From Zero to Hero III: The Cyclone Heavy Warjack

Hey guys,

today I want to walk you through my painting process of the Cygnar Cyclone Heavy Warjack. I started off cleaning and assembling the figure. Because it is plastic and not metal, I didn't pin the model. Instead I used the superglue and green stuff method detailed here.

As my first ever Warjack, I wanted the pose of the mini to have a lot of character. The direction I was going in was an unstoppable juggernaut on the battlefield, mowing everything in front of him down in a hail of bullets, while slowly advancing.

Primed and ready for painting

 After the prepwork was done, I primed the figure with my airbrush using Vallejo Polyurethane Acrylic grey primer, taking care not to spray it on too thick.

Then I applied the basecoat of Falcon Turquoise - there was a bit of overspray during this step, which can be fixed later.

To have a little contrast to the turquoise color, I added to stripes of ivory to the model, which broke the monotone coloring up quite nicely. To achieve a smooth coat, I applied the ivory in several thin layers. This was important, because on a model as large as this, even the tiniest brushstrokes are very visible.

I then applied Boltgun Metal on all metal parts of the model, taking care to water the paint down with "Magic Water" in a 2:1 paint to water ratio - I normally tend to go with a 1:1 mix, but with metal colors I find that if you add too much water, the covering ability of the paint really suffers greatly.

For the ornate metal parts I used Vallejo Game Color Bright Bronze, which really complements the overall turquoise color of the mini very well. I also thinned it a bit to get an even coat.

After all the metals were done, I applied Les' Heavy Body Black Wash generously to all the metal areas to get some definition. I also used it very carefully in all the recesses of the armor plates on the main body of the Cyclone, to separate those a little better.

I then went over the whole model, cleaning up the paintjob where some of the wash had gotten out of hand. I also started highlighting the edges of the armor plates first with a 1:1 mix of Falcon Turquoise and Electric Blue and finally with pure Electric blue. I also added in details like the eyes of the Warjack, the Barrels of the chain-guns. To highlight the silvery metals I drybrushed these areas carefully with first Chainmail Silver and then Vallejo Model Air Silver, to really bring these areas out.

The eyes are bascoated with Bloody Red, highlighted with Orange Fire and then dotted with Sunburst Yellow

The Bronze areas where washed with a 1:1 mix of Devlan Mud and Ogryn Flesh and then hard edge highlighted with Glorious Gold.

When I was done with the paintjob I based the mini and then varnished it first with gloss and later with matte varnish to protect it. This turned out to be a mistake. NEVER varnish your mini after you added static grass. Turns out, there was some static grass loose on my desk and the varnish fused some of it to my Cyclone. I had to remove it with pincers which damaged the varnish a bit. I had to rescue the figure by adding some battle damage to mask the scene of the crime.

All in all a very nice model to paint and it gave me some valuable experience for my next Warjack. Until then and as always, enjoy and have fun,


IK-Painter