Shadows of Brimstone: Part Four

Hello there happy people, we're back with another whistle stop tour of progress on the Shadows of Brimstone commission!

It's going to be a bit whistle-stop because these were (with the exception of the scout) some of the, how to put this politely, less exceptional sculpts... So I don't have a huge amount to say. These were all either possessing odd proportions or strange fabric flows, some had anatomy problems, most had disappearing details (belts that start on one side and vanish on the other). There's only so much you can do with that sort of thing, so here we are.

We'll start with the best of the bunch. The scout (who I could not get properly in focus, rackum frackum grr) was the nicer of the four, although even she had a levitating rifle necessitating a rock under it and a face that was way more "standard white girl" than Native American. Using this as another occasion to play with my skin tones palette, I checked some references and set to. Given that "tanned but rosy" would be how I would describe the average tone, Bugman's Glow seemed the ideal starting point. This was shaded down with Reikland Fleshshade and then highlighted with increasing amounts of Cadian Fleshtone with a dash of Kislev Flesh for the final highlights. Then I glazed it back down with a thinned Seraphim Sepia. The buckskin clothing was various sand tones and I finished her off with the details from the picture on the card, warpaint, belt etc.

The gunslinger was another "alright" model, face was a bit weird, eyes almost missing. This one was painted to match the card and as a result doesn't work quite as well as a miniature, because artists can choose how their paintings are lit it doesn't matter if you have dark hair, dark hat, dark jacket. It all just works. With a miniature, you'd normally want to change up the tone a little, have some contrast breaks in the overall effect. She looks fine in person, you can see all the changes in which black I'm using, in photography? Not so much.

The Marshal is pretty much a twin of her sister model from back in part one. Just with physics defying coat added. Seriously sculptors. Look at the hair, look at the coat, look at the hair, answer me what is wrong with that picture... Again, colours from the card but this time a bit more mini-friendly!

This last one, the outlaw, I'm including for a sense of completeness, do not like this one at all, bizarre sculpted coat (although at least hair is normal), eyes in the wrong place on the head (nothing I could do about that). The only one of the whole lot of models I just have to say: Bad about. Considering the amount of complaining I've seen about the models online I'm surprised she's the only one. I will say that the casting is not great on a lot of them - the six that are last all have holes in really critical locations, one on the face and all need sculpting to fix - but people seem to be grumbling about the sculpts when it is the cheap casting that's at fault. Except for the outlaw. She's just bad. End of grumble.

Sorry this one seems grumpy, this batch has been somewhat trying so finding nice things to say can be tough. Promise I'll be cheerier next time! Until then.

TTFN

Shadows of Brimstone: Part Three

Somewhat belatedly (I've been ill, some kind of ear/lung-murder-virus thing) we return to the weird world of Brimstone and a pair of likely lads from rather opposing ends of the socio-economic spectrum:

Yep, today it's the turn of the Doctor (for whom I could not find visual reference for love nor money so I just went for it) and the Male Prospector. They kind of represent opposing ends of the sculpting quality in Brimstone, because the prospector - for all that his proportions are a bit weird - is a nice model. He's got lots of nice details and works well. The doctor is... ok. Unfortunately "ok" is the best most of the models come in at. They're mostly single piece and so occasionally suffer as a result of slightly unimaginative posing, or in the case of the doctor, a slightly weird element. In this case, his hair. The detail is also a little soft on that one but otherwise. Not terrible. Lets start with him.

The doctor is the companion piece to the nurse we featured in part one. Quite a few of the Brimstone models have both genders represented, which is nice. For this chap, there wasn't a whole lot to consider, I figured a basically brown tone would work and used a tan yellow waistcoat to both fit with the tone and also contrast the darker brown bits. I'm happier with the battered leather look on the gladstone bag this time. I went for a much lighter brown on the scuffs and it worked nicely. The glasses were a frustration. It's almost impossible to freehand the eyes in there to make them look like actual glasses so you're left with Django style shades. There's a reason not many models have glasses, there a swine to paint to look like plain glass lenses. Otherwise, he's fairly unremarkable.

The prospector was a lot more fun. I realised he's supposed to be wearing a sort of lumberjack shirt waaay too late and painted him with those red/pink longjohns on under his much-patched denim. He's got a ton of little details - the frying pan is really nice - and he looks exactly how you'd expect an itinerant prospector looking for claims in creek beds and the like to look. I think only a gold pan would have improved him but you could successfully claim the frying pan can do double duty. I actually all but finished this guy before I got sick so unfortunately the exact mixes have been forgotten. But he's a nice model!

That's all for today. More shinies soon

TTFN

Shadows of Brimstone: Part Two

Continuing our Shadows of Brimstone mini-odyssey, this time with the two "Jargono Natives":

Apparently there is some sort of jungle/swamp thing in the Brimstone setting and these two are residents of it. They're actually some of the nicer cast models in the game that I've painted so far.

The "male native" - if these characters have names, I don't know them - is supposed to be armed with a turtle shell shield along with that alligator shoulder armour and Inca-esque sword. Given that the sculpting on the shield was not a huge amount like a turtle I needed to use some trickery to get the effect. For the outer layer I just painted a suggestion of the ringed look that turtle shells have. (By the way SoB sculptor... that isn't how turtle shell looks... just saying...) For the inner part, it was sculpted perfectly flat so I put a bit of shading on to indicate the internal ridges of the turtle skeleton. The alligator hide is just Caliban Green, over-highlighted with Nugling and then glazed down with Athonian Camoshade which knocks some of the saturation out while still keeping it a nice green.

I've left discussion of the skin till now, introducing "female native", because, well, what else would I talk about? I'm always a little confused when sculptors do the bikini thing on tribal types. A loincloth would have had the same effect and been a little more in character. But hey, aesthetic considerations aside, I knew I wanted these to have that particular skin tone that most Amazonian tribes have, a little redder than, say, Hispanic. Following my usual progression of human skin tones (Burnt Umber through Beige Brown to the GW pinkish skin tones) I figured start at Beige Brown with a tiny dash of Burnt Umber. Warm it up a bit with a wash of Reikland Fleshshade - I'd usually use sepia with this tone - and then start the highlighting: Pure Beige Brown layered on and then further lightened with Kislev Flesh added to the mix. Finally, I glaze the whole thing again with another, slightly thinned, layer of Reikland Fleshshade. I think I got it about right. Some stone daggers and the tiny bits of clothes later and jobs a good un.

Well, that's all for today folks, next week we'll take a bit of a break from Brimstone and have something with a smidge more horsepower. 'Till then...

TTFN

Shadows of Brimstone: Part One

Hi folks, today we're kicking off the first of a new commission, painting minis from the Shadows of Brimstone game. I'm completely unfamiliar with the board game so I'll be focusing on the painting only!

First things first, they didn't photograph too terribly well. But assume that there's some more transitions and subtlety about them and all will be well... The models do have some problems, very, very 2D sculpting, the casting quality is... ok, verging on terrible at times and the material is that irksome restic stuff. However, once you get through all that, the models are quite nice treatments. This US Marshal above in her civil war style uniform and chaps is a good example of the box's miniatures. I was following - ish - the colour schemes on the game cards so it was mostly figuring out the mixes that would give me the desired effect. In this case starting from The Fang (sigh) for the jacket; a mid tone grey for the trousers and Burnt Umber for the chaps. A nice sculpting touch is the trouser cuffs just peeking out from the chaps at the bottom. Well thought through.

The nurse was one that I didn't have a card for so I pulled some Victorian nurse images from the web to get a sense of colours. In this case a petrol blue (Vallejo Field Blue) highlighted with lighter greys. White for the apron of course and dark slightly scuffed leather for the Gladstone bag. Finally, I tried to replicate the difficult-to-capture-in-paint brown/amber glass colour for the jar in her hand. I can't remember the exact colours, but the basis was a vague tan/amber colour highlighted with white and then glazed in first chestnut and then a thin brown ink. Worked out ok I think.

The nun was one of the worse minis so far, harsh sculpting on the face and thick details in places but otherwise ok. Not a lot to say about the painting on this one. There's black, black, black and some details. I have just this second noticed that the lining wash on the cross' necklace got away from me so I'll have to go back in and tidy that up tomorrow. With not a lot of painting to speak of we may as well talk basing here: The "Brimstone" setting is in various landscapes so we went with a parched, rocky soil with struggling clumps of grass. Essentially it's what I did for my Night Goblins (pick out the bigger bits of sand in a rock colour before the final drybrush) just with less grass.

Finally, we have a collection of bandit types. These are just stormtrooper types, there to be gunned down as soon as they appear so didn't warrant huge amounts of time. Instead, I chose to make it an exercise in "how different can I make a mob of totally identical dudes?". By changing up the clothing colours while staying in the classic palette of the "Wild West" I think we wound up with a nice gang of individuals rather than a uniformed squad.

Well, that's just the start on the Shadows of Brimstone. There's another 15-20 characters to go at least before it's all done. So if you like your fantasy Wild West, watch this space.

TTFN