Unleash the Monsters.

What a curiously intriguing trailer we showed off yesterday. I wonder what could possibly go on advance order this Friday - something involving crypts, graveyards and bats by the looks of it. But anyway, enough of the speculation, you'll just have to be patient and wait for Friday. Until then, I thought it would be a bit of fun to go hunting for monsters because we're all going to need some in the coming weeks to defend our lands from invasion by shambling hordes of... ooops, I might have said too much. I'll get on with showing off the big beasties before I give the game away.

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  Originally I had a different blog theme planned today, but then I saw this Ghorgon in our Flickr pool and changed my mind entirely. David Perryman uploaded this piece for us and we thought it was so good that it deserved two pictures just so that we could try and show off every angle of it. David used this model as an experiment in special effects such as drool, snow, ice and blood. He also created areas of object source lighting (particularly around the warpstone) with Snot Green, Scorpion Green and the aid of an airbrush.

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  The blood was created with layers of washes, stringy glue and Water Effect. The icicles are melted flying stands and the blood flying from the beast's claw is built up from fine strands of melted flying stand and Water Effects that beaded at the ends. The snow is bicarbonate of soda mixed with Water Effect. David particularly enjoyed building the kit, commenting that 'there are certainly a lot of skulls on it!' The skeleton sign-post in the base is one of the extra components from the Giant kit.

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  Tom Markham's been busy painting up a few monsters too, including this fantastic Zombie Dragon. We were hugely impressed with the ethereal lighting effect underneath the Dragon itself, and the replication of the same colour on the Vampire's sword. Love the use of the wind-blown leaves on the base too - very realistic.

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  Chris Poole has now painted all three of the new Beastmen monsters that we released last month. His Cygor was painted in Chris' signature washed-out tones, with plenty of greys and browns in the paint to give it a very natural look, whilst using a vibrant red for the blood on its hands and face. Chris, like David above, has also used this model as an opportunity to try out object source lighting on the warpstone chunks (more information about object source lighting can be found in this book).

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  Joseph Vella got his hands on the Dark Elf Black Dragon when it came out last summer. Joseph has always had a thing for painting Dragons and actually owns one of the very first Dragon kits that Games Workshop ever produced (I'll try and convince him to send in a picture). With this kit he decided to build the model with the rider as a separate component, which means he can choose to use a Dreadlord or a Supreme Sorceress as his commander depending on what army he's fighting against.

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  Some time ago I showed of Francesco Alfieri's Blood Angels on the blog, which featured some stunning freehand work. Well when the Tomb Kings came out, Francesco set to work again, this time on a couple of Warsphinx kits, finishing them at 4am two days after they were released. The paint scheme for the stone body of the Warsphinx was inspired by portoro marble (if you Google it you'll see that Francesco was very accurate with his representation of it).

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  Traditionally Warhammer is the game of terrifying monsters, but while I was paddling in the Flickr pool I found this mighty Trygon painted by Alexandre Dell'Olivio and knew that I had to show it, too. Alex has also painted up all the extra parts from the kit and made them interchangeable so he can field either a normal Trygon or, should the need arise, a Trygon Prime (for those of you who don't know about Trygons, a Trygon Prime is essentially a nastier version of an already particularly nasty monster).

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  And then I saw this model painted by Alfonso García Tovar and had one of those over-exaggerated jaw-drop moments that you only see in old cartoons. Okay, I know it's not technically a monster, but can you blame me for showing it off on the blog? From what I can tell it's a Chaos Space Marine Lord (Slaanesh flavour) in Terminator armour. The real question is: what model was used as the base for it? Send your answers on a postcard to our Facebook page.

We were also contacted by the guys in the Black Library team yesterday to let us know that the latest novella in the Space Marine battle series Catechism of Hate by Gav Thorpe, will be available to order from the Black Library website this Friday (that's the 6th if you haven't bought a new diary for 2012 yet). To find out more, check out the Black Library website or have a look at this video where you can find out all about it.