FallingTwilight

Updates on the WIP Smoke and Mirrors Crew. Much work still to be done but base coat and first shade and some highlights are done. So Cassie I went with the standard Red. Performers are Green/pink and Orange. Angelica I am doing in Blue.... So now I am trying to work out what to do with Colette. I think I am going to make her clothes darker than the others... I might go with dark blues and grays. I also am going to do a brown/gold pattern on the Green and Pink Performer's corset.. hopefully it comes out kinda paisley looking. I am also going to make her tights more "Ballet Pink" than what they are now. Orange Performer I'm going to try and freehand some blue blossoming flower branches on the dress. I can't decide if I want to just throw a light wash on Cassandra's boots and gloves to pick out the detail but overall leave them white... or if I should paint them some other color... I feel like with that dress they either need to be black or white. Plus, overall, smoothing out the colors and whatnot before the highlights start.

Thanks! Yeah, I like the way they turned out but I basically had to accept the gritty primer (my wife would murder-kill me for priming them indoors) since the weather here is seldom both warm enough AND dry enough to prime without getting at least some of the grittiness. The first time I tried to spray a varnish on a group of miniatures and it microbeaded all over them due to the humidity that day I rage-quit painting minis for 6 months. O.o I just risked brutal wrath today by priming some bases in the utility room. MY KINGDOM FOR A GARAGE... it's not a BIG kingdom, mind you... I was on such a tight schedule that I really didn't have time to file off every seam and fill every gap... I basically had to just do that on only the most egregious examples (You may be familiar with the back of the floating Oxfordian Mage's coat...) I've been a little more diligent on the Showgirls and Kaeris, since I have had some time to kill while waiting for bases... but even then I want to try and knock both of those crews out in the next few weeks as much work/life balance and 3 year old kid allow. I decided to try and paint Cassandra's stocking as sheer fabric and got started on it... The kiddo kept interrupting me and the wife was at work, but I trucked on... and then I looked at it and realized I'd put the sheer fabric on the folds like a highlight instead of where it touched the skin. DOH. So I'll have to redo that... And my daughter keeps harassing me to paint "The Princess" which to her is the Performer with the poofy dress. So I'll probably do her when I am done alternating between Cassie and Kaeris. If she ends up some weird color then I'll just blame it on a 3 year old's suggestion.

So there you have it! Around 3 hours per night for 21 nights, and 25 miniatures complete... minus LCB, who got as much work done on painting and then fixing him as the rest of Hide and Seek combined. Given the amount of time I had to knock all these guys out I am pretty pleased with the results. I wish I had had a couple of more weeks and could have really spent some time on them... but overall I think they'll look great on the table, even if not held directly up to the eye. You might have noticed that I have shown you the stuff that I gave away to Friend 1, Friend 2, and Friend 3 for Christmas... and you might be asking yourself "Hey... aren't YOU and your wife planning on playing this game too, Falling Twilight?" Right you are...right you are.. but the Gifts were the priority, obviously. And then the weather hasn't been cooperating... and the bases I ordered aren't here yet... so here's the sneak peek at what I am working on for my wife and I... You know what my wife likes? She likes Fire. And she plays a lot of very straightforward characters in RPGs and such. Many of them also like fire. SO ... for her, who could be better than Kaeris?! And note the swoopy cool female Firestarter I snagged during the Black Friday sale along with the S.E. Francisco, Barbaros, and Dr. Dufresne! Can't wait to paint her! ... And continuing my fine tradition of snagging a faction for a new game because I want to paint them and then finding out they're one of the most complex and troublesome to learn and play properly... Here's my pick... Also, because I cannily selected Arcanists for both myself AND my wife... all the additional miniatures we pick up to throw into our Crews can be used by either of us! Wile E. Coyote... SUPER genius... And that wraps up what is done and gifted and what is WIP. I just primed the WIP stuff today, and the bases I want aren't here yet. You can see that they're all temporarily affixed to their bases with poster tack if you look closely. It's been done to death, but Colette and her gals are going to be on wooden stage flooring... I can't really think of a better option for them, honestly. Kaeris and her Crew will be on cracked stone with lava from the melting rock. If you have any feedback or constructive criticism, please let me know! I think for the time allotted they turned out fairly well, although there are some things I would have done differently or paid a little more attention to if I did it again. I should be able to take my time with Smoke and Mirrors + Angelica and Burning Revelations and the Gunsmiths and Oxfordian Mages. I'll post pics when I have em! -Falling Twilight

And of course they get a box too... It doesn't look as GREEN as it does IRL due to lighting fails and camera mishandling and whatnot...

AND THEN! The group all together. I am STILL amazed at how colorful these gals all came out.

Then on to the Bushwhackers proper. There was a poll conducted. The results were unanimous. The stuffed bird HAD to be a Flamingo... and not some more camo-appropriate bird. I'm afraid my photography skills failed harder than usual with the next one... she's a bit out of focus...

WAR PIG!!!1!!11!!one!

And then on to her protégé... Little Lass. She's ben in the mud, obviously... And then everyone's favorite party-girl, Trixie Belle. There are a couple of things I noticed about Trixie as I was getting ready to paint her... 1. Her clothes pretty much FIT. I mean... they're ragged... but they're HER SIZE. 2. She has SHOES. Clearly she is a girl that gets what she wants.

Friend Number 3 is the kind of person that you get hillbilly bayou-dwelling gremlins for...trust me. He has managed to work "Revenuers! Get Offa My Land!" into several conversations. Since Mah Tucket actually HAS a "Get off my land!" ability, I felt she was the Hillbilly Bayou-Dwelling Gremlin for him. >.> <.< Also, I wanted to paint Trixie Belle. O.o So some notes overall on the Gremlins: I tried to paint them all in mainly browns and greens because they're BUSHWHACKERS... and they should be good at attacking from stealth and hiding in the Bayou. To make them stand out and pop I did a lot of mixing different greens... blue-greens...yellow-greens... brown greens... you-name-it-greens. Overall I was surprised at how well that worked out and just how colorful they are! I feel like the gremlins look great! The slightly grainy pics that follow don't really do them justice, IMO. Also, they're GREMLINS... so uh... it's MONTHS from Laundry Day...if you know what I mean. When I showed them to my wife she said "I didn't expect the GREMLINS to be BEAUTIFUL. I don't think any of the other gremlin crews would have come out so colorful and attractive, had I not chosen the Bayou Bushwhackers. Let's get started with the Matriarch of the family! I wanted her to be grimy but colorful. You can see the crud worked into her clothes and in her hat, and WHO KNOWS what color the blanket she has tied around her neck as a cape used to be! The Battle-Spoon though... she takes REAL good care of that.... she calls it Spanker.

And ONLY NOW do I notice that LCBs base is showing the foam through the cracks.... /seppuku

And the Group.

Aaaaaand... LCB in all his toothy glory. It bears noting that LCB took me forever to paint because I started out making him look all green and ghosty and was painting brown carapace on top... then realized that I wasn't going to make deadline if I kept doing that... then tried to take a shortcut... COMPLETELY borked the miniature... drank some delicious rageahol and went on a rampage... came back and realized that I didn't have time to strip the paint and start over AND still do what I wanted... and then did my best to salvage the miniature. It's fairly well salvaged I think, even if it looks NOTHING like I originally intended.

The kid himself. The camera DID get the tone-on-tone of the pillow, but not the three shades of warm white on his shirt.

Coppelius. I described the "I want them both!" part of his Card to my wife. She felt that was TMI. She loves that he is wearing khaki's tho. The shading doesn't really show in the pics. There's actually a transition from pink at the top of his head to dark purple at the end of his tentacles. Also, his khaki's are shaded, but the camera didn't pick it up well. And then to everyone's favorite murderous teddy bear of doom... I wanted his eyes to look like they were glowing brightly... but again... it bears repeating...I suck at painting OSL and light.

On to Hide and Seek! As I explained to my wife when she asked about the Crew: "You're coming home from work late, walking the last little way. It's dark outside. You see some dazed-lookin' kid in a nightshirt wandering around and rush over to make sure he's OK. At the last moment you realize that you just walked up to an unattended little kid at night, and that you are in MALIFAUX... and hey why I everything spinning and IS THAT YOUR HEADLESS BODY FALLING OVER?!" The BOX! Like the others there is a metal plate in the bottom and all the bases are magnetized. The ALPS! ... and I gotta be honest here... I wasn't really feeling these guys. They don't look nightmarish enough for me I guess. I really didn't know what to do with them. I kinda rushed to get them out of the way while experimenting with a cell shading kind of effect that really didn't turn out well. I'd have gone back and tried to fix it... but I really didn't want to paint them to begin with. And a closer look at the one I have dubbed "Boss Alp." These are made a little grainy by the cropping I did to them. The color transition is actually much smoother than what is picked up on the picture here.... you'll see in the wide shot better I think... And then on to the Daydreams! These I was actually looking forward to painting. First... I agonized over what color to make this little guy... but in the end decided he had to be Classic Red Demon. A couple of shots of Tongues McTinywings. For some reason he has underwear... that cracks me up. Finally, the little tentacle monster. My aim here was to make him so gross you wouldn't wanna fight him because you might have to TOUCH him. Accordingly, he got a gloss coat instead of a matte coat at the end...

And finally... a Group Shot of the Crew. As you can see... painted to Tabletop Standard it looks reasonably good when not at EXTREME CLOSE UP! AAAAAAAHHHHHH! Range.

And now the Ghost Rid- er... uh... The Purifying Flame... I TOLD you I sucked at OSL and Lighting Effects, didn't I?

Witchling Stalkers! I really didn't mean to paint them the way they were on the box art... I didn't realize I had done it until I was putting them in the gift box! Doh.

Aaaaand... a closer look at Sonnia.

More Samael Hopkins. Sorry for the bad camera work and lighting. I'm a terrible photographer!

And on to Sonnia and Samael! For Sonnia I wanted her to be colorful, but still kind of dark... if that makes sense. I opted for a dark green jacket and cream colored top. I'm not entirely pleased with how the lantern came out.. I wanted to do some OSL with it and try to make it look brighter... but I suck at painting light. Samael was basically "A Study in Brown." I gave him the same blue colored shirt that is on the rest of the Guild Models to tie him in to the group, but other than that I wanted to see if I could paint him with as much brown as possible and differentiate everything enough that it didn't run together. It's hard to basically paint a model one color and have it look good. I'm fairly satisfied with the results. I still gave him blonde hair just to put another color on him though.

And now to try and get the images linked in The Right Way.... Guild Guard together. On the one hand, I think that yellow is SUPER BRIGHT. On the other hand, it pops out on the table really well.

The First Box I put together was Guild, Torch and Blade. Here is the Box, as well as the Guild Guard. COMMENCING UPLOAD TEST! Note a couple of things: Yes. The cold did make the primer texturize the mini's somewhat. It's nowhere near as noticeable in person. On the whole I don't usually mind as long as what I am painting is primarily supposed to look like cloth, since I think that slight texture makes for a good Cloth Texture.

Howdy all! I've wanted to try Malifaux for a while, and I discussed trying to get my Sunday Night Game Group to try it out with my wife oh, round about Mid-November. She basically shrugged and said "Even a small scale skirmish game may have too high a barrier of entry for the guys. I'M certainly not painting miniatures, and the others either can't afford a starter box or don't have time to paint. If you want to play this game you will basically have to get everyone a Crew and paint it for them." I thought about this for a while and then said "Challenge Accepted." I snagged everyone in my gaming group a starter box and an add on during that sweet Black Friday Sale. Originally because all of these were going to be gifts I had planned on really taking my time with them... but my goal was to deliver them the first Sunday after the Christmas Holiday Weekend before I went back to running the regular RPG game... and because of order volume and the time of year it was I didn't get them until Mid-December... One guy in our group got Torch and Blade plus a box of Guild Guard. Another got the Bayou Bushwackers plus a War Pig. The last got Hide and Seek plus Teddy. I quickly realized that I had 3 weeks to paint 25 miniatures in order to make deadline... when I work 8 hours a day... and my wife is a workaholic that generally does 12... and we have a 3 year old daughter. If this was the Hunger Games the odds would DEFINITELY not be in my favor. So I had to sacrifice the "showpiece" quality of the miniatures and go with Tabletop Quality. Irksome, but there just wasn't time to do 25 miniatures in 21 evenings unless I shifted my expectations down. Also: Virginia Weather. The number of days I lost waiting for Mother Nature to give me a day that I could prime or varnish miniatures made me say a number of bad words. I ended up getting dragged down to see the in-laws overnight on the Friday of my deadline weekend and missed it by a factor of Lord Chompy-Bits. But one player couldn't make game night that week and it bought me a little more time! With the additional week I managed to get everything wrapped up, maybe not quite to my satisfaction, but at least at "Good Enough" level. So Merry Christmas, Suckas! I got all y'all a game I wanted to play! What follows is each box that I put together for them, if you're interested. ... Hold Please while I figure out how to upload pics to the Wyrd Forums... -Falling Twilight