The Noise Marine, NMM and a painstakingly slow journey!

The Noise Marine. One of the greatest ideas Games Workshop has ever had. I got my hands on one and I knew right away that I had to do something special with this one, cue Non-Metallic Metals. NMM is a pain, but it looks so good. When you look at the old White Dwarf magazines from the 90s, you will see NMM all over the place. It looks amazing when it's done right, but it's very easy to mess up. 

To get myself started for the NMM I went to my bits box and found this Chaos demon axe. I based it with Rhinox Hide mixed with a little black, then began glazing layers with a light blue added to the mix. Once I got it to a mid tone, I began adding white to the mix, eventually ending with a pure white. With the NMM, you have to look at the highlights different to standard layering. The easiest way to describe it is, where you have a highlight, on the face next to it, do it opposite. In the above example, the highlight on the edge of the blade is at the top of the outer blade, then the flat face beside it has the highlight at the bottom, then I added one at the teeth of the skull which has a highlight at the top. It's always possible to have multiple highlights on a face, which I would do on a sword due to the longer faces, whereas the ave is curved, so you get a nice blend with the curve.

I'll also go on to apply this blending on the coloured armour sections of the Noise Marine. The different angles on the marine's armour lets you mix up the positions of the highlights quite nicely, too.

I glued up the Noise Marine for the most part. I attached everything on the body except the guitar and the arm holding the neck. The reason I built it up like this was so that the neck holding arm could be positioned correctly at the end. The arm with the whammy bar was easy to get into position ready for the guitar to line up. Painting as sub-assemblies lets me get all of the model painted up easier. The crotch area, the bare stomach and the ripped t-shirt that is just visible would be an absolute nightmare to paint. I began by blocking in the areas with a base colour - which for the greaves would actually be more of a midtone for the leopard print. Averland Sunset is the perfect colour to use for these pieces. I also used it on the shoulder pad of the neck holding arm.

Lots of glazing... So much glazing... There is no metal paint on this model at all, and I'm so impressed with how it's turned out! The NMM for bronze and silver can be found on the guitar's whammy bar, the face under the strings on the Bolter section, the Bolter magazine and rounds, the flame motif on the guitar, the... bit(?) where the neck meets the head, where the tuning pegs are, on the clips for the guitar strap and on the backpack/power unit. 

I also blended the blue and green armour pieces and I'm pretty happy with how they came out, particularly the green on the boots. The Zebra print of the helmet is also used on the elbow pads (both of them) and they help break up the section between the black armour underneath and the bright coloured sections elsewhere. The hair is a blend of Green, Yellow, Orange and Red. The orange is made by mixing in some orange into the yellow, then began glazing it, then adding more orange and a little white to get the highlight colour. The red is Mephiston Red as a base and Blood Red as a highlight. There was also a Agrax Earthshade put over the hair after the base colour went on, just to get those shadows.

With the Noise Marine being a re-imagining of a classic model, which added to my desire to use NMM on this one, I wanted to base it in that classic White Dwarf pictures style. Green flock was blued to the base, then the band around the base was painted Goblin Green (I used a pot of the old style Citadel paints in the Hex-style pots for authenticity) and left it to dry.

The Noise Marine was finally complete, and I think it looks incredible, personally! Recently I've not had much fun painting newer style GW models, but this model was something completely different. I could barely put it down!

Now, if I ever start to play Warhammer 40K, I know I'll be going with a Slaanesh army!

The Noise Marine on Chris' custom 3D Necromunda terrain