odinsgrandson

So, maybe it's The Walking Dead, but maybe it's The Hunger Games, but lately, I've seen quite a few cake toppers using arrows and bolts rather than bullets.

Some couples are in agreement about silent kills, but there are some couples where one of them didn't really get the memo and brought a shotgun.

In any case, here's the latest from the zombie survivor wedding front:

I find it a little odd that no one is speaking here about the different kinds of metals, resins and plastics that we see in miniatures right now.

And for me, it really makes a difference what they're doing with it.

For example, Wyrd really love those long thin pieces with tiny joins, and they don't mind making even a small mini come in a dozen or more pieces. So their very hard plastic is the way to go (a bendier plastic wouldn't work for them).

On the flip side, Studio McVey is doing some wonderful things with their line of Limited Edition Resin miniatures. The detail that Yanick Hannebo and JAG sculpt for them is actually greater than what would cast in other materials, so resin is absolutely the way to go there.

I find that GW's move toward resin to be uninspired- largely because their resin has more flaws in it than other companies, but also because their miniatures aren't more detailed than their metal counterparts. There is simply no gain here.

Anyway, there's a lot more to be said about the plastic that Privateer Press, Coolminiornot and Reaper are using, but I'm already feeling long winded.

Well, one of my clients wanted me to create a cake topper dressed like a time traveler and his wife (spoilers).

Anyway, here they are. Also, I am led to understand that their cake was shaped like a blue police box.

Well, my wife and I have decided not to play with unpainted minis.

Which really means that it takes us a while before we'll play the newer sets. But that's ok, the game ends up looking Beautiful.

Well, here are some more of my Super Dungeon heroes.

When I went to Gencon, I decided to group them together and enter them into the unit category. They landed me some prize swag from Sodapop:

The Sister of Light and Hearthsworn Fighter weren't part of the party I took to Gencon, but they were quite fun to paint.

And although I've posted them before, I round out the entry with the Starguild Sapper, Deeproot Scout and Van Wilding

Well, I just got some flow enhancer, slow dry, some super fine sand papers, and some diamond files.

I'm sure that wasn't all of it. I'm currently in need of some brush cleaner and probably some new good brushes (I'm not pleased with the last set I got).

Here is my Super Dungeon Succubus. Man, she was loads of fun to paint.

The color scheme is loosely based on Millenia from Grandia II, but the mini doesn't look all that much like her to begin with (and I didn't want to alter her since she's such a great mini to start out with.

Well, here are a few of the Super Dungeon minis that I've painted for my own set. I decided to start out with the ones that have clear references for them:

For the Deeproot scout I went with a 'Deepoot scout to the past' color scheme. Pre-ocarina

Super Starguild Sapper (I have a second one to paint up in green)

And I decided to go with a Richter Van Wilding color scheme on the last one:

Who wouldn't be complete without his shapeshift:

And last of all- I decided to just ditch the reference all together for my Princess Ruby. That's because we have a second, and my wife is going with a more peachy color scheme.

Well, I did meet my wife int he game store... (yeah, I married well).

Wow, Nathan. I've seen enough sexism to totally believe your story, but it just gets me every time that someone is willing to actually say something like that out loud.

I've also noticed a lot more inclusion since I first started gaming. Malifaux 2E isn't the first book to do this- I remember seeing it in books by Wizards of the Coast and White Wolf for quite a while (the first I remember was the Netrunner CCG manual from the 90s).

I painted up this Katherine Laddermore for the P3 Grandmasters this year. She got a silver medal.

I've also posted her to Coolmini if you'd like to be opinionated about her.

Anyway, here she is:

Yeah, there's a whole lot of crazy ideas out there, and every time someone says "you should always" or "you should never" then they're lying. That includes me.

Every technique gives you an effect, so the best thing is what is going to give you the effect you want in the micro sense.

Even scorned techniques like drybrushing have uses (I like it for the texture of denim).

Here's a mini that I painted up for Gencon's painting competition. I was rather pleased with how he came out, but this year's competition was pretty stellar and he didn't come home with anything.

I've also posted him to CMON for those of you who care to vote.

Anyway, here are some pictures:

@Big Mike- are you ready?

...i have to be careful to work with either all warm or all cool tones when blending thin layers.

May I ask how you did the skin? It's perfect!!

Thanks, I think I want to talk about both of these together.

The skin is usually something that wants to be the main focus of attention (I actually had a rough time composing with this mini because her face isn't showing, but I decided that the skin was still going to be the focus).

Areas of higher contrast attract the attention of the eye. There are three kinds of contrast- value (light and dark) temperature (warm and cool) and color wheel (use of opposite colors near each other).

So, what I'm saying is that when you're working with a color, you can definitely go up alternating in warm and cool colors (I learned that trick from Zach Lanier). But doing so makes the area into a center of interest. Do it on the face, but not on the boots, you know?

I'll show you how it is done on this mini's skin:

My go-to method for painting skin is to shade it separately with green and red, both mixed with the base color. First I'll do a wash of red (P3 skorne red) then a wash of green (P3 battledress green or Traitor green) and last I'll mix the two together for any very deep shadows (I don't remember if I had any on this mini's skin).

Since I wanted to keep a kind of purple to the shading, on Santana here, I mixed in a tiny bit of purple to both layers as I went down (I don't remember perfectly, but I'm pretty sure it was Reaper Burgandy Wine that I used there).

After that, I highlighted up using flesh tones, and at the top made sure there was a little Ivory yellow in there (P3 Menoth white highlight).

So, I'm using green and red and purple and yellow without ever mixing them together. Since these are all opposites on the color wheel, I have some pretty strong contrast happening.

In addition, these colors are all different temperatures (I go down with the warm red, then the cold green, for example) which also creates contrast.

Mixing the complimentary colors together doesn't usually create as much contrast (although it can if you have really sharp lighting). So the green shading on the magenta clothing is toned down enough that the skin really pops out from it. The grey and black are similarly simpler colors, meant to draw the eye less (although I lie a little, the grey has purple shading and yellow highlighting).

So, there's the rant.

This mini is a very limited release from Wyrd- similar to their event minis, they also only sold this one to minions who work at promoting Malifaux officially.

I was very happy to have secured one (especially since I don't work for Wyrd). So I decided that it was a good idea to paint her up for this year's Gencon competition.

She took first single miniature for Wyrd.

I've posted her up to Coolmini for anyone who cares to vote.

Anyway, here are the pictures

Edit- oops, this is totally a double post...

Loved this on the day, love it now.

A question - what colours did you use for the pink/red outfit? It's a rare thing to see that colour but not garish and neon!

The trick to that color is that I shaded it with it's compliment. If I remember right, the red started life as P3 Sanguine Highlight (or a mix of Sanguine Base+Highlight). I shaded it with a dark green and highlighted with an ivory color. The shading tones it down quite a bit.

Looks great, but is it just me or would you use this as a better Perdita...not Santiago?

I thought that when I was painting her. Of course, I'm looking forward to seeing the new Perdita box set, and we'll see what she ends up playing as.

This mini is a very limited release from Wyrd- similar to their event minis, they also only sold this one to minions who work at promoting Malifaux officially.

I was very happy to have secured one (especially since I don't work for Wyrd). So I decided that it was a good idea to paint her up for this year's Gencon competition.

She took first single miniature for Wyrd.

Anyway, here are the pictures

Thanks. That first one was a favorite around here too. She got to play in an RPG for a bit (we needed a commanding pixie).

Man, Tom's sculpting is crazy. These minis are so small, and he still pulls off the best faces around.

Tom Meier of Thunderbolt mountain sometimes has his children do design work for him. He's started a line of Theoland minis (including the infamous 'Slug-eat-your-face' and Ninja Cannon) and Noraland- whose primary infantry are the Fairy Princess Ballerinas you see here.

These minis are tiny, and their faces are so expressive.

Really like these. They're great little models (I painted the starter set as a commision a while ago). How did you find them? I enjoyed all of the characters, but found the kobolds pretty boring by the end.

The Kobolds are some of the less awesome monsters from the game. The Fireflow Denizens, Dragons and turtles are all pretty sweet (and I love the new undead guys).

This set is a commission, so someone else found me.

Personally, I found out about Super Dungeon some years ago when they first had the metal pre-release minis at Gencon. About a year later, I thought the game looked pretty sweet and pre-ordered it.

At the moment, I'm painting up minis for Gencon's competition, but once that's over, I'm pretty sure I'm getting on the Chibi undead from their newest expansion.

I finished a commission a little while ago in which I painted all of the Super Dungeon stuff that was currently out (this was just before the Von Drak expansion.

Here are the heroes:

you removed the fish!! *grin*

lovely paintjob. one of my favourite "Evil Empire" minis

I kept the fish. This is a different shield, and you just don't throw away quality bits like that, even if they don't fit this character.

Here is a mini from Mordheim. I decided to paint him up as my character for the Iron Kingdoms RPG (I'm playing him as a knight/aristocrat that is clearly past his prime and often confused).

I've always been a little surprised that I haven't gotten any steampunkish cake toppers. But recently, I got to work on a Victorian cake topper. The older clothing was really great.

I figure that this is the current closest I've come to a full blown Malifaux themed cake topper. I'd love to do a steampunk one soon.

This couple wanted to down play the gore quite a bit, and here is the result:

And some Victorian Zombies:

Well, here's a couple that love their multi-player.

I think the last time I did that, I started out by making a wire armature that was a little curved and sculpted it basically like messy hair (lots of lines).

If there's some other flames in your crew, you'll need to make sure the style matches, but otherwise there's a lot of different ways you can sculpt it.