A Song of Ice and Paint, week 1 (2021 week 44)

This week we're starting a new theme and like the last couple, this one is also a big batch paint. This time we're looking at A Song of Fire and Ice miniatures like those featured in Week 41 of 2020. These come in packs of 12 or 13 depending on if they have a specific captain fig or not. I rather like these figs. They're made of nice hard plastic, have an appropriate amount of details, and aren't covered in straps. So for the next five weeks we embark on Yet Another Batch Paint(TM). I do wish they were slightly smaller in scale to match other figs in my collection.

These guys are Lannister Halberdiers and if I knew anything about Game of Thrones, I'd know what that means beyond, you know, having halberds. You'll note their color scheme isn't what you might expect: uniform. That's because I don't use them for wargames. I use them for RPGs where it's way more important to be able to tell them apart than it is for them to look good in a unit. That said, when you do line them up as a unit, they do still look pretty good. I can only guess why that is. 

It's also interesting to note that even though they're not a great paint job, they still look OK. I think this is  two parts owing to their design which is sparse and well separated and one part due to color choices on my part which is high contrast and shiny. I did the trim and standards and heraldry in an off white to make them stand out rather than the yellow ochre I might have preferred. This helps hide some of the lousy blends and fairly serious lack of contrast. Also of note is that the upper parts of them are mostly metal which hides my lack of shading. Overall, I think these guys work and were completed in roughly over an hour per figure.

2021 finished mini counter: 282/100

Wizkids-a-rama, week 4 (week 43)

This week will round out the rest of my Nolzur's and Pathfinder normal sized figs. I've got some dragons that'll show up here at some point but for now, I can rest easier that I never have to paint another normal sized figure from these lines unless I'm a dumb and buy more. I really hope I have good reason to when I inevitably do. Also note that I'm still fiddling with my photography settings and they're still not good.

We saw Minsc in the first week of this theme. This would be his blister-mate, Moon Elf Sorcerer who I assume is someone else from Baldur's Gate. In fact, I bought them for this fig since she was holding a fireball and I really wanted to do more OSL. Clearly, I didn't do any OSL on this fig but I did spend a lot of time picking out details on her outfit even if I punted and painted her cloak black. I think this works and I like the color scheme.

These two are Pathfinder Human Female Oracles and like our Moon Elf friend, I bought them to practice OSL and then failed to follow through with that. What do you want? It's a speed painting theme! The gal with the scythe is awful. I mean, steel breastplate, bare legs, scythe and open toed sandals is all kind of fantasy hot mess. I have no idea what they were thinking. The other gal I like despite all her bejangles and other gear and I spent way too long on her. I think these work OK too.

The gal is the other half of Female Human Wizard featured in week 24 next to a repeat of Aasimar Paladin featured in the same week. She's got a definite unlimited power thing going on which I failed to do any OSL with. I don't think her Harry Potter scarf things hit. He's got super cheap & easy black wings and armor in a suitably edgelord way played by Pro Acryl Transparent Black and nothing else. These are cheap and easy paint jobs that look good for the effort expended. I.e., not much.

These two don't look OK and I had a heck of a time painting them. They're Nolzur's Female Aasimar Wizards and they look way nicer in the renders than these figs turned out in actuality. There's way too much negative space on these and the spell effect on the ground made her legs almost impossible to paint. Seriously, folks, don't make figs like these, at least not if we can't paint them in subassemblies. Those spell effects are "hey, look at me green" on purpose to draw attention to the less well done parts of those paint jobs which is generally "the rest of it." You can tell which one's wings I spent actual time on.

This guy is a Nolzur's Weretiger and he arrived with the wererat a couple weeks ago. I like that he doesn't have a million details but I really think there was a better paint scheme in there. Probably his cloak should have been grey to pop out his orangey fur and probably his armor wanted to be a less orangey brown. The freehanded stripes don't particularly work but he's fine at arm's length. I learned on this fig that tiger patterning is harder in paint than in illustration.

We saw the non-winged versions of Nolzur's Female Aasimar Paladin and Fighter in week 1 of this theme and as I recall, I rather liked those figs. I rather liked these, too, and despite being a speed paint, I put more effort into them even if it doesn't really show. The paladin gave me a great opportunity to paint a nice face so that's where the bulk of the time went despite the fact that it didn't shoot well. I especially like how her wings turned out and I think I learned that I like painting wings. I think these came out well and they'll round out the last of the theme.

So there we go, 41 figs in four weeks (three calendar weeks in actuality) for a grand total of 48 painting hours. That's right around 70 minutes a fig which is right around where I wanted to land. In truth, the same time spent on generally better/easier-to-paint figs would have probably yielded a better result, but this is what I had so this is what I did. I'm not unhappy with this effort, but in retrospect, I shouldn't have bought most of these figs.

2021 finished mini counter: 269/100

Wizkids-a-rama, week 3 (week 42)

Week three of this theme and it's going...ok. On the whole, these aren't good figs and they are not easy to paint. I'm helped by the addition of a Redgrass wet palette. I own numerous wet palettes, many of which I made so you might be wondering why I not just bought one, but bought one of the spendiest of them available. My wet palettes all suffer from serious mold problems and nothing I've done has curbed this. The Redgrass claims to be mold-resistant so I'm putting it to the test. More on that later!

First up we have one half of Nolzur's Human Male Cleric, the other half of which is currently playing one of my player characters and featured way back in week 24. This fig is the epitome of Nolzur-ness. It has far too many details none of which make any damned sense. Across those too many details are a set of mold lines that resist mitigation. Beyond that, there's also hard to reach negative space and since these figs are primed in white, you can't just not paint it without looking really terrible. This guy was a mess and the only good thing I can say is that I don't have to paint him anymore. Oh, and I replaced the dumb thing on the end of his mace with a bead which looks much better even if it's on crooked.

These two are Pathfinder Female Half Elf Rangers. one of them looks like a preppy necromancer with a crossbow and the other looks like she belongs on Hoth. They contrast strangely in their completely different level of detail. One was extremely hard to paint, the other not so much. I think they work, but only just but I'm not entirely unhappy with this paint job. The photography, on the other hand, leaves much to be desired.

Next up we have Nolzur's Elf Male Druids and I don't like these figs. The renders look nice, but then again, they always look nice and I have no idea what that spell effect is on his hand, nor did I paint it particularly well. In this case I was helped by the detail on them and picking out the patterns in ochre helped hide some of the other sins. They're kind of big compared to the other figs in the line. Not sure what's up with that but it'd be really nice if it was consistent across the line.

These are Pathfinder Female Knights/Grey Maidens and they may win the trophy for "most straps." I'd hoped that all the armor would make it easy to hide mistakes with metallic paints but that turned out to not be the case. The sword gal had all kinds of badness on her cloak. It looks like it came out of the mold bad and they chose to send it down the line instead of pulling it for quality. I probably could have done more with that if I'd realized it was this bad (note: white primed figs make these kinds of issues really hard to see). I kind of like these figs and put extra time into them but kind of lost it after trying to put buckles on all the damned straps. They landed OK.

Next up we have Pathfinder Female Human Paladins who I mistook for Seelah and painted in her color scheme. Maybe that's what they intended. I can only guess, but I do have an official Seelah in one of the Bones kickstarters so I have to imagine there are licensing issues afoot. These might be good sculpts, I like the poses in particular, but they're let down by some properly messed up molding. Or priming. The priming is generally heavy on these which might be the problem. At any rate, the details ended up really soft in exactly the places they didn't want to be. I think the fleshtones turned out well but these have lousy negative space and I spent not nearly enough time blending their cloaks. If only I had the oils out. Next time, Seelah, next time. 

Last up we have the other half of Nolzur's Female Half Elf Monk which sounds an awful lot like I cut the fig in half but indeed, these come in packs of two. I bought this pack because of this gal's fireball and despite wanting to do a lot more pronounced OSL, I only did some. Normally when you do these you paint the dark half of the figure in, er, darkness, but I forgot to do that. So instead, I subdued the lighting effect from her fireball--yeah, that's it. I totally didn't half ass this at all. It's still OSL so it still counts! I also didn't realize how glossy the paint ended up until I shot it.

2021 finished mini counter: 259/100, OSL 3/5

Wizkids-a-rama, week 2 (week 41)

For this theme I'm trying to settle into a rhythm focusing on brush painting and slapping around paint as quick-like as I can but I can't say I've been successful thusfar. These are (supposedly) pre-primed so I don't have to worry about that. I spend some time shaving off mold lines and getting them on a magnetized base but we dispense with the zenithal and anti-zenithal this time around. Instead we're going with a shaded basecoat mainly comprised of Pro Acryl Transparents and following up with whatever paints will finish the job. Like last week, these aren't good paint jobs but they are fast and I'm trying to keep up two per day (around 1.5 hours per fig or so) to burn through them as quickly as I dare. Also note that I'm experimenting with my photography rig and I haven't quite dialed it in yet so these shots are lousy as usual.

First up we have Nolzur's Female Half-Orc Barbarians and Nolzur's Female Half-Orc Fighters. Despite being from Nolzur's, I think these aren't terrible. The barbarians in particular, I think are fairly good sculpts. Notably, these are from a later wave and I'd like to think they're learning. Some day in the unforseeable future, I might lift my embargo of Nolzur's figs. I could have put more effort into the barbarians' fur and I don't think that the bronze-whatever on their armor particularly works. I was experimenting with different recipes and I don't think any of them particularly landed. These turned out OK, and I wouldn't be embarrassed to put them on my table.

These are a pair of packs of Nolzur's Female Human Cleric because I am a dummy and have a miniature buying problem. I'm doing much better this year, tho. I do not like these figs. Their armor is kind of dumb. I don't like their crowns or bendy weapons or dumb spell effects, and because of all of this, I generally didn't spend much time on them. It's also interesting seeing them side by side just how much the same figs can vary in this line. Every mini poses some interesting unique problems, even if it's another crack at painting the same figure. For that, I'm glad, but these don't look good and I'm not particularly sad about it.

Last up we have the wererat as seen in Nolzur's Wererat and Weretiger (the tiger part of the duo will be seen later) and the other half of Nolzur's Elf Female Rogue, and the blister mate of last week's rogue. The wererat's pose is janky but he doesn't have too terribly many details and the details he does have are pretty soft. The only rough part are his eyes which are pretty danged indistinct. This gal's gluing gaps and other difficulties are way worse than last week's. Despite that I put in more time into this fig than it could really support. For my efforts, these two look bad, but they're painted and that counts for something, right? 

2021 finished mini counter: 249/100

Wizkids-a-rama, week 1 (week 40)

Welcome to the next theme hot on the heels of the highly successful Elffest 2021. During that fourfive week period we averaged one fig a day which is pretty danged good in my book and some of those paint jobs weren't terrible! For this next theme we have something a little different. Rather than being a grouping of figs by culture or thereabouts (Elves, Samurai, Lizardfolk, etc.) we have a grouping of figs by manufacturer, in this case, Wizkids. My increasing displeasure of the Nolzur's D&D line and Pathfinder equivalent has been well established and I just want to get them the heck out of my pile of potential. So for the next four weeks we're burning through them as quickly as I dare hoping to keep up the same kind of speed. So here we go.

First up we have Pathfinder Deep Cuts: Human Fighter. Had I realized these figs were so large, I probably wouldn't have bought them, though I do mostly like the sculpts. The molds, however, are typically lousy. There's a trend with larger figs to pack them with doodads and bejangles and strap and whatnot which carries through to 3d models, too. These were a torturous paint and I think my lack of persistence shows but they typify the best and worst of these lines. I did paint in a 5 o'clock shadow on these guys which, with the fancy metallic weapons takes focus away from the badness.

This is Minsc. I didn't even play that game and I know who Minsc is. He came with a gal who will undoubtedly grace these unhallowed pixels in a future week but for now we just have Minsc. He's from a middle-late wave and I think there's a pretty marked improvement. He has a reasonable amount of detail--enough to look good but not enough to be a pain. He was a reasonable paint and I think he turned out OK.

These two dudes are the wingless version of Nolzur's Aasimar Paladins one of whom showed up way back in week 24 and one of whom will show up later in this theme. They're not particularly complicated but I also didn't work particularly hard on them. I'm kind of put off by the sleazy politician sculpt of their faces and they have far too many straps. Most of these guys (the brown tones in particular) are a sole coat of Pro Acryl Transparent Brown which I think looks good enough as both leather and wood to not put a ton of additional effort into. This kind of trick serves me well in these kinds of batches and we'll see it a lot. 

These two are Nolzur's Female Half Elf Monk with a staff and Pathfinder Female Half Elf Rogue with daggers and I don't like either of them. The monk is neither a good sculpt nor a good fig and if I'm honest, I bought them for the other fig in the blister which is shooting an awesome fireball--stay tuned! The rogue has a nice pose and not awful armor but there's some significant part fit issues that really ruined my enjoyment of the painting. This is sadly also common in these kinds of figs. Any time there's a factory gluing, it's suspect. These were never going to support a proper paint job so they're the best color: painted.

These two are Pathfinder Human Female Fighters and I rather like the gal with the sword despite her bendy scabbard. The gal with the bow is not glued, sculpted, or molded particularly well and that kind of ruins it for me. She also has a really significant gluing issue on her head and cloak which looks really, really wrong. As an additional badness, her cloak has the typical difficult negative space underneath which I hate so much on these figs. I spent probably too long on these and only one of them looks OK. I did speed up over the course of the theme, so there's that. 

And ending on a high note, I rather like these two gals despite being Nolzur's figs. They are the wingless versions of Female Aasimar Paladin and Female Aasimar Fighter and no, I'm not sure which is which. They have nice poses, fairly good armor, and I can buy that these gals mean business. I mean, they're not half-turned around in a spine-snapping supermodel pose, nor are they waifishly thin and yet somehow ridiculously over-endowed. So naturally, I love them! The winged version will show up in a future week and hopefully those are just as nice!

2021 finished mini counter: 239/100