Shadowblade (SHOC Force)

Shadowblade is the final member of SHOC Force (for now!). Like the rest of the Team the mini is from the Nexus Miniatures range of models. The range was perfect for me in creating a Team visual across a group of minis.

Shadowblade is an Unhuman like her colleagues; in her case her powers allow her to teleport short distances, and give her enhanced stealth capabilities which she allies to formidable combat prowess.

A former assassin for hire, Shadowblade is now trying to build a new life and atone for her past, while supporting the SHOC Force cause and Dr. Omega's Unhuman Manifesto.

I followed the basic template of colours for SHOC Force with Shadowblade, although her costume is the most varied of the bunch. It has been twenty eight months since I first painted Oculus and Razorclaw for SHOC Force, so this has been a pretty long-gestating project. It also means the first finished faction for my 'Super Earth' project - basically the minis I will be using to play-test Supers Unlimited.

More hopefully, I seem to have regained some painting momentum which I hope lasts for a while and gets me back on track with my output goals.

Dr. Omega (SHOC Force)

Dr. Omega is the second of my very recently finished batch of minis. Like the rest of SHOC Force, the sculpt is from Nexus Miniatures; for my purposes he is an Unhuman Super, the most powerful member of SHOC Force and its leader.

Dr. Omega is a powerful psychic, with telepathic and telekinetic powers. Most heroic Super-Teams view Omega and SHOC Force with suspicion, which has resulted in many skirmishes as Omega pursues his Unhuman Manifesto.

To add a regal element to Dr. Omega I thought the purple cape and gold trim would be good options. it helps differentiate the model from the rest of the Team and hopefully elevates him a little in 'rank'. The rest of his costume colours are aligned to the standard SHOC Force template.

Fortune (SHOC Force)

Fortune is the third member of SHOC Force I have now painted, almost two and half years after completing Oculus and Razorclaw. Like the other members of the Team the mini is produced by Nexus Miniatures.

With the model I wanted to achieve a kind of generalised 'East Asian' skin tone, but I am not sure how successful that was. The rest of the colour scheme follows the pattern of the SHOC Force uniform template.

Like his Team-mates, Fortune is an Unhuman, one of a secret off-shoot of humanity gifted with amazing powers. In Fortune's case he can manipulate probability to a degree, in order to create plausible shifts in the likelihood of events. In terms of direct power, Fortune is possibly the 'weakest' member of SHOC Force, but he is nonetheless vital to their successes.

Oculus (SHOC Force)

Oculus is the name I have given this model, which is another from Nexus Miniatures (click for link to the Nexus site), from their SDZA (Super Dinosaur Zombie Apocalypse) range.

Like Razorclaw, Oculus is a member of SHOC Force, and often acts as de-facto field leader for the team. His powers allow him to see across the range of the electro-magnetic spectrum as well allowing him to project devastating short range line-of-sight electro-magnetic blasts using specially developed goggles. There is friction between the straight-laced Oculus and the abrasive wild-man Razorclaw, which causes tension in the team.

I started painting this mini at the same time as the first one, painting the bulk of each in tandem, although focusing on one at a time when it came to the finishing details of each. I struggled with painting the face, but I am leaving it as it is so I can keep momentum for other minis.

Having painted these two, I am looking forward to more SDZA releases using the same uniform motifs so I can add to the ranks of SHOC Force. More generally, I am really happy to have painted a couple more minis, my first two this month, especially after struggling to get stuff painted for so much of the year.

Razorclaw (SHOC Force)

While on my recent painting roll (a pretty unprecedented-for-me 14 minis in two months - not the kind of output I have managed since giving up bulk painting GW stuff), I decided to get some work done on a few minis that would all include a lot of red.

This is the first mini finished of a small handful of minis that I started in the past week. The model is from a new company by the name of Nexus Miniatures (click for link to the Nexus site), from their SDZA (Super Dinosaur Zombie Apocalypse) range. Nexus and SDZA is the brainchild of my friend Drew, aka Doctor Warlock.

As soon as I saw the FON (Freaks Of Nature) Agents for the SDZA range I knew I wanted them, what I wanted them for, and how I wanted to paint them. So I bought the first two, which will be joined by others as soon they are released, and which I will be using for a secret project over the next year or so, and with all to be painted in a matching colour scheme.

For my secret project the mini will become Razorclaw, a scrappy bad-ass feral superhuman who has been recruited as part of a clandestine team code-named SHOC Force (Super Human Operations Covert Force) in homage to 90's comic book super teams with names such as WildC.A.T.s and H.A.R.D. Corps. Razorclaw is fast, strong and tough, and since his recruitment into the ranks of SHOC Force is just beginning to learn of his true heritage as an Unhuman, a secret race of super-powered beings.

Razorclaw is the first of several minis I want in the group, as the secret project I mentioned involves testing as many combinations of 'rules stuff' to destruction as possible, and I would like a selection of minis to help me focus on that, that are not too specifically tied in my on head to anything in particular.

The colour scheme was inspired by VALIANT Entertainment Inc.'s comic book anti-heroes known as HARDCorps (see image right for an example). While I have not copied the scheme wholly, I have used the predominant placement of red, black and white in the best-fit parts of the mini as I saw it, and I am pretty happy with the outcome, even if it isn't my best painting (I have not been painting much red lately so it was a struggle). The next ShOC Force mini should be posted in the next few days.