A thing a week 2024, week 18

No theme again this week and there might not be a theme for a while. 

We start with Lilly, Arch White Mage from Lion's Tower who I got with the Kingdom of Talarius kickstarter. There are a handful of figs that I like out of this set and I thought this one one of them right up until I took a hard look at it. her proportions are off which bothers me more than I care to admit and I don't particularly like her high heels. I also don't think her face is particularly expressive but after a few hours, she's painted and that counts. 

Next up we have two of the three mounted Wraith Dread Knights from Reaper Bones 5 and I cannot find a direct link on their site. I also cannot find the third guy who I'm sure is kicking around somewhere with the missing Blacklist Fantasy Series 1 monk among other missing figs. These are a speed paint done very slowly. The starting washes were applied a couple times as I was experimenting with mixes. The highlights were intended as a single step but I did them three or four times. I also slapped a wash over the whole thing a couple times to build up the layers of grime to fit what I was going for. Most of the time that's a problem, but these guys are darkly-looking-death-knight-guys so I wanted that dirty looking finish. I did punch up the edges of the metallics very sloppily so I got that goin' for me. Unclear if these guys will ever get screen time but for now, they're done.

Last up we have a fun one shot not very well. This is Lydia the Lionness from RN Estudio, a sculptor that I like a lot despite their penchant for armor with high heels. I printed her, I think, at 28mm which was a mistake and as a result, the universe rewarded me by only printing one of the two I asked for. She's been prepped on my painting table for over a year and would occasionally pick up random paints as I was nearing the end of a session as is typical. Well, this week, the time had come. I put probably six hours or so with about half of that on her face, also as is typical. One of her eyes looks really good. Her other eye looks a little derpy and yes, I could have fixed that, but I didn't. Done > perfect, not that perfection is at all in question here. I think she came out well and I'm happy to count her as one of my high quality paints this year. The only friction between me and painting this fig again, beyond firing up my 3d printer, is the fact that the model is not pre-supported so I'd have to re-support it again before printing. 

2024 finished mini counter: 116/208, 6/12 high quality

A thing a week 2024, week 9

Leaving Blacklist Fantasy behind at least until I either find the missing monk or Series 2 finally ships (still not optimistic), we're going on to the perennial topic: clearing out stuff on my painting table. It never ends, people.

This is Aurielle - Female Ranger from RN Estudio, a sculptor that I like a lot. Howcome we haven't seen more (any?) of their sculpts here? Turns out that a lot of their earlier sculpts are unsupported which is a real pain but fret not, there are more on the way. I watch most movies that I watch very late in the cycle and I am very well versed in Tolkien's works so I was unprepared to learn that this sculpt was assumedly inspired by a character in Peter Jackson's exceptionally long The Hobbit trilogy. I've since watched that trilogy. I have thoughts but that's not what we're here for today.

I spent a lot of time on this fig though certainly not as much as I could have. We're somewhere in the ballpark of 25 hours or so over the last couple months mostly done in between doing other work, particularly if I had the appropriate paints on my palette and wasn't done for the day. Printed in the summer of 2022, she got some random blue airbrush overspray and sat in my "to do" list for quite a while. 

I spent upwards of five hours just on her face and particularly her eyes which I super failed to photograph reasonably. Her hair probably could have gotten a lot more work given that there's so much of it but my brush skills just aren't at the point of picking out individual locks especially where the details are so shallow. In reviewing the shots here, I note that I missed one of  her hair bands that should be metallic but I'm just going to leave it as a detail to do better on next time so don't be surprised if she shows up again. 

With the time spent, she'll qualify as my fourth high quality fig on the year.

2024 finished mini counter: 56/208, 4/12 high quality

A thing a week 2023, week 49

We're in the home stretch here and it looks like I'm going to hit my arbitrary "fig a day" stretch goal. That means that there's going to be a flood of big posts rounding out the year and hopefully none of the dodgy math that I'm known for.

These three are from Bones 4 who I know as witchy gal, gravestone gal, and barbarian chick (actually Willow Greenivy, Witch, Jahenna, and Talnyth, Female Elf Barbarian). They were done as mostly speed paints mostly because they weren't super complex. Probably Jahenna needed more highlights and again I didn't realize her dress was quite so shiny until reviewing these photos. Talnyth had some pretty bad mold lines and the white bones plastic detail was really, really soft. I did what I could. Probably Ms. Greenivy came out the best and I'm bummed I didn't do more work on the crystal in her staff.  

From blf1 we have elf barbarian and female dwarf cleric and Regis from the Legend of Drizzt boardgame. I didn't super like any of these figs so they were a batch speed paint. They came out OK and I note that the basecoat was shiny again. This time, I think maybe a homemade wash with Daler Rowney ink. The one thing I did do was try really hard to differentiate the different leathers since there was so much of it. Probably the dwarf gal's gold armor needed more work than it got and try as I might, I couldn't get the border of her robe to work.

These two are a moral victory more than anything. On the left we have Levita - Female Arcane Wizard from RN Estudio and Nemesra, Dancing Girl from Bones 4. Levita was one of the first 3d prints hot off my Mars Pro in late December of 2020 and before I realized I was using the wrong layer setting so she's got obvious layer lines like most of the prints in that batch. She started getting paint maybe a couple weeks after and had been sitting on my painting table since then getting the odd brushstroke over the years. Nemesra was in the same boat and both of them have way more paint than they need and end up worse for it. There's something extremely satisfying about completing both of these even though neither is painted well. 

Next up we have an Eye Terror from Crippled God Foundry. Monsters are usually easier than characters and  this guy was more or less the same. I thought I'd need him more quickly than I have (as I type this, he hasn't seen table time yet) so he's speed painted aside from his giant ridiculous eye which I spent good time on. Ultimately he's painted and should see some table time in the next few months. 

These five are clearly skeletons, particularly from blf1. They are questionable sculpts and I did not spend enough time cleaning mold lines (go figure). I could have also painted their hoods in different colors instead of their bases but I clearly didn't. What I did do is hit them with an oil wash. I've typed it before and I've typed it again just now: every time I use an oil wash I'm impressed with how cool they look for so little investment. 

Last up we have a potpourri of blf1 figures. From left to right we have: female human rogue, male gnome rogue, female halfling fighter, male halfling ranger, and female gnome paladin. I can't really call these speed paints because they really weren't weighing in at somewhere between 3 and 5 hours each with the gals getting more work on their faces because they should. Probably their cloaks needed more contrast especially top to bottom but instead I've been experimenting with blacklining. I think it helps and will be experimenting more with it in the future. Stay tuned!

2023 finished mini counter: 313/104 and boy I hope that number's correct.