Octopus Overlords

I'm going to have to print off some new guides for all of these paints...

Nice! I pledged for their smaller box. Hopefully it shows up soonish.

I had my delivered in Belgium.. eugh.

And because of Covid there's no telling when I'll get my hands on it

EzeKieL wrote:I had my delivered in Belgium.. eugh.

And because of Covid there's no telling when I'll get my hands on it

Oh man. That sucks. I take it your aren’t anywhere near Belgium?

I live in Hong Kong

Looks like Scale75 is about to release a new KS tomorrow for a set of Encyclopedias .

It is a collection of 10 helpful books called MINIPEDIA, focused on painting miniatures.

Worked some with the Scale 75 Instant Paints last night. Templates were printed up and I worked on painting them up last night on the zoom chat. First impression: way less contrast-y than contrast paints. Colors are way more subdued than contrast. Almost pastel.



I’m going to try some out on an actual mini today or tonight, I’m thinking of painting another copy of the Vault Girl I recently painted. See how they compare.

I only picked up one of the potions (Flesh, I think) but I haven't experimented with them yet.

I did just discover the Song of Ice and Fire miniatures (CMON, 2017?) that appear to be super tremendous for Rangers of Shadow Deep - here's a sample from the Night's Watch collection:



I'm excited to get some more, but the scale is 28mm heroic (I think) so they do look a little oversized when you mix them in with other miniatures.

hentzau wrote: ↑Sun Nov 08, 2020 1:30 pm First impression: way less contrast-y than contrast paints. Colors are way more subdued than contrast. Almost pastel.

That makes me happy. I've got contrast paints in quite a few colors, and they're pretty intense. A different type of contrast paint adds a different tool instead of more of the same tool. And less heavy on the pigmentation means that they'll be more suitable to layering or putting over other colors (put Blood Angels red over a metallic, and you have Blood Angels red.)

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Sun Nov 08, 2020 1:38 pm

I did just discover the Song of Ice and Fire miniatures (CMON, 2017?) that appear to be super tremendous for Rangers of Shadow Deep - here's a sample from the Night's Watch collection:

I'm excited to get some more, but the scale is 28mm heroic (I think) so they do look a little oversized when you mix them in with other miniatures.

A quick check shows they're 32mm. 28mm Heroic is 'standard' size (Games Workshop, Reaper, etc.) The 'heroic' doesn't really mean much anymore, as different companies use it differently. Originally it meant that it was measured to the eyeballs rather than the top of the head, but when that became standard some companies started using it to indicate exaggerated proportions (giant swords, overly bulging muscles, etc.)

My plan right now is to start painting for Rangers of the Shadow Deep as soon as I finish the stuff I have lined up on my desk (Fallout: New California and 7th Continent.) The hard part is that my board gaming table blocks access to my desk, so I have to move it way off to the side when I want to paint, which blocks access to the closet where I keep my miniatures. My kingdom for a little more space!

Ahh, ok. I might have been confusing things. They're definitely bigger than my Frostgrave and other random proxies. I'm using, but I think if I'm consistent with them it shouldn't be too bad. I really like the sculpts and that matters most (to me) so I'll figure it out.

So the one on top was painted with Scale 75 Instant Color, the one on bottom with contrast.

Ignoring overpaint areas (still learning the viscosity of the paints so there was some slop) I guess it turned out OK. The colors didn’t match up with what I was expecting, I’m thinking about printing another one off and trying again with a different color.

The default skin color is VERY thin. After one coat it looked more gray than skin colored. I had to go over a second coat to get any kind of flesh color out of it, and it is still very pale.

The black is not as black as contrast, it’s actually closer to Basilicanum Grey. Yellows were pretty good. The hair color is actually called ogre brown, but as you can see isn’t very brown at all.

Edit: One other thing...there is something in these paints that is kinda nasty. I have an old rubbermaid pot that I use for brush cleaning, and I keep the water in it for days at a time, because it has a lid. Saturday night when I painted up my swatches I used the same pot as usual and closed it up after using all of the colors. Sunday when I went to paint this fig, I opened it up and it smelled disgusting. Like a rotten smell.

I dumped it out, rinsed it out, put fresh water in it, and continued on painting. Now (Smoove, cover your eyes here please) I'm a brush licker. I have been for years. I have been trying to break the need to do this by buying better brushes, but I still will inadvertently after cleaning sometimes stick the brush in my mouth to get a good point on it. And I must have done this a couple of times with these paints too, because I woke up this morning with the NASTIEST taste in my mouth, and it tasted like the pot smelled. So, I'm never going to repeat that mistake again.

That Scale75 blue looks like the perfect denim.

AWS260 wrote:That Scale75 blue looks like the perfect denim.

Yeah, as I started painting that’s what I thought. Color is Fairy Blood, FYI.

hentzau wrote: ↑Mon Nov 09, 2020 6:02 pm Now (Smoove, cover your eyes here please) I'm a brush licker. I have been for years. I have been trying to break the need to do this by buying better brushes, but I still will inadvertently after cleaning sometimes stick the brush in my mouth to get a good point on it. And I must have done this a couple of times with these paints too, because I woke up this morning with the NASTIEST taste in my mouth, and it tasted like the pot smelled. So, I'm never going to repeat that mistake again.

Yeah, that denim looks tremendously good.

Have you watched Radium Girls yet (or read the book)? Just curious.

Interesting, thanks for sharing. I'm wondering now at the potential of using varying layers with this stuff since has a high transparency. Say, one layer overall, a second on the side but not the top, a third only on the bottom to create lighting effects. It'll be fun to experiment.

I found this earlier, and I'm actually thinking he may have a point. I have had some eyes come out really, really well, but it is usually a pain getting there with multiple touch-ups.

Smoove_B wrote:

hentzau wrote: ↑Mon Nov 09, 2020 6:02 pm Now (Smoove, cover your eyes here please) I'm a brush licker. I have been for years. I have been trying to break the need to do this by buying better brushes, but I still will inadvertently after cleaning sometimes stick the brush in my mouth to get a good point on it. And I must have done this a couple of times with these paints too, because I woke up this morning with the NASTIEST taste in my mouth, and it tasted like the pot smelled. So, I'm never going to repeat that mistake again.

Yeah, that denim looks tremendously good.

Have you watched Radium Girls yet (or read the book)? Just curious.

Very familiar with it, yes.

Working on my cosmic frogs.

More work with Scale 75 Instant Paints...

Three more painted with Scale 75 instant paint.









The last picture posted solely because the plumbers butt amused me.

Final one for the weekend (I think...been on a roll...)

How fast did it go comparing to other paints?

EzeKieL wrote:How fast did it go comparing to other paints?

It’s about twice as fast as a standard base/shade/highlight figure. Comparable to contrast paints in speed, once I started to get a handle on their viscosity.

I’m getting a bit braver, layering and mixing colors. The last figure I posted I did two different paints for his skin and liked the results much better than straight human flesh color.

Hentzau (or anyone) - have you tried doing a brush-on primer then brushed-on highlights + Citadel contrast paints (or equivalent)?

I'm trying to replicate a rattle-can zenithal highlight and I'm not sure if it's worth it with the contrast paints. I'm looking to just paint the minis from Tainted Grail using an ivory base coat, then white highlights then something like skeleton horde over everything? Or just use the ivory base and skip the highlights (or do them after the contrast paints)?

I know I should be using light(er) colors for the base coat under the contrast paint for most of the colors. But I've seen how for the browns ivory works better than the true white I'd normally use. The general wisdom pre-contrast paint seems to be to do all the base and highlighting work and then apply the shaders (Army Painter or something like Earthshade from Citadel), but with the contrast paints, I don't know if it's wasted effort.

Decisions, decisions...

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Tue Nov 17, 2020 9:45 pm Hentzau (or anyone) - have you tried doing a brush-on primer then brushed-on highlights + Citadel contrast paints (or equivalent)?

I'm trying to replicate a rattle-can zenithal highlight and I'm not sure if it's worth it with the contrast paints. I'm looking to just paint the minis from Tainted Grail using an ivory base coat, then white highlights then something like skeleton horde over everything? Or just use the ivory base and skip the highlights (or do them after the contrast paints)?

I know I should be using light(er) colors for the base coat under the contrast paint for most of the colors. But I've seen how for the browns ivory works better than the true white I'd normally use. The general wisdom pre-contrast paint seems to be to do all the base and highlighting work and then apply the shaders (Army Painter or something like Earthshade from Citadel), but with the contrast paints, I don't know if it's wasted effort.

Decisions, decisions...

I've done zenithal with white over gray, and the results... vary. Many of the colors have very, very strong pigments, and will completely bury the subtlety of zenithal highlighting. The same would be true of actual colored highlights (like pre-Contrast era highlights.) Red would just be red. Other colors might well work. Another option is to get some Contrast Medium from GW and use it to thin the pigments a little (it's basically clear contrast paint, so it doesn't mess up the effect, just make the pigment a bit less dense.

Even before Contrast paints, my very basic process was base coat, then any shading washes, then highlights last. Sometimes a glaze over that if needed.

The new Scale75 contrast paints would probably work a lot better of zenithal/brushed highlights. If I ever see mine I may prime up a $2.00 bag of toy soldiers.

You do have me curious about priming in gray and then drybrushing the entire piece in bright white before contrast paints, though. It would probably work on detailed pieces that don't have smooth surfaces.

Not my image, but you can see the mini style and what I'm going for here:



I was also thinking of doing it to my KDM stuff as well, mainly because of the insane details yeah.

In those colors? I'd prime white, wash a thin black, and drybrush white (maybe with a thin black glaze if the drybrushing was too loud, or maybe painting a few white edge highlights.)

That is if the texturing on the sword and cloak are modeled on. If not, it would probably involve stippling.

The new rage I see on reddit these days in nonmetallic metal (NMM), or painting metallic items without using metallic paint.

For contrast paints I’ve only used zenethal on a couple of figs and was only mostly satisfied. Depending on the contrast paint it may do absolutely nothing on the darker parts.

I would say If you want to try this go no darker than the gray seer with a wraithbone or pure white over it.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Tue Nov 17, 2020 10:44 pm The new rage I see on reddit these days in nonmetallic metal (NMM), or painting metallic items without using metallic paint.

NMM has been popular for while with display and competition painters (it was discussed here back as far as 2012), but I honestly dislike it for tabletop use. It looks amazing in photos (see the example in the spoiler - wow), but looks wrong on the tabletop. The problem is that's painted to be viewed from a specific perspective, and moving and turning it makes it look... odd. The metallic highlight don't move, and if the angle isn't right, they look off.

TMM (True Metallic Metals) look better on the table, as they're actually metallic, but look worse in photos as light doesn't scale (IE - the reflections don't work correctly at scale short of actually chroming things.)

What I have begun to see more and more often by pro painters when working with non-display pieces is a hybrid approach. They'll take a variety of metallic paints and use NMM techniques for shading them. They might take, say, gunmetal, steel, and aluminum colored metallic paints, paint them like they were NMM, then add a bit of colored glaze. The effect is much more subtle than NMM, but still looks good in motion.

Ok, lots of good suggestions. Not that NMM stuff - that's bonkers. I'm all about speed now and trying to get things to the table. That would be the exact opposite.

It's a cool technique I'd like to experiment with - I can understand what they're doing (technically) even if I'd never have the need (for display purposes), which is kinda cool. I'm always amazed at how much more there is to learn with the hobby.

It's on my list of things I want to learn, if for no other reason than to understand the reflections and their placement so that I can use it in other things. One of my biggest weaknesses has always been understanding light and shadow as it applies to shading and highlighting.

Been unable to paint for the last couple of weeks due to some minor surgery to correct trigger thumb on my right thumb. I am super excited to get back into it soon though.

Right before I had the surgery, I painted these Dark Oak from Folklore. They were a lot of fun to paint and I got to practice doing wet blending of similar tones. I ended up putting several different shades of brown (for example) on the wet palette and dipping between them often to try and achieve a varied tone in the wood.

Nice job!

We were discussing TMM and NMM (True Metallic Metal and Non Metallic Metal) earlier and I mentioned the new approach I've been seeing that combines the two. I just came across a sample video that demonstrated it. I don't love the presenter (he tries to hard to appeal to the under-20 crowd), but his content is good.

The primer and paint are coming today! The primer and paint are coming today!

And it’s going to be a pleasant 60 degrees in Massachusetts today so perfect conditions for inhaling toxic propellant and primer outdoors.

$iljanus wrote:The primer and paint are coming today! The primer and paint are coming today!

And it’s going to be a pleasant 60 degrees in Massachusetts today so perfect conditions for inhaling toxic propellant and primer outdoors.

If it’s your first time, wash your figures before you prime them.

Yep. Episodes 2 and 3 would be a worthwhile time investment while you're waiting.

Washing of minis is being done after a pleasant walk in the park with the pup. (which will tire the pup allowing me to get to the washing)

And I've watched his videos BH and they're really useful! I don't know if I'll get everything right but between this helpful thread and some online videos I'm hoping to be on good footing. And I'm taking as relaxed mindset as possible so it's fun

If it isn't fun, it's not a hobby anymore!