Kitty-a-thon 2023, week 4 (2023 week 13)

Kitty-a-thon 2023 continues with three lovelies and one big bruiser. 

The gal on the left is Cursed Sands Lionness from Titan Forge. I've bemoaned the paucity of lion figures in the past and female leonin figures are even more rare for reasons I cannot fathom. This sculpt has some not fun negative space and I wrestled a lot with my color choices. I don't think her linen-colored details sell particularly well and the yellow trim on it really doesn't sell. Dark lining might have saved that choice but nearing the end of this theme I was seriously running out of steam. Astute viewers will also note the pock mark on her hood because I haven't used my printer correctly, maybe ever. I expect to print this gal again at some point and push more than the three-ish hours I spent on her.

Next up we have Cheetah Girl from Reaper and she's a metal fig. This sculpt did a lot of the work and while I didn't have to pick out the stripes in different colors, I figured that I should. The color scheme sells a little better here though the highlights on the red didn't photograph well. Her spots and markings on her face freehand weren't hard but the spots are probably too regular. Either way, I'm counting her as a high quality figure that I spent somewhere like six hours on. I'm happy with the result and expect to buy and re-paint this figure again. 

On the left we have Hu-Ren from Wrath of Kings, a game that I notably don't play. We saw his box-mate Za'ken way back in Week 3 of this year. I had hoped to use him as an NPC in the predecessor of my current Saturday game but never got him fully painted. In fact, I started painting, stopped, re-prepped, and re-started painting twice before carrying him over the finish line with this theme. His sculpt also has some really lousy negative space and the seam where his head fits is really, really serious and I did not do a good job filling it. Looking at the shots here, probably I should have colored his armor at least slightly differently; it's pretty samey even if it sells better up close. The shading on his fur, on the other hand, I think worked well. Sadly, I have to conclude that the base is the best part of the paint job.

Last up is Rashakin Headhunter - Modular F from Artisan Guild and I super love this fig. Like Cheetah Girl, the sculpt did most of the work and the bulk of the lift was done with the airbrush and washes.That didn't stop me from spending hours on her fur not including the freehand stripes. I especially like that her face is so expressive and I spent extra time there, too. I figured that the teal details would be fine over the orange pop-color of her fur but looking at the finished pics they're a little detracting. Overall if I'd spent a little more effort on the details, particularly her clothes, I might have counted her as a high quality fig. Probably we should expect to see her re-printed and re-painted at a later date.

2023 finished mini counter: 86/104, 4/10 high quality

Kitty-a-thon 2023, week 3 (2023 week 12)

For week three of Kitty-a-thon 2023 we have a hodgepodge of leonins that have needed paint for a while. It's surprisingly hard to find leonin figures because they're not super common in games but they're common people in my fantasy games. That poses some fun logistical issues.

From left to right we have Reaper Bones Avatar of Courage, Kyros, Lionman Warpriest from Comet Lord Miniatures, Leonin Ranger from Galaad, and Leonidal from Printed Obsession. They weren't as much a batch paint as pervious since they only really share their skinfurtones. 

The Avatar of Courage is painted as a Zulu warrior which matches his attire. I was pretty sure that getup was from history so I did some searches and figured it out. He's got some gaps in his arms which came separate and because I'm lazy I didn't paint in subassemblies. I wanted to do more with his muscles but honestly, I wasn't feeling it and was done in a couple hours. The lows need to be lower and the highs aren't high enough. I've got another which I expect to do a better job with.

Kyros is like a lot of 3d sculpts: very cool in preview but very hard to paint. He's got a mess of negative space and because he's resin, he's kind of brittle. I didn't do enough work pulling supports off and he's got the scars to prove it. Ultimately I think it's an OK result for the three-ish hours I spent. 

The Leonin Ranger is a pretty good sculpt (Galaad does good work) and my printer really didn't do a good job. Like I said, it's kind of broken. The pose is doing most of the work on this fig. Unlike a lot of sculpts, he doesn't have a surfeit of details. He's painted simply but because he isn't extra complex, every piece is a little bit better than otherwise in the two-ish hours I spent. I'll almost certainly print and paint this figure again somewhere in the unforseeable future.

The Leonidal is the problem child of this group. He's got a stupid number of details. He's got a huge amount of negative space. He's got a bunch of soft details that are hard to distinguish on his armor. He didn't print correctly. As such I didn't spend as much time on him though more than the others over time. I repainted his cloak probably four times and didn't even end up in a good place. I probably spent four or five hours on him all told and the best I can say is that he's painted.

2023 finished mini counter: 82/104

Kitty-a-thon 2023, week 2 (2023 week 11)

Kitty-a-thon continues with these six lovely kitty people. These are 3d prints from Velrock and more specifically the Leonin Tribe. If you follow that link you'll see that there are 18 different figs in there but that I have only six. Well. My 3d printer is ever so slightly broken. And by "ever so slightly" I really mean "my failure rate is awfully high." These are the ones that I thought were still salvageable but most of them have some kind of printing defects. I don't think this is due to the provided supports which looked perfectly reasonable to me. 

I speed painted these all in the same color scheme and all at once. They spanned maybe five hours total and I didn't do enough work on anything to be super stoked about them. While I like the sculpts in general, they were really inconvenient to paint due to a bunch of weird negative spaces on them. Things always look good in preview but it's hard to tell that kind of stuff until you're turning the fig around on a painting stick and asking "how the crap am I going to get paint in there?" While I like the color scheme (the jade paints in particular) 

I'm not certain that the Plasma Fluid over the metallics are working for me which sucks because I really like that paint. I did less on the gals than the dudes and I think they're better for it. Some day I'll figure out how to use that stuff effectively. I also think that these were not well served by being a batch paint since I left out a lot of details like their saber teeth and details on their bejangles and whatnot. Overall they were done in around ten hours and I'm not unhappy with them.

2023 finished mini counter: 78/104

Kitty-a-thon 2023, week 1 (2023 week 10)

This week we're starting our first theme of the year, the infamous Kitty-a-thon, which is a lot better than the normal "working through the prepped stuff on my desk." This week also continues the non-theme of working through my vintage backlog. 

These are 02-130 Dae-Shiru Commanders and 02-132 Dae-Shiru Regulars from Ral Partha and are among the first figures I ever bought, somewhere back in the heady days of the early 90s. These are OK sculpts and questionable molds as is common in figs from that era and I didn't take super good care of them over the last three decades. I don't recall ever using them in play and while I could contrive a reason to have them exist in my games I don't have any particular need to do such a thing. I bought them because they're cool and now they're painted. Early 90s me would be impressed.

For those who don't spend a lot of time with metal minis: the primer you use makes a big difference. Normally I use Badger Stynylrez which works great for all kinds of figures (it's even in the name) but not metal. Vallejo Surface Primer works on just about anything I'd use in the hobby. Stynylrez is inexpensive, has good leveling properties, and is paintable in about 15 minutes so far as I can tell. VSP requires about a day of curing time before painting. Also you might notice that I didn't add all the bejangles and other bits. That'd be because a) I didn't now how to assemble them (I don't still have the instructions and found them online too late) b) a lot of it is really fiddly with heavy metal bits, and c) I've just plain lost some of the bits.

Ultimately, I think this is an OK representation of them. Nothing spectacular here, just regular paint jobs partially done with the airbrush with some fancy detail work. I didn't have to call out the stitching on their armor and didn't do an especially good job on it anyway, but I did. These five were done somewhere in the 12-15 hour range for the batch and it's good to have them painted after all these years.

2023 finished mini counter: 72/104