Cloud WIP New Progress

Howdy folks!

Did some fun progress on Cloud from Final Fantasy 7 and wanted to give an update.

I didn't snap any photos before this step, but essentially I did the excruciating work on the sword.

I started with blacklining all the shading of the sword, which takes a good wet palette, a teeny pointed brush, and some infinite patience. Making sure your brush point is, well, on point, and having thin black paint is critical. Holding your breath before you draw the line and exhaling once you start also helps, and a big factor is confidence in your brush stroke. Committing to the line without stopping makes things so much easier for you in the long run, as picking up halfway is really tough when making the black line consistent in line weight. Also being ready with a wet brush with only water helps erase mistakes before they dry, but that's a last resort for only big mistakes as the result is unpredictable. Also keep in mind that your highlights can fix the majority of your mistakes in blacklining will help prevent unnecessary modifications that you can't undo.

For the tiny little squares in the blade I used a wash to line instead of paint, it gives you more leeway in application and you can always add more to darken the line, but with paint you're giving yourself more chances to screw up in such a small space.

I then had mixes of my greys and whites for the edge highlights, which is what makes the finished product look awesome. Until this step you won't see the fruits of your labor, but once you get done with this you really see your NMM silver come together. Without this step it just looks bland and unintentional. Here you have to keep in mind how the light will reflect off the edges, and to not just have a single solid white highlight on the entire thing, it has to play with the colors beneath and only be a step above where it's reflecting. Because the blade edge is on a different plane then the flat of the blade I stepped up the white so it looks like it's reflecting harder than the flat space. I also kept in mind that the hilt of the blade needed to appear as a different material so I kept the color closer to neutral gray than the blade to give the impression of a block of sturdy metal rather than steel.

Lastly I carefully placed a very very very light glaze of turquoise in select areas of the blade to give the impression of steel reflecting sky. This makes the grey stand out much more and gives more of an impression of reflection than just using greys and whites.

Here is where I completed the hair, eyes, and a very small touchup of the face. The hair was based earlier with VGC Heavy Brown. I lined the shadows with GW Agrax Earthshade to give it definition. I then highlighted with a 50/50 VGC Heavy Brown and VGC Heavy Gold Brown. The trick to painting hair is to treat it just like NMM, where your reflections are coming from the bends of the hair and concentrating more on the middle portions of the shape rather than the traditional top-down edge highlighting technique most are familiar with. Once that was done a tighter highlight of just VGC Heavy Gold Brown followed by another highlight of adding white to the mix finished the hair.

The eyes, as almost all my eyes, are a happy accident. Every time it's a gamble and likely takes multiple attempts until I feel satisfied enough to leave them alone, especially when a model like this has a tiny eyeball. My normal technique was applied here. Earlier I did a small wash in the sockets to guide me and give more contrast to the eyes. I then painted the entire eye black, and finally come in with two small dots in the corners. This is a much better technique than painting the eye white then going in for the pupil in my opinion, as it is very tough to get the bottom of the pupil to meet the bottom eyelid, and if you don't you'll either get crazy eyes or the model is always looking up/down. It's also much harder to get the pupils to look in the same direction that way. With two dots in the corners you get a more pronounced pupil that stands out on the table better and is more likely to be the same size and look in the same direction. Granted, when I zoom in on the eyes, like, super zoom, the left eye is absolutely perfect and the right is just straight wonky, so take the advice with a grain of salt. Like I said early, it's a gamble, and I usually just leave it alone if it works well enough.

Here I started repainting the base. Although the previous base looks okay in photos, it's under a harsh light. When in normal lighting it's just too dark and he doesn't contrast well. I decided to go lighter and stuck with grey. Even though this whole model is almost entirely black, grey or white, I figured it would look different enough, especially with some washes and grass.

And here he is as he stands today. I ended up redoing the base twice essentially. I drybrushed some grey and white to bring up the brightness after washing the base with Secret Weapon Soft Body Black wash, but it was looking super bland and remedial. So I then added GW Agrax Earthshade and GW Nuln Oil to various areas to increase the contrast. I think I'll go back in with more drybrushing of grey/white to pick up more detail now that the contrast will show better.

All I'll have left after that is to paint his clothing and add some details to the base and he'll be ready to continue not getting over Aeris and moping around with existential quandaries and whatnot.

Malifaux WIP - Tara

Hey folks!

This weekend I also did some major work on Tara, using that awesome galaxy base I made and showed in the previous update a a little while back. I am absolutely pleased with how she's coming along, and only a few more (anxiety-inducing) steps away from being ready to rock!

I was painting her alongside the Cloud miniature I showed earlier and forgot to take pictures as I did the steps because I got too caught up in the work :)

Essentially prior to this stage I had her sticky-tacked to a stand to paint her off the base. I used VMA Dark Panzer Gray, then added some VGA Cold Grey until it was a pure grey. I initially wanted her clothes to be as black as Cloud's but let the grey get a little away from me. She still is pretty dark, so I'm okay with it.

I also painted the skin on her arm with a brush very quickly just so I can airbrush the blue where her arm is transforming into the claw. I picked blue because this is what I plan on painting her more alien crew members as, although I hyped up the lightness for her to make it stand out. On the other members of her crew, like the Nothing Beast and Void Wretches, I plan on going much darker with this blue being very sparing, just to make the OSL pink pop more. But with such a small area of "monster" on her I feel I needed to embellish the color to make it noticeable. A dark blue/black wouldn't look good and would get lost in the model. For the blue I used VMA Blue and VGA Electric Blue, a color I've been obsessed with ever since I painted that Blood Bowl commission a long time ago.

Here you see me finishing the skin tones in the arm and face. I used my tried-and-true combo of colors from Reaper, Golden Skin Shadow, Golden Skin and Golden Skin Highlight. Simple, but effective, and my favorite combo of colors for skin. I didn't use any wash so I could keep the values nice and soft. The trick is to paint the golden skin shadow opaque, but since it's over black it's a bit darker. When you're done doing the rest of the skin, you go back over where the layers are, well, layered, and do a small amount of shadow over the lines to blend it together. When it's painted over the base Golden Skin, it comes out with a much different tone and blends the two layers extremely well.

For the eyes, because they are just so ridiculously tiny, I decided to keep it very simple when I was in the middle of painting them. A trick I use when wanting to give a dark, ominous feel to a model's eyes, is to do a light wash of black in the sockets. This helps guide where my paint needs to go later when painting in the actual white and irises, but if you do it light enough to let the skin tone show through it really helps frame the eyes and gives that really creepy look to them. If you're doing a non-creepy set of eyes, swap out the black wash for a flesh wash. The definition does a ton of work for you but helps your eyes pop (not literally).

In this case I new they were just too damn small to do that. I originally wanted to recreate what I did for the Malifaux Child's eyes, where I painted the eyeballs grey and added bone to the mix and left it with no pupils to give it a dead, otherworldly stare. But it's just too damn small. So instead I did a heavier wash of black and made it look like nothing. She does have nothingness in her fluff, so I guess a black set of eyes does the trick of explaining my not-doing-more-workness.

I think it did a great job, because it puts the Golden Skin Highlight of her cheek bones right next a line of black, which does a great job of defining the face and where the eyes are and helps make the skin contrast very well.

Lastly, on this step I also did an additional drybrush of white/grey on the stones of the base, because they didn't stand out well enough in natural light. Once that was done I glued her to the base to make it easier to paint.

Here is her backside :)

Okay, a ton of work was done in this photo. I used GW Nuln Oil and a small brush to glaze the shading in her grey clothes. This was pretty time consuming. Then I took shades of Black, Cold Grey and and maybe some white, to line each crease of her clothing next to the black glazing. This was even more time consuming and frustrating. There are a lot of areas where I am just completely unhappy, but really the overall look is good, and when you're not staring under intense light and 6 inches away you will likely not notice them. It may bug me, but I know it still looks pretty good.

Adding in these highlights definitely took it from looking maybe like black to definitely this is grey. This is what I was talking about with Cloud, where it's a really fine line between keeping a model black and stepping over the line into grey, but luckily she can get away with it as opposed to Cloud who has a defined look.

After the excruciating work of highlighting I also painted the leather elements with a mix of VMC Woodgrain and VMC Orange Brown to block it in. I originally did the same to the bands on her wrist and ankles, but decided that stood out too much and painted them black with a highlight of GW Shadow Grey and Space Wolves Grey. They get lost in the folds of the clothes, but I found that I actually don't want those to stand out. 

Also, Tara knows the faux pas of wearing a brown belt with black shoes, but since she's less than 2" tall she doesn't give a crap. She needed something to break up the grey fields, and I once saw a picture online of someone doing the brown belt over a dark grey coat like this and I liked the look, so sue me :)

Lastly, you'll see I did the hair, and I was super happy with how it turned out. Hair like this can be a pain, especially when you want it to look like black hair. You can't go grey with this, like how her clothes turned out. So I did a simple trick that keeps it black while still having nice highlights. I just painted in the "bends" some GW Shadow Grey in the direction of the hair and left the primer in the darkest areas. Then I painted some lines of GW Space Wolves Grey to highlight those areas. It was super quick and I think is highly effective, and although it's another grey it separates well from the rest of the model. The blue tone of the grey ties the clothes in with the arm and base. It's important to think of those things to make a model look uniform, especially when you have such a wide array of colors on a model like this. 

Here this wasn't too much extra done, mostly the arm. I used some GW Blue Glaze (I forget the name) and painted them in the crevices of the monster arm. I then took some GW Purple Wash (forgot the name of that too) and glazed in the heavier shaded areas. Lastly I mixed some VGA Electric Blue with a bit of white and selectively added edge highlights. But only highlighting small focal areas I made it look much darker than it started out to be, which I think will help tie it in with the crew models I'll paint slightly darker, or rather more emphasized on the darker areas. It will make more sense when I paint those guys.

Here I finished, or rather started working the leather areas. I took the original VMC Woodgrain/Orange Brown mix, added more Orange Brown until it was pure Orange Brown, then added VMC Dark Sand for highlighting. I did this haphazardly to show worn leather rather than a clean set of layers. I then washed it with Woodgrain and finally GW Nuln Oil. I ended up going back over with my highlight mix to show more areas of wear by slightly stippling/randomizing the highlights.

And this is where she stands today. I painted the belt buckle up quickly with some greys, and did work on the hilt of the sword. The hilt I painted as a challenge to myself to try to do more brush NMM work, using GW Shadow and Space Wolf Grey with white as the final highlight, with a small glaze of VGC Turquoise. Because it's so small even if I mess it up it doesn't stand out too badly. I feel like I did the front of the hilt well enough but just crapped out on the back side. Honestly it doesn't bug me even though it's objectively the worst part of the model, but it was fun to try out some challenging new things, and I feel like I can easily translate this to other models in the future. If I had just had my mixes out and ready on the palette rather than mixing on the fly I think I could have done this better. Overall I'm pleased.

Next up I'll have to paint the OSL glow on the sword and the hole in her chest. I am excited about the final look, but am terrified of doing this as one screw up will negate all the hard work I did on her clothes!

More Cool Stuff for the Hobby!

Lately I've been struggling with getting all my Malifaux crews transported successfully to tournaments and (semi)weekly gaming. I was using a small Feldherr bag to transport my crews, which worked well enough when I got my Viktoria crew well-tuned and didn't need to bring much else. Now in M3E I have completely different crews and a few of my models don't fit the foam bag well at all and have broken. When one of my Bandidos' tiny guns broke from her hand twice I decided enough was enough and I needed to get a new solution. 

I had been messing with magnets for my miniatures for a while now but never fully committed to it. I successfully magnetized my Descent minis, but don't transport them often. I magnetized my Hamelin crew but don't use them and never stored them in a magnetic case or transport. I also successfully magnetized my Zombicide Green Horde minis but made a foamcore box with a magnet sheet to store them. What I really needed was a very sturdy solution for all my Malifaux crews, and working on it myself would have me hesitant on its quality or security.

I debated on turning a wooden cigar box into a tournament tray and transport solution, but felt it wouldn't be big enough, and I'd have to secure a handle to it, and it wouldn't hold my other stuff like cards, tape measure, etc. without more work.

I remember a long time ago seeing these Tablewar Mini Cases at a Warmachine Tournament and realized it was a perfect solution, so I found the site and ended up buying one.

It came in separate shipments but didn't take too long. The trays, due to its modular nature, takes a tiny bit of work to put together but Spikey Bits does an excellent set of videos on doing this stuff. Essentially you use some Gorilla Glue to put them all together and use some clamps to hold the sheet to the frame while it dries.

What you get is an excellent storage/transport unit that fits every one of my needs! The trays slide out and can hold a ton of minis on each one. It also comes with a small drawer to hold all your necessary gaming items. This isn't 100% needed, and I may have to abandon it if I plan on bringing my entire Malifaux Outcasts collection. But for now I've streamlined all the items I need to bring to play in a tournament or weekly game to only this case! I love that. It also can hold my dry erase marker, which I've decided to switch to using instead of a ton of tokens/markers for conditions in the game to downsize the amount of stuff I need to bring to a game.

For now I don't have a ton of stuff magnetized, but my entire Parker Barrows crew is on the left and some of my Tara crew is on the right (with an extra Midnight Stalker because he was already magnetized). By this weekend's tournament I'm hoping to have the Tara crew magnetized and ready to play!

While I was on the same site I saw they also offered neoprene backdrops for Macro photography, and it comes with a cool stand to hold it up so I bought that too. I used to use a printed backdrop on regular paper and it worked well enough, but I saw that the mat could work really well with my light box that I owned and it turned out to be a perfect fit! It comes with three mats for different backdrops, one is cool, one is warm, and another is just a blue to white gradient.

My first test photo using Ashes and Dust turned out pretty good! I've just got to work on my camera settings as the lights are really bright even when diffused and the white colors get washed out.

I highly recommend these products from Tablewar if you have the same needs that I had!

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.

Wow, it really has been a long time...

It has been the better part of two years since I've posted. I am going to try to revitalize this blog, with the hopes of better motivating myself on completing some projects that I plan on soon.

I won't bore you with long reasons why I drifted away. Essentially my job had me prioritize my time differently than I used to before my promotion, and cutting this blog out was one of the ways for me to get things done.

But I've really missed updating this, even if it was mostly for myself. So I'll do my best to keep posting stuff, starting with a photo dump of various projects I've done since the last post.

Granted, this isn't absolutely everything, but really just the ones I've managed to find from my phone. Some are complete while most are in various stages of progress.

Enjoy!