Help needed with Empire Balthasar Gelt (updated 4th Sep 08)

[darkstudios]

I am hoping you guys can help me improve this model greatly as at the moment he\'s looking pretty bad, I painted him a few months ago and just can\'t seem to get him to look good.

Please help me out with some suggestions how to improve or repaint this model.

here\'s the current mess:

 

[freakinacage]

he looks ok generally, i would suggest bigger pics for a better criticism

 

[darkstudios]

as requested here is a much bigger pic, hope its not too big ??

This mini was previously rated on this site as 5.9 and I would ideally like to get it up to at least a 7-8 but as previously mentioned I have no idea how to improve it.

 

[DIablofollower]

Well here is what I would suggest. First off base the horse with a gray color instead of a blue and then build up to white with some of the gray showing through as the darkest highlights. The red is looking good although I would give it a couple of more high lights. As far as the silver metallics go, I think it may be a bit over the top with so much black ink. Tone that down a bit and give it sharper high lights with a lighter silver, especially on whatever that is under the reigns it looks a bit flat. Over all I would just suggest sharper high lights on the whole model as well. All in all though it\'s a decent paint job. Nice and neat. The base is looking good.

 

[darkstudios]

Thanks for the advice DIablofollower, I will try to improve him as you have suggested.

You said you like the base but I was actually thinking of changing it to some sort of rocky ledge, do you think I should keep this one or change it ???

 

[freakinacage]

Originally posted by DIablofollower
Well here is what I would suggest. First off base the horse with a gray color instead of a blue and then build up to white with some of the gray showing through as the darkest highlights. The red is looking good although I would give it a couple of more high lights. As far as the silver metallics go, I think it may be a bit over the top with so much black ink. Tone that down a bit and give it sharper high lights with a lighter silver, especially on whatever that is under the reigns it looks a bit flat. Over all I would just suggest sharper high lights on the whole model as well. All in all though it\'s a decent paint job. Nice and neat. The base is looking good.

aye what he said. although i disagree about the metallics. i would add more shading to eh stuff around the horses neck.

i think a rocky base may be simpler and easier to pull off

also, thin your paints more. this way you can build up the highlight more slowly and therefore more smoothly

 

[DIablofollower]

I agree with freakinacage, the rocky base would look better and is easier to pull off and watering your paints down will help with an overall smoother look.

 

[darkstudios]

I finally got around to updating this guy, in the end I decided to get rid of the water base and went for a rocky ledge instead.

Let me know what you think of him.

 

[DIablofollower]

That definitely looks a lot better. The base is awesome, and the horse, although at first doesn\'t look as smooth as it should, looks very nice. The roughness only adds to it\'s realism. Great work.

 

[War Griffon]

Now that really is a transformation and quite astounding from the first set of photos to what you have now.

I still don\'t like what you have done with his mask it just doesn\'t look right the silver that has been put around the eye and mouth slits almost make it look comical. I think I would try by painting the whole mask a dark metalic colour and then blending up by adding silver to the mix at each stage so that the final highlights don\'t look so sharp. DOn\'t forget to wash with a brown to tone down if it gets too bright though

Love the base much better than the stream version

 

[darkstudios]

thanks for the nice comments guys :beer: