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Dark Sword Roadkill the Troll


MamaGeek
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Matt was friends with him, though I never met him as I didn't meet Matt until after Roadkill had passed. We do occasionally see his wife and have dinner with her though. I enjoy seeing this piece painted up; once I painted one for his wife...oddly I was the first (and remain the only) person to have done so.

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I didn't know the story until after I picked out the figure, just because I love trolls, and I thought the mini looked really cool. It is a sad, but touching story. The figure was excellently sculpted and cast, and really very fun to paint.

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I'll agree, it's a very cool mini with a very touching backstory.

 

Well painted. Loved watching the progress. I really like the contrasts between the colors, and particularly like the bright greens in the skin. The spilled beer effect is very well done.

 

Keep up the great work!

 

~M

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I love your skin. It is so smooth looking. Actually, all the details are nicely done. Spot on as always. Keep this up and I may just hang up my brushes permanently for the sculpting tools so I never have to face you in a challenge. ::P:

 

Andy

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Very nice. I like the bold colors (do I see red shading in the green skin?), good gold NMM, good harmony of the highlighting & shading among the various parts of the model. I also like the spilled-beer effect and the leopard-print.

The blue feathers look out of place in the color-composition, and the simple light-blue-over-dark-blue and pink-over-crimson for the feathers don't hold up against the rich colors elsewhere; maybe taking both of their highlights toward yellow would help.

Is the spilled mug solid, but painted dark on the "open" end? That would work for a small cup, gun-barrel, and so on, but with an item this big, I would suggest actually drilling more of the end out to make it hollow. The inside of the hat also looks shallow (not the right size to fit on a head) and would benefit from being drilled out.

The highlighting on his right (our left) pec looks odd to me -- I don't understand why there's a shadow on the upper third of it.

The anatomy of the raised right arm (especially the pec, deltoid, biceps, and upper back) looks unnatural, but that's an issue for the sculptor, not you.

I like the wood-grain painting that you did on the floor, but I have two suggestions: 1) use other methods to get straight/flat forms on a base that you sculpt, and even paint with a straightedge to guide you, since these surfaces and lines are too wiggly to be realistic, but not wiggly enough to seem deliberately cartoony; 2) use better reference material (photos of actual stairs/stages/decks) when you're choosing where to put the seams between the boards, so the construction is more believable -- the seams along the edge imply a mitered corner, which would be strange for a stair (the tread/floorboard would probably go to the end, and the riser/vertical face would fit in under it), and the boards on the two front vertical faces would probably have their ends staggered rather than lined up.

Thanks for sharing,

Derek

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Wow, thanks Derek for such a detailed critique! I really appreciate you taking the time to do that for me!

 

* The spilled beer was actually pretty easy, just a few layers of yellow, with a thin lighter line around the edges, then a layer of gloss varnish over the top.

 

* The feathers on his hat I wasn't terribly happy with, either. I did play with the coloring on them, but they weren't being cooperative, and I needed to wrap this up so I could move on to other things that were waiting on me. It's interesting that you noticed them, though, because it means my eye was seeing things it should.

 

* The spilled mug was a thingy from inside a broken MP3 player that I took apart. The handle is a piece of paperclip that I attached with putty. The problem with the bit is that the insides contain some kind of electronics that are soddered in there, and I couldn't get them out very easily. I thought the base really needed something in that spot, and a mug was perfect, but I'm a terrible sculptor (yes, I've tried), and that bit was all I had to work with, so I made the best of it. I agree it would look better hollow.

 

* The shadows on the muscles are placed in the sculpted creases. I never think of second-guessing a sculpt, or adjusting it with filing, drilling, etc. Looking at it again, I think you're right about the shallow hat and the musculature. This mini is for a Dark Sword comp, though, and the company is judging it themselves, so I don't think I'll lose any cred for problems with their sculpts!

 

* It never even occured to me to worry about realistic joints between the wood boards! I'll have to keep that in mind for next time. I'll definitely use a straight edge next time to paint the edge lines, too.

 

Thanks again, Derek!

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