Painting My Bones (But Not The Ones Inside Of Me) - A Kickstarter WIP.

[Coleford]

So I returned from a month long trip in Spain this evening to find a Giant and strange box sitting on my bed. After opening it carefully, thinking it must be a bomb or decapitated head, I was overjoyed to find it was none other than my Bones Kickstarter! REJOICE!

 

After sorting through the sheer rediculous number of miniatures, I realized that I'm going to need some sort of motivation to paint this beastly assortment of minis, and the best way to do that is to showcase my work on the internet as I try to tackle, as quickly as possible, all the Minis I got.

The plan is to speed paint them up to pretty much tabletop level, a little lower than I'm used to doing with really only one base color and one layer of shading, with alot of drybrushing and washes to help me "cheat" along the way.

Without further rambling, we haveeee... this guy. Model #1 of 200...ish.

Mr Sandman.

 

 

 

At first I was like "OHHHHH EVIL WIZARD!", and then I started with the purple and was like " He kinda looks like hes wearing one of those sleep caps on his head... OHHHH SLEEPY TIME WIZARD." and gave him a cute little star covered hat.

Nothing is more intimidating to enemies than stars on your head.

 

If anyone has any tips on how to take better pictures of my minis, or any comments, feel free to belittle or abuse me at your whim.

Also, if anyone knows where I can find the actual names of the models so I dont have to name them all stupidly, that would be grand toooooo... okay.

 

I'll have a new differenter picture of another mini tomorrow, with more madness.

 

[trystangst]

Here's a great way to get all the names, quickly(ish):

http://greg.botch.com/bones/

There are a lot of minis in the box - and it'll take a long time to get thru them all, even if you speed paint them. My advice - don't rush it! Enjoy each mini as you can. They're not going anywhere.

[smokingwreckage]

Noice!

[DLMyst]

I took the time mark the product number on each baggie with a sharpie. It took a long time but it'll be worth it in a couple of months when I don't remember who's who. I'll probably transfer the codes to the bottom of the bases when I have more than 2 painted.

 

nice work on Mr Sandman, and welcome to the forums

[Coleford]

@trystangst, That is probably the most helpful thing I've ever seen. I actually spent a solid 40 minutes online trying to find his name through every possible avenue, even looking at every single wizard that Reaper sells on their store so I could search him somehow and see someone elses painting of him, and still couldn't find him.

Finally Idecided "Screw it. Sandman."

Now, I see, his name was "Wizard With Staff and Familliar.", and that he doesn't exist in the store yet! Haha! Personally, I like "Sandman" better, with his little fancy hat.

Thanks for this link, Its gonna be a huge help in my future endeavours!

 

NEWS.

Basically, my 'cool' friends want me to set up a small intro campaign for them to play next week.

I'm pretty stoked as for years I have tried to get them into any kind of gaming, so I can have both of my groups of friends be together as one big happy group. The issue beforew was that they either lacked the dedication and wallet to purchase and paint an entire army for any GW type games, or because of television, they lacked the brain power to "imagine" ... for any other sort of table top game.

They still lack alot of brain power, but now that I have all these models, they're all like "WOWWW BROOO, THIS SEEMS WICKED. LETS DO PUSHUPS.", and I'm like "Yeah... bro... I know. Also, don't call me bro, bro."

 

As a result, i'm gonna try to paint up like 4 characters and a couple monsters that one might see on a First level encounter.

 

Right now, heres half of my project for the day.

 

Filthy Damn RATS.

 

 

Look at those COLOURS. Look at that VARIETY.

 

Should be done in a couple hours with my regular standard of filthy paintery

 

One issue though...

I'm looking at these right now in their currently half primed state and seeing that drybrushing may be an issue. I'm finding that a couple of these bones, like these Rats lack a lot of the deep detail I'm sort of used to seeing in models, while most others, like Sandman, have the nice deep thick lines and crevaces and have really intense detail... Maybe its the material? Maybe some models are better suited to Bones material than others?

Anyone else noticing this?

 

If you have any ideas on what Characters or Terrible Tiny Beasts I should paint for a first level type encounter to impress some SERIOUS bros, SPEAKKKKKK!

 

[Coleford]

Alrighty, so, this took a little longer than expected, but I decided after trying and trying to take good pictures for the past few years, and never having anything that actually looked like the things I had painted, I decided that I had to have been doing something wrong. After a little google searching, I came up with a bunch of info on photography... specifically how to make this beast...

 

 

Took about 5 minutes and 1$ to make. I will shout the values of this from the hills. It actually makes things look like they do in real life, and not all washed out and wonky. MAKE ONE OF THESE IF YOU DON'T HAVE ONE.

 

Anyways,

Without Further Ado, The Rat Bastids.

 

Just some base colors, a little Liquid Talent (GW Agarax Earthshade), and a light drybrush, and here we are.

So, that brings the count up to 13 of 264ish completed! YAY!

 

Out of town for the next few days, but will have some more stuff up soon.

Any requests from Vampire for what you want to see painted up?

[araziel]

Hah, liquid talent, that's a good one :P

 

I like them, muted and realistic looking rats. I think I'll do mine once I complete the Dungeon Dressing pack as they should be quick.

[Bjkernow]

Very nice my friend, loving this thread and look forward to seeing more

[OneBoot]

Your WIP is soooo much fun to read! :D I laughed at several points, which is what I'm hoping you were trying to do...bro.

 

The rats look awesome!! Great job on the fur. I ran into the same issue of there being VERY little depth to the fur detail. I ended up using a super thin wash and very light drybrushing and was able to pull out what little there was.

 

Mr. Sandman looks extremely great! This is one of the models I'm very excited about, and I'm saving him as a reward once I'm done with the minis needed for my current campaign.

 

As far as impressing your SERIOUS BROS, I'd go with characters that have a) a big weapon(s), b) cool armor, c) lots of accessories. For a first level encounter, I'd go with the Pathfinder goblins, since they're all waving various sharp weaponry and/or fire, which is always good. Skeletons or zombies might not be bad either, since they're so recognizable. If you want to go with sheer impressiveness and "wow-factor", I've found that dragons do pretty well at that.

 

Good luck on your game!! That's way cool that they're all interested now, and hopefully they'll remain so! Something else to keep them excited and invested might be to sort out all of the character-type minis and dump those in front of them, have them choose the one they want to represent their character, then promise them you'll paint it for them. I've found that this makes the game more real, especially for newer players, and helps them stay more invested in their character and the game. Our newer players are all excited for me to be done with their minis.

 

Huzzah!

--OneBoot :D

Edited August 12, 2013 by OneBoot

[Coleford]

Small update.
Realised that since this is a WIP blog, maybe I should post some WIP pictures.

 

Heres a Dwarf shortly after a brushing of Liquid Talent, aka 3/5ths done.

 

 

All Brown will be gold. All gold will be shiny.

 

I thought I was being neat by doing a blue dwarf, then I went to the inspiration gallery and was like... "oh poopoobummface, everyone else did blue too."

 

CANT WIN EM ALL.

Will have the finished Mini up tonight hopefully.

 

I may have surgically removed one of his fingers as well while trying to remove mold lines. I'm really not used to the softness of this material. It cuts like butter but before its butter... so... like milk.

 

Anyone else finding it difficult to shave these things?

 

[OneBoot]

I guess if you're used to dealing with metal minis, this stuff would feel like trying to cut air, but since Bones are my first introduction to mini-dom, I'm finding it closer to cutting a brick of cheddar cheese with a small, really really sharp knife.

 

I've had more success with not trying to get the entire mold line in one go, since I tend to make more slips that way. Instead, I do just a wee bit at a time. This tends to leave it a little bit rough, but at least no chunks are missing. I then use one of my needle files or sanding needles to give it a quick smooth-over. A little time consuming, but it works well for me. :)

 

That "liquid talent" stuff looks pretty awesome, I might have to look into that....

 

Huzzah!

--OneBoot :D

[smokingwreckage]

It's one of the new wave of pre-mixed washes. See also, Army Painter Inks, and Secret Weapon Washes.

[Coleford]

Andddd Done.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I Tried for sooooooooo long, messing around with my lights, and diddling with my limited Photoshop skills to try to get some decent pictures of this guy, but alot of times they turned out darker than Wesley Snipes or just way tooooo POPPY like, *Blam, Kapow, Batmannoises.*

 

I think Nuns have a better idea of what to do during sex then what I have about taking photos. The picture of the backside looks 100% better than the one of the front. Suuuuuppppeeeeerrrrr...

 

Overall, I'm quite happy with how he turned out. Did a little higher level of highlighting than I normally do, and I think overall, the colours and accent color of red really brings the model together...

That being said, I ABHOR PAINTING EYES. Homie looks like hes about to roll into a coma, but, honestly, its the best I could do. I tried dad... I really tried.

Also also... I ABHOR PAINTING WITH METALICS. Gold is okay because you just paint it straight on, then throw a light brown wash to give it some depth... but SILVER!?... Allow me to smash my face repeatedly into the keyboard. UAHHHHDSFHDSFJsdkasjskdcakdfnafdskafjJKIJFKDSNFNSKDFENFJo.

 

Anywhooo... Learned alot of lessons about... alot of things painting wise and I'm really looking forward to the next model! YAYYYYY!

Finally...If you have any tips for picture taking and Painting either of my two new nemesis...es... please help!!!

[ub3r_n3rd]

I think you did a great job with him. As far as photo-taking goes, I'd look at the specific form topic "shutterbug" for tips/tricks on how to take better photos.

[Doug Sundseth]

Two tips for photography:

 

1) Use a light-medium gray background rather than white. Your camera software is optimized for scenes that average out to that tone, so getting a good exposure will be easier.

 

2) Don't light the figure from the sides, light from either side of the front.

 

Bonus tip: If you're not shooting highly reflective surfaces, you generally don't need to worry much about softening the lights (which is the purpose of a lightbox). Bare lights work just fine as long as the subject is far enough away from the background.