The Swarm stirs - Painting a Custom Zerg Army for StarCraft

Diving into the newly released StarCraft miniature game with a full Zerg force has been a complete blast, especially since it provided the perfect opportunity to experiment with enamels for the very first time. Combining the contents of the Founder's Edition with an additional box of Hydralisks, the goal was to craft a menacing swarm that felt organic and unified while taking advantage of enamel washes to bring out the deep textures of chitin, flesh, and creep.

To lock down the organic tones across the army, I relied on a combination of speed paints, fanatic acrylics, and enamels:

• The Red Under-Flesh: The flesh base was built using Speedpaint 2.0 Blood Red, which was then shaded down with AK Interactive Striking Grime enamel to sink into the deep muscle recesses and give it a weathered, organic feel.
• The Green Carapace: For the chitinous plates, I used Speedpaint 2.0 Burnt Moss as the foundation, bringing back the high points with Vallejo Camo Green edge highlights to define the segmented plates.
• The Bone Talons: The claws, spikes, and teeth were blocked out with Warpaints Fanatic Urban Buff before getting a coat of AK Striking Grime enamel, leaving a stained, bone-like finish.

To keep track of different broods during gameplay, I gave each squad of Zerglings and Roaches its own distinct color scheme. One Zergling brood features the muted olive and bone carapace over deep red under-flesh, while another displays winged magenta bodies with vibrant teal membranes, and a third sports teal-tinted carapace plates over rich red muscle. 

The Roaches follow a similar logic, with one squad featuring blue-spined carapace accents to instantly set them apart from their green-tinged broodmates. This variation adds a sense of swarm diversity on the table while making unit identification simple in the middle of a battle.

Anchoring the entire army is the purple creep basing scheme. I used vibrant violet tones blended into bright magenta and lime green bio-luminescent pustules across every base, from the tiny Zerglings up to the Queen and Kerrigan. The stark contrast between the bright purple creep and the earthy, organic tones of the creatures binds all the different brood schemes together into a single, cohesive force.

Taking on enamels for the first time across a horde project was definitely a learning curve, but the depth and sheen they give to chitinous armor is hard to beat.