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So I really like board games with cool minis. Two of the board games that I’ve spent the most time playing are Kingdom Death: Monster and Super Dungeon Explore! Both are great games with fantastic minis- although the tones each use could hardly be farther apart. The developers of these games know each other, and When both games went to Kickstarter, they took the opportunity to do a cool cross over. So means that we got a really cute chibi of the Twilight Knight. She makes a great mini, and I’d have been happy to leave it off there, but the fluff on her card implies that if those super cute Super Dungeon characters go into the Nether Rift in their seting, they end up in the brutal and bloody hell world of Kingdom Death. So I got to thinking about this, and decided that I really needed to expand on this idea of the cute little chibis on the Planes of Faces. Yes, these are all playable, and I'm going to continue to create Chibi versions of Kingdom Death monsters.

When Super Dungeon Explore first hit the scene, I almost immediately wanted to start making characters from some of my favorite 16 bit JRPGs. For some reason, my favorite characters in Final Fantasy 6 were always the least central ones, but the chances that Sodapop were going to make a suitable Mog or Umaro mini was pretty low. So, when I saw that a local Blood Bowl commissioner had some Big Foot Minis for sale, I had to jump at the chance to make an Umaro. I only had to adjust the hair a little and it was perfect. For Mog, I started out with a Giri creep from the Super Dungeon Goro set (I ended up with lots of extra Giri after the Forgotten King Kickstarter. Anyway, here they are:

This was an old Soda Pop miniature that I think I received as a promo. It's been setting in a box for 10+ years as one of those models that was waiting for me to be "good enough". He was a blast to paint, and I was kind of amazed at how well flesh tones worked for hair color. Entry three of four at ReaperCon. Comments and Critiques welcome.

Ok, I’m a fan of the Final Fantasy series, and one of the things that I like to do is convert chibi minis into some of my favorite videogame characters. Naturally, one of my favorites is Auron from Final Fantasy X. He’s such a badass. I started out with the Goemon mini from Ninja All Stars (which is a fine mini in its own right). Everything that isn’t Goemon was made from green stuff. All together, I think he came out rather well.

A while ago, Sodapop Miniatures released the Deeproot Scout- a character I think we can all agree had some inspiration in Nintendo's favorite elf. Naturally, my favorite incarnation of the Hero of Time to base him on (Link to the Past) as seen here The hair is red (even pink) because I was working from the pixel art rather than the art in the book. More recently, Sodapop released a resculpt of the character- so I decided that the best thing to do would be to level him up a bit. So here is my Deeproot Scout painted up as Link with Blue Male, the reforged Master Sword, red shield and boomerang.

My biggest mistake with this WIP so far is failing to notice that there is a significant piece missing from her back. I don't have a spare, so I will have to sculpt something on and paint it up as well. I will need to post up updated pictures of this one and other active WIPs I have. Probably about 10 projects in progress on my painting bench.

There's something about Chibi miniatures that makes me want to create fan art out of them. Fan art for many things- Kingdom Death, Siege of the Citadel, Final Fantasy, Borderlands- the list seems to go on and on. So it shouldn't come as a surprise when I want to create characters from one of my four year old's favorite book series- The Princess in Black. She's a princess who is secretly a super hero who fights monsters with her ninja skills (I really love these books) For those interested, here's what she looks like in the books:

WiP on Yagyu Jubei

Some miniatures represent a real challenge. They’re loaded with so much detail that you may need to find references to figure out what all of it is, and even then you can run into difficulties making each individual bit pop. Lining each piece, and making sure the colors coordinate while also keeping the value contrast high enough that each bit stands out just enough (and not too much) can be challenging and rewarding. Then there are minis like these Super Dungeon Explore’s ghosts. Somehow, I find myself absolutely loving these designs, despite their simplicity (I mean, we’ve got one area here, then the eyes). Naturally, I couldn’t resist painting them in Pac Man colors.

Here is one of my favorite sets of minis, of all time. They're the Fungal Growth Spawn point for Super Dungeon Explore, and I based the color schemes on the various colors of mushroom monsters from the Dragon Quest series.

I'm painting the Moon Princess from Sodapop's Ninja All stars for a model swap. I've made some subtle changes since these pictures were taken, but I'm struggling to visualize how to make the relatively flat surface of this model's hair into a convincing thin black hair as in the model's artwork. Any suggestions? Any critiques or comments overall?

Here are how I painted up my Rabid Squirrels for Super Dungeon Explore. I only have three of them here- because my wife claims half of the chibi minis I get. It is a good thing we got so many of the same sculpt here, or we would have had to fight over them (she got most of the pets...) Here they are:

Here are a couple of my Relic Knights characters that I've painted up. I guess the force colors are showing pretty strongly here. I don't know that there's a whole lot to say about them, so go have a look:

Here is my Darkspace Fiametta that I painted up for my Paladins in Relic Knights. She has some issues with size- she's larger than the humans from the faction. So I decided that the best option was to make her not be human. Clearly the Tonorrians have a huge range in possible sizes (just compare Kisa and Austrican). I figure this is because they're cat people, and can be based on some wide varieties of felines. So, I figure it'd be ok to have a size of Tonorrian that's in between the two. Her ears are green stuff, her tail is a metal wire that I filed round at the edge.

More experimentation with metallics. Here's the charging Shattered Sword Paladins Paragon: He's much brighter in person...I couldn't get the lighting quite right today. I'm still working on my TMM process. I started with a navy blue and glazed metallic blue on until the highlights were the same color as the undiluted paint. I did the same thing with the silver, but it didn't come out quite as good. As always, C&C welcome!

Quick tabletop paint I did yesterday. Not a contest winner, but I'll enter him as a Spaceship Superstar anyway. As always C&C welcome!

Since I'll be finishing the minis in my Doctrine WIP thread pretty much one at a time, they'll each be getting their own Show Off thread. First up, SDE Kisa: Her varnish didn't go on quite evenly, and dried all weird. I managed to smooth it out, but had already taken the photos (and I'm lazy). As always, C&C welcome.

Here is my Starfire the dragon. I went with pink, and felt that I needed to paint up the wings to herald back to his namesake.