Space Marine. Luckily the Wraith Constructs are reasonably simple to paint. I thought the Sekhetars were going to be easy too but they were kinda tricky.

I kept the heads, chests, shoulders, arms, loin cloth/armour all separate from the model’s endoskeleton. This base robotic frame was quickly painted in metals and washed and dry brushed. I then started to paint the other separate pieces in gold and gave them a similar wash and drybrush but it wasn’t enough, so I had to go back over them and develop deeper shading and brighter highlights and it really helped. Then the tricky part, painting all the blue and yellow armour sections. I think it was worth the extra effort and my Sekhetars look like they belong to the Thousand Sons more than the weird bone coloured eavy metal ones.

The evening before the deadline I was applying the decals to Wraithguard and the models were done. This mean’t I had to create my diorama and photograph it on the day of the deadline. No pressure then! Before I went to bed, I set up a print on my 3d printer of a lightning bolt. When I woke up this lightning bolt stencil-like cut out was finished and I mounted it to some black card and taped a piece of translucent green plastic to the back of it. For the warp rift, I cut a hole in some black foamcore and twisted some cotton wool into a spiral. I then airbrushed greens and blacks onto the cotton wool. The idea being I could put lights behind the lightning bolt and warp rift and illuminate the photo.

Now, the part of my plan that I decided I would do when I first suggested the idea, this photo was always going to be two photos. The first will be the robot battles and the second photo was going to be the warp rift, that would be spun 180º and merged with the other photo. The clever part is that the lightning bolt would be in both photos and be the same distance to the lens and shot with the same lighting conditions. When over laid in photoshop they aligned perfectly. I finished the photo off and sent it to Games Workshop with a couple of hours to spare. In the end, the final image was a bit rushed and I would have liked a bit longer to to iron out a few issues but it’s done and for the most part, I’m happy with it.

How to Paint Sekhetar Robots

As I mentioned above, it’s easier to leave all the armour and arms separate to the end skeleton and paint them separately and then glue together once done. It’s really important to leave the hood-like head piece off so you can easily paint the domed robot head underneath. It’s very Kastelan robot and hints at a pre-heresy design. Another important tip and just basecoat the entire gold areas in Skull Crusher Brass. Don’t try and paint the trim neatly. Once all the gold areas are done, just paint the yellow stripes and blue panels over the gold. Most people make the mistake of painting it blue and then painting fiddly gold trim on top but that’s the hard way. Work smarter not harder.

I hope you enjoyed this behind the scenes look at creating a piece of artwork for Games Workshop’s Warhammer Community team. I wasn’t sold on the Sekhetar’s at first and I used the experience to expand my Aeldari collection, but do you know what… I kinda love the Sekhetars now and I keep looking at the Thousand Sons range… this is how GW get you isn’t it… the first taste is free.