A thing a week 2023, week 35

This week we have a mini-theme of rogue gals! That's right, these are all rogues or rogue-adjacent gals many of whom are 3d prints. Many of those 3d prints have weird printing errors so we got that goin' for us.

The gal on the left is Southern Archer from The Printing Goes Ever On. She may be the only one of my prints today that doesn't have a serious issue. I like that this sculpt is uncomplicated which means that I have the choice of either going fast with reasonable quality or spending the normal amount of time at higher quality. My only real gripe about the sculpt is that her face is hidden by her cowl which makes painting tiny details much, much harder. 

The gal on the right is Female Ranger from Galaad and her bow is fucked up. I love this sculpt and it's from one of my favorite sculptors. I'm not super sold on the green of her outfit thought it felt right when I was painting her. I spent a bunch of extra time on her face but overall not enough time to warrant a high quality paint job. Now that I have a new printer (Saturn 2 if you're curious), we should expect her to show up here again sometime in the unforseeable future.

These mirrored Rogue gals are also from Galaad and I mostly like this sculpt. Sadly, their arms are pancaked so I didn't have to feel bad about not spending more time painting them. I do wish their cloaks were, I dunno, a little less long and flowy because a) they're a pain to paint, and b) it looks like they'd drag badly on the ground were it not for the invisible wind. They're mostly painted in contrast paints as has been my habit of late. I experimented with white hair on the one which I liked a lot and I also experimented with mixing my own fleshtones on many of these. That worked out OK but in these photos it looks a little too blue. Also, the highlights on the black cloak doesn't really work. Both painted, though, and that counts for something. Namely two ticks on the finished mini counter.

Last up we have Goonmaster Human Rogue 1, Titan Forge Bodyguard, and Reaper Bones Lanelle. The rogue's sculpt is probably too complex and I spent a lot of time just trying to get all the details painted. Also, despite the fact that I like her dynamic pose, she was a real pain to glue down to the base and you can almost see the hole in her foot where I failed to pin her. The details are a little soft which I'm not a fan of, especially on the cloak. 

The Bodyguard is a good sculpt that I really made a mess of. Either the print was soft, the prime was too heavy, or both. Either way the details were soft and despite spending a bunch of time on her, the result isn't super good. Probably she'll show up again in the future. 

Lanelle is a good sculpt with a really, really bad molding defect. Her chin is almost completely missing which means that no matter what I did, there was no amount of sculpting with paint that was going to fix it. Other than that, the dumb fantasy shoulder pads, and her iffy weapons, I really like this fig. And for reasons that I don't fully understand, this paint job came out way better than the others despite spending no more time on her. 

2023 finished mini counter: 191/104

A thing a week 2023, week 34

This week we have assorted speedpainted bads. They're not all that interesting but I got to mess around with some fun effects so I've got that goin' for me.

First up the minions, in this case, Blacklist Fantasy Series 1 Fire Beetles. I could have looked up what these guys were supposed to be but I didn't and so I painted them in faux metallic. I did zenithal these (for all the good it did me) but I covered all that up with mostly transparent metallics through the airbrush, and no, beyond being a Vallejo Metal Color, I don't remember which one. Once they were airbrushed I hit them with a coat of Badger Ghost Tints and did just about nothing else. The metallics and candy coat do a lot of the heavy lifting to the point that I'm hoping folks don't realize how lousy a paint job these were.

But what if we did the same technique on a bigly fig? Well, that would be this guy. This is a Bones 4 Giant Rhino Beetle and he's painted exactly the same way and with the same colors. I could have picked out the weird textury thing on his back with a different color, but I didn't. I like the color effects but honestly, way more effort went into painting the rockery badly than with the rest of the fig. I do like this fig but I'm not super likely to strip and repaint it.

Last up we have these crappy constructs which belong in a Skyrim Dwemer ruins more than they do in my game. I use a lot of constructs but these guys look way more clockwork than I'm comfortable with TBH. That clearly didn't prevent me from painting them badly, however. They're a copper to gold fade which mostly doesn't read unless you pick the figure up and look closely at them but I think that part looks pretty good regardless. It looks like my drybrushing pulled up some of the paint on their heads but in fact, my airbrushing was just bad since it was the end of a session and my paint was not cooperating. For the about an hour I spent on all five of these guys, they're the best color: painted.

2023 finished mini counter: 184/104

A thing a week 2023, week 33

One more bads post and then we'll switch gears. Luckily (?) these are slightly better paint jobs so we got that going for us and if there's a theme for today, it's "big stuff." These weren't painted in the same order they're shown here so let's see if my counts add up when we catch up!

Kicking off first we have a Reaper Bones Hill Giant Huntsman's Dire Lion. This is my favorite kind of paint job: high drama, low effort. The Hill Giant Huntsman will follow along at some point. This guy came with Bones 4 and sat around primed for an embarrassingly long time until now, err, many weeks ago since I'm pushing a pretty big bow wave of posts right now. I didn't realize just how shiny his fur was until looking at the photos so, yeah, that's not fantastic. If I'm feeling frisky I'll dullcoat him but I probably won't. 

Following the big cat we get a big dog. This is also an animal companion to another set of figs, in this case the Bones 4 Frost Giant Raiders. I painted him like a red wolf before I learned that he was supposed to be from the frozen north (or south, I guess) and if I'm honest, this is not a good paint job. I got the markings mostly correct but at the time, I just wanted to be done. He was painted at the end of a fairly long session and my back was really hurting. IIRC, he was done in like an hour or so. 

Next up we have The Thing In the Well from Bones 5. I don't have a link handy as it doesn't seem to be on their site yet. I wanted this guy as a boss encounter for a future dungeon and he's both big and pokey and making a mess of one of the Bones 5 boxes so I painted him. This is not a great paint job and it was mostly done with the airbrush and followed up with some messy washes and the most minimal of detail work. I think it's a good effect but mostly because it's big. These kinds of figs tend to get used sparingly so not having a great paint job isn't the end of the world. He'll count as the second large fig for this year's challenge.

Last up we have a Nolzur's Adult Remorhaz. I think this was a gift and has not only been painted somewhere in early July, but has already gotten some table time. I don't know how often I'll be able to use a remorhaz on the table so I'm glad I got the chance. Like most Nolzur's mini products, he had lousy mold lines, a very gloopy prime that obscured otherwise nice sculpt details, and hydrophobic patches that didn't want to take the contrast paint basecoat I did because my airbrush station wasn't setup. Overall I think it's a good result mostly owing to color choices and we had a memorable encounter where it chewed one of the PCs in defense doing itself significant harm. Good times. He'll also count as a large figure for obvious reasons.

Blacklist Fantasy Series 1 Dire Bear. Honestly, this is kind of a lousy bear looking a heck of a lot more like a werebear than a dire bear. He was painted mostly with the airbrush with a light coat of a Vallejo Model Air brown over the  top of a zenithal. A quick drybrush and picking out of details rounds out the work and it looks like I forgot to put Reikland Fleshshade gloss in his mouth. Nothing like a "glamour" shot to highlight your mistakes. 

This guy is a Chaos Toad Savage from Bones 4. He was also mostly painted with the airbrush but with extra volumetric highlights over the scales. A wash, some details, and demon dots were most of it though the rockery he's standing on took longer than I care to admit. This guy was a mess to glue. He was in parts and was warped to the point that I had to clamp and torque and swear a lot to get him together. The demon dots are too regular which isn't great but overall I think it works. 

2023 finished mini counter: 173/102, 3/5 large

A thing a week 2023, week 32

Moar painting moar bads, this week also from Blacklist Fantasy Series 1 and we kick off with orcs which I painted like hobgoblins. Why? I have no need for another group of Orks (with a K) and these aren't fantastic sculpts. Also based simply with Geek Gaming Scenics Base Ready flocking and painted very simply, I didn't do enough to clean up mold lines. One of the really lousy "features" of this line is that their mold lines are pretty godawful going over some very difficult parts of the sculpt. 

Next up are bugbears from the same line with the same issues. I did some minor drybrushing on their fur to make it more believable as such but I don't think it particularly worked. I hate their fantasy polearms (really? bugbears have these?) and their dumb nubbly single pauldrons. I tried to downplay the parts I disliked by using a nice, dark, saturated red. These guys don't particularly work for me but they're painted and I guess that's fine.

2023 finished mini counter: 167/102