A thing a week 2025, week 39

Two more right up the middle this week and the two remaining bigatures for this year's goal. First up we have Nolzur's Young White Dragon. Astute viewers might note that this dragon is indeed not painted in white which is a notoriously difficult color to paint in. Indeed. I checked my collection of painted dragons and I a) indeed did not have a green one, and b) have a set of green paints/inks that I actually like. The decision was pretty easy from there. 

This week's offerings are (obviously) speed paints. I've typed quite a lot about my feeling about the Nolzur's line of figures and these have all of the issues that I usually rant about. The good news is that these are the last two and I very likely won't buy new ones. I didn't do a good job with the gajillion awful mold lines but I didn't want to not take advantage of all the texturing work that the sculptor left. 

This other guy is Nolzur's Young Red Dragon and painted in the intended color scheme. He's maybe a little more on the orange side but I clearly didn't do anything about it. 

Both of these guys are pretty simply painted. Since the Nolzur's lines  are "pre-primed", I started with a simple airbrush basecoat. From there we got a speed paint and/or contrast paint step to darken some stuff down followed by various levels of drybrushing. A few details were picked out like their bajillion claws and teeth and spikey bits and the bases were basecoated/drybrushed very simply afterward and that was it. Both were done in about five hours all told over several days. They look OK for the time invested but they're the best color: painted.

2025 finished mini counter: 143, 2025 goal figs remaining: 10

A thing a week 2025, week 38

The last few weeks we've been in slapchop mode with a various added techniques. That begged the question: how fast can I do an actual slapchop and how good are the results? Well, now I can answer both.

These four are Female Sector Enforcer 2 from Velrock, one of my favorite sculptors and I printed them this year. That has the downside of not being a 2025 fig goal but completing them means they're not kicking around my prepped pile. I picked these for this experiment since they're both sci-fi and armored sans faces which usually tie up a lot of brush time. Inspecting their armor, you can convince yourself (as I did) that they're mostly three colors. 

Starting with a fairly muted zenithal in warm tones, I did a two-step directional drybrush with an ancient pot of Reaper skintone followed by a very light highlight of Golden Heavy Body Titanium White. This gave a better treatment of the volumes and the second step picked out all of the exposed edges with a very  nice edge highlighting. After that, it's a careful but single coat of my favorite contrast paints which is why there are two in primary colors and two in secondary colors. Each of them is three colors two of which is shared across the group. I picked out zero details. 

Overall, they look pretty OK and were done in less than two hours for the group of them. Notably, they read a little better on the table than they do in these close-ups and the satin-y finish of the Contrast paints is working for us this time. These might have been a little better with additional thinning of the Contrast paints or swapping for Speed Paints which are in general thinner, but I'm not unhappy with the result. This sculpt can certainly take a higher level effort, so don't be surprised if they show up again sometime in the unfroseeable future.

2025 finished mini counter: 141
 

A thing a week 2025, week 37

Like last week, these guys are on goal for the year. Unlike last week, these guys are definitely not metal. In fact, like a lot of the Runewars figs I've painted, these were a real mess. A couple weeks ago we had big kitty cavalry and I typed about them being a relatively quick pseudo-slapchop job. These guys were mostly a slapchop job and it shows. Because the sculpts and molds are sus and because I don't expect them to see a ton of screen time, I didn't feel the need to do a lot of work on them. 

I did do something fun with them, however. I took the opportunity to experiment more with different colors of metallics. In this case, I mixed Vallejo Metal Color Aluminum with various Golden High Flow Acrylics and got mixed results. The blue turned out really nice, probably because the pigment is strong but transparent. The Teal is probably the worst with its not-quite-metallic sheen. To pick out more of the shadows, I hit them with a candy coat of Badger Ghost Tints far too thick in places to mixed results as well.

Despite all my speed painting attempts, they still took a couple hours per fig and, if I'm honest, a sub-par result. 

2025 finished mini counter: 137, 2025 goal figs remaining: 12
 

A thing a week 2025, week 36

A small showing this week as I've been very busy prepping for BrickCon but both figs are on goal which is nice. Both figs are also metal which is also nice.

First up we have Balzardor, Cleric from Reaper's Dungeon Dwellers line. If he looks familiar, that's because we saw him about twenty months ago back in Week 1 of 2024 in green and boy am I happy that I didn't paint him in the same color scheme. This version was in pieces and because he's metal, he had a lot finer details that were a mixed blessing. His eyes in particular were very challenging. His shield and arm fell off early in the painting process and I took the opportunity to paint the shit out of the inside which no one but me will ever see. He was done in a few hours, most of which was spent blending on his cloak. 

This is Alaine, Female Paladin and as the turnaround implies, she's going to count as a high quality figure for the year, number 11 as it were. I like this sculpt a lot. The molding is somewhat sus. I spent a lot of time on her face and on shading her armor. Probably more effort should have been spent on everything else. And if you notice the nose ring chain thing going on there, that was a mold line that I wasn't sure what to do with. I didn't dare use a sanding stick and didn't trust my knife skills so I painted it gold like it was supposed to be there and I do not regret that decision. Her waistcoat could use better highlighting and her hair is a little flat and her fantasy sword is a little indistinct but otherwise I'm pretty happy with this effort. Done in something like five hours, I'm hoping I can obtain another one sometime in the unforseeable future.

2025 finished mini counter: 133, 2025 goal figs remaining: 16, high quality: 11/12