Darkstar

And here's the Black Orc from the City of Adventure expansion. I think his sculpt holds up very well to today's standards even as old as he is. I enjoyed painting this guy as hey, I just like painting orcs anyway and this one is very unique. Hey thanks CW. I use a 3 light setup and a GE A1455 14.1 Megapixel to shoot with. I use an OTT Full Spectrum light above and to the left for overhead lighting. I use a Verilux Happy Light (Full Spectrum) on the right and ground to illuminate cast shadows and I use a warm incandescent spotlight in an old adjustable lamp for head on illumination. No flash on the camera and macro on. Over the years I've come up with this but it's taken all those years to really be satisfied with my miniature photos. It's an art in itself and I'd have to make a whole post to really get into that haha. It really does take experimentation and practice haha. Thanks CS. It's nice to be back posting as always. The holidays come and go every year and then I can get my e-life back once the smoke clears. Hey thanks MC, I appreciate it. Thanks Loim, holy cats indeed haha!

Hey Sean, you know I really like that texturing of the cloth there. It's very subtle and adds a ton of interest to the piece. You've pulled it off there for sure with your method! I see what you're saying about the trim not meeting your standards of the overall texturing though. It's not bad, it could just use a little more shading imho. Will help to give off that proper metallic look when the shadows are taken darker, like a dark brown or (even almost to black!). Some of those glazes/washes from citadel come in hand for that. Even inks, due to their transparency they're easy enough to get this kind of tricky shading down. Alright man I really like it, great job!

Ok, another day, another mini! This time we have the Beastman from the Dungeon of Doom expansion. Great name. One of his abilities is to eat one (or more!) of his followers to regain life. Very cool. Not the most detailed sculpt in existence for a mini, but I tried to give him some "pop" where I could, while keeping it true to the card-art. I never would have come up with the red fur/yellow skin combo myself but in the end I think it's interesting. Thank you! Haha, that had me laughing, well done! Why thank you, that's very kind to say, I'm glad you're enjoying them I know sadly... I'll have to capture that angle in a future photo for sure, thank you Thanks! I appreciate you saying so, thank you.

Been a busy couple of months! Don't want to overload this page with a ton of images so I'll just post one per day. Today I'll start with the one I finished yesterday, the 3rd Edition Barbarian: More to come tomorrow and so on, I've painted quite a few but haven't got around to posting any of that work until now. Now that things have finally settled down after the holiday whirlwind I can get back to my "e-life".

What is this "quick" thing you speak of? Well quick being a very relative word heh, especially for my slow-painting self. You can set up your color blends in advance in each well of the palette with a lot of control as to the changes in color, so you can quickly just get your blend worked up by having your colors accessible like that. Let's say for example that you want just a little piece of a mini painted, like a satchel. You set up your blend of colors in the wells of the palette from dark to light, then pull from those and paint on the mini. Since there's a ton of little wells, you can always have a few open and ready for "quick" work like that. It's handy for the little details that you don't want to prep a wet palette for. Just put paint in the little wells and go to town. When done, run it under the sink, that sort of idea. I keep a couple of the things around, very handy.

And here is that video of painting the horns finally. One more to come this week on Friday if all goes well. When you're busy the days of the month just get chewed up so fast, where does it all go!

Hey cool Sean, they're pretty useful for quick blends for sure. Remember the cleaning tip I mentioned about pouring some kind of meltable sticky wax into the wells if the paint dries in them. You can use beeswax or in a pinch those little red wax coatings from baby bel cheeses. Save the red wax coatings, wash them in soap and melt them down somehow. I have a wax melter pot but you can use a double boiler. Sounds like a lot of trouble but it's not. I'll make a video of the care and maintenance of these things, took me awhile to figure out how to complete clean them if you get lazy and let the paint dry in them. I have the video of painting the horns filmed, and will be rendering it over night and uploading in the morning tomorrow.

Hey guys thanks everyone! @Citrine, yes indeed, silicone pot holder type of thing. You've already ordered one so hope it works for you. I really like mine. Best advice is to clean it before the paint dries in it. Just run it to the sink when you're done painting. If the paint dries in the wells overnight or something, pour a little melty beeswax into the wells and let it harden for a minute or two. Then pull the beeswax out. Paint comes clean out with the wax. Guys those are great tips for the parchment paper. I soak mine. Just like ' official'palette paper that you buy from art supply stores. A little soaking helps "open up" the paper for use. Pinning is a good idea too, CS, never thought of that. Alright, I'm doing some priming work this morning on another project then once that's done it has to cure up so I can set up the camera and shoot some video for this. Probably a video tonight or tomorrow am. I'll probably finish this guy today and post videos of painting his horns and his base then call it done and move on to the next Reaper mini!

Hey guys, I have been busy this last week with commission work, when it rains it pours sometimes around here and I haven't shot any video. I was hoping to have it all done last month because I can get pretty hectic sometimes and my free time projects have to wait. That being said, I'll get some video up soon as I'm at a place now where I can look at getting an hour or a day free to work on this again. It won't be as soon as today that i get another vid up, but I'm looking at getting at least one up by the weekend. He's almost done anyway so there won't be too many vids to film. The good news is that I have another mini in line to paint and film after this! So if these are good for you to watch, there will be another up soon. A new mini means showing new techniques on new surfaces and should be a lot of fun.

Alright, yeah slowly but surely a little bit at a time he is indeed starting to come together, thanks man! Thanks for following along and commenting, glad you're getting a kick out of this project. Hey alright, thank you! That's great you're learning stuff from watching these, I know how valuable a resource watching videos can be for learning and it's one of the main motivators for me doing this. There's plenty more after this video is done, and I will cover *everything* that I can think of in great detail as I go forward. Especially stuff like consistency of paint and the technical things like those sponges. All the 'arcana' tied into my approach. Ok, I'm uploading a new video showing how I painted up his pouch in a red leather kind of effect. Towards the end of the video the mini goes offscreen for a bit, I need to check the screen as I film more...ooops! You don't miss much though, just some minor blending at the very end. Here's that video:

I'm posting another video this morning where I paint up his beard in a blue/black color to match his shoulder pad fur. I tweaked my rendering settings while playing around with stuff and the FPS is low for this video so it's a little choppy...won't go back to that setting again for future videos ugh. Although the filesize is smaller the drop in quality is not worth it, hey I have to watch these too in case I forget how I did something, and I don't want to suffer! In the end I change his beard color from blue to a kind of orange/grey/brown but wanted to show this video anyways because it's how I painted the shoulder fur.

Hey those bones and MAS bases are a match made in heaven aren't they? They even look cool before they have any paint on them. Went through your WIP thread here, your use of color is very free and stylistic, looks to me that you're already developing a signature style and that's so important. Will look forward to your progress as you paint all these guys up!

Hey, even though you're new, I've been doing this forever and it's exactly how I do it, except I use magic sculpt instead of greenstuff, otherwise it's the same sound technique. Loving the bones material because it's so easy to cut and drill, makes the task of pinning much less of a chore than the metal versions of these minis. Good clear tutorial and I'm sure people will get a lot of mileage from seeing how it's done the right way. Bonesium is so easy to drill and carve that it's always worth it just to take that extra couple of minutes and get that hole drilled for the base for sure. Permanent solid attachment, no fuss.

Hey no problem. If you have any questions on any of that as you watch, I want to add that I have a thread going here in the WIP forum where I have these videos all in one place and that might be helpful to you as well. Here's the link for that: http://www.reapermini.com/forum/index.php?/topic/50796-ogre-chieftan-step-by-step-videos/ (@Talespinner: Thanks for that compliment brother I appreciate it!)

Hey all, hope you had a good weekend. I've got a video up of how I painted the bone on his belt buckle. Here is that video! I've got a couple more filmed and lined up to go. Getting close to actually completing this dude. Probably done by the weekend, will see!