Zab's Damn it to hell! WIP

[Zab]

You have inspired me to start a WIP thread of my own. You know who you are - Damn you all to hell.:suspicious: I don't have time for this! What am I doing?! ~sigh ~ Here we go...

I am currently working on my DV boxed set and recently started to use my air brush from more than just priming and sealing. It rocks! Here's the basecoat and highlights on my chosen and helbrute which I decided to do as Night Lords...
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I also used silly putty to mask the armored areas of the helbrute while I did the skin/mutations, another first...
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Not too shabby. Lets jump to how they look now or this opening post will take forever...
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I am doing something different with these from my normal "finish one area at a time" thing. I am highlighting everything up to a REALLY stark highlight and then knocking them all back down with controlled glazes and shades so I can see the progress of the whole unit in shocking clarity or I will get bored and stop. This box set will be my last army. I don't play anymore and I just want to paint cool minis, so soon I'll be selling off the old armies and terrrain & buying more cabinets to display what I paint.

On that note! I entered a contest over at brush brothers and sisters (A German forum, BTW Google translate butchers that language in a horribly hilarious way. Pretty sure no one is having the same conversation over there with anyone else unless they are fluent in German) where you pick your favorite fairy tale and paint up a mini of it. So I, or rather, my daughter (The Agent of Chaos as I'll usually refer to her) picked the scene from Sleeping Beauty where the prince fights the dragon on that ledge...
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But I like to try new things to push my painting since I got bored with 40k (still my first love though) and I'm going to try doing it in a chibi-like style. Here's the rough layout so far...
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And of course I have to do a test mini to see what painting a chibi figure is like right? RIGHT?! Yeah, any excuse to buy a cool mini. So here is where I am at with Vendella from SDE...
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I'm also trying something new with this one. No pre made shades or glazes. I will use the colors from the basecoats and highlights mixed with darker colors and thinned. I'm also going to try my hand at some NMM gold since it feels more cartoony and will still look okay if I mess it up a bit with harsh blends in the chibi style.:tremble:

So that's it for now. Pretty decent intro post I think. I look forward to hearing from you all.

P.S. - Damn you all to hell. :curl-lip:

 

[Milosh]

excellent intro into your WIP and some nice stuff you are working on. I like the sleeping beauty scene a lot.

 

[kathrynloch]

lol! Great start, Zab! And welcome to WIP! hehe

 

[Zab]

Thanks! I'm no where near as good as a lot of you on here, but I want to get away from army painting and get back into fun stuff like the sleeping beauty scene and single minis to expand my painting skills. I have picked up so many valuable tricks just seeing other people's work that I felt it was time to start the thread of my own.

 

[moetle]

YAY ZAB! Your off to a great start, my friend. I'll be joining you in the SD chibi thing too, as SD Guts and SD cat girl just arrived today.

Looking foward to more

Moe

 

[Zab]

Thanks! That's cool, SDE are fun little minis. They are shockingly small! A few things as a heads up if you have never bought SDE minis before: They come pre-assembled and with a bunch of mold lines and a bit of super glue hazing.
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I had to get out the super glue uncuring stuff to take her apart so I could prep her properly. Also, get a new blade for your knife cause they are made of a weird soft plastic that is hard to sand and file. Once I was done cleaning Vendella I actually had to do a few thinned washes of liquid GS to even out some of the imperfections.
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Honestly, a real bee-atch to prep - still super fun to paint though!

 

[10 ball]

All good stuff
Loving the sleeping beauty dio (the little knight from Runic is a fav of mine) I would move the knight a bit closer to the dragon and decrease the overall base size.

 

[Canny]

My imagination is going crazy with the sleeping beauty scene, the Knight and Dragon look spot on, I do think the distance between the two on the cutting mat look better than on the card. I look forward to more posts.

 

[Zab]

Thanks guys! Yeah 10, Canny, I will probably scale down the cliff and move the two closer. I'm trying to decide if I want a bit of overhang from the base or to stay within the bounderies. I tend to start big with the foam and then trim it down to scale as I go since I'm not a great sculptor/carver. It's a bit more forgiving when I make a mistake that way

 

[KruleBear]

My imagination is going crazy with the sleeping beauty scene, the Knight and Dragon look spot on, I do think the distance between the two on the cutting mat look better than on the card. I look forward to more posts.

Agreed. The sleeping beauty translation will be fun to watch. Welcome to the wips.

 

[Chrispy]

I also recently got a Vandella and was thinking about doing her either in a Morrigan (Darkstalkers) or Carrera (Viper GTS) color scheme:

One thing I thought about is have you given thought to trying cell shading? That's where, like the pic about there are no gradations, just stark shadow and highlight areas. I had envisioned this for quickly painting Tau to gaming quality, but maybe it could use some refining. I was going to try and do my Vandella with water-soluble oil paints for smooth transitions, but I'm hoping they can get thin enough so the brushstrokes don't show up. I was surprised how small the fig is and how good the glue is on her head.

Well, looking good so far!

 

[Zab]

Yeah, I thought about cell shading too. It looks simple, but I think it would be really hard to recreate it on such a small 3D surface. I think it would have to be very exaggerated. That being said, I still might try it because it would be very striking. The one thing about it though is that I will have to pay very close attention to where the lights and shadows are and where the light is coming from. I wonder if it would still work if the scene was under lit like from the movie where it's light at the bottom, but dark and shadowy at the top? It would look menacing for sure that way...

 

[Chrispy]

It's actually a trope in most animes that the light from below is when the character is acting scared or menacing. Type "scared anime" into google image gives immediate cell shading examples with light from the bottom.

 

[Zab]

OKay, I got all excited and pretty much blazed through Vendella. SDE minis may be a pain to prep, but God they are fun to paint! First I prepped her display cube...
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I make a lot of these. I just buy wooden blocks from Michael's in various sizes and go to town staining and varnishing them. Anything from, tea to coffee, to food coloring, to paints, to tears from failed projects will work. When I seal I use either clear varnish or a spar varnish which can tint everything with an amber tone.
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Then I went to town on the insert part of her base. It's the bottom of one of the stone/dragonskull towers from the SDE game...
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Next I added some glowing algae type stuff...
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Then it was back to Vendella and her NMM gold...
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It's okay for my second NMM gold attempt ever. I think I would smooth the transitions with a few more mid tones and push almost to black at the highest points next time. Pretty good for a fun, cartoony little SDE mini though. NMM is challenging, but fun. I'll try it again soon.
Next I finished up her hair, wings and skin and added some daemonic dots to her thighs, shoulders and face...
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Eyes and a little flush to her cheeks to make her seem flirty...
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I put her together, mounted her on her base and added some very subtle OSL from the algae and she's done.
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The only thing I would change (other than my skill level and inability to take my time when excited) would be the water fx on the base. I don't think it needed it. F-YOU, HINDSIGHT! F-you. Not bad for a few quick nights work. Maybe 5-6 hours in total?
I may take some nice pics of her and toss them up for voting later today or tomorrow. She's not my best, but she's only a "for fun/learning/test mini". She's also only my second non 40K display mini so it's a milestone for me.

 

[KruleBear]

Very cute. Well done.

 

[Canny]

Im especially Impressed with the NMM head band, thats come up great. the eye is pretty fly too. I have to say I was looking at you gallery I think Im going to pick up afew Dark angels from ebay to paint, But before that I will have to paint my scribor mini which should arrive soon.

Hows the Sleeping Beauty scene coming along!?

 

[Zab]

Thanks Krule, I really like the chibi style mins now having painted one.

 

[Zab]

Thank you Canny. Some of the NNM did turn out nice, but it was mainly fluke I certainly could have taken more care with it. She is very tiny too (I have millions other excuses, but I should pace myself). I actually used a shot of Rainbowdash for reference for the eye.

My little pony is awesome for simple cartoon eyes! What?!

O_O

It is! Fine. I'll hand in my man card in the morning ~sigh~ Shoulda used Rarity...grumble, grumble...

 

[Chrispy]

Anime eyes defy reason in approaching them. They're very tough to get, and using Dashie was probably a good idea, unless you want to go insane redoing eyes.. And no, that's not the chief reason for my current state of un-sanity. Great job all around!

 

[Zab]

Thanks Chrispy, the whole anime style is subtle, but defined - or as I like to call it: Intimidating. As you can see I chickened out on the cell shading. I may lose my mind and just go for it on the contest entry without testing it first! Oh and Canny, I started to clean and prep the knight. God bless Runic miniatures :worship!: I spent more time looking for mold lines that didn't exist than actually cleaning the mini!!!! I just couldn't believe what I was seeing, I guess. What did you order from Scibor?! I love those minis and I have heard their casts are super clean too. I have my eye on a few of their busts...