But with that aside I have a fun filled update with the things I have been working on. First and foremost are my completed Mechanical Doves:
These are totems for the Arcanist Master Collette, and her entire crew is one I'm painting for Adepticon. The theme for her crew is stage performers/magicians, and the Doves reflect that beautifully.
The Doves themselves are actually quite simple and easy to paint, but I discovered that the bases for them were far more complex, and they became the focus of my painting.
Lots of little touches, swirls, and details. I ended up putting down a lot of freehand on the book and cards in the above pics.
The book, scarves, and wand all turned out wonderfully! They are distinct enough that you can make them out, but still sit well together without hurting the eyes to look at them. One gripe I have with the sitting Dove is that I completely missed the fact that there are multiple scarves, and I could have done them in multiple colors rather than one complete chain. Ultimately it isn't that big of a deal, but I had the model completed and sealed before that thought ever occurred to me.
Doves aren't all that I've been working on. Having been gifted a Sonnia Criid Avatar for Adepticon I decided to sit down and get it assembled so I could primer it when the weather warmed up enough. I discovered that however cool this model is, that it was going to require a lot of work just to put it together.
As you can see in the above pics there are a LOT of gaps, and the resin parts don't sit well against the metal. A few parts didn't match up full at all! Between cleaning the flash, mold release, and putting grey stuff on the model I've already put in about three or four hours of work on this model.
Of course this means that once it's painted it'll really draw attention and be totally worth the time and effort.
At various points here and there I've squirrelled away some time to start assembling miniatures from Sedition Wars.
Pictured above is the AI Drone, and it's very difficult for me to remember that name as I keep thinking of it as a hover weapons platform from the PC game X-Com: UFO Defense. One thing I have encountered is that there is a little bit of warping on my pieces. I received an email about this even before I received my own copy. The warping occurs while the boxes are exposed to temperatures, and while you can't stop it from happening there is a way to fix it.
Unlike last time the pieces I'm showing now are characters from the game. There's only one of each of these, and are clearly intended to be in the spotlight.
Very dynamic and heroic looking, I love it! Once I've gotten my Adepticon models painted I plan to spend a lot of time with these guys as well as continuing The Babylon Project.
One thing I'd like to address here is the approach of assembling models before, or after they've been painted.
The above model is composed of multiple pieces, and so far you can see the torso, leg, arm, and head have all been assembled. The model, when finished, will be holding aloft a sniper rifle. The final product will doubtless look amazing, but if I assembled the whole thing then painting parts of the torso and face would be insanely difficult. Therein lies the crux of the matter. If you fully assemble your miniatures before painting then they're ready to go and fun will be had, but sometimes you can't assembled them fully (or at all), and still be able to paint them. What it ultimately comes down to is personal preference. Sometimes I'll assemble a model fully if I think the piece won't be too difficult, and at other times I'll leave it in multiple pieces so as to make painting easier.
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