Skeletor

[finnpalm]

Hi everyone.

I have only recently gotten back to painting, and my first submission is not one I am especially proud of, being somewhat of a perfectionist and my own biggest critic.

Still, being a child of the 80s growing up with cartoons like He-Man and Masters of the Universe and such, I so wanted to share this with you:

If you want to vote and comment/critisize it you're very welcome, even though I'm aware of most of the shortcomings on this one. The original Hero Quest minis are dreadfully low quality as plastic were back in the days, but I've tried to make it look good anyway. Link here:

http://www.coolminiornot.com/295710

I whipped it together (that it turned out Skeletor was purely for my own pleasure) because I have promised to dust of my old Hero Quest game and run for two lady friends' daughters (age 8 and 9) and a couple of their friends as an introduction into the gaming hobby. As part of the project I am trying to learn how to speedpaint to get all the monsters done, and I'm also working hard to get back to my old form. I have looked up female versions of the hero-minis in the game, and I'm looking high and low for parts to complete missing stuff from the game. I think I have all the parts from the basic box now, except zombies, skeletons and mummies.

The female hero minis will be done with more care and time spent, and I will of course post them here for your scrutiny. Hopefully by then I will have gotten back at least some of the skill I had when I was younger.

I apologize for the lousy image quality. I have no idea how to take pictures of minis, but I have seen threads named such that I believe it's a matter that is thoroughly discussed on these forums, so I'm hoping to learn it.

Anyway, glad to be here and looking forward to your comments and my own development as a painter.

Cheers.

 

[finnpalm]

Looking around I see that many before me had the same idea. -_-' So much for my "unique idea".

Although where this:

http://www.coolminiornot.com/268046?browseid=7595224

much more detailed version of the mini comes from is beyond me. Were we treated with subpar minis in Sweden for some reason?

 

[shakes]

I'd bet without thought or pause that that is the same miniature, same sculpt, and same detail. It just looks so much different due to the illusion he has created with his highlights. As for cc on your's I like the start, it displays great brush control, very clean and controlled. That being said it is seriously lacking in depth. Get some highlights going and you'll find you can create all sorts of illusion to make the details pop out. It's also very glossy looking, would really benefit from a pass of dullcoat. Did you prime him before painting? He has a very plastic sheen to him that I've seen before when people don't prime.

p.s. I really like his horns, its a nice smooth, suttle blend.

Happy painting,

Shakes

 

[BPI]

I think it's just that NSA is a rather good painter

I think he looks fun, painted up one of the HQ Zombies myself the other year and he went quite well. Seems to be a few folk lurking about the Gallery who are HQ fans too, so be sure to upload any others that you paint.

Couple of pointers for Skeletor...

The silver ball on his helmet, try another couple of coats of thinned metal (Chainmail?), see if you can get it any smoother (don't work over wet paint, let each brushstroke dry). Then thin Badab Black glazed over the lower half of the globe. Deepen it a bit for the lowest quarter. Perhaps throw in a touch of Asurman Blue to suggest reflection from his clothing. Tiny highlight of Mithril Silver on the top. Old brush, as though you were going to drybrush, but just gently burnish the metallic flecks onto the top, it can help you achieve a nice smooth and bright final highlight.

Skull, just a tiny further highlight. Try a touch of Bleached Bone in with the basecoat colour and gently define the eye sockets, cheekbones and chin. Tiny bit of White in with the basecolour for the teeth, not the whole tooth to be painted, just a highlight!

Pale Blue, just throw a shade into his armpits, thinned Badab Black probably as easy as anything else.

Base. Overbrush with a mid-tone then drybrush with a light one. Then bung blobs of any old colours of wash over it. Orangy tones will help to set off the blue. It won't be massively different to what you've got but will look as though far more effort has gone in

You said you know which bits you aren't as happy with but hopefully the ideas above are all quick and simple enough to consider applying them. If not, hurry up and show us the next one :good:

Cheers, B.

 

[SkelettetS]

yay another one from gothenburg, cool! välkommen!

you should try highlighting skeletor more in the face (helmet&skull) a level or two, as it should be the focal point. still a nice piece, especially the horns. and i love the mini - i might also paint it sometime when im out of projects (like in 3-4 yrs.... sigh).

 

[finnpalm]

Thanks for the input. Several things you guys said are useful. Although maybe I should reveal what has actually been done to the mini:

The other skeletor-mini I linked above is definately more detailed. Take a look at the feet for example. Mine almost sinks into the base while the other has steel-toed boots. My mini is cast with the base as one piece. I suspect the other is not, but rather had to be mounted in the base. I should take a picture of some of the other minis from the Swedish version of the HQ box to show you the lack of detail compared to other minis.

The midnight blue colour is defect in some way and highly glossy. The whole mini has been triple coated with matte varnish.

There are two to three layers of highlights on both the light and dark blue areas.

The teeth are so shallow that I can't highlight it more than that. The only thing I can think of to give more contrast to the face is to fake the teeth.

The ball on the horns is painted with gunmetal and then highlighted with chainmail. Although I have not washed the lower part of it with black as suggested. I will do that tomorrow.

The mini is primed before painting with a grey basecoat (I prefer grey over black or white and always have).

For bleached bone on the face I agree it would make the skull look more like bone, but I highlighted it yellow-ish since Skeletor has a yellow skull rather than bone white. I would definately paint a regular skeleton bone white rather than yellow though.

And I never paint on wet paint.

None of the blue areas have been washed but rather highlighted a few times but after seeing the photo I went back to the mini to work more on the highlights but the contrast is there so I couldn't really figure out what to do. I have looked up a DIY instruction for a lightbox, which I will try to build and try to take a better picture to show you.

Either way I guess my approach to this one wasn't serious enough. I'll start work on the female heroes pretty soon though (they have to be done before april), and hopefully I'll have a light box by then and perhaps we can get some better founded feedback/critisism going. I can tell you guys sit on a lot of information that would be useful to me.

Best regards.

 

[supervike]

Either way I guess my approach to this one wasn't serious enough.

I don't think that seems to be an issue.

 

[finnpalm]

Well, the image is apparently of so poor quality (and from the few days I've hung around here I've learned that taking good pictures of your mini is important, and I can understand why) that people are mislead in their attempts at giving advice, which is solely my fault. And since I come here because I want advice.. But thanks, I think?

I'll probably just take that Skeletor off the board and wait until I have something worth critisizing. Meanwhile, I'll post two cowboys (Wargames Foundry) I made about ten years ago or so.

 

[finnpalm]

Ok, here I go. With comments. This to give you an idea of at what level I was as a painter before I had a leave of absence (basic gaming level I guess, no display). Again the pictures are taken with an iphone (gotta get a real camera..).

The first mini was badly cast and the leggings didn't have an egde on the left butt cheek, so basically (having no putty of any kind) I faked an edge on the transition from legging to jeans. That's probably the part about these two minis I'm the most proud of. xD Not happy with the wrinkles on the lower back of the vest, but I've got more patience nowadays. I am somewhat bothered by the low quality of the minis from Wargames Foundry, but if you want historical minis in that scale I don't know where else to turn to. Can one be a victim of poorly detailed and cast minis? Sounds like a sorry excuse to my ears, but I sure feel like it sometimes.

Second image - Factual error. I was thinking about Swedish lowland cattle (link) but the black patches are way too small, and that sort of cattle isn't shaggy like that. It obviously should have been buffalo instead.

Third image: His skin actually looks pretty nice and not as yellow as in the picture. More a tanned tone to it (dwarf flesh with chestnut wash and highlights of flesh, red and white, if I recall correctly). I didn't know about swamp tufts so I made my own from toothbrush bristles, lol. The colour didn't turn out right and it looks kinda toxic.

Fourth image: I clearly had no idea how to paint a glass bottle, so I improvised with light blue tones in the white. The front of the bottle says "EQU" with top of the T slightly visible above the thumb. I love little details like that even though I don't really know how to use that to my advantage yet. All the bases are done with glue and sugar, because I didn't have sand or any other basing material (in hindsight I should've taken a jar and gone out and gotten some sand I guess..)

I painted a svastika on the back of a Sturmgeschutz recently, in the 1/1000 scale to my friends' amusement (these images are from before the svastika. I'll see if I can get a picture of it, and before anyone asks I am not a nazi, and I don't glorify WW2. I was asked to paint the svastika and accepted it as a challenge, because I'm like that and wanted to see if I could do it. The Germans painted svastikas on the top of their tanks to keep their own air forces from bombing them.)
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/204/t34side.jpg/



(You may need to click the thumbnail and zoom in to see that it actually is a star.)










I stopped painting shortly before NMM spread to the wider audience (met that Jenny-girl from GW at a gaming convention and spoke to her about it and she showed me a few minis she was working on with that technique, shortly after I stopped painting altogether).

I have, since I stopped painting and picked it up again, learned to dilute my paints better (I also use different paints nowadays, but often what is at hand). I have a better idea of the sort of materials that are available (no custom swamp tufts now), but still these forums have been a gold mine of knowledge.

I still have a good sense of colours, but need to learn the paints I'm working with and how they blend. I need brushes, because right now I use some random brushes standing in a cup in our painting room (no idea who they belong to). Same goes for the vallejo paints (not mine).

I would like to get back to and past the level I used to be at. Sadly I have no good idea of how to do that, and that's why I'm here (hoping to get catapulted into a plethora of new techniques to try out and advice on what to start working on when it comes to the basic painting, because often I'm not satisfied, but I don't know how to fix it..).

Basically I know I've got an artistic talent (because I've been nagged about it by people who know about these things for most of my life), but I need to put the pieces together and use it to actually become good. Hoping you guys's advice and critisism will help me do that (if you think I've got a skewed self image please feel free to say so, because I'm trying to figure out how to approach this whole mini-painting business realistically).

And if you want to know how to glue sugar onto a base and paint it without it melting.. B)

 

[finnpalm]

yay another one from gothenburg, cool! välkommen!you should try highlighting skeletor more in the face (helmet&skull) a level or two, as it should be the focal point. still a nice piece, especially the horns. and i love the mini - i might also paint it sometime when im out of projects (like in 3-4 yrs.... sigh).

Being Swedish as well, can you confirm that the Swedish Hero Quest minis were indeed as badly detailed, or do I have it wrong?

This thread isn't really about my submission anymore. If a moderator wants to move it to a more suitable section of the forum, perhaps?

(Editing posts seem to screw them up royally. Image links disappear and formating goes out the window and all the text is just mashed into a block. What I'm trying to say is "sorry for the double post")

 

[10 ball]

oooooo, I like the itsy bitsy tiny tank, very cool

 

[supervike]

Well, the image is apparently of so poor quality (and from the few days I've hung around here I've learned that taking good pictures of your mini is important, and I can understand why) that people are mislead in their attempts at giving advice, which is solely my fault. And since I come here because I want advice.. But thanks, I think?

I'll probably just take that Skeletor off the board and wait until I have something worth critisizing. Meanwhile, I'll post two cowboys (Wargames Foundry) I made about ten years ago or so.

I'll have to honestly say, I feel you are putting way too much thought into it. Post up what you have, let the criticism fall where it may. If you feel the photos aren't up to snuff, try something else the next time. But, by all means, I'd discourage you from removing a pic. Simply because I feel it's all part of the progress. As you improve, or make changes, there will be a visual example of how you've grown.

My comment above about you taking it 'seriously' was my way of gently saying, maybe TOO seriously. You stated you are a prefectionist, but don't see flaws as failures, see them as opportunities.

Onto your Cowboys. Both are very nice for 'tabletop gaming standard'. Clean look, yet still a bit 'gritty' like a Cowboy should be. Love the Cow pattern Chaps. The bases look solid, and overall I'd give them a 6-7. (i tend to be a higher voter than most of the community).

To move these up to a higher level (not that you'd need to), I'd suggest deeper contrast, and more highlighting at the focal point of the mini (most often the face).

Keep it up!!

 

[finnpalm]

I'll have to honestly say, I feel you are putting way too much thought into it. Post up what you have, let the criticism fall where it may. If you feel the photos aren't up to snuff, try something else the next time. But, by all means, I'd discourage you from removing a pic. Simply because I feel it's all part of the progress. As you improve, or make changes, there will be a visual example of how you've grown.

I'm not removing it from this thread. Just from the voting thingamajig, since it's not really "done" per se.

Yes I think a lot. In my opinion there is no such thing as thinking too much, as long as you don't let your thoughts take control and you suddenly accept a spin off branch of thoughts as truth, or even likely to be true. I'm analytic by nature, and have gotten very good at it through the years. Coupled with good self-awareness (for good and bad) it means I know my limits very well, and my lackings but also my skills. That in turn helps me push my limits in the right direction to develop myself as a person. I may sound like I'm talking back at the critics in this thread, but that's not really the case. I listen to every word, but since I am painfully aware of myself I can disregard misdirected critisism and absorb and consider the rest.

Another thing about me is that I used to be able to paint a mini forever (figuratively speaking obviously) since I am somewhat of a perfectionist. I've worked hard through the years to actually be able to put something down and say "good enough" and walk away from it. The Skeletor-piece was one such mini. It's a plastic mini of low detail and sure I could "fake it" like I've done before, but I had other minis to do so I didn't want to spend too long with it. It was just a funny side track, while doing all the parts for my Hero Quest. Now all the critisism had me fall back into my old habit somewhat, and tonight which I was going to spend painting other stuff was instead spent trying to work some more on Skeletor. Those who gave me feedback shouldn't feel bad about this though. I enjoyed every minute of it.

I tried to take new pictures of the mini covering the lamps up with t-shirts and white paper but it wouldn't work out. I really need to get that light box thing going.

Anyway, here's a few more pics of Skeletor. See if you think it's improved from the first pic. This is however the last work I do on it. I need to get going on minis that are worth spending time on. ;P First two attempts at new pics of the original paint.

And here's what he looked like after I put on four to five more layers of highlight and some shading.

As you can see I followed the advice to make the base orange-ish (three tones of brown and orange blended). I agree it did a lot. The base was grey originally because all the other minis in the box have grey bases as I'm trying to finish them quickly and didn't want to do anything too complicated.

I shaded the horn-ball on the lower half with blue and black.

Didn't dare use black wash in the armpits so instead I tried blending a darker blue and painted contours of the muscles where they were detailed and made them up in places they weren't (I've studied anatomy and physiology so I'm not completely lost there). Not all satisfied with how it turned out however.

I took a bleached bone colour and painted each tooth separately where they were there, and faked teeth where they should be but wasn't (just like the edge on the leggings/jeans transition on the cowboy, while the area is just completely flat in reality) the rest of his face and a small highlight on both the skulls on his chest and belt.

All the blue areas are highlighted with a few more layers.

It was fun, but I'm not satisfied. I'd like to think that I can do better, and I think perhaps I was rushing some of it tonight (his right shoulder didn't turn out well, so I'm not showing you it and the different shades are clearly visible ) and didn't give it all that. As you can probably tell I like creating optical illusions, and when I highlight my miniatures I seldom use sharp contrasts to enhance detail. My goal is always to paint it so that you get a feeling of detail, but you can't tell that it's been faked or the details enhanced with highlighting (is this generally a bad thing in the minipainting hobby? should the source of the contrast be obvious?). I also hate it when you can see the transition between different layers of highlighting. If I don't have seamless transitions I could've just as well take a huge brush and drybrush the whole mini. I also really want to try out that NMM techniques I see people use. Looks difficult but I want to try and learn it. So yeah, I have high standards that are hard for me to live up to as I'm not that skilled (although some days I ace it, but I'm not consistent).

My comment above about you taking it 'seriously' was my way of gently saying, maybe TOO seriously. You stated you are a prefectionist, but don't see flaws as failures, see them as opportunities.

Onto your Cowboys. Both are very nice for 'tabletop gaming standard'. Clean look, yet still a bit 'gritty' like a Cowboy should be. Love the Cow pattern Chaps. The bases look solid, and overall I'd give them a 6-7. (i tend to be a higher voter than most of the community).

To move these up to a higher level (not that you'd need to), I'd suggest deeper contrast, and more highlighting at the focal point of the mini (most often the face).

I'm shielding the light in these two pictures so it's indirect to avoid reflections. Do you still think it's too little contrast?

Keep it up!!

Oh you bet I will. Keep commenting.

Finally a picture of some chaos warriors from the Swedish Hero Quest box to show you the lack of detail on them and how they're cast with the base in one piece (Citadel designed them, but I have this feeling that we actually got some simpler minis here in Sweden because I have never seen minis that badly detailed anywhere else. Sure, badly cast and skewed, but not that badly detailed). Note that the right mini has only a first, thin layer of basecoat. The left mini has two layers. Take a look on the skull on the circular plate on the mini's right side of the chest. Yes it's supposed to be a skull. All edges and seams on the minis have been filed down and trimmed away.

ps. I forgot to take a picture of the svastika on the Sturmgeschutz (by the way is it allowed to post such images on these forums?). I'll try to remember tomorrow, and I'm starting to think perhaps I can use that to make some what I see that you call "freehand" on miniatures in the future. The female wizard has a nice dress that is all flat and just waiting for some detail. I'm thinking perhaps I can make it go from white on the top and fade over to a dark blue by the bottom and paint white stars on the blue..

 

[SkelettetS]

Being Swedish as well, can you confirm that the Swedish Hero Quest minis were indeed as badly detailed, or do I have it wrong?

yeah i have the HeroQuest game too, or at least the minis. the box and content is more or less demolished beyond recognition. i honestly dont think they are that bad (with a few exceptions), but then again it might have something to do with nostalgia heh...

 

[finnpalm]

yeah i have the HeroQuest game too, or at least the minis. the box and content is more or less demolished beyond recognition. i honestly dont think they are that bad (with a few exceptions), but then again it might have something to do with nostalgia heh...

Well, I must have gotten a bad specimen then. My minis from the box are mostly just flat in places and you either need to resculpt them with a scalpel or file or paint details where there are none, and that's just for basic detail like lining of clothes and such. The goblins often have the surface of the base covering most of their foot so it looks like they're hobbling around on a stump. No matter.

Onwards.

I hope to soon have more professional pictures of better painted minis to show you. Looking forward to that. Best regards.

(egads someone please fix the buggy post editing so it doesn't mash your post together into a block of text unless you specifically retype all carriage returns with each edit.)

 

[SkelettetS]

nah, youre probably right, havent looked at them for some time. still thing some of them are pretty cool though

 

[finnpalm]

nah, youre probably right, havent looked at them for some time. still thing some of them are pretty cool though

Indeed, some funny monsters, like the Fimir for example. I learned just the other day, as I was painting them and commented on what a strange monster they are, as a friend quickly googled it and found the history of Fimirs in the Warhammer Universe, and how they were concieved as a monster and the celtic Fomorians they're inspired by, and theories on why they were removed (their females are sterile so they reproduce by capturing fertile human women and raping them. I guess they really thought things through when they decided to aim for a younger clientele).

Also there is a Gargoyle in the game, but I've lost the batwings that are to be mounted on the back, so I'm gonna use a pair of eagle wings instead. Guessing it will turn out like some cross between Khorne and Tzentch. Considering trying to create a surface like cracked stone, but I have no idea if I'll be able to pull it off. We'll see. Like you say, a lot of interesting monsters to paint. If only they had been metal. :/

 

[finnpalm]

As promised, here is the Sturmgeschutz:

 

[supervike]

That is the very definition of tiny!! Well done.

 

[finnpalm]

That is the very definition of tiny!! Well done.

Thanks. Hopefully I can utilize that talent in some way when painting larger minis. I've never really done any "freehanding" as you call it, so I look forward to try it out. Probably won't nail it the first few times but it needs to be tried out.