Crystal Brush Winners are Up

Ok, for those of you who haven't been following, the Crystal Brush was Coolminiornot's idea for creating the most competitive miniatures painting contest in the world. They started out by offering huge prize money for the winner ($10,000) and got some outstanding entries for the effort.

This year, they've been offering prizes around the world to the winners of various prestigious painting competitions passage to Adepticon.

It follows that the winners this year have produced some of the best miniatures that any of us have ever seen.

Congratulations to Jose Manuel Palomares Nunez. GEA really is a worthy champion.

Privateer Press shows off first Gargantuan

So, we've seen a few of the Colossals for Warmachine so far, but this is the first one we've seen for Hordes.

I don't know that there's a whole lot that needs to be said about him:

About freehand murals and insignias

A few times, I have been asked to share my methods for painting the more detailed freehand coat of arms and murals.

The first thing to do in every instance is to break the shape you want down into basic shapes- the ones you learned about in elementary school (like circles, ovals, rectangles, triangles etc).

For example, a skull can be created out of a semi-circle on top, with circles for eyes and a squat trapazoid where the teeth attach.



You can actually break up pretty much any image into these kinds of shapes. It is sometimes best to use references at this stage. For example, when I first started painting lions, I actually took a good long look at the Lionhead Studios' lion to figure out how to create my freehand:



So, after you have a basic idea of the shapes that make up your freehand, paint on an outline in your darkest colors. Shading on a flat surface is a lot more difficult than simply highlighting up, so I always start freehand with some of the darker colors.



Highlighting is an odd process here. Basically, I fall back onto what I know of miniatures, and imagine where I would highlight the insignia if it were a three dimensional mini. For example, on a face, I would highlight up to the brow, cheekbones, and leave darkened areas in places like below the lips.



I tend to work with one color at a time, and then move onto the next one by starting over with basic shapes again. For example, I first painted the outline of these characters, then painted each color separately, adding details like teeth and eyes after the rest of the faces were completed:



One last note- depending on the look you are going for, it is often best to go back in and add dark lining to the freehand that you've finished. Dark lines help different areas pop- especially from a distance. From my examples, you will notice that I often add lining in this way, but not always. Just be aware that lines that are very dark can add a sort of cartoony/comic book look to a miniature.



It is often good to fall back on some basic freehand designs that you may have used in the past. I use the same methods for jewels, flames, lightning, or starscapes as part of complex murals as I do when I'm painting them as simpler effects. I've even used quite a bit of Object Source Lighting techniques to add some zest to the freehand.

That's pretty much it. Like all techniques, the more you push yourself to stretch, the better you'll get at it.

Some more Puppet Wars minis

Here is another set of Puppet Wars minis from a project I finished a little while ago.

I still love these little minis. They're very small, and have some impressive details on them, but it is also nice to see the sort of parody of Malifaux characters being played out.

For painting them, I feel that it is necessary to try and play up the parody by using colors that evoke the 'standard' studio versions of the characters.

Easter Gremlins from Wyrd

Ok, the guys over at Wyrd miniatures have been smoking something strong this time, and what they've come up with is some special minis just in time for Easter:





It turns out that Easter minis can be pretty awesome. And why let Scibor have all the fun?

Cake Toppers that go together

Here's one of the latest cake toppers that I've created. This set is meant to go on different levels of a tiered cake, hence the bride and groom are looking down (and aiming) at the zombies.

Privateer Press posts first colossal 360

Privateer Press has just posted the first 360 for one of their Colossals, along with their gallery photo and the price they're projecting for it.



I'm a little surprised to see that a colossal comes with some little mechanikal solos. I suspect that they'll arc lightning back and forth to the stormwall.

The price is now known at $134.99. That's higher than anything I've seen from Privateer Press, but the mini is larger than anything they've released also, and as far as giant resin minis go, you could do worse for the money.

Also, they've given us a comparison photo for scale.

Caverns of Roxor

Ok, my last two posts were Super Dungeon related, so I kind of thought that maybe I should write about something else.

Then, Sodapop unveiled their SDE expansion at GAMA.

Well, we don't actually know what any of this means (all we have is photos of the boxes, and the minis they were showing off at Gencon last year). But it looks like they're going to have boosters in addition to large boxed expansions. And I'd definitely like to try a game with multiple Dragon Clutches.

Four small boxes and one large one. The box you can only half see in the picture can be seen in another blurrier photo too:

Fur Effect

A fur effect essentially means adding texture to a flat surface. There are plenty of minis of animals that use non-textured surfaces to depict areas where fur or hair would be short (horses, for example). Adding texture to these surfaces can make a mini quite a bit more dynamic. For example:



To attain this effect, I used a sort of basic base-shade-highlight approach, only all of the areas of shading/highlighting were invented as I went.

I started out with a medium brown (P3 Idrian Flesh which I tinted slightly toward purple in order to make the brown seem brighter). Then drew short lines of fur onto him with a thin brush in a much darker brown color (something like P3 Umbral Umber or Battlefield Brown). This is your shading layer, so while you are adding in these dark lines, make sure to also put this color into the areas you'e like shaded on the finished mini.

When drawing these lines, follow the musculature of the mini. Super Dungeon minis don't have as detailed musculature as some other lines, but here you can see that the lines follow the muscles on his arms. More over, there are places on the mini that suggest tufts of fur (on his arms and beard, for example).

After that, it is time to highlight up. This is done using the same short line method, but now you should be using a lighter color. For this mini, I used the base color, then did several layers adding in more and more of a yellow-white to the mix (combined with the purple, this helps the brown seem brighter).

As you add more layers, treat this like most highlighting. Cover a smaller area with each pass, and highlight towards raised areas. The biggest difference here is that rather than blending the layers together, you are simply adding short lines as you go. The last pass, I actually just went around the face and hit the highest raised areas.

That's about it. As I use this technique more, I'll come back and update this write up with new insights.

Angry Bear! (it must be exclaimed)

Ok, I knew I had to get a copy of Super Dungeon Explore when I saw the Angry Bear mini.

One thing about Super Dungeon Explore minis is that they're not as detailed as many lines. It is actually kind of like having a blank pallet in front of me, and I could do anything I want with it.

So, I decided to add quite a bit of detail myself. The most obvious is the fur- I used a technique that used to be popular on Rackam's Wolfen.

But also, I added details to emphasize his anger. The gums showing, and red beneath the eyes were things that I felt brought out something in this mini that I hadn't seen in other paintjobs of him.

So, I guess the moral of the story is that it is a lot of fun to paint outside the lines, and it becomes easier to do when there aren't all that many lines to start out with.



And he might spend a little part of the game as a druid:

Brass Scorpion with as much freehand as I could fit

Here's a Brass Scorpion that I did for a commission a little while ago. I really enjoyed doing all kinds of crazy freehand and filling those panels. Filling them with grotesque images that would please Khorne was really quite a bit of fun, and worked well with the theme that the mini already has going for it.

Anyway, here he is, with a slew of detail shots.

Mud Splatter

An important part of making your miniatures look unique is to apply wear and tear. With a lot of minis, this includes things like battle damage scratches and such.

With some minis, especially tanks, I find there is a lot of depth that can be added by simply adding a little mud splattering.

Here is an example of a very mud splattered tank:



The mud splattering on the sides was created in a few steps. First, I watered down a medium and dark brown paint, and applied it like a wash to the lower portions on the tank.

When that was finished, I took the same paints and and old brush. I filled the brush with some slightly watered down paint and held it next to the mini while gently blowing through the brush onto the mini. This splatter application works quite well for blood also, and I find that the randomness of it helps out a great deal with the finished product.

One other thing to note on this tank is that the treads are painted in browns. These are the same brown paints that I used for the splatter patterns, and help unify the mini's context.

Another thing I think I should bring up is if you are using mud splattering in conjunction with a base, you should use the same colors on the base as you use with the mud:



A base helps add context to any mini, and when you are adding mud to the lower portions of a mini, it is important that the base suggests everything else you've done with the mini. In this instance, I created a base of thick mud for this tank to be crossing, and used the same colors on the base, tracks and splatter.

Loads of new Wedding Cake Toppers

For those of you who follow this blog, you'll know about the geek wedding cake toppers that I make.

You'll also know that most of them heavily feature zombies and couples fighting off the horde.

Well, it has been a while since I've had some to post up here, so here are quite a few different couples:

This first one wanted to be the zombies themselves- so we have something a little different going on here.





This set had a few specific ideas in mind- especially the smirk on the groom, and matching the weapon to the brides own guitar.



These next two were similar in some ways, but the choice of weapons were drastically different. I'm honestly wondering if I'd prefer the shotgun over the M-4 assault rifle myself.  Also, it probably is easier to fight off the horde in ABUs rather than a tux.





Of course, it is hard not to think that the ideal weapon choice was discovered by this groom.

Reaver Lords coming soon

Reaver Lords is a miniatures company that is just getting started. At the time of this writing, I believe they only have a facebook page for an online presence.

However, they have previewed their first miniature: the Shadow Prince. And I've got to say, if they keep this quality up, they really have a winner:

Wyrd Puppets

Well, normally I would post up some of these minis in groups, rather than having a single shot for each one.

But Janci couldn't resist getting a single shot for each and every puppet that I painted. So this is a more pic heavy post than I normally put up here.

So, here is a set of minis from Wyrd's Puppet Wars game.  Players of Malifaux will recognize Zoraida's voodoo doll versions of their favorite characters.