Painting the War Gods of Olympus Amazons

The Amazons were introduced in yesterday's blog post.  They are a recently unlocked faction from the War Gods of Olympus kickstarter by Crocodile games.

As usual, we have the shaded basecoat, from which we will shade and tint the entire figure darker.

These are some of my initial glazes.  You can see the difference they make already.  Since I could not make a definitive choice between gold and bronze, there is a bit of each here :-)

More layers of glazing.  As I work darker, the areas where I want to show some SE-NMM effects become more defined.

These are among my final glazes, with the darkest darks.  I have also tried to tint some areas warmer or cooler.

Once those are complete, the middle tones are my next areas of interest.  When doing any sort of NMM, the middle tones become even more crucial.  That is where you can show the most reflected light.  While everything reflects some degree of light in its shadow area, metals are very efficient at reflecting such light.

You will see me doing a LOT of that on this figure.

Also, I have been working on the flesh colors at the same time...

With most of the middle tones restored to the level I wanted, I work some highlights in.  These are the best way to ensure that shiny look... positioning them right next to your darkest darks, which are typically where the horizon line would be.

I also attach the shield at this point, since I won't be doing much more on the skirt.

The sword in finalized, with the cooler blues on the skyward facing side of the blade, and warmer colors to reflect the ground.

I finished off the red areas at this point, as the eyes and other flesh tone details are completed.  The helmet crest is also finished.

Just about finished!!  The shield gets its final touches, and the war paint is added to the face, with a few scars on the arms.  Time to attach it to the base!

Stay tuned for the images of the finished Amazon!!

Heavy metal... more NMM

This represents the last of the NMM miniatures.  It is a Reaper mini called Niroli, Female half orc.

The concept behind this was to show the non shiny NMM, with less reflections and even a tiny bit of weathering.  The emphasis here was on a more purplish hue, complimented by greens.

As opposed to the more high contrast SE-NMM, where you are using the bright sky colors vs much warmer grayed down colors, these were from a more compressed range.

Not as high a value contrast, much less saturation, and so on.  Everything a bit more muted.

The set of colors is one of my favorites for non shiny metals  :-)

Amazing Amazons: War Gods of Olympus

As many of you probably know, Crocodile Games is doing a very nice kickstarter campaign right now.  It is called War Gods of Olympus, and they are unlocking factions and miniatures left and right!

One of these newly unlocked factions are the Amazons.  In this post, I will be showing some of the concept art, as well as the incredible greens!  The fact that these are still sculpted by hand by Mr. Fitzpatrick, a long time master.

Cathy and I have coveted War Gods figures since we first started getting into the miniature painting... especially since 2003.  The sculpts have always been consistent in quality, with excellent production values.

I am fortunate enough to be painting one of the Amazons right now:

Here it is right after I excitedly tore open the package:

There are also plenty of troops being made for each faction, and the Amazons are no exception!  Here are some of those greens.

When you look at the PDF on the kickstarter page, you will find a PDF that has an introduction to the Amazons, with stoy, stats and concept art.  You will see that the figures are very true to the concept art.

Since they have a vast existing product and years of experience doing what they do so well, I believe the turnaround time for the deliveries is very rapid.

I will be posting the painted figure as soon as it's done!  Stay tuned for that.

In the meantime, here is the link!  Go check it out!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1820979427/wargods-of-olympus-mythology-miniature-battle-game

Another demon, another big base

Here we have the big 60mm base for the Ultraforge Pleasure Demon.  I added some products from Secret Weapon to this base, such as the resin skulls and a skeleton which is also available.  That is very poseable, since the arms, legs, head, and torso are all individual pieces.

They have a new product about to be released which is a bag of corpses! They look fantastic.

I put a few basic colors on the palette to begin.  Some warm colors, some cooler, lighter, darker, etc.

The initial layers are very simple.  All I want to do is cover the surface quickly, and find out what I want to do with the colors.  I am experimenting with the Badger air brush paints, by the way, which is why the colors will be a bit shiny early on.

You can see that I have already begun to add lighter colors.  I am working very quickly, so the colors are still wet for the most part.

This view with the palette shows you some of the colors that were mixed.

Lighter and lighter on the rocks.  Remember, I am going back in later to get more shading and tinting...

Lighter still.  Notice that the skeleton has a variety of colors on it already, and that I have even alowwed some of the surrounding grey to work in as well.

Now it is almost time to work in the washes and glazes!

Here are some of the first glazes.  I had the usual colors on the palette.  Concrete, soft body black, a sepia... blue black, etc.  Those were the Secret Weapon washes.

Now I am doing a second and even a third layer of glazes, getting darker with each step.

After adding some cracks to the rocks, I go back in with some lighter middle tones and lights to 'pull out' some of the shapes.  I also did a little clean up work on the skulls and skeletons, where things may have not been very smooth.

I also took some dark brown and blue regular paint and put in the deepest dark shades.

One more big bird!

The snowy owls finally came into stock last week, so I had a few rushed here!  Time to get them put together very fast!!!  So , I started out by cutting those thick plasticard pieces to make bases.

Here are the parts...

After filing and washing, it's time to glue them together, using the "glue-green stuff-glue" technique.

This is very helpful on figures such as these, where the pieces are usually not going to line up very cleanly.

Not only does that fill the gaps automatically, meaning less work later, but it makes the joint a lot stronger!

This was very helpful on the wings!  The ring of green stuff mixed in with the glue, and make a shaky joint rock solid from the start.  Also, it means you don't have to wait for ages holding the part in place waiting for it to dry!  The green stuff does it for you.

The pieces are all in place.

Now it is time to work your way around the bird on the inevitable gaps.  I start out with the ones on the underside, so that I am way less likely to stick my fingers in those as I move to the areas on the back!

Working my way around.  The most difficult areas are the ones on the underside, since they can be hard to get to, and so are the gaps by the larger feathers.  You have to sculpt a few feathers of your own in those places to keep it from looking odd.

You can see one of those areas here...

All gaps filled, gravel added to the base, and a bit of the brown craft paint as primer!

Time for painting!!!

Something for human flesh...

While I realize this is not a 'human' figure, I needed something for the human flesh tone video.  I ended up using one of my Raging Heroes Sci-Fi Blood Vestals because I was curious to see what they would look like in a color scheme different from the one I used for my army. :-)

It was actually a lot of fun to paint them in more 'natural' colors, so I am glad I did that.

Besides, there was plenty of flesh showing, and the face is not hidden with too much hair, or feathers, or fur, which usually end up on barbarian style figures that I had considered.

So, moving ever forward!!!

Not a complete wash out...

Well, on a night where just about every electronic device was shut down and unplugged with all the crazy impending storms of doom, I had to wait to get this posted.

Kind of like waiting through 3 OT's for the Hawks to get that winning goal!  Most of the guys on the ice looked a lot like me at 5am :-)

Anyway, these images show the complete set of Secret Weapon washes.  You have been seeing me work these into my techniques more and more.

I tired to break them down into 'families' here... or are they line shifts?

From what I have tried of this batch, you have some very intense, or 'staining' colors.  Cathy sorta found that out when she had a little fumble getting some of the drying blood on her palette.

This group is very interesting, in that you have some opaque washes included.  You have seen me use the armor wash a lot in recent posts.  I certainly look forward to the parchment wash.  That will go right in with concrete for some fun opaque light glazes!

I have not tried any of these, which will be very helpful on my terrain and basing.  

This batch has seen a lot of action for me.  You know all about the concrete, and how I like to use both the hard and soft body blacks.  Now I get a chance to see what Storm Cloud can do.

I have used the Algae and blue black on my metal surfaces, mixing them in with the hard and soft body black.  I am very eager to try the cool grey mixed with concrete for some metal surfaces...

Get your sunglasses ready, because here are the bright washes.  Obviously very highly saturated.  These will probably take the most testing to figure out the best use.  Right off the bat, I can see them being helpful to get some washes on colors that you want to remain high chroma, or saturated, even after a wash.

I will have to see if any of these have that same opaque quality.  I hope so, since that could mean some very fun effects!

Once again, many thanks to the folks at Secret Weapon for coming up with some very nifty products!!!!!!