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!

12/10/16 Malifaux Tournament! Blood Bowl WIP! Things!

That sweet Malifaux goodness!

Wow, Ryan... a whole month with no updates, what's up with that?

Sorry folks, although I had been doing lots of hobby stuff I hadn't quite gotten enough material together to warrant an update (at least in my mind!), so I had been holding off on content for a bit. I did manage to work on a post involving some thoughts on the game in terms of strategy much like my AP post, but I didn't quite finish it.

Anyway, what's been going on? Well, for starters last Saturday we had a Malifaux Tournament at the impressive Montag's Games store. We had 8 players in attendance, including a relatively newer player I had faced before in the Henchman Hardcore tournament a while back. 

Below are the table set ups for your enjoyment...

Doug's western themed board, I like the set up and he generally has the same set up every time which is good for its symmetry but not to cuttered

Doug also used his Arena Rex mat for an interesting mat, the TO arranged the terrain and made it the definition of symmetrical

Karl's board featured on a Guild Ball mat, which conveniently marks the center circle for Strategies like Reconnoiter

My board that was featured previously on the blog, although I set it up differently every time

Brandon set this one up very quickly, although I must admit it seemed very interesting to play on

I set this one up very fast, it probably had the least elements but hardly any straight lines of sight from deployment zones

Round 1

Standard, Collect the Bounty

Convict Labor, Take Prisoner, Show of Force, Set Up, A Quick Murder

Yay! I actually remembered to post the entire scheme pool!

Mike getting ready to throw some summons in my face

My first round was against Mike, one of my regular opponents who has made the switch from Gremlins to Ressers. So far he's only used Molly so it was a safe guess that she was going to make an appearance.

The scheme pool looked like it favored my Viktorias. Recently I had been using them a lot with a good amount of success and have actually gotten worse with Leveticus - a discussion for another time. I had recently made a big change in the list and replaced Ashes & Dust and Sue with Aionus and two Winged Plagues. I had only one game with this composition under my belt but felt it was such a good addition that I was confident it could weather the tournament. Collect the Bounty is very good for the crew, and they are now very capable of handling marker related schemes like Convict Labor. Their specialty is A Quick Murder, so I decided to go with Viks for my first game.

Molly peers beside the building at my crew in the open...

Based on the terrain I saw that there were a few bottlenecks to look out for. If I went behind the buildings I'd be forced to come out toward his crew in one, maybe two openings, and those would confine my ability to move around my own crew. He deployed first and set up his whole crew behind the closest building while keeping a lone Flesh Construct on the opposite side to hinder my schemes. I noticed that if he decided to come out between the first two buildings he'd be hindered by some scatter terrain in terms of outright coming toward me, although it's a two way street and would force me to work around the terrain to get to him. If he came out between the second and third buildings I'd manage to have a much safer approach as it would take him longer to become a threat but he'd approach safer as well. I decided to deploy behind my first building instead of in the open just in case the flow dictated that I needed to change the approach. It also benefited me to help with my scheme runners on that side.

The opening turns went as expected, with a slight twist. I assumed he would keep his crew together but the limitations of space and LOS had him split his crew in two and went through both alleys. I brought my entire crew out into the main opening while keeping a Winged Plague and Freikorpsmann on the left to place markers that would go unchallenged during the remaining game turns. My right Winged Plague went to the opposite table edge and I managed to get two markers on the center line with two more creeping behind them - Aionus is able to make all friendly markers move so they can eventually come into play mid game.

Molly then summoned two Students (Viscera and Steel) to swing at Hannah, who promptly tanked them and only took two damage. Viktoria of Blood walked toward them and killed one to ensure that I didn't have to deal with it next turn. To do this, however, compromised my usual positioning and left the Viktorias exposed if they didn't win initiative. It was a gamble I was willing to take, however, as Blood would have positives for Defense and a full hand of cards and stones.

Molly promptly throws bodies at Hannah

Turn two saw the expected blood bath. I managed to win Initiative and went to work. Viktoria of Ashes put up a buff for damage, teleported Blood, and Blood chain activated. She then discarded Oathkeeper and charged Sybelle - who happened to be A Quick Murder's target. Viktoria swiftly killed her, then walked toward the Belle and wounded her with Melee Expert. Although it's not as flashy as usual (like killing 6 models at once) it did the job and scored 3VP easily. 

Viktoria, in some deep doo doo but worth it

Mike then concentrated on killing Blood while he had the chance, but it took a ton of resources to do it. Between Blood having stones, cards and a positive flip to defense it took almost his entire crew, including Molly's new summons like another Student and a Punk Zombie, to bring Blood down to a few wounds left, and she was finished by a Necrotic Machine of all models, who flipped the Red Joker on damage just when it was looking like Blood pulled off a miracle and lived.

Because of how much it took to dispose of Blood Mike wasn't in a good position anymore. I had the freedom to place markers down for Convict Labor which gave me AP to spend on mopping up the portion of his crew that was further up the field. He was also in a bad spot since his summons were further back than he'd like now and no longer had the buffer between my crew and his master.

His lone Flesh Construct was doing his best to deny markers on the left, but I had placed three or four in the area and would be impossible for him to deny with one model. Instead of attacking him I just attempted disengage strikes and would walk away just to place yet another marker. Aionus tied up the other side while placing markers and moving them around, all the while handing out Slow to the Flesh Construct on the right.

In the end I had only lost two models, which were both of my Viktorias. I didn't kill too much in terms of significant models but I had locked down my VP while denying his - he ended up taking Convict Labor and Set Up and it ended up 8-2 in my favor. If we had went to turn 5 I may have gotten full VP, but I doubt the differential would have been any different.

Round 2

Flank, Interference

Convict Labor, Show of Force, Leave Your Mark, Frame For Murder, Set Up

Doug from the illustrious Guslado Games

So for Round 2 I was paired against Doug and his infamous Sandeep list. I learned a ton from our last encounter, but then so has he. I decided to use the Viktorias again even though he knew their trick, I figured having Aionus and the Winged Plagues will help me with schemes. The table was a bit of a choke point with the way the fence was, luckily Doug gave me deployment and I picked the not-so-damning corner. In hindsight I probably should have picked the opposite corner, being that the building was bigger and would hide me better while denying him a hidey-hole. I chose Convict Labor and Leave Your Mark, although in the end it would prove to be a bad choice.

It started off fairly well. I moved my Winged Plagues to the flanks to place markers, with one ending up on top of the large building in safety. The one on the right however died very fast to Cassandra and a Mage. The Freikorpsmann walked toward the north side of the board and placed a marker, and Hannah went up the middle. The Malifaux Child put up the damage buff.

Doug learned from last time and split up his forces a lot. One the fence-side was a Mage and Cassandra. The middle had Sandeep, and the far side had two Mages and Joss.

Due to the placement of his models I heavily debated if I should do a turn 1 charge with Blood. I figured I'd be able to get the two Mages and Joss in Whirlwind, but knew that once it happened Blood will be gone. Figuring I wouldn't have another chance at it I decided to go for it and slung Blood to kill them. It turned out I wasn't able to get the third Mage into range like I thought and only managed to kill Joss and one Mage - and Joss was the target for Frame For Murder. That's when it all went downhill.

Sandeep then summons the Banasuva to kill Blood, who managed to stay alive at one wound.

Ashes joined in on the fun and the two summons were killed, but Blood now had Burning on her so she was going to die.

Doug used the remaining resources to do damage onto Ashes and get her off the field. He got her down to almost dead.

Meanwhile I spent a lot of brainpower trying to figure out how to get out of this mess I put myself in. I managed to move the Malifaux Child in range, had Hannah walk up to Blood and use the Child's healing ability. But not having the cards in hand it was a gamble - I'd be relying on flipping either Moderate or Severe to heal enough to live. Of course, a Weak flipped and it wasn't enough to stem the tide. Doug's remaining resources managed to get Blood and Ashes down to one wound, which killed them once Burning took place.

Not much to say after that! It went downhill extremely fast. If Blood had managed to get that other Mage in Whirlwind range then my Winged Plague would have been free to run his schemes, but since I didn't the Winged Plague had to be exposed to try to get in range for Leave Your Mark and died. I also should have picked my schemes better, because Frame For Murder would have been a sure shot on Viktoria of Blood, which would have closed the differential much better. The reason I didn't take it was because every time I take it against another player of ours he avoids killing her at all so it left a bad taste.

Needless to say it was pretty demoralizing for me, and unfortunately I let it affect my following game.

Round 3

Corner, Stake a Claim

Convict Labor, Hunting Party, Exhaust their Forces, Neutralize the Leader, Occupy Their Turf

So for my last game I was paired against Travis, another regular opponent and Malifaux genius. We played on the Arena mat. Unfortunately with Corner deployment I realized that no matter what cornern I ended up in I was extremely bottle-necked. As I deployed my models it sunk in even further as I could already tell this was not going to be a good game for me.

With Exhaust their Forces in the pool and Stake a Claim needing models in enemy halves I decided with Leveticus, although in hindsight I probably should have stuck with Viks. I chose Convict Labor and Exhaust Their Forces, which I realized recently that Flesh Constructs are actually really good at. I need to start forgetting about Convict Labor when it comes to Corner Deployment, I'm just too far to do the normal strategy I usually do.

I hadn't taken a lot of photos during the game, mostly because it was a terribly awful game and I was already worn down from my last defeat and let it get in my head. He used Asami and was much better equipped to be walking around in forests than I was. He managed to get Neutralize the Leader on turn two, and was getting Hunting Party every turn. I only got two points from Exhaust Their Forces and nothing else. It was bad. On top of that my flips were awful, and my control hand rarely saw anything above an 8 even after spending stones. It ended 10-2 and we were done with an hour left in the round!

I felt bad that I didn't give Travis a good game but in the end it bumped him up to second place so he probably wasn't complaining! Doug ended up winning (again, damn you!) and Karl took third.

Lesson's learned, really. I need to re-rack my brain on scheme selection and really approach every scheme as valid rather than sticking to the same ones repeatedly - not that I'm saying that there aren't any staples, just that I need to reevaluate how I approach them.

In the end it was fun but brutal on the psyche. Luckily the end of the year is approaching and the new Gaining Grounds packet should be out - it should be enough to revitalize my game and is definitely exciting. 

After the game we had Indian food for dinner and went back to Mike's for Board Game Night. We ended up playing Camel Up, which is a surprisingly fun game about gambling! We also played King of Tokyo which was cool too, and ended the night with Cash and Guns, a fun party game.

Blood Bowl WIP

So a few weeks back Guy, the owner of Montag's, commissioned me to paint a copy of Blood Bowl in exchange for a copy for myself (I may have done some coercing...). From the moment I saw the new Orks I knew I had to get my hands on a copy, and they looked like an absolute blast to paint. It took me a good four hours to assemble and cover up the bases - they have a slot to insert the ball, but it's not something Guy (or I) wanted. I finally was able to set aside some time on Sunday to start the painting process. I had to do an assembly line in order to get them done in a timely fashion, even though I hate assembly line painting.

The first foundation of Red is placed...

Guy wanted them to have the same paint scheme as they do on the box but gave me the freedom to paint in how I'd like within that range - a good thing, as my particular style doesn't match that of GW which is a rather cool one. I'd been brainstorming on how I wanted to approach the work and decided on using a technique I'd used in the past for red with a slight twist.

Over a black primer coat I sprayed Vallejo Gray highlights and color blocking. Because this "undercoating" process is used under a coat of red I had to go more overboard than usual to ensure that the red is readable in the end. Once the gray was done I used Vallejo Red Ink and sprayed several light coats over the gray. It starts off as a light pink at first but over time and several layers the red starts to show, and it is really rich. Unfortunately it looks a lot different under the light than it does in normal lighting conditions and is actually a lot darker than I'd like.

New! Now with Orange! (Also, it looks a lot more orange than it really is in this light)

I decided to add another layer of highlights with Vallejo Fiery Orange. I was worried about this step as I hadn't used orange to layer over red in quite a while on this scale and was afraid it wouldn't look good. Luckily it worked out, and it creates a really cool sheen on the armor while still reading as red. Had I took the more realistic route it would turn out much more of a pink tone, maybe less so with a Flesh Tone undercoat. I plan on knocking down the gloss finish with matte varnish tonight to see if I need to work more on it.

Up Close...

I really like the way they turned out, but I'm afraid that they are too dark and subtle to pop. I'm debating on pushing the contrast further, by shading with Burnt Umber and adding in another layer of Gray/Orange. I'm also debating on the skin tone, as I initially thought I wanted them to be more of a olive green rather than the yellow green that they traditionally are painted as. We'll see, but in the mean time I will continue to update my progress and get it done as soon as possible!