September 2, 2007
Some New Minis to Mock
Here are the first minis I've painted in a couple of years. They're Mega Minis, and I did 'em quick and dirty to help me get back in the flow, and to experiment a bit in assembly-line painting.
It's a crap job. I should have done brown topcoat and yellow wash rather than the other way around, and I didn't even try to figure out a way to highlight the claws or tail.
My first unassisted attempts at basing. Not entirely suck--I built up some unevenness with sculpy, and then Elmer'sed the hell out of it and poured desert basing stuff (GDW) and put on a couple of stones by hand. We'll see how well it stands up.
Arguably, I should have piled the tiny scorps on top of each other to properly simulate a swarm, but I wanted to have two. The little guys have the same painting problems as the big guy.
I painted a green coat, said "That's stupid, gators aren't green, they're gray", painted them gray, and washed with forest green. It didn't turn out too bad. They're greener than real gators, but gators in the mind are green. The eyes are quite unreal, but again, part of this exercise was to get back in practice, so gators with googly humanish eyes are what you get.
Posted by Greg at September 2, 2007 2:37 PM
Never heard of these Mega Minis before. Are they 25mm (or whatever the standard fantasy scale is)? They seem like pretty average sculpts, are they relatively inexpensive?
They're 25 mm. Maybe even real 25 mm, as opposed to modern scale creep "25 mm".
See their page on Paizo. Six gators for 9 bucks, nine tiny and one large scorpion (in the swarm category) also for 9 bucks. That's a pretty good price, I think.
Are you still postdocing in Switzerland?
That is indeed a good price.
I am still in Switzerland, yes. I'll be here for between 1 and 2 more years, before plunging back into the US academic job market.
Yep. The big one can stand for medium and large-size Clampy, and I have this one for huge Clampy.
I always like giving unsolicited advice, so here goes:
With regards to the scorpions, I don't think you'd want to basecoat brown and wash yellow. I think you were on the right track with the lighter yellow basecoat and the brown wash to fill in the crevices and create dark areas. Maybe you could have used an intermediate color, between brown as the shadows and yellow as the highlights, to basecoat, then washed, then lined the edges or dry brushed in yellow. Also, getting washes to the right consistency is something I always had a devil of a time with. The consensus description is it should be like milk, and sometimes people add rubbing alcohol or detergent to change how it dries, if you have problems with that.
Have fun with your painting, and make sure to post your new figs. I miss the hobby quite a bit.
I have some flow-improver to help the acrylics, so I don't need to try alcohol or detergents. I use an eyedropper to add the "right" amount of water.
The thing about scorps is that the lighter colors are at the joints where the chitin is thinner, which is why I was thinking about a lighter wash to fill in the joints. But perhaps a yellow base and a dark heavy drybrush would accomplish the same thing.
I'm working on a bard now, and I have apparently forgotten how to do faces, because he's looking way too gothy.