Niko Cranewright/RCon 2013 contest entry

[Sanael]

At long last, I've finished all the PCs for our Dragonlance campaign. This is Niko Cranewright, a kender with a...fascinating...penchant for folding every sheet of paper he comes across into a crane. This is the reason our party's wizard can't cast Magic Missile. Kender, miright?

 

Anyway, I also entered Niko into the RCon competition. Surprising to me, a much less recent paintjob of mine was selected by the judges for critique (Janissa, or Cassie, seen in Show Off some time ago). I won bronze, and am quite pleased. Thanks to Derek for patiently walking me through the reasons Janissa was chosen over Niko; for now, I'm sticking a fork in this mini, but Derek's insights were incredibly helpful in showing me what I need to work on in the future.

 

Also, in taking this photo, there's an odd purple dot on the back of his coat; I don't know where it came from, and it wasn't there during competition. So I'll have to clean him up, and be more careful when painting near finished minis. Here he is:

 

 

As always, C&C welcome and appreciated!

 

[GuyWithCoolBackpack]

What kind of stuff did he say to work on, if you don't mind me asking? I'm not sure what I'd improve here.

 

Also, you should tell the fine men and women here how you made those paper cranes!

[Sanael]

The paper cranes are detailed in my Dragonlance Campaign PCs WiP. You can get all the details there.

As for my conversation with Derek, I think over the next few days I'll put together a post with side by side shots of the minis in question. It should be a good resource for anyone hoping to compete, if for no other reason than Derek gave me a lot of insight into what the judges look for. I'll post it by Wednesday, I hope.

 

(Edited to insert WiP link.)

Edited May 4, 2013 by Sanael

[Sanael]

For those interested, I've posted in the Reapercon forum a new topic about my competition experience, comparing Niko with Janissa, etc. The thread is here.

[Jabberwocky]

Thanks again for the write up! I think you did an excellent job on the conversion. Not much to add from a critique standpoint to what you mentioned in your other thread. I would say that you could have taken the highlighting/shading of the cranes a bit further. The freehand is well done, but not quite as crisp as it could be. This is something I struggle with as well. Dilute paint allows for (relatively) easy correction of mistakes, but you often need to go back several times over the same area to get more opaque coverage, especially when doing a lighter color over a darker background.

 

Congratulation again on the bronze! I look forward to seeing what's next!

Edited May 2, 2013 by Jabberwocky

[Sanael]

Ah, yes...the highlighting on the cranes. That was probably the biggest concession to time, compared to my original plan. There were meant to be three cranes (the third was sculpted, and was smaller, and is sadly somewhere on the Reaper HQ floor...I suppose if they find it they can cast it!), and they were all going to have freehand designs. At the very least, I would have put down lines to represent the folds of paper. But all three were still bare greenstuff when I arrived in Denton, so...

 

Long story short, they absolutely should come up a bit.

 

Thanks for your thoughts!