A thing a week 2024, week 8

Our Blacklist Fantasy Series 1 nightmare over, we move back to the amorphous ridiculousness that this blog would be known for if anyone actually read it. One problem at a time.

First up we have 3d printed Onyx, Ironborn Fighter from DnD is a Woman and I made a very bad stupid dumb mistake. I printed them too small, like 28mm. These sculpts are way too thin to do this and they broke about a million times which probably shows if you look closely. As they're mostly armor and I was mortified of breaking them again while painting, they're  mostly painted with Vallejo Metal Color with the airbrush. There are no characters like this in my fantasy worlds so they might see use as golems which are probably over-represented but I dunno that I'm brave enough to stick them back on the table. They're a speed paint done in like 45 minutes total.

This is a Reaper Bones 4 Maggotcrown Juggernaut and he is also a speed paint. Astute viewers may note that he's also mostly armor and thus he also was mostly painted with the airbrush. I don't have a lot of undead in my fantasy worlds either so I legit have no clue when he might get screen time so I'm not super bothered by the time I didn't spend on this fig. He's painted and that counts and proves again that I can go fast if I want to. What would I do if I was punching him up a notch? Probably more detail work on his gloves, straps, stupid skull, and other details in addition to an awful lot more work in shading through glazes or washes or whatnot. Probably edge highlighting with a very shiny chrome would be good, too.

Next up we have a Bones 4 Devil whose pals we saw way back in week 28 of 2023. I also don't use a lot of demons in play except for last campaign which has since wrapped up. Her two chucklehead pals started as mini-bosses of the last half of that campaign so it's only fitting that she was the last boss of that campaign. No clue when I'll use demons again but I have them if I need them. As she's mostly exposed skin like her pals, she was also painted mostly with the airbrush with a color shift low to high of magenta to orangey-red. In this case the shiny worked to my advantage on her wings which were otherwise washes over simple drybrush. I lost a lot of the shading when doing the red on her skintones which I didn't bother to extra-highlight. With more time, demon dots, better handling of the super soft metallics, and probably painting her horns in a bone color rather than black which IMO doesn't look as nice.

This guy is also from Bones 4, particularly a Cave Troll. He's mostly slapchopped using Army Painter Speed Paint 2.0 and picking out highlights and details after that. The sculpt is doing most of the work here though I did pick out the teeth with a glossy white and each of the scales a few times. I think this is a good result for the hour or so I spent on him. The glossy is doing work on his skintones on purpose again here which is nice and marks a distinction between the super flat of his scales and (most of) his other details.

 

Rounding out this week's offering is a Nolzur's Umber Hulk and was a gift from a pal quite a long time ago. Unlike a lot of the other figs here, I have a lot of uses for his guy and was surprised to see how well he fit in a multitude of roles followed by disappointment for not having painted him sooner. The ultra speed paint target, he's a) mostly painted with the airbrush, b) washed slightly beyond that, and c) a handful of purposely shiny bits and other details. Much like the Ultramarine chapter of your favorite James Workshop Grimdark Shooty Bang Game (TM), he's named his paint scheme which is awfully convenient. Done in about a half hour all told, he's the epitome of high drama, low effort painting--my favorite.

2024 finished mini counter: 55/208

Blacklist backlog week 4 (2024 week 7)

This week we finish up the theme as I finish up the last of the Blacklist Fantasy Series 1 and simultaneously challenge my ability to take something resembling reasonable photos. The majority of these are "get 'er done" kind of paint jobs and they have the added difficulty of being large or very large. This also challenges my idea of what a "large" figure as it is especially given my goals this year so here we go.

First up we have a shambling mound and demon lord and both are speed paints. They're mostly Pro Acryl Transparents with a bunch of work to pick out details. I thought the orangey mushrooms on the shambler were a lot more saturated when I was painting him and they look really washed out here. I spent more time than I expected picking out details on it. The demon lord could really have used another ten or so hours in addition to the ten or so I spent on him. His large size made him difficult to work with in addition to all the negative spaces on him. I'm not sold on the fleshy sword thought he sculpt really insisted on it. Ultimately I don't use many of either of these dudes so other than increasing my painted count, I don't know what I'm going to do with them. The shambler was done in a couple hours in total.

These next two are ogre and troll and I don't know what the sculptor was thinking on the ogre. Other than skipping more than a few leg days, the musculature on his left arm is a mess that I struggled to work with. I can overlook the dumb spikes on his mace but the ever-present mold lines over his hand wrappings really sucked. Base coats were mainly provided by the airbrush and finished with a few hours of brush work for highlights and details. The troll was a true speed paint with basecoats provided by ProAcryl Transparents and a light drybrush. Another hour or so for details and highights and he was done. Overall the two of these jokers were done in under eight hours and like the previous two, I have very little use for them (trolls are a playable race in my game worlds and have a very different aesthetic).

This beefy gal is listed as giant and she took freakin' forever. Being mostly flesh, I spent a super long time glazing up and down to make it look OK. Basecoats were done with the airbrush and followed by a fleshwash to unsuccessfully add darklining (I did that at the end with a detail brush). The cloth and other details were (obviously) rushed and I did not realize that her leather skirt was quite so shiny. That particular Vallejo Game Color Terracotta give me a lot of trouble and probably I'll burn it on terrain or give it away so I don't have to deal with it any longer. I sunk around twenty five hours over a week or so into this fig, or "bigature" which I stole from Uncle Atom and I think we landed in a good place. There are no giants in my place so yet again, my potential uses for this fig are pretty limited. She'll count as large fig #1 for the year.

Last up we have what is hopefully clearly a dragon. He's also a bigature and again I have to note that the sculptor was a little off the rails. I watch all these youtube videos where folks are painting these $150 James Workshop dragons with intricate, painter-friendly textures then I see this guy with random cuts in his wings, barely defined webbing textures, and stupidly deep and inconvenient scales. As I don't use many dragons and don't particularly like this sculpt, this guy is a speed paint. I started with a Forest Green Daler Rowney Ink which I was going to lay over the entire model as a green dragon and immediately changed my mind. I kept it as the base for the wing webbing and ended up with an Indigo Daler Rowney Ink for the rest of the body. After that, a lot of drybrushing and detail work done to the tune of about six hours all told. Not my best work for sure, and the fig will hold a better quality paint job but I just can't be bothered.

And we're done! There's one more guy kicking around somewhere that I cannot find. I'm sure he'll show up at some point at which point I'll stick him in the pipeline but until then, I'm calling it done. It took a year to work through them all and ultimately I think they've been pretty good sans the stress of them being delayed for so long without any real understanding that they'd ever ship. Either way, they're done now and that's cool.

2024 finished mini counter: 49/208, 2/4 busts or large figs

Blacklist backlog week 3 (2024 week 6)

Continuing our mini-theme of finishing up the Blacklist Fantasy Series 1 figs, we begin with Half Orc Bard and Inkeeper. These two are speed paints and I'd like to pretend that I picked a color scheme that would be easy but that isn't actually true. The Ork probably needed more work on his skintones, in particular to desaturate it some. I probably needed to do more with his leathers, lute, and mug but this is what we got. The innkeep got even less attention and probably needed more. His fleshtones were a mess for reasons I don't fully understand and I did nowhere near enough work on his face. In retrospect, his curly mustache and purple gear gives him a very unintentional Wario vibe. I sprung for the freehand planking on the base rather than cutting him off of it and gluing a chunk of basing material. They're painted and that's good and I don't know if/when they'll ever get any real screen time.

Next up we have a pair of durids, particularly Male Human Druid and Female Half Elf Druid. I'm not entirely sure that either of their setups really screams "durid" to me but I'm not a sculptor. She repeats the purple of our Wario cosplayer above and I liked the red on her curls. I did not like painting her curls, however, as they were really shallow and my freehand just isn't that good. I did enough washes that it looks OK at distance but really does not hold up under scrutiny. Her face is the same way. I went back and forth on his hair which looks a lot like a turbin, reinforced by his curved sword, but the closer I looked the more it looked like hair. His face, hair, and other details needed more work than they got and again he looks OK at distance but not up close. I did do extra shading on his shield FWIW, but IMO it doesn't save anything. For a coupla speed paints, I'm not unhappy with the results.

And now we get into the fun ones. This is Male Elf Wizard and high quality #1 on the year. I experimented with a redder leather courtesy of a fun Speed Paint 2.0 color that I like a lot and the desaturated-ness of it makes the opposite saturated green work a lot better than I might have expected. The highlighting on him is minimal but effective and I kind of wish I'd stuck a tuft on his base to punch him up a bit but I didn't. You can also see the mold line that I did not enough to deal with. In my defense, mold lines over cloth folds are awfully difficult. I did a lot of darklining to separate stuff and did a bunch of work on his hair. Overall, I like this result done in about five hours.

Next up we have female human fighter and she shares the same red leather only a lot more of it. I worried a lot that the composition wouldn't work but it turned out OK on accident. Looking more closely we've got a classic red/yellow/blue triad with a desaturated yellow and red which works. I'll almost certainly do that again at some point. You can also see the difficulties I had with moldlines and similarly did a lot of darklining. Her face sells better in person than in these shots. My camera has been shooting more of a downward angle than I wanted and only just realized it. There are probably a couple more details I could have picked out but for the same five-ish hours, I like where this fig landed and she'll count as high quality #2.

I have a hang up for OSL which is similar to my hangup with NMM. I know how to do it more or less and when I get into it, I like it a lot more than I expect. So you'd think I'd remember that before I get going. I put off painting this fig until the end of the normal sized ones because I was dreading the OSL and then when I got into it, I had a lot of fun. In retrospect the composition isn't as good as I'd thought and probably her hair and the fire should have been yellow. I did her leather bits in a more saturated red but IMO it reads as a little more candy than I wanted. Her face is a lot better in person, as is the lighting but she's looking down a lot which isn't helping and my hot lights sadly blew out a lot of the more subtle shading. She'll be high quality #3 for an investment of 8-10 hours or so and I like the result. 

2024 finished mini counter: 43/208, high quality: 3/12

Blacklist Backlog week 2 (2024 week 5)

We continue our finish sprint of the remaining Blacklist Fantasy Series 1 figs. Will I ever see the Blacklist Fantasy Series 2 figs I kickstarted so many years ago? Stay tuned!

First up we have Male Human Cleric, Vampire Lord, and Female Human Paladin. The first and last will likely get some play but I don't use a lot of vampires in my game. I just don't like them. The reds were played by Contrast Paints rather than the Army Painter Speed Paints 2.0 that I've been experimenting with (note the shininess). The blending on these works better in person than in the (relatively) harsh light I shoot in, similarly for the armor metallics. I guessed on the gal's breastplate which I interpreted as metal but I have no idea if that's what was intended. Also, it doesn't count as armor if it doesn't cover your vitals. The vampire's white shirt super blew out in my lights which is yet another indication that I need to turn them down another notch. Aside from the vampire, I like these figs who were all done in around eight hours.

Next up we have Lich Lord, Male Dwarf Monk, and Female Human Constable. Of the three, I like the Constable the best and spent the most time on her. The Lich is plain and simple a speed paint since I don't use a lot of undead and the (lack of ) quality shows. I punted on the dwarf's paint job. I moved back and forth on the colors on his various bits before I settled on the blue and grey. There's nowhere near enough separation on the grey bits with the cording and while I like the blue and leathers, the greys really sink the paint job. The constable probably needed 10 minutes more on her hair which is a little too stark, and another 10 minutes on the shading on her coat which looks much nicer in person. I have no idea why the sculptor gave the lich a skeletal face and jacked arms. Ugh.

Last up we have Male Elf Paladin, Male Elf Rogue, and Half Elf Fighter. I have no idea why so many elves are showing up late in this feed but here we are. I had good luck blending on these and in this case the shiny red works for the fighter's presumably-laquered armor. His head is a little small which is weird. The leather on our emo-rogue did not come out well and I mostly phoned it in (obviously). The sanest of the three and notably the one I like the most is the Paladin. He's got a good level of detail unlike the other two and I probably should have spent more time shading his armor. And I'ma soapbox for a sec here.The paladin has a realistic sword. It's arguably too big for one handed use but it has a prominent pommel (for balance) and a fairly simple crossguard. Good. The rogue has a stupid fantasy dagger. Why? There are plenty of super-cool historicals that could be there and instead we get weird cutouts and depressions and a handle that is stupidly long. Finally, why does the clearly Samurai-inspired fighter have a European-styled sword? At least his scabbard isn't on his back. 

2024 finished mini counter: 36/208