Doc Zoff's WIP

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Originally Posted by gorb

Can we compromise and call her Tonya? Love the hairdo.
What in grud's name is that green thing poking out of Tonya's chest?
This build is great!

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Thanks Gorb! (and thanks BAM)

Tony (now pronounced Tonya but staying with original spelling to save having to replace passport, driving license, work ID card for the nursery he works in etc.) clearly ate something that didn't agree with him!
It's a nurgling kitbashed from the GW Putrid Blightkings kit, merged in using milliput. As soon as I saw it on the sprue I knew I wanted it emerging from Tony's chest, I hope to achieve a figure that looks all sugary cute at first glance, then creates a "WTF!?" double take when the viewer starts spotting all the sick and twisted details. I do have a worry that it might traumatise small children... but it's a very small worry that I can comfortably live with :)

I had a poke around and found a really nice image of the same nurgling emerging from a blightking below...

NOT MY WORK!!! NOT MY WORK!!! NOT MY WORK!!! NOT MY WORK!!! NOT MY WORK!!! NOT MY WORK!!!
http://www.unpluggedgamers.com/wp-co...6-1024x774.jpg

NOT MY WORK!!! NOT MY WORK!!! NOT MY WORK!!! NOT MY WORK!!! NOT MY WORK!!! NOT MY WORK!!!
Image copied from http://www.unpluggedgamers.com/2015/...d-blightkings/

The Painter 'Kingsley' has used a much lighter green and lighter flesh tones, which clearly works better than mine so in true plagiaristic respect I think I'll do likewise.
(Kingsley, I couldn't see how to contact you for permission to post this, should you spot this and take exception PM me and I will of course take it down).

My further thanks to Gorb for getting me motivated to tidy up Tony's Gurgling Nurgling. I was setting in for a CBA night (Can't Be Rzd), but instead made a bit more progress.

Attachment 72050
Usual curse re quality of late night photos, but you can hopefully see some improvement? The blended greens look pretty rough in the photo, but it is greatly magnified. I'll take a look in daylight nad decide if it needs further work. Also ran round blocking red into all flayed flesh areas, and lightened up the skull and bone.

Ah, a nurgling! Very nicely done.

Regarding posting other people's images: I think if you are worried about it, next time just post the link.
That way we can all just go there and see the original site if we want to, and no one complains :)

This seems oddly cathartic for you. Tony/Tonya seems more comfortable with him/herself.
Great work! Keep it up!

Loving it Doc! That nurgling is an awesome touch. Who would have guessed a tiny little demon like that would draw the model together so well. Totally fitting. Liking the color change on the legs too. Still think the green would have been cool looking by the time you finished, but i’m a green fanatic. As far as the gender identity stuff goes, seems like a touchy subject these days and more closely related to picking out pokemon than biology. Apparently there are now 112 different genders that popped up the last year so you’ve got some options there to consider.

I've been making slow progress of late, which is fairly typical for me when getting outside of my comfort zone. I thought I'd have a first try at nmm on the gold crown, the general consensus is that nnm isn't easy... but how hard can it actually be?!
Attachment 72271
... very hard, at least for me. I wasn't at all happy with this, but I've posted the photo in the hope that eventually I'll look back and see how much my nnm technique has improved. I think my main issue was that with no prior experinece I had no real idea of how to develop the effect so kept overlaying different colours with no real improvement.
I then thought put the model aside and do a visual mock-up using other nmm images as a reference, which after some very basic work gave me this...
Attachment 72272
I'm guessing this will look awful as a large image, but does show an improvement when zoomed down to actual size. Armed with this, I had another go which was only marginally better (didn't bother with another photo. I then read an excellent 'how to' by Automoton and had another go with metallics and colour glazes, I am far happier with this finish...
Attachment 72274
again it will probably look rough in close up photo, but looks okay on the actual figure. I hope I'll also look back at this photo and see how I've improved, but it's a matter of starting somewhere. I had to remove the impaled torso to get at the crown which has damaged the hair paintwork at the base of the horn (won't repaint until I've smothed the really rough CA residue, and I was also a bit bummed to notice that I'd blobbed the wing paintwork (managed to get the paint blob off but it took the finished paint coat with it. Both minor problems are ringd in the photo... darn it! The sash has been painted copper, I'm going to hit that with Nihilic Oxide washes/glazes to give it a weathered verdigris effect. I did this a few years back on some bronze cannons so hopefully this won't be so challenging. After this I've got to continue with the reptile skin legs, glaze/blend/drybrush the undersides of the wings (fix the damage at the same time) and then shade and highlight all of the pink skin (might be interesting, the pink is a rather bright base to work from). Once all this is done I'll have the freehand eyes to paint in. The eyes are going to be the 'make or break', but I may have a cunning plan involving cigarette papers... more details once I've had a chance to test it (possibly in the form of 'don't try this, it doesn't work!!'). Still a lot of work to do (the lizard skin is particularly labour intensive) but I'm starting to see light at the end of the tunnel. I also found a bit of driftwood tree bark recently which is suggesting a bare rock and lava style base.

First of all, props for trying something that you consider beyond your capability. For me, fear of failure is something that I have to push hard against.
Second, the final result on the crown looks pretty cool. Nice contrast and highlighting!

Thanks Gorb! After I finish Toni (we agreed on a gender neutral name in the latest councillor session) I'll have another crack at nmm using a pile of gash dwarf axes from the spares box, rationale being I won't get hung up about potentially messing up hours of work and can test different approaches and make side by side comparisons. I suspect the awful polythene molding of the crown didn't help today, with no hard edges to highlight and a requirement to conceal rather than emphasise the ( lack of) molded detail.

Looks awesome. So, are you going to stick to the cartoon/anime eyes, or are we going demon/junkie on 'em? I'm excited to see what you pull off with the rollin' papers.

Hi Dabeebs!
Turns out 'how to draw my little pony eyes' pulls back loads of search hits, I'm currently planning to use these as my design template
Attachment 72292
Got a couple of options with the rollin' papers (we called em skins in my day, does 'skinning up' still mean anything these days?), I'm trying the simpler option 1 first...

Option 1
- Place a skin over Toni's face and mark the centre points for the eyes
- holding centre mark skin to a monitor zoom the eyes template until they are the right distance apart to get the size of the eyes are roughly in proportion
- use a couple of post-it notes to tack the skin over the eyes image, the thin paper (Rizzla blue, but any will probably do) is thin enough to trace the image in pencil
- cut the paper so that each eye is on a narrow strip (much easier than trying to wrap the whole paper round the face in the next step)
- position one eye over the face with the pencilled side touching the face (the image is reversed so I used the right eye image on the left and vice versa, I could've retraced the image onto the other side to avoid reversing the image but couldn't be Rz'd)
- while holding the eye strip stationery pencil over the eye image (no need for care, rough scribbling works well
- the graphite on the paper should transfer to the mini giving guide lines for freehand painting
- position second eye, visually check that the eyea look level and evenly positioned on the face then pencil over the second eye
- swear because it looks like Picasso, (consider leaving the eyes obviously misaligned... but I think it would've jst looked like bad workmanship) use a soft rubber to rub the bad eye off of the mini then repeat (might need to go over the originsl linework in pencil again)
and this is the result...
Attachment 72293
Doesn't look great from front on, but should be enough to be able to recreate the original image (IF my freehand is good enough... and it's mighty rusty!).

This is as far as I've got right now, but if my freehand really lets me down I might paint back to pink and then try option 2...

Option 2:
Same steps as above up to having the paper tacked over the image on a monitor
- freehand paint the eyes onto the paper to finished quality including the whites of the eyes and some skin tone around edges, you want the image to be opaque to avoid skin tone showing through the finished eye. Applying several thin coats will help to create a file layer which will add stability later. A final coat of clear may also help. This is handy for dodgy freehand painters as you can keep trying until you've achieved two acceptable eyes
- with a sharp scalpel on a hard surface cut around the painted eyes (this is why you want pink around the edges so you don't have unpainted bits of paper)
- apply clear acrylic to the area on the mini where you want to add the first eye and be ready to do the next step before it dries
- lay the paper eye over the wet clear and hope that you either get the postion right or can drag the eye into position without damaging it (I haven't tried this with acrylics so can't predict the results)
- over a fairly flat surfaces the damp paper will hopefully have enough flexibilty to bed down smoothly onto the surface (an additional clear coat over the top may help)
- if you haven't already applied clear over the paper, do so to seal it paying particular attention to try to get the edges of the paper to feather down flat
- repeat with second eye paying attention to position, you'll have limited time to get it right before the clear start to dry
- tidy with freehand paint as required

DISCLAIMER
I've not tried this technique with acrylics, it's based on a car spray technique that I have used where the image is given enough coats that it forms a film when dry, after which the backing paper (normal paper rather than fag paper) is soaked with water and rubbed away leaving just the film image which is then placed over a clear wet sprayed car paint surface, and more coats of clear sprayed over the top. This works with car paint because the solvents in the wet paint remelts the film image forming a continuous paint surface, plus you can build further clear coats and then polish smooth. I assume that acrylics won't have the same solvent effect on dried coats hence my hope that fag paper is thin enough to do the same job. If you are going to try Option 2, do bear in mind that it's unverified, so definitely test it on a scrap piece first.

Post script to above...
I was using cellulose car spray on steel bike frames. Don't use it on miniatures, the same solvents are likely to melt you treasured figure into goo! (and any other types of painted surface, cellulose is just generally aggressive).

Despite personal trepidations, painting Toni's eyes freehand went better than I'd expected:
Attachment 72312

Attachment 72314

Attachment 72316

I'm generally happy with the eyes, and Toni's overall look, I've not really achieved the 'cute gone macabre and gruesome' look that I'd orginally anticipated (he's too cute looking to strike fear into the other little ponies) but the direction it's taken has been just as interesting. With completion of the eyes I think I've completed all of the unknowns now, so it should just be carrying on to completion now. The bark piece he's standing on suggests a black basalt and magma theme to me, so maybe I can still bring some gothic back into the piece.

This is super incredible -my reason being simple-I really had no idea what this end result was I had a small speculation it never led me to this. Now seeing it I was right all along that this demonic abhorration was something that scared during the process but disgusts me in a good way now that I see this . Incredible vision!!! Your sick. Your twisted.a perversion if all that is wholesome. I live it.

Hahahaha! Doc, you are a true visionary. Those eyes came out really well. Your hooves? Hoofuses? Came out superbly and look lifelike. Really digging the 2/5ths of a zombie on the horn too! I think the bark hits the mark for volcanic rock. Awesome stuff as always!

No Steph, you're the visionary!
I was thinking the torso keebab was just dead meat, possibly Toni's version of a packed lunch (good luck with eating that Toni... ooh yeah. no arms!) but you're right, the face does look quite animate. Methinks a bit of sculpting is in order for a pair of arms reaching out in true 'Shaun of the Dead' fashion... "Urrrgghhh!"

Or for more attitude here's one I did a few years back...
Attachment 72325
As always apologies for naff photo, stupid phone camera autofocus refused to select the figure until I put the plain background behind!! Dammit, if I could get a really clear shot of this guy he'd make a good CMON profile photo! This guy was painted as an experiment using just GW washes over a white basecoat, and was probably a significant step along the road towards learning how to use glazes.

Thanks BaM, '...abhorrent...disgusts...twisted... pervertion of all that is wholesome...' You're talking my language fella!

Hey doc, this super unicorn/pony/pegasus/demon/and manymore - hybrid is really a unique work.
Looking forward to see this further progressing.
Remembering an animation guy in one of the hotels, who was wishing the kids sweet dreams of a "rainbow pony with laser eyes"... I'd say you nailed now an image for that :-)

Nice freehanding those eyes. The whole figurine is turning out awesome. Unique too :)

A little redundant to point out, but that sure is unique! Points to you on the free hand of the eyes; I'm sure they were a little never wracking, but you pulled them off. I'm still intrigued to see where this goes, and the finish line seems to be getting closer with your posts.

Awesome work. Keep it coming!

Thanks for all the positive feedback everybody and apologies for lack of updates, but I've hit the dreaded 'modellers block' with Toni. I've been trying to motivate myself for days, and resisting the temptation to start something new, with the sum total of not doing anything at all and just getting increasingly frustrated and despondent. I finally decided that I need a change and have started construction of an Airfix 'classic' (in the true sense of the word... the molding dates back to the 1960s) 1:76 25 pdr field gun and tractor. I love the old Airfix millitary kits, partly for reasons of nostalgia, but also because the abysmal molding quality (by modern standards) presents a real construction challenge. Every single join needs to be tested, filed, checked, glued and then usually cleaned up after the glue has dried. Most 'flat' surfaces need to be filed and scraped until they actually do look flat, which also removes the lumps, bumps and blemishes that bear witness to the venerable age of the molds, a process that also restores sharp angles and corners. Roundness is a somewhat vague concept, and though wheels usually shape up reasonable well after flash, huge sprue attachment points and general mold wear have been cleaned up, gun barrels etc. are invariably oval requiring careful reshaping to get a convincing finish. Detail is usually basic and clumsy to the point where reference photos are needed just to work out what some parts are intended to represent, and how those parts need to be refined to give a true representation, plus scratch building of details that have been entirely ommitted from the kit. Panel lines are often raised rather than engraved so it's generally worth removing them and rescribing based on reference photos. And if a vehicle has any glazing you're going to have to scratch build and tidy the fit of windows yourself.

So yeah, real beasties to build, but it can be immensely satisfying to end up with a decent looking result despite all the challenges and failings that are implicit with a kit of this age.

I know millitary modelling is rather off-subject for CMoN so I won't post WIP updates for this build, however if anyone reading this has aspirations for taking the first steps towards sculpting, the clean-up skills you could develop from building (or wrestling with) an Airfix 'classic' are good practice for cleaning up your own cured milliput/polymer clay/resin/etc. sculpts.

I reckon 2-3 weeks for finishing this new project, after which I'm hoping I'll have found some Toni mojo.

Cheers!

I hope you and Toni can sort your differences out, it would be great to see it finished!

As for not posting military models, I certainly don't care. I'd love to see your work on the Airfix kit.
Is there another forum where you post stuff, maybe like Fine Scale Modeler? Which ironically has a space ork on its latest magazine edition...
http://www.finescale.com/