yani

The kimono before putting on the pattern. I thought about a light green one, but considering the diorama is going to be in dark blues and green I needed better contrast. next step would be to add the flower pattern

Day 2. I finished her skin. The photos look rather terrible, but I enhanced the shadows somewhat on her leg. I have noticed the camera picked up a milk moustache. oops.

K, so I've decided to go very very courageous and tackle a diorama in time for Reapercon. I'm going to post my WIPs for brutal feedback because I need to push to the next level... and I've never done a diorama before. I started work on the geisha last night, putting down a skintone and shaded the leg. Here is problem no 1: I use a daylamp, and when I work under it, the shadows and highlights seem pretty obvious. But take the lamp away, and the shading is very subtle and not all that contrast-y. This may be what is going on here. The other thing may be that I haven't as yet figured out the optimal camera settings to photograph my minis The theme behind the diorama is that she's in a garden, on a hot, moonlit night.

^ seconded. For some reason, I'm really drawn to his beard. i like how it's done.

I'm actually leaving the crackle effect on the wings - I thought it looked cool too :) I did the underside of the wings with Carnage Red and the same thing happened. So I figured it was the primer - and it's the same primer I use for every mini. I did a rough coat of the brush-on primer over the model, and the same thing happened, only on a smaller scale. Maybe I need to make the primer "set" for a longer period than 24 hours? And yes, I gave the mini a massive scrubbing - it had bright orange primer on originally and I spent a good week trying to get rid of most of it.

I'm using blood red I'm posting this on my phone so i'm not sure if the pictures will load up but if it does, the arm has three coats of paint; the left wing is paint diluted on 5:1 paint to water, and the right is one coat of pure paint

Now for my silly question. The rules on the site for Open says that everything must be the artist's own creation. So, if I wanted to have a stock Reaper mini on a rather elaborate diarama-type base, that wouldn't qualify for Open?

Deal with it in-character. If your character gets herself burned by the AOEs, then figure out how your character would react. I'd imagine it would either be a withdrawal of support (no heals), a rampaging attack on the offending character (like herzog - I like that solution :)), or bring lots of enemies towards the AOEr so that a) she feels like she's contributing and b) opportunity actions aplenty.

My earlier question is still outstanding :)

Question: I can't remember if this was OK or not, but are there any rules about posting the entries online prior to the competition? Either in WIP stage or finished?

What's involved with the one-on-one sessions?

or even have a much more active & greater social network presence? I know you have the Facebook page, but that only gets updated every once in a while. And heck, you could probably "friend" multitudes of FLGS' that are also on facebook - I know mine is. A lot of marketing nowadays is through the word of mouth presented by social networking. Just a thought.

I've always like Monique DeNoir, in either incarnation. But I'm really loving the dynamic pose of Warl Hellbore, Assassin http://www.reapermini.com/FigureFinder#detail/02782 and all other like poses.

I'm super organised. I have three sheets of paper that are covered with swatches of paint all aligned in their various shades (like light->dark blue which melds to blue greens to greens to green yellows to yellows etc.) It's to show me, at a glance, the colours I have available. Then I have a bunch of those index cards with little swatches of paint at various stages of dilution - the first column has the paint out of the bottle, the second column has the paint at 1:1, third column at 1:2 paint to water, etc up to 1:5. The paint swatches are painted in the index card via triad (since I use RMS), and it both enables me to figure out how transparent the paint it, since I paint the swatch over a line, and enables me to easily compare colour selections. Finally, I have the notebook where I write down what colours and mixes I used for the mini. Usually, if it's a complicated mix of colours, i will add a swatch of the color as well. I'm not very good at dreaming up color schemes or knowing what colours to use, so I use as much help as I can get :)

No real reason other than I thought it would look cool. In my mind's eye it worked :) Thanks for the help tho. I think I will just "assume" that the horizon line is below that of the plates and just only show the sky portion of the reflection, which is pretty much how I would go about doing regular NMM anyway

I'm not quite understanding, so let me elaborate. Sky-Earth NMM, in my reference, is the highly reflective chrome look. Because of the mirror effect of silver, it shows the blue & brown colours. In my mind, if a mirror-like surface is another colour other than silver, it will just show the sky/earth effect but only in the shades of the gold. So the colour palette I'm using is Pure white, Linen White, 1:1 mix of Sandy yellow & golden blonde, Palomino Gold, Chestnut Gold and Intense Brown. I'm trying to get the horizon line reflection, and by the horizontal angle of the plates, it should just follow the angle. but when I tried it, the look failed completely and it was a mess.

I'm trying to get a gold SENMM effect on the breastplate of this chickee: I made a couple of attempts last night, and it looked really bad. Does anyone have any advice or tips? It's essentially the three overlapping plates under her breast that I was trying at, but I'm thinking I may just cut my losses and just go regular NMM

I've found that relying on paint swatches from a computer monitor is rather unreliable. I'm going to guess you don't have the actual paints in front of you to make this judgement. Blackened Brown is actually a fair bit darker than what it's showing up on my computer monitor, and Sandy Yellow is much MUCH lighter in paint color. My suggestions would be to mix an appropriate highlight/shadow. Try giving a mix of the sandy yellow in with the intense brown for a highlight. It'll tie to the Sandy parts of your minis, but still provide that rich orangey/redness that you like.

More advice: Don't think a woman is "out of your league" or is "too hot" for you. Chances are, EVERY guy has thought that of the poor girl, and thus she doesn't get asked out at all except by the really really socially-awkward people that don't take body-language cues very well.

Notice: the cat had to meow first before firing. I think that's a fault in the system.

Eh. I'm female and I like to geek out. my non-geek friends take it as a part of me, same as I take a lot of their idiosyncrasies. I don't take any shame in it, and people, rather than give me crap about it, look at me in a different light once I've "come out" about playing D&D. In fact, a new friend of mine has said she wants to try D&D: she got all hung up on the stereotype and when she found out that I played it regularly and I don't fit the stereotype of geek, she felt like it could be something she would get interested in. but I'm 25 and don't really give a damn about what people say about my likes and dislikes. I don't need to be 86 to think that :) Actually, no-one HAS given me crap about my geeky interests, so I guess I'm lucky.

Wow! That's amazing! You should come by Dragon's Lair on a Friday night and show it off to me - I paint there every Friday night :) I would really love to see this in person!

IMO, "courtesan" would work just fine and we can leave nationality out of it. I would love to see Bob do both traditional Geisha with all the robes, and a modern Japanese woman in day-to-day kimono. Oh, and some cute anime schoolgirls in kimonos, too. ^ Exactly what was said here.

I don't know from where you got that "knowledge". But as I have already pointed out, that knowledge is somewhat incorrect. While Geisha have not been simple prostitutes in, say, from Edo-period to pre WW II era, they were strongly tied to prostitution and courtesan contracts. FYI, I am a Japanese. And while I am not a historian, when I was a university student, my measure was Japanese language. So I have read a lot of older Japanese documents, including those written in Edo era. I meant to say the Western view of geisha = prostitute comes from WWII times. I am aware of the timeline of the evolution of Japan's ladies of the evening, and that, yes, Geisha were glorified prostitutes way back when. But by the time the Western world was exposed to Geisha, they weren't prostitutes. But eh. It was a minor complaint to begin with and somehow got pushed into mountain status from it's little molehill days. So I'm happy to shrug it off and give you awesomeness instead:

black is a bad word? Apparently it is. I was lectured for a good 10 minutes a couple of years back for using that term to describe someone. *eyeroll* While no expert on the subject, it is clear to me after reading about the history of the Geisha that prostitution is a dark part of their history. Personally I don't see the whole "prostitute" part of the model you are seeing. Nothing is exposed and her position/stance could simply be part of a flirty provocative dance. Possibly the same type of flirting private dance the non prostitute Geisha are famous for. meh, it was merely that the kimono was nearly falling off her shoulders, and exposing her leg that much. in Japan, less is more. Showing the inside of the wrist is considered evocative; there's really no need to have all the clothes coming completely off in order to be sexy. From what I see across this planet through the ages, very few people ever climbed out of the hole, much less wasted anytime throwing themselves back into it~ best, lol. yes, it is an uphill battle. But, eh. I've said my piece. It would be nice to have non-hyper-sexualised pieces out there, but since the main audience are males and sex sells, I can't fault the marketing aims. I just know that Geisha=prostitute comes from when American GIs were in Japan and the prostitutes there called themselves geisha, and it stuck. I don't think the synonymous relationship came from a period earlier in history in Western thinking. I just know that when I plan to paint it up (and I will; it still is a gorgeous mini), I just won't have her as a geisha with the makeup and such. But that's just me. I think Geisha are more beautiful because of all the clothes they wear.