Final Fantasy 7 Cloud WIP

Howdy Folks!

Just gonna show a quick work-in-progress on a cool miniature I got from eBay, Cloud from Final Fantasy VII!

This was purchased as a vanity project, but I'm going to use him as a Wokou Raider proxy in my Parker Barrows crew until the models are available again.

Here is is primed black. Not much of a step but a crucial one :)

I did a very heavy coat of one of my workhorse colors, VMA Dark Panzer Grey. This is a very good color to use when wanting to paint "black" without just being, well, primer black. Black is a very tough color to show values for and easily steps into grey when done too much, and this color being used as one of the primary colors is what helps keep it dark while showing value.

Next step is a highlight of my other workhorse color, VGA Cold Grey. I love this color so much, it's probably one of my most used ones.

Add a little white to the Cold Grey for the next step, you can see it coming together on the NMM of the sword (which I drastically change later). I believe I keep this highlight to the sword and base only.

Then a final highlight of White on the sword. Bling!

I felt like experimenting on the base so I did a recipe I only did once before, and I think I will paint over this now that I've seen it in regular light, but for this step I did a heavy wash of Secret Weapons Miniatures Stone.

Then I blocked in some colors for the hilt and skin. The hilt is GW Foundation Mephiston Red, an out-of-production color that I love and will miss when the bottle runs dry. The skin is Reaper Golden Shadow.

I block in the hair to turn him from Zack to Cloud :) and drybrush the base with VGC Dead Flesh. The base ended up being too dark in natural light and doesn't contrast with Cloud's clothes/boots so I'll likely change this to a brighter color.

Here I did a major overhaul of the sword and added some "gleams" to the front and more to the back, along with brightening the edge of the sword. Under my hobby lights the original gleam looked good, but in natural light it was entirely too dark. I also noticed that behind his head was almost completely Dark Panzer Grey so I had to fix that up, it looked extremely odd that it was really bright up at the top of the front sword but then almost black by the head. This was a ton of frustrating work to get right, and even then I just settled rather than keep fidgeting with the sword. The hardest part was getting the edge completed without screwing up the earlier work done on the blade, and you may still be able to see the mess but I'll be able to cover it with the brush highlights.

Somewhere along the way you will see I finished the hilt, I hit it with a heavy wash of GW Agrax Earthshade then highlighted with a mix of GW Mephiston Red/Reaper Golden Skin. I also finished his skin tones for the face and arm, although I'm going to go back and add a bit more to the arm and clean up his cheek bone area to make him look less gaunt.

That's where he's at for now, once I do the brush highlights he will look a lot better.