Dark Eldar reskinning project

[Romm-boss]

First things first, greetings!

I guess I'm not the only one who thinks Dark Eldar skins are plain ugly... while the models themselves are great and have a lot of potential. After a little practice with using DoW texture tool (and ~6 years of skinning for other games), I decided to start a series of skins giving the evil xeno guys and girls a better look.

Without further ado, screenies!
(around 1,174kb total )

http://hos.samods.org/archont2.jpg
Archon reskin (almost done). Added non-teamcolorable golden trim and armor parts (inspired by Golden Eagle marine skin series), more detail, redone face (skin color inspired by Battle March Dark Elves), gave him new eyes with pupils. Perhaps black eyes are more true-to-fluff but he looks so much better now with some sense in his eyes ^^

http://hos.samods.org/wych.jpg
Wych reskin (WIP). Mainly, body skin changes, added tatoos and changed skin tone. Will have more detail on armor and weapons. Perhaps will give her eyes similar to Archon's.

http://hos.samods.org/haemonculus1.jpg
Haemonculus reskin (WIP). Not entirely true-to fluff, but he looks meaner this way Still thinking of what to add, but will keep the face for sure.

http://hos.samods.org/vect1.jpg
Dais of Destruction reskin (almost done). Asdrubael Vect is one and only, so is his vehicle! Thus, team color on it would have looked stupid, I reskinned whole thingy so it looks like GW model this way. Warriors still have team color though, which is great. Reskinned Vect to actually look like Vect, and gave his slaves Leia costumes ^^ The eyes are red as shown on GW artwork, don't know if I should make them green to match the rest of my skins.
(Used parts of GW photos and artwork during making Dais of Destruction skin, credit for lightnings on front vehicle part, skulls and sides of throne, and slave costume goes to GW artists. All Games Workshop stuff (c) Games Workshop)

Tatoos and glyphs were made using Michael Dolan's Dark Eldar font (get it here: http://members.aol.com/lokian1/other2.htm)

Waiting for your comments and criticism!

[stfas]

i say, make the eyes the same as the archon on every unit, it looks good out to me!

[Birchtree]

Very nice work. I was planning on adding tattoos to the wyches myself, but no need to now.

As for the eyes, I'd go with green or black for Vect (red is a bit expected and overused, I think). Purple or pink is another possibility, since it would match the soul essence glow that's associated with the dark eldar.

[Romm-boss]

Thanks for you comments, anyway, more screenies!

http://hos.samods.org/warrior1.jpg
Warrior reskin (finished). Gave him magenta metal tint (I'm going to use it on most Dark Eldar units), made the skin cleaner by removing scratches on armor, etc. Changed sybarite head, too. Added badge to the helmet and made eyes non-teamcolorable, he looks much darker and more sinister now ^^

http://hos.samods.org/raider_ravager1.jpg
Raider and Ravager reskin (almost done). Pretty simple, same magenta tint, more clean texture to fit the rrest of the units. Ravager's base color is now secondary so it differs from Raider, plus the Raider now has old Dais of Destruction front hull texture.

http://hos.samods.org/incubus1.jpg
Incubus reskin (WIP). Changed armor to secondary, gave him magenta tint and made overall color scheme much more dark. Power weapon skin similar to ones used by Dais on Desruction Incubi. Thought of giving him same burning non-teamcolorable eyes as to the Warrior, but they look dark in the game for some reason, will see what I can do about it.

[stfas]

looks really good out!

[IBBoard]

Some great textures there. Hopefully the Texture Tool was easy enough to get the hang of

The Haemonculus and Archon look great, as does the Wych, although I'm not so sure about the belly tattoo. Did it just look a bit strange and blank without it?

The Dais may be Vect's (at which point it's strange that Relic included it, since GW won't allow them to include special characters) but I think the team colouring helps. If there is only one (and GW haven't changed the fluff or never explicitly said "there aren't any others") then it still makes it easier to differentiate between armies by having matching colours.

The warriors look interesting, and cleaning the scratches up looks good. I'm not sure about the badge on the helmet and whether it will look right with all badges, but it looks good with the ones in the screenshot.

Overall a great set and it's good to see someone new who's putting together a collection, rather than updating one texture and leaving the others to not match Give me a shout when you're done if the set is too large and I'll give you an alternate way to submit it.

[Romm-boss]

Thank you very much, and yes, your Texture Tool is one of the most convenient converters I've seen, it's been a pleasure using it ^^

Wyches' belly... guess yes, it would not look right without a tatoo, provided everything else is tatoo'ed. Or you mean the wrapping error on the belly?

In Soulstorm campaign it's said that Vect himself rides the Dais of Destruction... And regarding Vect vs. Vect - well, Nightbringer vs. Nightbringer or Deciever vs. Deciever would make hardly more sense. They're not teamcoloable either btw, if I recall correctly. Anyway, Dais of Destruction has teamcolrable warriors (like Vect hires his crew from the Kabal he's fighting for), so the owner can be distinguished clearly.

[IBBoard]

I hadn't noticed the wrapping problem, but it doesn't surprise me that there is one.

My only thought with the belly tattoo was that perhaps less might be more, since she already had a face, arm and leg one, and so her outline was already breaking up a bit. A tattoo-free belly would give her a more solid central area with a single block of colour. That's just a guess, though, and like I said it might look like you missed an area if there isn't one

[stfas]

make the eyes non-teamcolourable and make the tatoo's trim2 colourable maybe?

[Seaglen]

I absolutley love these new textures!

the incubi look wonderful with those new blades (would it be possible to re-work the face on the knee?)

warriors are much cleaner (although im also not sure about the helmet badge)

i think the idea of it being vect's craft is brilliant, as it gives it a bit more character than a generic 'dais'.

just one point:

although the gold armour looks good on the archon, i think it would suit dark eldar if it were more silver, as gold is normally associated with the 'holy good guys'

silver tends to go well with purples and blues (dark eldar colours)

[chaos]

WANT.......SKINS......NOW, oh btw nice and smooth textures bro

[IBBoard]

I think you're a couple of years too late. If they're not already on the site then I'd guess that they're not likely to turn up

[chaos]

darn no more textures for people who like torture

oh btw IBB i put a scheme colour for the knights of blood in the "knights of blood" page go check it out and tell me what u think my Admin

[IBBoard]

There may still be some people somewhere changing things, but Soulstorm never had quite as much momentum as the earlier expansions and then DoW2 came out and the modders mainly moved to that, even though texturing and badge making wasn't quite as easy as it used to be.