A thing a week 2025, week 17

Three more giant or giant-adjacent figs toward our 2025 goal this week which is going to be the end of our mini-giant-and-giant-adjacent non-theme. So let's get to it.

First up we have an Ettin from bones 4. He's not as big as the other giants we've seen but without a frame of reference it'd be hard to pick that out. This guy's got a lot of character from his "hey, look over there head" to his improvised anvil-hammer. Also, because he's not quite as large, he wasn't quite as tedious to paint which is a nice bonus for me. There was definitely a bunch more that I could have done with this guy not limited to picking out the leather straps better, doing something with the bulby things on his bracelet, putting any color on the shield, etc. etc. but when I got here at the end of the batch, I was super done. Occasionally I take a look at these shots and think that I should come back some day and punch them up when I don't feel the weight of several hundred unpainted minis and this guy is one of them.

These two are Frost Giant Heroine and Frost Giant Ranger and more or less why I was so done when I got to the Ettin. I like that these two have so much character. I dislike that they have quite so many tiny details. The edge highlighting I did on these has really paid off by making them look cleaner than they actually are and just like last week, the stitching is really doing some heavy lifting here. The ranger is in a harder plastic, possibly the predecessor of bones black which made it really hard to un-warp the spear and made the antlers on the stag kind of brittle despite having glued it twice. More work was probably warranted across both, especially since I like them, but again there aren't many giants in my world much less sentient ones. Will they ever see screen time? Unlikely but hard to say for sure. At any rate, they're painted and I'm happy for that.

2025 finished mini counter: 66, 2025 specific figs remaining: 78

A thing a week 2025, week 16

Some good news this week and some bad news this week. The good news: three more against the goal and three abnormally expensive ones to boot. The bad news: I found an accounting error that put my goal count two short. This happens from time to time.

First up we have Hill Giant Lowland Warrior and Hill Giant Lowland Chief both from bones 4. The chief has been kicking around my painting desk since the middle of last year before I got serious about hitting a fig a day. I find big figs intimidating because I generally like getting most of the details right. Big figs have big blends and glazing is a really expensive operation on big blends. I also find that metallics don't look quite right at a large scale not that either of these guys has a lot. The warrior was part of this year's prep trying to get primer on my remaining goal-specified bones 4 figs. I failed, but hey, the last two still-unprimed figs are difficult in my defense. I can't claim these two are speed paints in any way and I do notice that the warrior's back is suspiciously shiny due to the contrast paint undercoat but I do know that both of these guys are painted.

This chonky dude is a Hill Giant Hunter from bones 4 and he came with a Dire Lion which we saw way back in Week 33 of 2023. Of these three, I like this guy the best and probably spent the most time on him. Across all these guys I put extra time into the color grades in their fleshtones which really helps separate each volume even on these bigatures. The stitching in the sculpt was super easy to paint and really helps sell the scale of the dude which I really like. I probably should have brought the blue on his details to a higher value and I almost certainly could have done more with the leather straps. Overall I think this is a good effort but mostly, since there aren't really giants in my game, I'm just glad he's done.

2025 finished mini counter: 63, 2025 specific figs remaining: 80-3+2 = 81

A thing a week 2025, week 10

After perhaps too many weeks making limited progress toward this year's goals, we're about to plow straight into them starting this week. First up we have two questionable sculpts and two very questionable molds. The guy on the left is an Anhurian Cavalry and the guy on the right I found as Onyx Chevalier, Overlords Solo but was listed as Overlord Cavalry in the Bones 4 Fan Favorites catalog. The sculpts are made much worse by the quality of the molds and the bones white plastic. I did what I could with the mold lines and warped features but could not get the lean out of the overlord dude. The results are OK and the Anhurian guy can go with the other questionable sculpts/molds of Anhurian crossbow and Arnhurian spear dudes I painted very early on. 

This guy is clearly a mammoth and from Bones 4 and until I went and looked up the link at reapermini.com, I was puzzled by why he's so small. Turns out, he's a Pygmy Mammoth! This is about the pinnacle of lazy painting consisting of a zenithal, a contrast paint base coat, a minimal drybrush for highlights, and a handful of details picked out. The tusks were probably the most expensive part since the paint I was using was too thin on my wet palette requiring far too many coats. The result is OK for a speed paint but better than I might have hoped.

2025 finished mini counter: 40, 2025 specific figs remaining: 99

A thing a week 2024, week 22

Continuing on last week's post, we have another pair of Rocky figs from Bones 4. They mostly follow the same scheme as the previous blue Rocky: one or more lousy ink basecoats applied badly with the airbrush followed by one or two more basecoats with contrast paints, speed paints, or homemade washes, followed by picking out every scale individually and finishing details like horns, eyes, and whatnot. And yes, I said last week that I wouldn't commit to picking out every individual scale on every fig but spoiler: I did.

First up we have Treasure Rocky in green and yes, greedy green was the only appropriate color choice. I didn't wan the chest and treasure pile to be the focus so I made sure they were muted down. The gold basecoat was a speed paint metallic IIRC followed by a seraphim sepia wash to darken it down and to knock out some of the shine. If it looks a little dark, that's why and exactly what I intended. There's still some shine in the darkest parts of his body which looks pretty wrong in the photos but sells a little better in person. I should have yellow-shifted his wings and ear webbing which is pretty consistent in all of these guys. The gems and whatnot are phoned in but I'm not unhappy with the result.

Next up we have Flying Rocky in red and I like to think that he was rudely awakened by an alarm or something and has taken flight in shock. This kind of thing happens when you spend hours picking out tiny details on a fig. Of the five, this guy is probably the weakest. There's a bunch of mold lines I didn't manage well and the shininess on him is a little distracting in person. I also failed to sufficiently pop out the scales under his eyes and all of that is on top of the difficulties I and many folks have in highlighting red. The problem is that when you push up into the lighter values it turns pink which reads incorrectly and I am not good at yellowing down into orange and salmon tones despite how much I paint in that color. Part of it is that I really don't want to lose the vibrancy of my favorite pyrrole red and it really shows on this guy since the composition is dominated by it. Yellowing down his webbing would have helped the contrast but I'm still happy to call both of these guys high quality works on the year.

2024 finished mini counter: 126/208, 9/12 high quality