Eternally Guarding the Portal of Space and Time

Today's post is going to feature the first cosplay model I've done for the Relic Knights line.  The cosplay minis are just what they say they are: alternate sculpts of some of the characters as anime icons.  Darkspace Fiametta is cosplayed as a sailor soldier, very reminiscent of Sailor Pluto from the anime/manga Sailor Moon:



The sculpt came out looking pretty awesome, and it is definitely a solid piece all around.  I'm really excited about how she came out that I'm having a hard time thinking of words to write, so let's just get on to the pretty pictures:






All I gotta say is WOW!  I love how everything came out...except the eyes.  They look just a little off, and I'll probably go back and redo them once I can figure out what's going wrong with them.

In my previous post I hinted that something about this piece has me wanting to go back and do more with the other pieces I've done.  What aspect is that you ask?  Her hair.  I had some great input from a fellow painter about doing more with her hair than I had originally done:



Eeeeee! I look at it now and can see why I didn't put up much of a fuss to go back and do more with it.  Usually it's difficult to pick out individual hairs, and I do a bit of a wet drybrush to pick out the highlights, but DS Fiametta obviously has long luxurious locks that just demand more attention.  So I decided to go back over them again and add a few more coats:



Already you can see that it's looking much better!  Still, it needed to shine just a little more.  So I added in some highlights, and then used a wash to help bring the colors closer to each other:



Absolutely gorgeous!  For some reason the highlights came more naturally to me while still not taking as much time to paint.  The end result is a confidence boost, and the desire to try more!

You may have noticed that DS Fiametta is on an interesting base.  From the moment I knew I was getting the miniature I kept debating over what to do for her base.  My favorite idea is one all my own:  I wanted her to stand on top of the universe.



I was very happy to have something that was all my own in an artistic sense, and the end result came out looking wonderful!  Rather than an insert I used the base itself as my canvas, which turned out exactly as wonderful as I had hoped.  Believe it or not though this is also the result of a different friend's influence.  Here's the original:



Not bad in its own right, but you can definitely see that it came a long way as well.  Artist friends are the best, and can be a great resource to draw upon.  This particular friend has a facebook page you can check out to see her amazing works! /shameless plug

What started off as simple advice turned into a late night, online, mini-painting jam of sorts.  I got some great advice on getting the shading for a spherical object (turns out planets are vaguely sphere-shaped), and a little touch that adds is the brightest star in the sky underneath her feet.

Brony Mecha For The Win!

I recently talked about a special commission I was doing for a charity raffle, and while that raffle just closed the other night I still have pics to share!  You may recall that the last shot of the Celestia Mk. III was looking just about done right?



Turns out that the general consensus was that it needed more punch to it.  I went back and added in some more details.  The difference is astonishing:





So how did I end up thinking that top pic was done?  My original intent was to paint the mecha up AS the ponies themselves.  If you've seen pictures of the new My Little Pony you'd see that the characters have a primary color with one or two secondary colors.  With that in mind I went ahead and tried a minimalist look, which as you can see above didn't work so well.  Stylized was the way to go, and that's exactly what I kept in mind as I painted up the Luna mecha (which I call Brony 2):





Now that looks sharp!  I was really happy with how Brony 2 turned out.  I pretty much got the colors just the way I envisioned them, which isn't always a thing that occurs.  I'm sure you've noticed that there's a couple of symbols on each.  All the symbols were done free hand.  The Solar Empire symbol on the Celestia Mk. III looked like it would be the more difficult of the two from a theory perspective, but after painting both it turns out that the Lunar Empire symbol was the more difficult one.  I have no rhyme or reason for why as both symbols were equally complex, but I can say I spent twice the amount of time on the Lunar Empire symbol.  I feel that both turned out reasonably well, and this was a bit more challenging than my normal freehand, so yay for advancing my skills!

The raffle overall was a success, having raised a little more over its goal.  Congratulations to Erin and to Squeeky!

Nytmares Come Alive

A long time ago I picked up an exclusive model from Wyrd.  The Nightmare Edition: Lord Chompy Bits.  He's an alternate version of one of their standard leaders, and the model is incredible to both look at and hold.



He stands at almost four inches tall, and is all pewter!  Why has it taken me so long to get this masterpiece built and primed?  Well there are some issues I needed to overcome in order to get to this point.  The first one was what to use for his base.  I didn't want to use just any old base, and I had spent a lot of time looking at different bases as well as trying to come up with ideas.  It wasn't until I came across War Gama's booth at Adepticon that I finally found one I was satisfied with.  So I was ready to go right?  Not quite:



What you're looking at is one of my first two attempts to assemble LCB.  There are two main pieces: the lower half, which only has a tail which was easily attached, and the upper half, which consisted of four different arms, the shoulders,  a front torso, back torso, and the head.  The end result is that balancing the top half on the bottom half resulted in him becoming very top heavy and pitching forward.  I ended up calling on the same friend who helped me assemble my Nicodem Avatar.



I had told my friend of my plight, and he rigged it up so that there's a center pole holding the upper half aloft.  However this left a large gaping hold where the torso should join the pelvis.  With so many pieces on a such a large model there was bound to be some gap issues.



I decided to attack it head on, and ended up putting some grey stuff inside along the join before finally filling out the front.  I needed to add lots of filler where the shoulders topped the torso, and around each of the arms.  Also had a hole in the tail to cover up, as well as some extra support I put in where the tail joined the pelvis.  I think the only area I didn't use grey stuff was the jawline as it still looked natural to me.



The touch ups I put on are ok, and a casual glance won't see them, but lets take a closer look at the main gap:



It's a little rough, but not bad.  I think it'll be less noticeable once it's been painted up.

While I had my greystuff out I decided to make a little gift to thank my friend for helping me out:



Just a simple tophat for him to use as a marker.  The process was a bit simple.  I started with a flat and thin oval which I curled up the sides on to use as the brim, and at the same time I did a flat tipped cone where I put in indentation to give the hat some life/depth.



After letting them dry I made sure that the tip of the cone was flat enough, and then I drilled a hole into it so I could use a pin to help hold it to the base.



After some glue and a couple of hours to let it dry I got out a little more grey stuff and did a little ribbon around the join.  Overall I'm rather pleased with how it turned out, and I'm sure my friend will be delighted to see the results.

Anger Management

I'm a guy who pretty much has to do his own stuff.  There's a sense that if I let others get involved that it lowers the model's effectiveness.  Well my Nicodem Avatar has presented me with an interesting situation.  I love that the model is being born aloft by a host of zombies, but when I was done painting the pieces my attempts at assembling them proved wanting.

 

This was a model that if I continued to try and assemble it that one of two things would happen.  Either I would do a half ass job and be frustrated with it and not want to look at it, or I would throw it across the room in a fit of rage.  I admit that the prospect of either was unappealing, but what options did I have?  Recently I commissioned a friend to do some scenery pieces that had been lying around and collecting dust.  I wasn't going to get to them anytime this decade, and it helped my buddy get more models.  A win-win situation all around.  What I got really blew me away.



So obviously a fellow painter of no small skill.  I'm sitting at my desk with my frustration ready to have me re-enact scenes from The Incredible Hulk when I decide to give him a call.  I only needed to say a few sentences before he understood the entire situation.  With many sincere assurances that he would take care of things I began to feel calm again.  There have not been many times where I've felt comfortable with letting another work on my models, but this would be one of them.  While I will gladly hand over the pieces for him to work his magic, I'll be hard at work getting the crowning piece ready to cap it all off.