"Stop. Follow. Follow."

"English. Enter. Enter. Zero. Stop."

These three 28mm metal models are produced by "Black Tree Design" and are available as DW120 - Mechanoid from their "Doctor Who" miniatures range. "Originally built by humans to help colonise worlds", the spherical robots made their first appearance in Terry Nation's 1965 six-parter "The Chase".

As the automatons came in two separate pieces, they first had their rather delicate flame guns super-glued in place, before receiving an undercoat of "Vallejo" Surface Primer Black and "Warlord Games" Pitch Black. They were then treated to a couple of layers of "Vallejo" Gunmetal, drowned in "Citadel" Nuln Oil, and dry-brushed with (more) "Vallejo" Gunmetal.

"Black Tree Design" WIPs - This Cyber-scout has been primed, layered, dry-brushed and shaded

At this stage the Mechanoids could easily have be called 'done' to be honest. But I always remember the "match for the Daleks" as looking a bit more imposing and interesting - especially as their appearances within the colourful comic book pages of "TV Century 21" are forever etched upon my memory. Resultantly, I decided to at least add a little bit of extra detail to the rather roughly-hewn castings, by 'picking out' all their forward-facing vents and those around their antenna, with some extra "Citadel" Nuln Oil.

Disappointingly though, the "Games Workshop" Shade didn't really darken down the various triangular-shaped panels much at all. So in the end I gave the grills a splosh of the "Citadel" Contrast paint Black Templar - which seemed to at least somewhat replicate the look of the Mechanoids from the colourised photographs I'd seen taken during the story's filming; albeit they also appear to give the robots a blue-tint.

"Black Tree Design" WIPs - A trio of Sea Devils which are close to completion

Staying with both "Doctor Who" and "Black Tree Design", I've taken one of the Cybermen models I had been planning on simply pigmenting "Vallejo" Gunmetal, and instead attempted to 'mark it out' as one of the Cyber-Controller's dark-hued Scouts from the Sixth Doctor serial "Attack Of The Cybermen". This single figure has proved quite a fun little project, as the predominantly black cyborg's hand-blaster was an entirely different colour to his silver giant brethren too.

Lastly, I'm finally close to getting three more of the company's classic Sea Devil sculpts ready for the table-top. I'm especially keen to complete these Jon Pertwee monsters as it'll mean I've (once again) attained 500-points worth of finished figures for this year's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge AHPC) - on paper at least - and can resultantly start focusing upon the models which I only managed to get half-done late last year before the AHPC started.