Ludo's Workbench

[Ludo 5743]

Colonel Kane requested that I put up my CAV stuff up ASAP so it's going first.

(From left to right:) Dictator-B, Vanquisher, Tiamat, Weasel, and Ronin

 

Attempting to do some rusting on the Ronin. Need to do the detail and touch up the rest.

 

 

Weasel next to some Infinity terrain I'm painting for The Covenant FLGS.

 

Yes I realize I inadvertently made Iron Man with my paint scheme.

 

Vaquisher hunting prey.

I normally won't play with partially painted figs (encourages me to not stall) but I had some itch left from ReaperCon.

Wyvern down! Linkinatutu made the mistake of running his wyvern ahead of support fire and it got wreaked by missile salvos.

We house ruled that since the model could fit on the catwalk it was legal terrain but it was rough due to the extra effort to keep it from toppling off.

Edited May 14, 2013 by Ludo

[Ludo 5743]

I'd like to say that I haven't been painting because I've been too busy getting other stuff done, but it's not really the problem. I've been in a bit of a funk. Not only have I not painted any minis in two months, I'm behind on blog posts as well.

 

Tuesday I tried to break the funk with some NCIS and a fairly low detail model, 50032: Jake Ryan, Hero Explorer. My friend is running an Zombie Survival RPG where you play as yourself so I need a mini that looks like me.

 

My bench is surrounded by bit's of home improvement projects so I temporarily relocated to the living room couch.

 

Managed to get the major base coats on before I lost steam.

 

Wednesday, I picked up the model again. Drug my magnifying lamp out and set it up this time. Surprisingly, it made me feel a lot better about painting. Managed to get a majority of the model done. Still lack a few details and basing. Really proud of my freehand beard. (I never do anything free hand.)

 

 

Critique and advise are welcome. I want the make the boots look like combat boots (seams and laces) but I'm not sure how to approach it.

[CashWiley 36649]

Whenever I'm stuck for inspiration, I hit google image search! Both for source pics on what I'm trying to go for, conceptually; as well as pics of the actual model I'm painting to see other approaches (also, "I didn't know that was a glove!").

 

 

So this came up. Problem with combat boots (and I have a pair of black jungle boots) is that it's black on black. Since that pic is on a cloudy day, you're getting grey highlights. As they're shiny, think about pushing that almost specular highlight to enhance the shine effect. The laces you could try to pick out as a cooler grey, like a blue-grey, get some differentiation in there. Also note where the seams are almost like nmm in how they catch the light on horizontal top surfaces.

 

Remember to leave a lot of black to preserve the black look and avoid them looking like grey boots.

Edited July 18, 2013 by CashWiley

[Ludo 5743]

Of course it involves NMM techniques. (Haven't been brave enough to tackle those.) I will give it a try though. (yes, I heard Yoda in my head as I typed that.

 

Thanks for the advice.

 

I remembered someone posting that black objects should remain 75% black regardless of shadows/highlights.

Edited July 18, 2013 by Ludo

[chaosscorpion 2424]

Hmmm Laces, looks like a pair of Logger Boots with rawhide laces to me.

[CashWiley 36649]

NMM is a lot tougher when you get into multiple angles and weird planes. For this, I just mean that the seams are catching the light along the horizontal, upraised surfaces. So any seam on the mini's boot that would look like that, give it a highlight.