Octopus Overlords

There are a bunch of miniature painting channels on YouTube, but I am enjoying this one by Dana Howl.

She’s a real firebrand, isn’t she?

So....I've got 220 miniatures to paint with my Street Masters Aftershock all in.

I ordered a can of Army Painter Barbarian Flesh primer to take a good deal of the heavy lifting off of me. Most of the characters are Asian/Caucasian so it should take care of a huge chunk of the grunt work.

Here's my first enemy faction and first two fighters painted for STREET MASTERS. I went back and forth on whether to paint the bases the minion color because it does come off a bit Candyland, but ultimately I went with functionality over aesthestics. I hate the little rubber base covers that come with the game, so not having to take those off and on will be worth it.

For the boss I went with silver and for the heroes I went with gold. No particular reason other than I get tired of black bases, and it makes them stand out from the rest of the figures.

Only 200 more to go!

Looks great...I hated painting the female warrior in that crew. So frustrating. I'd also seen people painting elements of the enemy (pants, shirts, hair, etc...) the various colors for activation, but that seems like a ton of work too.

Those look great, YK.

I finally painted my first miniature!

As you can all probably see it's pretty basic . I only added one base coat so far. Any ideas of what I should do next? Or tips or something?
I'm planning on adding a second coat tonight and then maybe put some varnish on to protect the paint?

Not bad at all for a first piece! Great start!

For tips:

Spend some time on the prep phase before you paint, cleaning off those mold lines. It'll make the final piece look a lot better.

Generally, paint like you're getting dressed. Start with the skin, then the deepest layers, then the higher layers, etc. For instance, pants before boots.

For what to do next:

A second 'clean up' base coat. Go back as carefully as you can and use the same base coat colors to 'clean up' the spots where one color got into the wrong place.

Beyond that, it's either shading and detailing, or varnishing, depending on how far you want to take the piece. Basic washes will add a little shading and a lot of detail with minimal effort, FWIW.

Anyone have any favorite paints for skin colors? I have a couple different Vallejo skin colors but I haven't really been happy with the way they come out.

Ugh. Skin. One of my many Achilles heels.

I’ve been using Army Painter, but usually just stick with Barbarian flesh, and vary it by the wash I apply.

I’m fairly happy with the contrast paint flesh tones though.

Although no dark skin tones. I don’t have a good solution for that.

Yes, I also use Barbarian and Tanned flesh by Army Painter. Most of my models are now primed with Krylon Camo Sand/Khaki and I think the Barbarian or Tanned flesh works great over both of those. Prior experience in trying to use either over white, black or grey primer had less than desirable results, particularly when you hit it with a soft or strong tone ink wash (if that's your preference).

EDIT: I agree on darker skin tones. I have used "Monster Brown" on one of my Mansions of Madness investigators and I think it worked well, but the naming is unfortunate.

hentzau wrote:I’ve been using Army Painter, but usually just stick with Barbarian flesh, and vary it by the wash I apply.

I bought the Army Painter Barbarian Flesh spray primer to do the Street Master figures, and have been very pleased with it. While I prefer the beige for general priming, the flesh tone has saved me a ton of time since most of these minis show a lot of skin.

Thanks for the tips guys! I'm having a lot of fun with this . Even though it's slow going.
I made the mistake of doing a complete second layer (which made the paint too thick (the face)) and
also changing the colour of his face.

Lessons learnt!

wonderpug wrote: ↑Mon Nov 04, 2019 3:21 pm Anyone have any favorite paints for skin colors? I have a couple different Vallejo skin colors but I haven't really been happy with the way they come out.

Ugh yes, so much this!

My guy now looks like he has some kind of disease instead of a zombie!

I'm kinda scared to do dry brushing though

I was looking up info on layering and saw this video.
I'm not convinced on layering yet though because to be honest, I think the miniature looks way better before than after

I've messed with so many skin options. Different skintones, different combinations of colors, different washes, different techniques. For serious skin painters, you'll find that they tend to go with a combination of reds, tans, greens, and purples depending on where on the body the skin is. I'm not that much of an artist.

My personal preference these days are the Reaper Triads. Rosy skintones, medium skintones, fair skintones, dark skintones, olive skintones, golden skintones, bronze skintones. I have golden and rosy myself, and they're a wonder. Either start with the medium tone and add the other two as shadows and highlights, or do what I do: start by coating it with the dark tone, then fill in the non-shaded areas with the medium, then add highlights. No mixing required.

EzeKieL wrote: ↑Mon Nov 04, 2019 8:27 pm I was looking up info on layering and saw this video.
I'm not convinced on layering yet though because to be honest, I think the miniature looks way better before than after

I'd suggest learning drybrushing and washing before messing with layering or glazing. My recommendation is to watch the first few videos in this series. He's actually one of my favorite sources of painting videos, too.

Do be careful, at least early on, about getting info from too many sources. Some offer completely different techniques that share a similar name, and may end up throwing you off. Pick a couple that you think are good, practice the basic techniques until you're comfortable with them, then move on to the next technique.

Thanks!

Painting in a light color then adding an ink or wash has made a big difference for me. I’m getting better with drybrushing by painting the Nolzur’s dragon line with the RealmSmith tutorials. With a big model, it’s much easier to see the results.

It took me about 2 hours to paint this guy yesterday and it was much more frustrating than my first one.
This one had more details and lots of smaller parts to paint which often had me fixing mistakes.
I ended up not dry brushing yet since it was getting pretty late.

The fire is just improvisation and doesn't look that good but it's only my second mini ever so I'm not going to be too harsh on myself.
Really enjoying this though .

Oh and these are all miniatures from Dungeonology. It's a pretty cool game!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lm ... expedition
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/267 ... expedition










I still need to get some sealer/varnish. I ordered 3 kinds from amazon (temporary free shipping to Hong Kong, yay!) so I'm curious to try them out:



https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com ... L1500_.jpg (image was too big even with bigimg)



I'm also thinking of buying this, any opinions on this?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009L ... RT1F&psc=1

When you're ready, fire is a great place to practice drybrushing. You have yellow. Drybrush the upper portions orange or red, then go back and hit just the highest points of each flame with black (or, better, with black mixed with a tiny bit of red.) The one thing that everybody gets wrong with fire early on is that they do it backwards. Fire is brighter inside, and darker the further out it gets.

Those are excellent varnishes. I use both. You should be aware, though, that the matt is more of a satin finish. Finding really good matt varnish that actually has no shine actually took me quite a while. I ended up with this.

The set isn't a bad set. Vallejo is one of the brands I use pretty regularly, alongside Reaper, Army Painter, and Scale 75 ( for metallics - best on the market.)

A couple of other options:

The Mega Paint Set, which comes with a few washes as well.

Master Series Paints Core Colors Basics #1 combined with a wash set, either Vallejo or Army Painter.

I use the Army Painter washes.

I've been getting the painting urge again. I'm not playing any games that use miniatures right now, which is a good time to paint (I can paint what I want instead of what I need to get painted.) I also realized that I haven't posted any new pics in just over a year.

Thanks for all the skin painting tips. Looks like I’ll be priming in a fleshy color next time — I didn’t even know that was an option.

For now (already primed a few minis in white) I think I’ll either be trying a reaper triad or a citadel contrast flesh color.

One of the students in Dungeonology. I was going to do a bunch of them and just do a basic coat and that's it... buuut I ended up spending time on all the details . Now I get to do it 29x more times (but with different colour schemes to mix it up a little bit).

I'm pretty happy with this guy!

Some real quick paint jobs on some of my Core Space figures...



Quick and dirty, about half an hour each. Look great in the game, won’t win any awards.

They look great hentzau. My saying is "Any paint is better than no paint." It's amazing how many completely shitty paint jobs I've done and had non-painters ooh and ahh over them when I brought them to the gaming table.

Do you need to use wash on every miniature? I started not using wash on some because I want them to shine more. Is this common or should I always use a bit of wash for effect.

I like the green dude on the right. Shapeshifting alien or just weird gumby species?

Smoove_B wrote:I like the green dude on the right. Shapeshifting alien or just weird gumby species?

Weird gumby species. Only shapeshifters so far in the game are the purge, where on a bad enough roll one of the NPC civilians can become a Live One.

Here’s a shot of the civilians set up with some of the Purge.



This game has become my game of 2019.

EzeKieL wrote:Do you need to use wash on every miniature? I started not using wash on some because I want them to shine more. Is this common or should I always use a bit of wash for effect.

Well, depends on the effect you are going for. Most folks don’t want a shine, unless there’s a “toy soldier” type look.

Washes are really where you step up your painting game. I really like Army Builder washes and shades.

Those minis I just painted are painted with Citadels contrast paints, a paint and wash in one. Sped up my painting like you would not believe.

EzeKieL wrote: ↑Tue Nov 26, 2019 8:01 pm Do you need to use wash on every miniature? I started not using wash on some because I want them to shine more. Is this common or should I always use a bit of wash for effect.

You don't *need* to use a wash at all. It brings out the detail, and it adds depth*


*Miniatures are so small that light doesn't create natural shadows and highlights on them the way it would if they were full-sized characters. That makes them look flat. We have to add the shadows and highlights by hand to get rid of that flatness.

If you want shine (or if you dislike shine - I rarely want it), you achieve that with the varnish after every other step is complete.

hentzau wrote: ↑Tue Nov 26, 2019 10:55 pmThis game has become my game of 2019.

Your endorsement carries weight. Just found a copy on eBay - apparently it's now sold out on the publisher's site. Maybe this will be the game I can get my contrast paints to work with...

Smoove_B wrote:

hentzau wrote: ↑Tue Nov 26, 2019 10:55 pmThis game has become my game of 2019.

Your endorsement carries weight. Just found a copy on eBay - apparently it's now sold out on the publisher's site. Maybe this will be the game I can get my contrast paints to work with...

There’s a nice series of Let’s Play videos on the beasts of war/on tabletop website. Check those out if you want more gameplay stuff. I really wish I had known about this when they were running their kickstarter, I would have gone all in on it.

Thinking about doing a solo run of the first scenario and doing an AAR with pictures while I’m at my folks for Thanksgiving. My D&D game fell through so I need something to occupy my time.

And the minis aren’t perfect for contrast, but I’m making them work.

Have a little more work on the Nolzur’s Treant. Finished a shopkeeper, two Drow and a Tabaxi thief for the kid’s D&D game.

I also have a new prepainted mini storage setup with 4 drawers for big figures and 4 Arko-Mills drawers for my collection. I’ll finish and clean up the space this holiday then post photos.

hentzau wrote: ↑Wed Nov 27, 2019 1:24 am There’s a nice series of Let’s Play videos on the beasts of war/on tabletop website. Check those out if you want more gameplay stuff. I really wish I had known about this when they were running their kickstarter, I would have gone all in on it.

Word on the street is that another KS for Core Space is coming in 2020. They seem to be genuinely surprised at the popularity and are now trying to capitalize on it. I've read quite a few reviews and seen some videos, but I'm usually distrustful of random shills. I place much more weight on what the usual gang of suspects says here.

I'd love to see more pictures. Keep painting.

hentzau wrote: ↑Tue Nov 26, 2019 4:02 pm Some real quick paint jobs on some of my Core Space figures...

Could I impose on you to list out the Contrast paint colors you used for Core Space minis? I don't think I need a breakdown of which ones you used on each, but I'm having a hard time looking at the sample pots online and seeing matches that look like what you have.

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Tue Dec 17, 2019 7:26 pm

hentzau wrote: ↑Tue Nov 26, 2019 4:02 pm Some real quick paint jobs on some of my Core Space figures...

Could I impose on you to list out the Contrast paint colors you used for Core Space minis? I don't think I need a breakdown of which ones you used on each, but I'm having a hard time looking at the sample pots online and seeing matches that look like what you have.

Sure. I'll list what I can remember. I assume you're just looking for a rundown of the Purge, not the crew?

I'll take whatever you're willing to share. The wife is desperately frustrated with anything to get me for Xmas (I need nothing), but the idea of finally experimenting with these Contrast paints is enticing.