A thing a week 2025, week 48

Finishing out this awful mini-batch of bones 6 zombies, we have more bones 6 zombies. While slapchop has gotten some, I dunno, appropriate shade for being cheap and easy with not super good results, it is awfully useful for exactly this kind of application: large numbers of figs that would probably only be seen in aggregate that I otherwise don't have a use for. I don't want to use it super often across my collection but there are worse ways to speedpaint IMO. Also, FWIW, you can start with a slapchop and work in details that up the quality if you're so inclined. 

All sixteen of these were done in a giant batch weighing in at around four or five hours all told. I'm glad these dudes are done and won't be taking up space in my to-do pile any longer. Probably that's the best thing I can saywrite about them. 

2025 finished mini counter: 190

A thing a week 2025, week 47

With the major goals of this year's crafting safely in the rearview, I'm now working through my pile of shamepotential to hit an arbitrarily large number for the year. To be fair, the original number is pretty arbitrary, too. This week and next week we're getting a set of figs that I don't like and might not ever use but arrived in force with bones 6. Just so all my cards on on the table: I don't like body horror, I don't like undead, and I really, really don't like zombies. 

These figs are not well painted and I didn't spend any more time on them than I thought I had to. They're basically a slapchop with a couple washes and aside from the cobblestone bases, I don't even think they look good. Then again, as I've already stated, I don't like zombies. 

They're intended to be dark and dirty and that effect should be known pretty well by anyone who's thrown a heavy wash down as a finishing move. 

2025 finished mini counter 182 

A thing a week 2025, week 46

Fun stuff this week and two exceptional metal sculpts from Reaper. Both of them are way bigger than I thought they were and thus aren't super likely to get any screen time. Luckily, they're both high quality works (spoilers) and will look fantastic in my display case.  

First up we have Kosumi, Frostfang Huntress and it looks like she's missing from Reaper's site which is going to make it hard for me to find another copy. She's painted like a red wolf and despite the enormous time spent painting fur strokes, they're mostly invisible in these shots. Also missing in these shots is most of the subtle tone and temperature variations between her hair and her dark fur. And as a sad trifecta, the texturing I put on the leather is also missing in these shots which makes me sad. There was a really bad mold issue on her left muzzle which I cleaned up mostly OK but leaves her with a weird expression. I'm not unhappy with this effort (about six hours all told) but there's more that I should have done, particularly in highlighting her volumes better. Probably making each of my sad trifecta stand out more would be good, too. 

This is a Rageclaw Slayer from Reaper and I did find the link for him. I had no struggles with mold lines on this guy thankfully. Instead, my sanity strained under the immensity of the non metallic red that I picked early on. It went through many iterations and color swaps until I landed on this maroon to magenta transition and for better or worse, my brush strokes are really apparent. The last time I did a serious NMM was way back in Week 37 of 2020 and it took something like 50 hours for the two gals. This one guy was around 20 hours by himself so it's not like I'm going particularly faster. The golds are much improved in the intervening half decade (also: the shooting) while the main armor is harder to judge since they're in different color schemes. Probably my darks need to be darker and there's a level of refinement that would be an improvement but ultimately I'm pretty happy with this result. 

These two will close out this year's goals both in figs and in high quality works. So I got that goin' for me.

2025 finished mini counter: 174, 2025 goal figs remaining: 0, high quality figs remaining: 0

 

A thing a week 2025, week 45

Another small-ish batch this week, and it's gnolls! My love of gnolls is pretty well documented at this point so when bones 6 rolled around and there was a gnoll add-on, I had to get them. This isn't a high quality piece of work by any means but I think they turned out pretty well. I took my time with them which isn't a thing I do super often but I think it shows. They were done all told in maybe ten hours or so and I'm pretty happy with them.

2025 finished mini counter: 172

A thing a week 2025, week 44

Mini-batch again this week, wolf edition. I love wolves and I'm particular to solid color wolves and not just because they're easier to paint. I thought I'd ordered another group of these as an add-on during the kickstarter but I couldn't find them if I did. 

The texture on these guys is pretty good and they're molded in a hard plastic which is a mixed bag for me. On the one hand, it holds detail pretty well. On the other hand, it warps sometimes badly (note the yellow guy) and makes mold lines on fur even harder to deal with so I mostly didn't. These guys got a normal zenithal which mostly doesn't show through because they're so dark. A slapchop-like drybrush with a heavy body acrylic white followed. The basecoat was Army Painter Speed Paint 2.0 Grim Black which is probably my favorite of the 2.0 line. After that they got a couple rounds of drybrushes followed by washes to bring up the contrast before I handled their details. I did what I could with their teeth and note that this is where mold lines were the worst. I also note that I forgot to hit them with my typical gloss Reikland Fleshshade but that's probably OK. Their bases probably took more actual effort mostly because I insisted on painting with palette sludge as is my wont.

2025 finished mini counter: 166, 2025 goal figs remaining: 2