Mercenary Painting Log: Pan-O Teutonic Knight

After many months of delays, setbacks, distractions, and actual painting, I have finally completed my great work: the last of the models promised to be painted as payment for a shiny new Infinity Nomads force is complete!

Join me after the break for a few shots of the finished model and what I intend to do next with my (now more privately motivated) painting time.

Pan-O Teutonic Knight Front

Pan-O Teutonic Knight Side/Back

These shots are a little blurry, partially due to my shoddy picture taking (good 'ol phone camera) and partially due to snapping a couple of quick pictures after finishing this model up in one semi-blitz session of painting.

I faced a bit of a question mark moment with this model: it is very similar to the set of Order Sergeant models in terms of color and details. I seriously debated including it in the Order Sergeant model set, but ultimately decided against it for a few reasons:

1) The Teutonic Knight is just different enough that having to adjust for painting it would probably slow me down on painting the Order Sergeants (which were much more uniform, if not entirely similar),

2) The Teutonic Knight has some things in common with the Magister Knights, so waiting to paint it until after I had painted that set would leave me well equipped to paint those elements quickly, and

3) The set of Order Sergeant models was already decently large at 5 models. By breaking the Teutonic Knight off for a separate session of painting, it made it easier to get through the set of Order Sergeant models.

In hindsight, this approach paid off handsomely: I ended up stalling out a bit on the Order Sergeant models, and having even one more model in that set may have been enough to throw off my momentum with them. When it came time to paint the lone Teutonic Knight, every aspect of it's appearance was already well practiced somewhere else, so it ended up being a very quick, easy model to paint (I finished it in most of an afternoon).

And with that task done, I am finally free of painting Infinity models for other people!

Well, not quite yet.

When my friend gave me this set of Pan-O models to paint, it was in foam tray that included all the agreed upon models, as well as one extra one: Jeanne D'Arc (1.0). This was due to practical reasons as much as anything else - it was the entirety of his fighting force with Pan-O in one tray - but also because he had hoped to figure out something to trade me in exchange for painting up Jeanne D'Arc (in order to have a complete set of painted models).

Some time ago, I decided that I would paint up Jeanne D'Arc before I handed everything back to him, and only then would I consider this job "finished".

I'm doing this for a couple of reasons. First: this is for a friend after all, and I like being able to do nice things for my friends when I can. Second: I feel kinda bad that he's had all this Infinity sitting around, waiting to be used (either because he's been too busy to play, or I haven't been able to play Infinity against him), so it's sort of a "sorry for not playing up until now" present. And, finally: it is kind of a crying shame to look at that tray and see a fully painted set of models...with one ugly, unpainted metal one stinking up the joint.

So the bad news is that I'm not *quite* done yet; I still have one more model to go before my Pan-O painting excursion is complete. The good news is that Jeanne D'Arc (1.0) isn't a terribly complicated model, so she shouldn't take too long to paint; I already have a decent start on her, so hopefully I'll be able to get her finished sometime this week.

The other good news (though I'm not sure how "good" it is, practically) is that spending all this time painting Infinity models has successfully stalled things long enough for some new Khador models to be released, so after I'm finished with Pan-O I can return to the familiar land of red and snow. Ruin is on stand-by, awaiting an arm (I can start in on painting it sans arm if push comes to shove) and I *may* have a Zerkova2 coming my way if she's available for early release at Lock & Load. I'm not banking too much on that prospect - I'm unsure if she'll be for sale at all, and I don't want my ninja shopper to detract too much from his own fun just to get me a model I'll be able to buy in a couple of months - but if I happen to get lucky and get her early, I really want to paint her up quickly to try and enjoy some of that early release mojo.

That's assuming her rules are any good, of course. We'll almost certainly have a better idea of that in a few days, but that's another post entirely.