Asking for feedback on first completed mini.

Webmonkey

New member
As always,.. the first thing I'll address is the photo itself. The photo can make or break the mini,.. regardless of how well it may be painted. You can visit the photography thread for a more in depth discussion of the finer points of taking pictures. But a few things to do that will help a lot,..

1) Use the macro function on your camera

2) Set your ISO as low as it can go (usually around 100 or so)

3) If your camera has a separate aperture (or sometimes called an "F-stop") set it to somewhere around 16. You may need to go up or down a click or two, but it's a good place to start.

4) Use a backdrop. It helps to keep the camera from trying to focus on background items.

5) Turn off any flash, and use a couple of lamps to light the model from either side and a bit in front. (this can help to minimize shadows)

You don't have to know what all these functions do,. but if you adjust your settings as I've layed out, it'll help a lot, especially with your "depth of field" issues.

Also, as a side note, download some photo editing software (I suggest GIMP, as it does almost everything and is totally free). Then you can do some basic color corrections before you post the photos.

Hope this helped.
 

MrJim

New member
Looks really dark. As noted above, it is hard to tell how much of it is the painting and how much is the photography. Possibly a combination of both that is making it look too dark.
 

evl hmr

New member
The figure is dark, as stated above, try and brighten the picture more. Also, the blade chain blade looks unfinished. Maybe try bringing the silver back into the metal work more. The 'hair' on the head needs some brighter highlights to show what it is, the face mask is just hidden as every piece of the armour is the same, bring more contrast to the face. Good start, but you need to refine him now.
 

Wyrmypops

New member
It's far and away better than most peoples first mini. As ObiWan said "you've taken your first steps into a much larger world."

Ignore any of this if it's likely a problem of photography, but here goes.

There's a good holistic vibe to it. All seems to compliment each other. Except, the pink part on the hair stands out as being of a heavily saturated colour where the rest are more muted. The rest has a similar amount of darkness and medium tones. A bit of an absence of light tones though, may want to look up various techniques that handle "highlighting". "Layering" would be my go to process to serve well on clean minis sporting small areas, like Eldar. Highlights will add to the sense of depth started by the dark and medium tones, and also define areas against others.
Couple of examples; on the thigh there's small armoured plates, a highlight on those would have them stand out against the darker material beneath. Or those bands of orange on the skins and helmet, the dark shades are in recesses and medium tones are sat there too, but lighter highlight along the edges would make them more crisp and defined.
A note about the shading though, try to use the brush to lead the washes into the recesses rather than let them settle evenly. While it's still wet it's often useful, especially on flat areas like armour, to clean the brush and take some of the wash off the upper area, and wiggle the brush around a bit to break up the "edge" of the wash, else you can get dark lines at the edge from it pooling.

There's a bit of mess here and there. Green that has made it onto the orange areas. You could repair it if it bothers you. That occurrence goes away in time anyway, with experience and brush control. You'll grow more comfortable with how to wiggle that brush, how much paint to load depending on the thickness you're using, when to use the fine tip or the edge, what order should the parts be painted in. All things that largely depend on you, rather than as absolutes every painter has to adhere to.

Colour choice can be an odd thing. There's whole articles on colour theory that help inform the decision making process. Colours that are adjacent to each other on the colour wheel work differently to colour opposing each other. Can reach that point through practice anyway though, lots of trial and error. Like the green and orange, it works, whereas the sword being purple, it doesn't really. It stands out, isn't echoed anywhere else on the mini, but the hilt still being gold stops it looking wholly separate as could be appropriate for some kind of famous artefact.

I don't know your temperament. I currently get overwhelmed by too much new stuff at once, and if you do it might be wise to just try one new technique at a time. If you're fine with lots of tabs open with different info in each one on a variety of techniques then you could be well served by scrolling through the articles section of this site, or pulling up the sticky thread in the painting forum. So much info. Quite exciting really.
 
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