A thing a week 2024, week 10

This week we have funner than usual things. I'm starting a new campaign so we're getting (very) recent paint jobs with more character than usual with a notable plus one which we'll start with right here.

This is Wappellious Spellbrush from Artisan Guild. James Wappel is a seriously good, multiple award winning mini artist and a pillar of the mini painting community. I started watching his videos at the beginning of the pandemic when I started seriously pursuing the hobby and have supported him on Patreon ever since. He's been described as the Bob Ross of mini painting and you can find him on twitch regularly at very odd hours. I got this STL as a part of the Troubles in Taverns bundle and printed him out in September of 2021 which seems like forever ago. He got some paint at random times but has otherwise been among the dozens of figs in the background of my painting table. Well, I found the time and slapped some paint around and for the five-ish hours I spent, I think I got a good result. Originally I wanted to do a complicated OSL but obviously I didn't do that. Next time, maybe.

Next up we have Quinn, Skrang Duelist played by Tazythas, Dragonfolk Rogue from Reaper and he came with the Bones 4 kickstarter. This is a great fig with a high degree of modularity including wings which I didn't add since Skrang don't have wings. You can probably tell that I did a lousy job filling in the holes in his back. The base coat was provided by Army Painter Speed Paints 2.0 which picked out his scales very well and Vallejo Metal Color for the metallic bits as per usual. The red scales were highlight mostly through drybrushing and the fig was rounded out with minimal brushwork on details/highlights and a wash over the metallics. He was done in a couple hours all told and his arm fell off somewhere between taking these photos and playing a few hours later. Not to worry, since it's been found.

This is Chogan the Goblinslayer played by Orc Barbarian - B (Male) Modular. I'm pretty sure I've saidtyped this before, but I'm a sucker for modularity. In this case, the magic of 3d printing meant that I could mirror the axe/hand combo so the fig could have two axes at the request of the player. This is a fairly high drama low effort paint job. He's mostly skintones which is a simple Speed Paint 2.0 basecoat with easy highlighting followed by a bunch of metallics and detail work. The hardest part was that I glued him together first (for expediency) which made getting paint between his weaponry and body quite challenging. He was done in a few hours which is where most of my non-tryhard works land. The sculpt will hold a higher quality paint job so there's hope for his near-twin Orc Barbarian - D (Female) Modular whose shield arm fell off otherwise I would have painted her at the same time.

This doggy looking fellow is Madoc as played by a kitbash of Duncan Shadow's Fox Folk / Kitsune Multipart Kit with arms from Otter folk Multipart Kit. All of the parts were resized to match the character and the magic of modularity meant that the arms would in fact fit with the chosen body. You'll note that he shares quite a lot of colors with our pal Quinn which is on purpose. One of the guidelines of fast batch painting is to limit the number of colors used so there ya go. While the fig doesn't match the character as well as I might have liked (the player landed on a boxer-like degha rather than a fox-like degha) but I got all the other details right. As an ex-gangster, I painted his eyes as a dead "you want somma this?" kind of way that also doesn't really fit the character. I worked with the prompts I got. He was done in a few hours.

This kitty looking gal is Setsoku, my ex-carnie NPC as played by Tabaxi Monk - Amalya from DnD is a Woman. I printed her and her mirrored twin at 28mm and I regret that. All of the figs that I've printed in that campaign so far have had details far too small to handle sanely. I had intended to pick out the embroidery in her dress but couldn't sanely do so and ran out of time to futz around so I punted and ended up painting her clothes mostly in the same color. Her small size does match the character better but, I dunno, I have figs all over the spectrum from 25mm to 40mm so I'm starting to let go of that hang up. I will likely print her out again some day at 32mm and/or 75mm for fun and no profit. She was done in like two hours.

Last up we have Sparkle as played by Fairy 02 by Galaad, one of my favorite 3d sculptors. I spent *way* too long on this fig, about seven hours, which caused me lots of other prep-related issues as the clock wound down to go-time. I wanted to do a better job with fleshtone shadows so I spent a lot of time mixing and glazing up and down. It's not as smooth as I wanted, but it works on the table. The lacing on her wings was especially painful and was picked out with the glossy black Golden Hi Flow which I don't use super often due to their shine. In this case, that was exactly what I wanted and draws additional contrast to the dark parts of her monarch butterfly patterning. With more time that I didn't have, I would have made everything smoother and worked on more details like the flower in her hair and the gems in her bracelet which I threw gold and a wash over. I did do a bunch of black lining which is over-showing in the photos while the tonality in her skintones were washed out in the shoot as was the detail in her face which took a couple hours. She'll count as high quality #5 on the year.

2024 finished mini counter: 62/208, 5/12 high quality

A thing a week 2023, week 1

This year starts on a Sunday so you get three posts in one day. It also means that I've had to double-time it to get something not embarrassing in the front row of this year's wrap up post. The good news is that because it's the holidays I've had more than the usual amount of time to work on stuff.

First up we have a 3d print of Kitsune Ranger from Galaad. He's notably painted like an Australian Shepherd since he's a replacement player character for my in-person game. I have a couple gripes with what is otherwise a pretty good sculpt. The bracers' and anklets' negative space is IMO a little too pronounced which made them hard to paint. I also don't super like fur tufts like he's got since it makes picking out the larger volumes harder. All that said, he was a fun paint and despite the fact that the sculpt did most of the work, I'm calling him the first of the year's high quality jobs.

Next up we have a pair of nice figs, namely City Guard Elite Captain from Crippled God Foundry that I printed very badly. I like that this sculpt a) has a nice open pose, b) has reasonable armor, and c) has an expressive face. The last of those is why I painted these at all which I might not have otherwise. They're small, I think 28mm though I haven't measured, which made their eyes especially painful, but hey, that's good practice (always paint eyes). Someday I'll figure out how to work my printer to have fewer of these kinds of print failures. At that point I may revisit this sculpt.

This gal is Curiphaias Dragonborn Sorcerer from the D&D is a Woman campaign and sadly I can't provide a direct link. She's also really small, probably the same 28mm and came supported not terribly well so this print has more weird scarring and missed connection points than normal. She was a reasonable paint without too terribly many tiny details and completed in around three hours with the airbrush doing the bulk of the scaletone work. I'm happy with this rendition but not satisfied. Possibly she'll show up again sometime in the future.

This is Dragonguard Lady E from Artisan Guild and I super like this sculpt. Like Curiphaias, the bulk of the scalework was done with the airbrush though looking at the final shots here, I really should have done the metallics instead. I had some very lofty aspirations to do a bunch of shading on her armor that I clearly didn't do and I completely sidestepped any OSL for this round despite her obviously flaming sword. Even with the airbrush work, she represents something like six hours of effort done in about a day with a lot of attention to detail so I'm comfortable counting her as high quality #2 for the year despite the fact that the sculpt did most of the work. As a modular figure, you can expect future prints with said missing OSL sometime in the future.

What would be better than one flaming sword? How about two! Rounding out this group is, you guessed it, Dragonguard Lady F from Artisans Guild and no, she didn't actually come with two flaming swords. Astute viewers will note that the flames are going in different directions because through the magic of digital printing, I mirrored the right hand flaming sword so she could be extra rad. Or hype. Whatever the kids are saying these days. Clearly I also omitted any real OSL but I did work extra hard on her orangy cloak thingy. I really like this color scheme and I think we'll see a lot more of the blues and oranges this year since apparently last year was greens and purples. She'll count as high quality #3 done in about the same six hours as Lady E. 

2023 finished mini counter: 6/104, 3/10 high quality