[GROUP/OPEN]WIP L2PK3

[MonkeySloth]

Man the small plates around the knee are the worst. The rest of the leg I can quickly wet blend to get something going but those knees are taking me longer then everything else.

[CashWiley]

My steel was quite bad on Anduriel, but maybe it was easier with layering (as I don't wet blend).

[MonkeySloth]

I only just started doing it via glazing, so it's not traditional wet blending in some sense, but dang it makes getting some of the trickier stuff (like grays) started very quickly. Once I got the base blend, usually about 3-5 wet blends, I got in with layering to finish it off. It can literally cut my time by 1-2 hours for a section as I don't have to start a blend with layers but only maintain and build up.

[CashWiley]

When I did the pirate sword, the initial blends (a good half of the time painting it) could've been one pass of wet blending, so I see where it helps.

[Emli]

Because this thread needs more work...

 

I had planned to just do Anduriel, then do Tyden, but the recipe for the skin was the same for both and So. Much. Paint. Plans, they do change. 

 

Behold, skin! And they also got their hairs basecoated. Also I am so pleased with their eyes.

 

 

 

 

 

When next I paint, I am not sure what I will work on. I'm torn between finishing their hair and just getting the rest of the basecoating done so that I have a color reference. If I have time, I might do both!

Edited December 6, 2015 by Emli

[robinh]

I like the eyes, especially the female barbarians! I like the way she is looking to her left and a bit down it adds some life to the figure.

[CashWiley]

Yay, my favorite kit! Glad to see someone else working on it. Kit 3 gets the least love.

[Silvervane]

Or perhaps the most fear. I just ordered the rest of the kits. LTPK3 makes me feel like a kid near an open stove. It looks so pretty but I know if I touch it I'm gonna get burned in the effort.

[Emli]

I had been originally planning to finish the kits in the 'correct' order (1, 2, 4, 5, 3), but I was finding that NMM applies in a lot of places. I figured I could improve what I had picked up here and there by actually doing the proper kit. So far, it seems to be working.

 

On with the show!

 

 

 

- Pasted up the base for future landscaping.

- Finished up her hair. I had to do this twice, because I didn't highlight it very good, and in the end it looked pink after all the washes, and was missing the brown-orange depth of the example. The second time came out better, if still a bit chalky.

- Attempted to give her eyebrows, but mostly succeeded in making her look like she had a sunburn on her forehead. She's got a weird... almost like a deep cut between her eyebrow and eyelid on her left side. It's making that eye look a little weird up close, but I'm not sure what to do about it other than just look at her from further away.

 

I'll be putting her aside for now to work on Anduriel. Note to self: touch up her forehead, and re-shade her six-pack.

 

 

 

- Pasted up the base for future landscaping.

- Finished up his hair. I did this one a second time also. The problem here was that my Oiled Leather wash wasn't thin enough and it was covering up far too much of the yellow tone. Corrected!

- Started on the silver bits of the armor. I did all the basecoat, and all the Pure White/Pure Black blocking. Then I focused on blending his left leg, left side, and a couple of the bits on his front. The white->black->grey gradient feels stark in some places, but it looks right overall. Man, armor sure has a lot of crevices.

 

Next up, I'll finish up the silver bits, including the sword, then move to the green and leather bits. I think I should get those squared away before doing the gold ornamentation.

 

Other observations:

I have noticed, that compared to the other kits I've done so far (1, 2, 4), the instructions seem more vague. The pictures don't always seem to match the text they're next to, which has been mildly confusing. Also, as a relative newbie, I'm not entirely confident in my ability to follow the non-NMM recipes with their sparse instructions. That could also be that it's been some time since I've done kit 2 and I've lent out my instructions for that to someone who couldn't get the actual kit, so I can't go back and see if there's a foundation for the way its laid out. Having more angles on the minis would help both problems, I think, as well as some building on the same mini, instead of each section done on a fresh one. (I realize why it's done that way, I just wish I had more examples to look at.)

Edited December 6, 2015 by Emli

[CashWiley]

Edit: one thing I hope this helps is the back of the mini. Dearth of shots back there, lots of stuff.

Some of the pics in the instructions I hoped to shore up with pics in this thread :) I strongly believe that anyone working on one of these kits should read through the accompanying thread and take notes, and refer back when running into issues like your hair highlights. As I said earlier in the thread, I spent a /lot/ of time reading and studying before I even picked up the brush for this project.

 

For red hair, use blond hair colors to highlight.

 

If I recall correctly, most of Tyden's six pack was painted in.

[Emli]

Yeah, I realized later when I went back through the thread looking for some back shots that you'd mentioned the same thing about pictures. I've been trolling around for back shots to try to figure out whether those were supposed to be pants or leather under-armor, and what all the bits around his back were supposed to be. There are, I suppose not surprisingly, very few pictures in the kit colors, which is really what I was looking for. I'm filing away the kit recipes in my brain to add to my color knowledge, rather than trying out what I already know looks nice, so it would have been nice to see a more complete version done up using the kit colors. This thread is pretty helpful in that respect.

 

My hair problems were mainly technique; again, I'm trying to stick as close to the kit recipes as possible. I haven't done my hair the way described in the instructions before, and I was covering up too much of my darker highlights with the lighter ones and/or the washes. I found Anne's wip of Sophie, and that helped me figure out where I was going wrong.

 

For Tyden's abs, I noticed in the pictures that I hadn't defined it enough, probably because they weren't as defined on the mini. She really needs the six-pack, so I mostly wanted to remind myself to do that while I was fixing her sunburn.

[Emli]

NMM is hard and tedious. That is all.

 

 

 

Last time I was working on this, my gradient colors were way too thin. I'm not sure if they were thin enough this time, but it seemed to work out. I touched up his leg a little bit, and added a plate at the bottom that I missed. Also complete are his left side plates, gauntlet, and shoulder pad bits, the upper and lower pieces of the front of the breastplate, and his headband.

 

I think I would have a better view of how it looks if the rest of him wasn't primer. I'm still on the fence about pre-basecoating everything vs. working on one color/section at a time. I will probably just basecoat the rest of his stuff before working on the highlights.

Edited December 6, 2015 by Emli

[CashWiley]

I think it's looking great. NMM is definitely not easy and the more angles the tougher it gets. One thing to remember is that often smaller or repeating shapes can be treated as one larger shape, but learning /when/ that applies is the thing.

 

As far as paint consistency goes, I like to keep it a bit less thin at first, block in the highlights and shadows. Then thin it down and smooth the transitions over.

[Emli]

And the silver bits are mostly done. I call this "Too lazy to find a proper backdrop, so I used the brush case".

 

 

 

 

I am having a hard time gauging the blending without the reference of the rest of him being painted. Up to this point, I had been saving any nmm until the end, so the primer everywhere is throwing me off. At current, I'm not entirely happy with the weapons, and the right side armor looks darker than the left. So, my plan now is to take a break and basecoat the rest of him, and then go back and touch up any silver part that looks odd.

Edited December 6, 2015 by Emli

[Emli]

This just in: the rest of the basecoats helped a ton. I also threw some sand on his base to make it interesting.

 

 

 

I'm happier with how the steel/silver nmm looks now. I will need to do a little bit of touchup on the armor and weapons, then I'll finish up the ground and highlight his cloth and leather before moving on to the gold nmm.

 

I struggled a little with his back details. That arm by the short dagger looks like it should have the leather gauntlet on it, but it's not sculpted as such. I looked around and there didn't seem to be a consensus in the various painted versions, so I tried both looks and decided on just leaving it green. Bedroll is green also, just because. It feels sort of like cheating to basecoat the ground in the same color as his boots, but it sure makes for less of a headache later.

 

Hopefully one decent length session will finish him up. In other news, I'm putting off (again) finishing Tyden to work on a contest entry, but I will get back to her after that.

Edited December 6, 2015 by Emli