Slashhamster

I had pretty much decided to sit this one out after backing the first three, but that Count's Castle is really tempting...

What are your goals for painting? If you're aiming for getting figures done and ready for play (table-top), I think this guy looks great and is ready to go. If you're trying to level up your painting to more of a display/showcase quality, then as ub3r_n3rd said, I'd focus on using shading/highlighting to increase contrast. A few things that pop out at me on this guy: The weapon/armor doesn't look shiny, and metals need high reflections. You can look up either NMM (non-metallic metal) or TMM (true metallic metal) for some techniques for improving metalwork. Both are fine, and the choice is mostly personal preference. The skin and clothing could all be improved by increasing contrast via lining, and adding some highlights. If you're aiming for higher than tabletop, take some time to work on photography as well. There's some good suggestions in this thread. The lighting in your photos is a bit low which makes it difficult to see enough details to give specific suggestions. Everyone has different goals with painting. The important thing is to have fun. There's absolutely nothing wrong with table-top quality. A table-top quality figure that actually gets playtime is much better than dozens of unpainted figures waiting to some day see a brush!

I agree, those look terrific!

Have you seen Jamey Stegmaier's blog* over at Stonemaier Games? He has an absolutely massive amount of information available, gleaned from personal experience from his various Kickstarter'd board games. He covers his experiences on everything from how to design the campaign, stretch goals, worldwide shipping and fulfillment, backer communication, etc. It sure doesn't hurt that the games he's developed are actually fun too. If I were ever to start a board game destined for Kickstarter, his blog would likely be my primary reference. * No link included as I don't want to break any commerce linking rules, but it should be easy enough to find.

First hero complete...Nibbles! This one was a gift from my sister for my birthday, so he moved to the front of the queue. For the heroes, I intend to leave the bases a simple solid color, so that they stand out more on the game board from the monsters. I think a brown looks better than solid black (although I may need to darken this brown a bit). I haven't completely decided yet; I can repaint the base easily enough.

Here are two CAV Dictators I finished painting up, in honor of the CAV Kickstarter fulfillment completing (...never mind I've had these since the early Ace level shipping....) I figured a pair of Dictators would be a good starting point since that's what the quick start rules calls for, and the Dictator is easily one of my favorite CAV models. I have a real hard time photographing orange/red like this. For some reason, my camera tends to blow the color out too much. Oh well, you'll have to believe me the shadows/lining are a bit more pronounced in person. Hope you like them!

Got mine yesterday as well. Completed inventory last night; just a few packing errors (2 minis with 2 left arms and a missing right arm; missing the same 2 ryoshi as everyone else). Initial impressions are similar to others: - Lots more 'fiddly pieces' than the old original 8 wave 1. The Dictators were examples of perfect multi-piece assembly that were both easy to put together and repose. Most of the new ones have a lot of pieces, and as Doug said, it makes inventory trickier. - Interesting to see how my reactions to the designs changes with the pieces in hand. Some of the ones I was 'meh' about in the KS are actually way cooler in person, and a few are vice versa. I really like almost all of the vehicles; they handled Bones conversion well. Most of the brand new designs are really cool; the Reapers and Cataphracts are some of my favorites. - The grey Bones color is hit or miss for me. It's definitely easier to make out detail while unpainted, but I think it's going to annoy me a lot when it comes to painting. I feel I'm going to have to add a step to basecoat in white most of the time instead of wash and straight to paint with white bones. As far as stiffness, it feels about the same to me, and there's a similar amount of limp weapons/warping as the original 8 (I suspect mostly fixable with a hot water dunk). - I don't own any metal CAV, so the relative size of some of the models was surprising (not in a bad way, just unexpected). The Katana is big! Started painting up a couple of Dictators in honor of the arrival of this wave; hopefully I'll have them up in show off before too long!

Did you end up receiving your order? Yep.

I definitely drew the short straw on this one. My order isn't scheduled to arrive until tomorrow. I got my shipping notice literally an hour before they announced US shipping was complete. Hopefully karma will have my back and I'll be an early shipper on KS4!

Wow! Thanks to the judges and SamuraiJack for their time and effort, and to all of the participants. There were a lot of great entries, and I'm honored by the recognition. Thank you!

I know exactly how you feel. My caverns sets are languishing in unpainted glory for similar reasons. At this point, I'm too excited for city builder, and will end up painting them first. Poor caverns are going to sit unloved for awhile longer. Sounds similar to these? I love that paint scheme, and am similarly torn between an earthy style and something like this. Aw, thanks. Don't give me too much credit on the ice caverns; they are trivially simple. But yes, they were the clear caverns, NOT normal dungeon grey. There's no way what I did would look good over dungeon gray. I would skip both lava and ice, mostly as I think you don't want all ice or lava caverns. They're too specialized. I agree with Heisler, some take on a colorful set (either more earthy or more underworld-y) would be a good choice. ...and promise, I don't stay that for completely selfish reasons so I can watch your progress/results.

I didn't regret going unpainted for the first two, but this time... The factory did a phenomenal job on the painting.

Yep, exactly the problem I had. I've also used brush on Liquitex gloss and/or matte, and that works, although it has a slightly tacky feel I'm not fond of. My next test is probably going to be a brush-on of some kind, followed by a light coat of Dullcote.

Thanks all! Yeah; I thought about trying to do something about it, but it wouldn't be simple gap filling since there's so much texture going right over the seam. I figured I would need to, but no, I didn't even do the typical dunk in hot water thing I do with most Bones. Maybe I got lucky, not sure. I did use a knife to cut the bottoms and flatten them out a bit. They were fairly wobbly initially (and you can tell in the pictures they're still not perfectly flat) but they stand well enough on their own now. Thanks; the trick on this mini is focusing on the face. Almost all of my time was spent working on the face. It is clearly the central point (even more so than normal). Beyond the face, the rest of the mini is just some basic painting and drybrushing.

Thanks for the input; seems no one likes the brown edging idea. Who am I to argue then! Completed 2 more figures today...the Sisters of Pain: These two were a bit of a challenge, as they are covered in what I consider some of my weaker painting areas: female skin, hair, and cloth (red in particular). I'm reasonably happy with the results, although the red blending is not as smooth as it could be, and I think I lost the highlights a bit too much while glazing red back over the lighter colors. I'm happy with the hair, although it's really well sculpted on this model which helps a lot!

Here's a few random Bones minis that I've finished over the last couple of months. I finally got around to photographing them when I finished the bookshelves recently. 77318 Bookshelves I didn't pick any of these up during the Bones II KS, but we grabbed a few during the 12 days promotion. Love the detail on these and can't beat the Bones prices! They work really well with DwarvenForge Game Tiles and I wanted to get them painted in time for the City System KS shipments. 77156 Owlbear This was a pretty quick paint job. I had initially planned to do more with him, but after finishing a few basic steps, I looked at it and said, looks good, don't mess it up! 77144 Mummy Another simple paint job. I painted him quite awhile ago as he was a test piece to see how different sealers worked on Bones. I've had some poor luck with Krylon sprays (turn glossy over time, no matter how matte it looks initially), so this was a test with just testor's dullcote. Definitely no shine months later, although not sure it really provides that much protection either. Luckily, it's Bones, durable, and a simple figure, so I'm not concerned. Thanks for looking!

I have all of my original Game Tiles in almost that exact storage unit (different color). Perfectly fits all the walls/floors/corners from a 3 set pledge and curved/diagnonal add-ons. I have all of the various other bits in some other small containers. I haven't picked up another for Caverns yet, as I didn't think it would work as well given how irregular the caverns are. Post some pictures after you have it all organized! Nice start with the paint job. It's a big task. Don't burn yourself out by rushing for a deadline or you'll be so sick of these you'll look at your upcoming Cities tiles with disgust. I finished my game tiles, but have yet to start on my Caverns. At this point, I think I'm going to wait for Cities and paint those first, as they look a lot more interesting. Also, I think the straight wall piece where you skipped the base coat looks just fine.

Love the armor; excellent job on the NMM.

Beautiful work. The face is stunning and the wings are wonderfully blended.

Very nice! I particularly like the ice golem and his base. May have to steal that idea... Also nice work on the photography. They're all well positioned, lighted, cropped, focused and colors look good too!

Finished the troll today (aka Schmetterling). I decided to try shading the red/orange with purple, and it worked very well. Unfortunately he didn't want to photo well and it's a little washed out. You can't the rich purple shadows as well as I'd like...grr! Edit: I retook the photos with a different backdrop and better light positioning, and that has helped. --- I'm considering going back and edging the bases with a dark brown instead of carrying the stones all the way down, something perhaps like this: I think it gives the figure a bit more definition, but will prevent them from seamlessly blending in with the playing boards. Any opinions?

Thanks; that is exactly the look I am going for, so I'm glad that it's coming through!

There's been a depressing lack of painting the last few months, but finally the beastmen are done! I decided to paint them in different armor, just to add some variety. I have already started 3 other figures (the Inferno kickstarter has got me excited to get these painted again) so hopefully the next update won't take so long!

You might also want to add some bounce cards on the side, like I showed earlier in this thread:

I had reasonable success using generous amounts of flexible modeling paste: http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/57350-frost-giant-77106-wip/page-3#entry1106353