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I'm fairly new to Malifaux - I played a demo game at GenCon 2013 and picked up the rules and the new Children of December, but it's not been until recently that I got back into painting after a downturn. I managed to finish up an Ice Golem for GenCon 2014 and was able to get him into the painting competition, but this was without a base (he's also not been sealed or anything) - since then I've been in the process of moving and haven't had a hobby area or had a photo booth set up to take halfway decent pictures of him until just this past week or so.

 

I've won awards for painting figures before, but my goal with Rasputina and crew ideally would be to just paint them up to a standard I'm happy with - I'm not sinking in 30+ hours like I would for a competition figure, but I don't want to just slap on paint and not like the finished piece either. This Ice Golem is the first Malifaux figure I've done and I'm trying to acclimate myself to the different scale (I'm used to painting heroic scale figures, mostly), and my first attempt at painting "ice" and I'm using the Golem as the color test for the rest of the crew. I really like the scheme of the box art, so I'm trying to duplicate it with a minimum of effort.

 

I'm basing Rasputina's crew on Secret Weapon bases and have a SW Snow Effects set I'm going to try out as well, so for all intents and purposes these are both work-in-progress pics although I've probably put in as much work into the Golem as I'm going to do. I picked up some other boxed sets at the last GenCon and I plan on spending more time on those - ideally I'd like to finish Rasputina and company soon so I'll actually be able to play with painted figures.

 

Feedback, suggestions, and comments appreciated - don't really know a lot about the game world so I hope I'm on the right track...

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Edited by Tinweasel
Swapped out bad pic links for live pics
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First off, that looks great! If that's tabletop standard, then I'm kind of ashamed of my stuff.

On topic, I don't think there is a "right" way to paint this miniature line. More so than most other game systems there is a lot of leeway in what color schemes are fitting. To my knowledge there are no "this is what raspy looks like" kind of thing. Yeah, sure, lots of the art has her in a blue-ish coat but who's to say she doesn't have a wardrobe full of them in different colors?

TL/DR: paint what you like. If it's all going to be that standard it'll look great no matter the colors.

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Thanks!

 

Certainly no need to be ashamed of anything. I got back into miniatures again in '05, dug out all my old paints and got back into things with all kinds of painting guides pulled from the 'net. Apparently my "tabletop standard" is higher than most and I'm overly obsessive about painting - I've pretty much given up on even getting my own army painted and fielded for other games (it's been 9 years at this point); I think I'm better suited to a skirmish game like Malifaux.

 

I'm glad there's no set schemes - that's what I was hoping, but I really like the look of the box art so I'm likely just going to run with something along those lines anyhow. (I've got The Dreamer and friends as a second box to paint and put more time into, so I'm really going to cut loose on them color-wise.)

 

My weak area is painting flesh tones, but I picked up a few new paints and I generally do better at painting washed-out shades and pastels, so here's hoping...

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Looks amazing. And you know, I totally get what you mean about the obsessive nature of painting. I also gave up on completing an army, or even regiment type units, because I just couldn't bare to..I suppose hold back, if that's the correct thing to say. Every single model was taking me an age lol (not to say I was actually any good still...) and when they are all very similar looking it got very boring.

Thing is with Malifaux, being a skirmish game as you say, is every model feels like a character almost, so you can put more time into them and it seems more worthwhile. I also was more used to the slightly larger heroic scale figures (GW in particular), and was surprised at the detail of these smaller scale figures. So I kind of made it a challenge to myself to still try and push my abilities and paint these to the best I can.

Anyway sorry for rambling lol, Ice Golem looks really good

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On 11/17/2014 at 5:59 AM, madaxeman said:

That really is amazing - are you able to share how you got that effect ?

 

is it layers of washes, drybrushing or something else ?

I don't drybrush as a rule, unless it's something I want to have a textured effect (bases, fur, etc) so it's more or less straight painting over white primer. The last bunch of figures I've done, I've been trying to increase my speed of painting (see reply to sigmar3 below) so I've been playing around with painting with mostly thick washes/glazes to lay out the primary colors and then just tidy up. The Ice Golem (base is now officially a WIP, just got it primed yesterday) was done in about 2 days of painting, which for me is a personal record especially given how large a figure he is and the fact that I was trying to achieve a translucent "crystal" effect.

 

As I said, I painted him primarily as a color test for the rest of my Children of December crew and so he was done with 5-6 layers of glazes over white primer (starting from lightest to darkest) and primarily holding the figure upside-down, a few layers of intentional shading (the darkest blue and a glaze of purple painted into shaded areas and blended into the topmost edges of most of the flat crystal surfaces), about 4 layers of thinned highlights (mostly on edges) reversing the initial glaze color progression up to pure white... and then some tidying up. I'm trying to go back through and figure out my exact color progression because while I started him at home, I finished him at GenCon - the midrange color was P3 Arcane Blue (a nice glowy blue/teal color) and I do have a pic I took of the colors while the figure was still a WIP, the rest I'm fairly sure about and this time will definitely have to write down:

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On 11/18/2014 at 5:10 PM, sigmar3 said:

Looks amazing. And you know, I totally get what you mean about the obsessive nature of painting. I also gave up on completing an army, or even regiment type units, because I just couldn't bare to..I suppose hold back, if that's the correct thing to say. Every single model was taking me an age lol (not to say I was actually any good still...) and when they are all very similar looking it got very boring.

Thing is with Malifaux, being a skirmish game as you say, is every model feels like a character almost, so you can put more time into them and it seems more worthwhile. I also was more used to the slightly larger heroic scale figures (GW in particular), and was surprised at the detail of these smaller scale figures. So I kind of made it a challenge to myself to still try and push my abilities and paint these to the best I can.

Anyway sorry for rambling lol, Ice Golem looks really good

You pretty much hit the nail on the head of where I'm coming from painting-wise. If I'm going to paint an army (or a figure), I find it very hard to not "hold back" and even stuff like 40K Necrons ended up with conversions. I couldn't hold myself to painting a 40K Space Marine army as all that painting of similar figures would kill me, so I ended up running with a Chaos SM force - the trouble is my painting takes so long and I get so caught up in the details that I haven't yet even finished 500 points' worth (basic entry-level force, for those not familiar with Warhammer 40K) of my own assembled and painted figures.

 

My most recent attempts at a happy medium of quality vs. speed were 1) Necrons - I used a spray paint basecoat over primer and all the remaining work was a basic wash and then highlights... at least until I started going off the rails with conversions and adding OSL effects.

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...and 2) Orks - painted entirely using washes for the skin tones and basecoat, shade, highlights for everything else.

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Of course, for armies to play in 40K I picked the 2 forces that either have one of the highest figures-on-the-table count or the most repetitive painting-wise just because I liked the look of them. Talk about setting myself up for failure...

 

So yeah, I'm thinking a skirmish game with a minimal number of figures ought to allow me to paint to a level I want to paint to while still finishing a playable crew in a reasonable amount of time. (At least that's the hope!)

 

Thanks for the compliment on the figure, too!

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Nice. I have the same problem with armies and not being able to hold back.......my infantry always looked just as good as my characters. I down graded from GW Lizardmen and Highelves to Hordes Trolls to Malifaux.......I finally feel like I can paint and play with a fully painted crew.

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  • 4 weeks later...

So I attached the Ice Golem to the finished base, sealed it for gaming, and tried out a new photography technique. I think the colors are more accurate now, I dunno? (At least the backdrop is more accurate to real life, so I have to hope the blues, turquoises and purples are, too.)

 

At any rate, this is before the application of the Secret Weapon Crushed Glass basing set. Things may go terribly, horribly wrong... but I doubt it.

 

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Hey, it's great to see familiar faces - as it were! Thanks for the compliments as well (folks old and new to me)!

 

I plan on carrying the "snow caused by December's Children" theme over to the rest of the bases, ideally, but he's the most dramatic as he's punching the ground. I hope to have better final pics with the good camera and the proper setup shortly (time, gift-wrapping, and illness notwithstanding.)

 

Feedback, comments, suggestions et al appreciated! I've never worked with anything like a snow medium before and this is definitely the first time working with crushed glass - I got the Secret Weapon Miniatures Crushed Glass set as a demo and I'm really liking it thus far. (For info's sake - I laid down a first pass of the crushed glass/realistic water mixed with white paint added, and then a second pass without, and built up the "displaced by large fist" effect with larger chunks of coagulated mixture, white glue, FFF, and more brushed-on glass/water mixture.)

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It just so happens that I picked up the Translucent Pink "Hide and Seek" set from the Black Friday sale! (Thanks, Wyrd!) I'm trying to put them together as seamless and shiny as I can - I have limited experience with translucent plastic molded pieces. Anyhow, I mocked up a base for this Daydream from The Dreamer's crew.

I'm aiming for a half-orphanage, half-wilderness appearance as if The Dreamer's imagining's are coming from Earthside . I plan on having leaf litter and such on the outdoors part, maybe abandoned toys and childhood bedroom things on the wooden floor side.

WIP Daydream number 1:
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Translucent pink Daydreams! Who knew?

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Love the background you've shot the Ice Golum on, It really shows off the "o'natural' look. ;)

When you going to post up more pics or are you waiting till you have the rest of the crew finished first?

DR

depending on how quickly I can get the rest knocked out, I was thinking I'd maybe enter them in the Frozen competition upcoming on the Forums in a little bit. I mean, I'm going to be painting and finishing basing on whatever ones I get done anyway - and half the crew (at least) is going to be painted mostly with glazes, and I'm not aiming for "competition" standard, just a "tabletop" to my satisfaction.

The downside would be that I can't post any pictures of them, per the competition rules - kinda sucks in that I can't get feedback, but I think the Ice Golem turned out good, so there's that.

The upside? I have a Dreamer crew waiting in the wings that I plan on pimping out, and I have a Translucent Pink Dreamer crew I picked up for the sole purpose of having something straight-off playable barring assembly and basing (and if my basing plans work out, I'll carry them over to the rest of actual plastic The Dreamer and his friends).

Also, my daughter's working on a Lady Justice crew and my wife is waiting for me to finish prepping a Lilith crew - be posting pics of those if they're cool with it.

Long story short; more pics of stuff will be ongoing, I just dunno what forms they may take.

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That is a mighty cool golem. As always, the basing is exquisite and the blends flow perfectly.

 

Will also try to paint up a crew (The Valedictorian and her merry lot) for the competition, so see you there!

Don't know if you remember, but this is not the first time we would take part in the same painting competition :D

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Quote
Don't know if you remember, but this is not the first time we would take part in the same painting competition

Hiya again Gru6y! Relicnews P&M Forum FTW!

 

 

I bought the Translucent Pink Hide and Seek set with the intention that all I had to do was assemble them and base them, and I'd have a crew good to go all quick-like. I thought the translucent plastic would be good because, well, The Dreamer and all his friends are "imaginary" to begin with.

 

Now that I've seen people doing semi-painted translucent models and my wife was saying that as-is they essentially just look like "blobs of color" and could do with some definition or something, I'm no so sure about leaving them as-is. I don't know if I want to go whole hog and paint on any of the figures outright, since I've got a regular plastic Dreamer crew from GenCon still in the box that I'm going to paint up all fancy. (In other words, if I want a painted Dreamer or whatever, I'll eventually have one. Eventually.) So there's that... plus the translucent set gives me extra Daydreams and Alps for playing in different colors than the eventual painted ones.

 

So, here's the current progress on my first two Daydreams:

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As to what I did here, part of my assembly and prepping is using plastic weld to stick 'em together and smooth out rough filed spots, like where the pieces were removed from the sprue. To get rid of mold lines, I've been using a series of sanding sticks/blocks, with the last one being a cheap nail polishing stick I picked up at the drug store (I'd say it's about equivalent to 800-1000 grit or so, like wet-dry sandpaper.) I'm doing all this so I can have them as glossy and shiny pink as possible.

 

I then washed, shaded, and then lightly buffed them to bring back the glossy highlights. (My wife was right, they did need something to make the details pop a bit more!)

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  • 2 weeks later...

So this is phase one on my two Daydreams complete: they are shaded, based and sealed.

Phase two will be decorating the base, as I'm quasi-stealing an idea from Mako in part, by having the Dreamer's crew interacting between the little boy Dreamer's Earthside and Malifaux - to that end I'm likely going to follow up doing all the bases in halves with one part done in wooden flooring (like an orphanage or an 19th Century nursery) and half in a woodland theme. That's where the "decorating the base" part comes in.

I apologize in advance for the size/contrast of the pic, but I'm posting directly from my iPhone to Photobucket until I can edit the pics and repost from my website like I've done the others - I just wanted to show them off at their present state of completion.

image_zps1878d528.jpg

Feedback and suggestions welcome!

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