Dark Knight

Just a brief update on Batman. It's hard to do anything creative in this heat.

I'm just doing a high-contrast repaint on the grey, highlighting up the black bits with dark blue but it's barely visible so far. His belt looks pretty rough, I'm just hoping I can spoof some better detail with paint alone... on a metal mini I would have filed it off and tried to resculpt a new one.

Finished!

My Legionnaire is finished, and mounted on his brand-new base! (see previous post)

The blue still seems under-highlighted but I don't want it to have near-white highlights or it may make the colour seem less rich. I think all the colours and metallic effects turned out okay, and seem to fit together aesthetically.

Basing Basics

A good miniature tells a story. Maybe not a whole Russian novel, but it should at least stimulate the viewer's imagination to think of the figure as a "character", with context and background. A good display base can enhance or strongly guide how the viewer sees the figure, depending on the creator's preference (and skill). For example, I chose a rustic forest floor base for my Mousling to suggest he is a wandering minstrel traveling between towns. However, more futuristic figures like Princess Leia or "Greybo" require something more artificial/technological.

Right now I'm working on a base for my Black Legionnaire. I contemplated a stone floor representing a temple or palace, but I decided that he too is a wanderer, questing for some arcane knowledge or artifacts for his own mysterious purposes. So he gets an outdoor base. The base I'm making uses thin slabs of cork (from cheap IKEA coasters) to simulate weathered rock.

I'm using snow to indicate the season, mostly because I want to practice the technique, but also because it makes his milieu a little more exotic. The "snow" is sodium bicarbonate mixed with white Elmer's glue. Quite simple, but I don't want to distract from the miniature itself.

Slow week...

I swear brown is one of the most difficult colours to do well. Along with black, white, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. I'm currently working on the Legionnaire's rucksack, belts and scabbard: kind of a drab contrast to his vivid regalia. Not very exciting, alas...

In response to your previous query, Liz, he's wearing a metal mask or helmet under his cloth hood. So it's done in non-metallic steel like the rest of the armour. His eyes are barely visible through the vision slit in the helmet.

Legionnaire/eBay/Dark Knight

I'm slowly layering up the blue highlights on my Legionnaire:

I recently made my first eBay purchase - a couple of HeroClix Batman figures. These minis are basically toys, and are made from some appalling rubbery substance. However I managed to strip the paint off with acetone and I'm sure I can give him a much better look.

(VERY Dark Knight)

I'm a big fan of the Frank Miller version of Batman, so I think I'll go with a heavy contrast, near-monochrome scheme on this one.

Update

I did some NMM work on the Legionnaire's axe head, as well as the gold parts of his robe & armour.



I probably should start something else now that I seem to have the impulse to paint. This is the other mini I got from the most recent Miniature Exchange (along with the Mousling). I'm not familiar with the game it's from but it looks like some sort of medieval/technological hybrid soldier. The downside is that I'm not super inspired by it :^/

Armor-All

So I'm again trying to do "NMM" (Non-Metallic Metal) to simulate shiny metal surfaces using only regular paint. My initial attempt, the Emperor Haghendorf's gold livery, went quite well. This time I'm trying to create the effect on the steel plate armour of my Black Legionnaire. It looks a little sloppy right now, I admit I'm letting my blending smoothness slip a little while I concentrate on getting the overall look right.

Close-up shots:
 

I think he's done...

I put on a push this evening and finished my Mousling. I really just had to highlight some of his hat and gear, so it wasn't much of a "push"... I also added some freehand decoration to make his accordion look more interesting. He's posted on CoolMiniOrNot here, response has been quite positive so far.



I fixed his eyes after having another look at my reference pics. The single point highlight looks much better.

Mousling... almost done!

I'm just about done this little guy, I have to put the finishing touches on his hat and accoutrements and he'll be ready for the display case! Gotta love Italian seasoning mix - instant foresty leaf litter basing material which costs nothing! For best results, however, each piece should be glued on individually:



I'm not quite sure the gleam in his eyes looks right, but mouse eyes are solid black and I'm not sure how better to depict shiny black spheres. Easy enough to fix at any rate.

Brief Update

It doesn't feel like I've had much time to paint lately. But my mousling is coming along nicely, he's looking quite "rustic":



Also, the Black Legionnaire looks much better in a darker indigo colour:

Works in Progress

I'm liking the colours on my Mousling so far. The fur especially looks very natural. It's good to occasionally do a figure which isn't violent or warlike in theme:



Here's a palette test on my Legionnaire. I'm having more doubts about my colour choices on him...



Maybe he'll look better once he's a little more fleshed out, and a little less primary. I'm thinking the blue could be more indigo.

Miniature Exchange

In my post last week I mentioned sending out several miniatures for the CoolMiniOrNot.com miniature exchange. Well, I just GOT some as well - from "Pigmented" in Pittsburgh! There are two but this cute little guy is the one I'll get started on first:



Yes, it's a mouse playing the accordion. You don't see that every day.

Chaos Archer

My Chaos Archer is finished, I think he turned out pretty well:




The bronze bits look very good with flat varnish on them - not totally corroded but not polished either. I gave the steel armour plate a gloss finish though to make it look newer. The "mud" base actually looks like mud with boot prints too, which is nice. I just sculpted it by hand from epoxy putty after the figure was fixed to the base. The flesh came out looking rather flat but that was hard to avoid with the lack of detailing on the musculature.

A note about plastic miniatures:
Metal miniatures are "spin cast" in flexible rubber molds. The mold can flex to allow a complex casting to be removed from the crevices of its mold cavity. Plastic figures are cast in steel injection molds. As a result they cannot be as complicated or detailed - since the mold is inflexible any fiddly bits would be trapped in the mold cavity. The sides of the figure tend to be especially problematic and thus details there can be distorted or just absent.

Miniature Exchange

CoolMiniOrNot.com is having a "miniature exchange". Basically, I send a mini to someone, and (a different) someone sends one to me. It's a way for everyone to try painting things we might not pick out ourselves.

My recipient is "MarkusTay", a painter in New York state. I'm sending him these:



I've done two (1, 2, 3) of these exchanges before, it's a lot of fun and a surprise gift is a good motivation to put in the extra effort and make it a great paint job.

Miscellany

Bad mini

I wanted to paint up an evil archer for my uncle for his birthday, to go with the Wood Elf archer I gave him in 2003. All I could find was this plastic "Chaos Archer" that came with my brother's "Battlemasters" war game. It's pretty poorly-molded, and has little fine detail. This is what I've done so far:



So the challenge is: make a cheap ass injection-molded piece of crap look good enough to give as a gift. Wish me luck.

Contest Entries

I recently entered the Female Miniature Painting Challenge V (more commonly known as the "Chick Challenge"). These were my entries:


(thumbnails link to my CoolMiniOrNot.com gallery pics)


I didn't win anything, but it really spurred me to paint more quickly, and more carefully. Consequently these are currently some of my highest scoring minis on CoolMini.

Molly Millions

Some sculpting. The medium is Green Stuff - 2-part epoxy putty. I've actually been working on this for a while (very very slowly since sculpting is not my forte). It will eventually be a model of the character "Molly" from William Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy - a cybernetically enhanced mercenary with blades under her fingernails and mirrored lenses surgically grafted over her eyes.

Molly Millions
32 mm





Future additions include huge lenses on the face, 80's rocker-chick shag haircut and of course hands and face. I might actually remove the combat boot and give her cowboy boots instead. The book mentions those somewhere.

Initial Public Offering

Painting Agency is my experiment at hosting my own miniature painting-oriented weblog. Here I'll post my latest creations, works in progress and links to other miniature-related websites.

"Empereur Haghendorf" by Ilyad Games
42 mm



As of April 6 I'm nearly done this guy. He's an experiment in depicting metals (gold and steel in this case) without actually using metallic paints. Survey says "it's really freaking hard". [edited May 30, 2005 - "before" pic added]