Monkey King - MSB Toys

[Jike Ichi]

Hi all,

maybe you have already seen this miniature in Webmonkey's latest contest "I loathe this miniautre". I wanted to give you all a quick summary of this entry.
First I don't actually loathe this miniature. I think it's a rather good miniature. More correctly the thing about this one is the "I lost this miniature", or at least I thought. When I was sorting my materials for base making I found the baggage with this miniature at the bottom. It came with 3 other miniatures, fitting to the famous chinese story "Journey to the West".
Sticking out of all ist the Monkey King of course. Finally I would paint this miniature after all these years!

My first attempt looked like this. Bad luck! The compressor of my airbrush didn't work properly and I ended up with a devastating version...This was done with an Harder & Steenback Eclipse!! Yeah...

 

[Jike Ichi]

Back to start it was.

Good thing was that I tried to imagine the finalized colours on miniature in my head and I didn't like the imaginative result. It wouldn't have been good. I planned to paint the trousers yellow, as the monkey king costume is traditionally in chinese opera. But brown monkey, yellow trousers, red stick...naah somehow it didn't work for me.

While thinking of a new idea. I read the story of "Journey to West" another time to get some inspiration and look into Chinese traditional culture. What stuck in my mind are the really astounishing chinese landscape paintings. Some of them I had seen on my travel trough China 2000. Hmm, actually the year I bought the miniature I think. A plan was born, why not combine one of these master paintings with the miniature.

For this idea I liked to use the painting: "Penglai Island" from Yuan Jiang (18th century). Looking at the painting I got the idea to make the lower mountains 3D to get more a more dynamic result. I made a fitting frame out of wood and the moutains are made from cork and hobby putty.

Here you can see the WIP pics

 

[Cyn]

I saw your Monkey King in the Gallery the other day and totally fell in love with it. It is absolutely lovely.

What scale is the mini?

I tried to find one myself, but it seems like it is hard to find nowadays :/

 

[Jike Ichi]

For a good hold on the back frame I put 3 thick pins into the cloud basing that came with the miniature. I then sculpted a bigger cloud around it (miliput) to hide the pins.

The next step doesn't exist....no fotos.....I tried a blue version....no...didn't work. And then I got ill, all work on stop.

Primed again, and this time I tried the new Scale75 green colours set I got in february. For the monkey king I was going for a black fur colour with yellow brown tips, to contrast with the background. Just one week was left to finish my entry!

Here you can see first version, eyes already painted. I think eyes are the most important part of a miniature. If you get them wrong all your other efforts are in vain. The human mind always looks in the face of another person in the first few seconds. If it's not looking correct an odd feeling keeps in your mind, no matter how perfect the rest is.
So i tried my best with the eyes on this one. Not sure I got it totally correct, but the expression on his face is okay. He has blue eyes, because I have blue eyes and my wife says that I'm like a monkey sometimes

 

[Jike Ichi]

.

I saw your Monkey King in the Gallery the other day and totally fell in love with it. It is absolutely lovely.

What scale is the mini?

I tried to find one myself, but it seems like it is hard to find nowadays :/

Thank you very much. It's about 4 cm tall. The base of the frame is 15cm long and I forgot the hight . Sadly it's true, not many Monkey King miniatures out there and the MSB Toys version is sold out for years.

 

[Jike Ichi]

After the skin and fur I painted the trousers with the green coulor set from Scale75. I love these colour sets. They are very high quality, put got their price too.
The stick got painted golden. Here you can see a nearly finished version of the miniature. I added some grizzly cock hackle feathers (I'm a fisher and tie my own flies) to the crown to fit the costumes you can see in chinese Opera. For a final gimmick I made a straw that he was chewing.

For final version I added some structure to the golden areas. Not sure it worked like I wanted it to, but time was short for entry.

Big thanks go to a friend of mine who helped me get good fotos for the entry and my archive. She worked nearly an hour and liked the miniature a lot. I got some critics too, my father most of all. He said I should be ashamed to not have painted a background myself. Somehow through, I should have. It wouldn't have been nearly as great as the one of master Yuan Jiang though.

The final version can be seen here: http://www.coolminiornot.com/375051

I think I'm quit happy about the result. Yes some parts could be better, but time was short. I like his face expression for example. I'm not happy about some of the frame construction and about some shading.

Thank you for reading! Ask me all about it I'm happy to give you info. Critics are always welcome too!

 

[HodRod]

Wow, this guy turned out great. I really like the fabric on his pants and the way you did his hair is prefect. Really great job. I got to get my hands on one of these.

 

[BloodFather of Kharnath]

Yep good job indeed. I like the feel of the mini, and painting came out good.

 

[freakinacage]

Brilliant!

 

[Jike Ichi]

Thank you all for the nice comments!

Any critics? Besides the painting level, as I know it's not perfect. What would you have done different?
I thought of maybe adding some tree branches coming in on the lower left corner (as painted by chinese artist, seen in point 7., on foto). But there was not enough time to do that.
Or maybe an other colour for the cloud would have been better?
I will not change this model, but your thoughts could help me improve for upcoming projects.

 

[Dragonsreach]

Criticisms, nope really, I got nothing!

I think it's a really good concept, carried out very well.
And if others find inspiration from this even better!