On Time

In my last post I had made some really good progress on the two guardians.  I finished the green and had just put a coat of wash on it.  The green is the majority color so overcoming it is a big chunk of the miniature, but it always seems like getting the little details on takes an equal amount of time.



This is the point where things are starting to really come together.  As always I put down a layer of grey before I paint white because it helps the white to go on smoother, and I use the white as a highlight.  I'm still figuring out lighting, highlighting, and shading on robotic models, but it's coming along.




There's the final product.  One of the things that stands out the most to me is that the missles on a lot of other people's veritechs, and in the show itself, are all white.  Since I've got white on there as well I wanted to go with something different, and ended up with a dirty grey.  As I started to paint them I wasn't sure if it would work, but I like how it turned out and feel that it pops out more than if I had painted them white.  Let's see how they look next to the battloids:

 

I had teased a metal model last time, and while I had originally planned to paint it next the humidity has been pretty brutal lately.  If you apply primer to a mini in high humidity or low temperatures then the primer doesn't go on quite right and it gives the miniature a texture.  I have a backup plan for what I'm going to do next though, so I'll let you take a guess at what it might be.

Weekly Bi-Weekly

When I originally set out on this competition I had resolved to do a blog post once a week at least.  Here we are at the end of week four, and I'm on my second post.  In my defense I've spent the past two weekends running tabletop RPG's, so it's not all bad.  Let's start off with my first two finished pieces:



A lot of work is going into these models, which is why it's taking me longer to finish them.  So let's dive into next pair of models - two guardian mode veritechs:



On the left you can see the first basecoat, and on the left is what it looks like after a wash (note that the wash was still fresh in that pic).  The green that I used looks dark when it goes on my palette, but once it goes on it's a bit more thin and spreads out easier.  The end result is a slightly lighter and messier finish.  It takes a few coats to really get it solid.  Here's what it looks like after the wash and another coat of green:



 Multiple coats is what it takes to get the colors smoothed out.  This adds more time, but in the end it looks much better.  Next up is a few layers of highlighting, but this presented me with a dilemma.



I liked how the two Guardians looked after the layers of highlights.  I felt that the colors had really come together and were really working.  I encounter this problem from time to time whenever I'm painting up a group or unit that has some kind of consistency to it.  You've got some that look the same, but then one or two guys look different but really stand out well. 



In the end I asked my friend what he wanted to do, and he voted for consistency.  So in the end I washed the two models, but took care to not put on too heavy of a coat least I lose the finer details.  I think they turned out pretty good.



This was about Tuesday when I had gotten the wash done, and I had been hoping to get more progress in before the weather changed and threw my energy/motivation levels for a loop.  I should be finishing them up this week, and then I get to go a little off-schedule.



When me and Matt were discussing the terms of our competition we both agreed that we could swap out three models from our list.  I knew one of these models would be the special edition Breetai figure that was a Gen Con & Kickstarter Backer exclusive.  I got a few exclusives myself, including: Miriya in Super Veritech Guardian Mode, Max Sterling in Battloid, my very own Breetai, and a Greel Zentraedi Male Power Armor.  I don't know what I'll use the other two swaps for, and I'm holding them in reserve in case I need a break from painting Robotech models.  Then again I keep eyeing my Super Veritech in Guardian mode.