GuyWithCoolBackpack

Hey, I have pictures. I can add to this. Here are some things: Here are some pictures from Doug Cohen's 2 DAY long sculpting class. Considering It's my first scratch-built mini ever the results are pretty great. We all got our minis together for a dance party at the end. Cool class. A few others: Me with a cat, me with another cat. And the mini I made at David Diamondstone's Lighting Effects class. (Which is a really good class.) I took a few pictures of the entries, but you can see better pictures of those elsewhere.

I've always had in my head that it would be fun to enter something in all 4 categories. Even if you don't do well in all of them it would be a total hoot. The Diorama would be a challenge, of course, not to mention that some of your painting might suffer if you stretch yourself too thin. But if you can pull it off you'd end up with a neck full of ReaperCon Metals, and that would be cool.

Hello Again, all, long time, I was wondering if anyone here who has taken Douglas Cohen's sculpting Class (the Long 2-day one) could give me any advice on whether or not it would be good for me. I've managed to take most of the classes I really wanted to take over the course of several previous ReaperCons and so If I want to, I could sign up for that class. Some specific questions I have: 1) I have a little bit of modeling experience in Greenstuff, mostly conversions, patching, and the occasional tiny extra. I would be taking this class specifically to get better at modeling more complicated things. Good idea, or are the concepts here too hard to pick up unless you're already making your own models? 2) How does the schedule work for people? I mostly attend ReaperCon *to* take classes, so spending all my time in classes doesn't bother me a bit. 3) Any other notes on the class that you think I might want to know? Thanks for any feedback anyone can give. Cheers! -N

Hello, I've been hearing more and more about European style as compared to US style but other than some general opinions about liking smooth blends more over on this side of the pond I haven't been able to find any examples of the differences Between the two styles or suggestions about how to employ either style. Can anyone point me at good examples, tutorials, or video examples of European styles or examples of the different styles?

That is 100% levels of adorable.

Nice! I like how you used some lighter greens to bring highlights up to the face, but the whole thing ends up looking a little muddy since there is so little contrast between the colors anywhere on the bust. The eyes especially you might want to conside adding a strange color to. It would bring your focus to the right place and you could give it a really alien look with some odd colors.

Nice rocky look! It looks very heavy. And yeah, a nicely different-colored base would bring out the mini a little more.

Nice! You should try adding a wash to the whole thing to bring out the details in the wood. Also, you will need to bring a good base if you bring it in as a diorama, so consider also shipping down a significant chunk of your backyard and the edge of your house.

Is that NMM on the bottom guy? It looks so natural! Well done.

Nice colors! Good stuff.

The main downside of this mini is that most of us save our first mini to remind ourselves how much we have improved over time. Since you've already started with freehand, the improvement in your technique will be a little less noticeable. You've got a great start here. I see you are using dark washes to give it some shadows. If you want to take it to the next level, use some lighter paint to add highlights. The easy way to hit your highlights is with dry brushing, but with such good brush control as you have you could probably just find the parts of the mini that would be struck by light and put lighter paints there. Great first effort!

The whites are *spectacular*. The shadowing on her legs is just perfect and really sells the effect. Try for some small highlights on the black, though. They need to be small, but in this picture the blacks on her shirt really just disappear.

I spent, no lie, like 5 minutes just staring at this mini and taking pictures from every angle when I was at the Con. Then i ran over just to find Ian and ask if he could talk with me about the painting technique. He ended up teaching an impromptu mini-class for a few of us during his spare moments in between teaching other classes. Not only a wonderful mini, but a great teacher, as well. I'm a fan now. I'm definitely going to have to attempt something like this in the near future, the style is definitely something I want to try and emulate.

Looking good! Nice eyes, simple and effective color scheme. The dry-brushing on the wings is a very appropriate effect, too.

Wait, you need drill heads for pinning? And this is bones? I haven't tried this myself, but I heard people talking about taking your pin metal, heating it over a candle, and then jamming it into the bones so it melts a hole. I haven't tried it at all, so I don't know if it a) works or b) gives off toxic gasses, but it might be something to consider.

I've been dying to find out the winners. I never usually know where to find out about it. Thanks to everyone posting the updates and congrats to all the winners! Skillz abound! Here's a hint. If you want to know who won a category, it was probably Corporea.

Look at all this home and safety I have *all over me*. Good con, everyone.

I figure that after the certainly very tired ReaperCon team takes an extended rest, they might want to see a little bit about what people thought about the con and potential improvements. I had some thoughts, and figured others could contribute any ideas they had for the edification of all. Things I liked: The Venue. It wasn't perfect, of course. If it could be magically moved closer to the hotels that would be better, but the place itself was very functional and nice. The lighting was quite good, I could paint pretty much anywhere, which was a real bonus and treat. I liked the class spaces a lot. Plenty of room, no tripping over one another, and the horseshoe shape was great for teacher feedback. I think it totally worked and made the con pretty great, so kudos on that. The Vendors and the little Vendor Scavenger hunt: Clearly designed to get us shopping, but it was really nice to have an excuse to go and talk to people, which is largely one of my favorite parts of the con. All the vendors were very nice and pleasant and sold really cool things. They were also all very kind when people would just come up to get their stamp. The Teachers: Nothing new, of course, but all the teachers were fantastic, willing to teach and talk, and endlessly supportive of anyone who wanted to learn. The Award Ceremony: 'Grats to Anne for keeping it moving at a good clip. That can't be easy. Things I didn't like as much: I spend all my time in classes but I did hear some people talking about how there is lots of gaming to do, and there is, and there's lots of shopping to do, but outside of the classes there aren't a whole lot of 'events' for painters. And they were probably right. There could certainly be more open painting 'events' for people to jump in on. Some examples: -More speed painting: The fact that speed painting filled up within seconds of being announced every time tells me there could definitely be more speed painting events. -Open Q&A for artists: Perhaps just a little time when you could give any willing artist a Mic and let people ask questions of them. Might need a moderator, though, just in case. -Painting Demos: Maybe set up a camera and an overhead projector and let people watch painters work. Or show off some paint formulas for interesting effects. Or have someone show off different charactaristics of different paints (blues being pretty transparent, whites covering well, etc.) Or an open viewing of youtube painting tutorials. Just some random ideas. Navigating the parking lot: Man, I don't know that I ever figured out how to get out of that place cleanly. Hard to get water: Maybe I missed something obvious, but I had trouble finding cups for painting water and places to dispose of my water when done. I didn't want to throw the water in the trash, so I always ended up having to head to the bathroom to dispose of it or fill up on clean water. --------------------- Small concerns, I know. Don't get me wrong, I had a blast at the Con and always intend to return. I just figured if anyone had any ideas on how to make it better, they might as well let their ideas be heard.

Also of critical importance: The sweet backpack in my user icon so that everyone knows who you are.

I'd love to see any other angles you have on this. There's a lot of nice dynamics in color and It would be nice to get a view of how they all blend together.

3 Hours! Nice result for some fast work. Any tips for speed?

My favorite part is how you managed to make the eyebeast a little 'eyeball eyebrow' to make him look angry. I also like that OSL. I'm going to be studying that lower right corner to get some ideas for lighting black and white areas like that. Magnificent!

Hey, can anyone offer some tips for me to help make my NMM better? Here's my latest attempt: It's not terrible, but I'm aiming for 'great' and always seem to be falling short. This attempt was made with 6 shades that I mixed up between Nightmare Black, Shadowed Stone, Stone Grey, and Ghost white. I'm working with glazes, or at least what I perceive glazes to be, which is to say "really really thin paint that you put on a bunch of times." Here's some things that vex me: 1) When it comes to the highlight color, I have a hard time keeping the paint where I want it. I keep getting 'rings' where drops dry out and deposit all the pigment around the edge rather than focusing it on the center where I want it to be. (Look especially at that last highlight on the handle bit). 2) The blends aren't as good as I think they should be. I go with really thin paints and multiple layers (and a lot of patience and time) because I'm looking for really good blends, but I never seem to get the result I'm looking for. Any thoughts or tips on things I should be doing to take my blend game to the next level?

I adore that red wash you did on the top to give it a transformational biological look. A fantastic idea for the mini. I might go back and do mine again.

One of my favorite things is when my hobbies collide with real world tasks and all of a sudden I'm useful in a way I didn't expect. Here's a story of just such an event. My son has a Captain America ring that he found at the playground of his day care buried in the sand something like a year ago. It's the closest to actual buried treasure he's ever encountered, and as such he thinks it's pretty much the best. It has, as you can see, gotten some wear on it though, and he was a little bummed that his ring wasn't looking quite 'heroic' anymore. Well daddy knows how to paint things, let's see what I can do here: The first thing I did was prime it white. The paint wasn't going to stick onto whatever surface was on the ring already. I then went ahead and tried to get the rings painted but as you can imagine, I'm sure, It was impossible to get a circle of sufficient crispness for Captain America with a freehand job. So I improvised. After all, I'm a dad now, and that means I have access to tools. That's. Much. Better. It worked about like you would expect it would. I puttied the ring to my drill and would pull the trigger to spin it. It took a couple of tries, actually, to get the ring centered enough. I don't have a bump tool or whatever they use to get things centered on Lathes so I had to make manual adjustments until the ring was well centered. Once I got it there, all I had to do was dip my wide-ish brush in the right color and *bam*, perfect, concentric circles. Here's another progress shot, and don't panic about the color scheme. I know what I'm doing here, it will all be clear soon. See, you *can* paint the shield red white and blue...or you can paint it like they have in the movies, with shiny metal bits. And if you ever have the opportunity to get out Daddy's Shiny Metalic Paints, you take that chance. My young'n was very excited to have a cool metal gleam on his ring. And since i knew I was going to be painting over the blue in the middle for the star, I just undercoated with blue on the outer ring too, to match. *Pro strats*. Of course, there is no drill bit that spins in a star, so I had to freehand the star in the center. It came out better than I was worried it would, actually. I considered breaking out the compass to really get everything perfect but I am, after all, painting for a kid. I don't think he cares about the precise lines. Besides, I would risk scratching off the paint or primer. This will do. The final step(s) were to put on some brush-on sealer and then some Matte finish to try and get a really hearty covering on my nice paint job. Muted the colors a bit, but whatever keeps me from having to redo this every 3 days will definitely work for me. The other thing that Mini painting has taught me to do is to pin things. We had one of those things that you put on the side of a bed to keep kids from falling out, and part of the hinge that lets it swing up and down had fractured due, no doubt, to keeping my son on his bed. I actually spend some time this weekend and drilled and pinned the hinge to create a really strong bond, then green stuff-ed the heck out of the fracture. That part is probably the strongest bit of the whole structure now. What about you? Have you come across any practical uses of mini painting? Outside of, you know, painting minis. Anyone pinstripe their car? Airbrush a wall? Base coat a picture frame? Use a wash on a Halloween costume?