Red Herring

I wanted to share a little trick I use from time to time. Have a look at those minis, painted some time ago:

Nice figs, are they? 

No, in fact, not that much: look at the poor job on the lower legs of both figs, look at the one-layer highlight on the pistol arm of the sword dude... look at the one-dimension chainsword painting... 

The trick here was to have a well done center piece for the mini. In both case, it was the face, and the chest. I spent a large proportion of the painting time only on those areas. The eye is pulled toward faces, when we look at miniatures. Try the oposite, just for fun. Do a great job on the miniature body, legs and arms, but do a quick blotch of the face. The overall "feeling" of the miniature will be poor. 

These two guys make a good first impression, but when you get to know them... 

Here is another mini, completed yesterday.

Don't ask me why it is not centered... I don't know... 

Been busy.

Well, it must be the most overused excuse for not blogging, but here it is, I have been extremely busy. To the point of not painting at all for several months. But; back to it now. Here are a few models I made in the last few weeks;

First, My Ariadna army:

I tried to keep some coherence in the whole army by using mostly the same colors, but still I've tried to keep the scotts (top picture) distinct from the french (bottom picture). I used the same color to paint the kilts and the armor peice of the french (which are blue in the studio scheme). I think that I had the most fun I ever had painting a miniature while painting the wolf. It is a really REALLY nice miniature.

On the other side; the guy with "One-handed HMG and a claymore firmly planted in the ground" is probably the stupidest pose I have ever seen on a miniature... I really wanted it for gaming, though... but bottom line is that, in my opinion (this is my blog, after all!), the Infinity range contains exquisite miniatures, but they tend to make strange poses, sometimes...

Some note; the leftmost guys in the bottom picture is not an Infinity miniature, but an EM-4 mini, which I converted to an infinity chasseur with sniper rifle. This miniature had the exact same "concept" that the other chasseur... cap, ear-set, rifle, knee pads, backpack... simply a good coincidence.

The bases are still bare... AGAIN... I'll get to that eventually...

Here is what I'm into these days... Infinity.

I got back to these because of a desire to paint nice miniatures. Simple as that. I have been trying to paint armies for the last few months, and I got tired of speed painting...

Pretty much the same thing that happened when I started this blog. I'm a cyclic guy...

Ok, so, for technique, I tried to combine pretty much all the tools I have in the arsenal for these figures. Fast basecoat using mostly foundation paints (good coverage), then wash with appropriate colours (as opposed to the dip technique, where you wash the miniature with one shade only) and finally highlight using very thin coats. I also had a bit of fun with cross-colour shading; using blues to shade green, browns to shade blues, etc. It's all very new to me, so i'll keep experimenting on that for now.

Sorry for the picture quality; I lost my old photo studio, as the lab it was taken in moved around a bit and the camera used is now dead... I'll try and make it better next time.

Dirt Stains, the revenge

Hello!

Ok, here is a second attempt at mutation:

And with his acolyte:

Quite pleased with the dust this time. As "dust" is what the stains are meant to represent. It's absolutely impressive what can be done with those old zombie heads, from GW... I have painted about 120-150 of them, but always very VERY V-E-R-Y fast, and quite frankly, badly. I only now realise their potential.

On the "poor-guy-who-have-been-horribly-mutated" front, tough, I think I erred a bit on this one... he have a crazy look on his face that was not planned at all, but that developed during painting... I tend to do that... I develop mood as I go, instead of planning... I guess it makes me an "instinctive" painter...

All said, I really like his face...

Nice Dirt

Hello again.

Sorry for historical fans... it seems that I'm in a Sci-Fi mood these last few days...

Anyway, yesterday's post, and a reply that was posted (thanks Mathieu, you nailed it) about dirtying up miniatures made me think about this mini, made a few months ago:

This guy is a wargames factory trooper made using the gas mask instead of the nazi head (no, it is not a mutated head, like I saw on some website... there are straps in the hair to hold the mask!). I sculpted some kind of bag, a grenade and fixed the collar and the neck, which is not a very good fit on these miniatures.

I wanted to picture a trooper who had spent quite a few days in the trenches. Think WWI or Stalingrad...

The point here is that in this particular case, I had some objective in mind when I started to muck it up. So I had a good Idea what kind of stains I wanted where.

This is the (or The) mistake I made when I started stain my mutie. I did not have any idea what happened to him. Why was he dirty? what kind of stain should be where? (ok... not always a good idea to ask that...) So instead, I went for a general flopping of diluted paint everywhere... which make absolutely no sense when we look at it, because no sense was intended... if you get my meaning...

The next one should be better.

And, no... still no bases... I usually don't base until I know what kind of game and what kind of army they will be used for...

Dirty Painting

I just completed it. My mutie.

Not wholly satisfied, as I did not get the look and mood I was after perfectly right.

Here he is, and again, this is not at all a masterpiece, but one of a grunt in an army.

At the base, I did not want a nurgle mutant, so no "diseased" look. I did a clean-ish skin tone relatively close to pink, mostly to inspire... well, "pity" is too strong a word, but you might get my point. This is a poor guy who have been horribly mutated, not a blood thirsty mutant from the wasteland... Then, to honor the ork origin of this mini, I chose a green to dress it up. As a bonus, green complement red on the colour wheel, so it is a good companion to the pinkish skin. Then, I chose my favourite orangy brown for leather, and would use the same colour for the rust of metal parts, thus tying up two parts of the mini. The blue simply came as a complement of the orange. I intend to keep the skin, the green, and the rusty-brown constant through the army, but I will vary the remaining colour so that they don't seem like they wear uniforms.

The result was pretty clean, in the sense of "not dirty looking". So I tried to muck it up... and this is what I think I could have done better... I am not sure the stains and dirt are believable. The figure certainly look stained and dirty, but it's the paint job that look dirty and stained, not the mutant!

I tried to use differently coloured washes to stain the mini, as well as a drybrush of the beige brown I will use on the base... I am open to suggestions as to what went wrong with the staining...

On the sculpting side, tough, i'm quite pleased. It's hard to tell now what is grey plastic and what is green-stuff, so I consider that a success, at least in the green-stuff mastering sense.

Simple Sculpting

Hi,
It's been veeeery quiet on the hobby front during the last weeks. Lack of time, in general. Bad timing for a new blog, but can't be helped...

I have been pushed by a friend (Ok, pushed is a bit hard... motivated...) and his new army to build one myself (yes, another project...). He is putting together a chaos army for warhammer 40k. I already have a 40k army, but, as I said, it's not playing the game that motivates me, it's building an army!

So I've toyed around for the last week with different ideas, but found each army to have Huuuuuge drawbacks (modeling-wise... I'm not even getting into the gaming aspect): Orks and their general goofiness, Eldars and their power rangers aspect warriors, imperial guard with their 700$ minimum starting force... space marines with their "I already own one" reality...

Then, I remembered a few things: First, I can build stuff... second, I have more than a few sprues of plastic bits, mostly orks, fantasy zombis, a few skavens, some chaos... And one prototype:

The idea here was to build a poor guy who's right side have completely mutated while his left remained more-or-less "stable". The metal plate in the back was turned into a "something" outlet with tubing still attached, and paint-wise will be complemented by the metal plate on his head. The pictures don't really make this detail stand out, but by chopping off most of the width of the original ork neck, I obtained a long "giraffe-y" neck. The only obvious error I did was to underestimate the ork posture. I did try (look at the right ankle) to make him stand a bit more upright, but the end result really is far too leaning foward to my taste. He should be falling on his face... well... maybe he is...

All said, I built this guy relatively rapidly, it is meant not as a masterpiece, but as one of the grunts that will make this army, so, building time is an issue... as a bonus, in this project, I will use green-stuff a lot, which will train my skills with it, something I have not done for quite a while.

I will then try to build a complete mutants force. very "mad max" like for the vehicles, which can be represented perfectly in game with orks. As I will probably use the Orks army book to play these, I will use mostly ork bodies (and as it happens, I own many-MANY orks that I don't want to paint as orks, so...), so they will be easily identifiable for anybody. The main positive point in this idea is to have an original army. Not original as in "nobody-ever-did-anything-like-it" but at least original as in "cannot-be-obtained-off-the-shelf".

Painting it is my next goal...