02782: Warl Hellbore, Assassin WIP for Summer 2015 Exchange

[Darcstaar]

OK everyone.

Not sure how best to post WIP after the fact.
So, I'm going to post a few pictures at a time.

 

I was paired to paint for Arc724 in the Summer 2015 Exchange.

This was my first time, and his.

 

Here's the link to the Show Off.

http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/63001-02782-warl-hellbore-assassin-exchange-mini-for-2015-summer/

 

And here is the Fiction:

http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/63011-from-the-personal-holocron-of-master-bel’rheol-force-assassin/

 

Here are the starting supplies:

 

A few angles of the mini.

 

The base is a 30mm Tau-Ceti base from Secret Weapon.

 

The Shoto (Short Sabers) are sewing needles I picked up at Hobby Lobby.

[Darcstaar]

First on the agenda was to cut off the daggers and drill out the hands.

I then wanted to make the boots look less odd.  I snipped off the toes and filed them into a more recognizable shape.

I cut him off the brocolli base, and cut the two smaller front cloak swirls, since they didn't seem to make sense to me.

I damaged that fold in the cloak...

 

 

 

[ub3r_n3rd]

After the fact WIP - you can post up to 10 pictures per post at a time, so just do multiple posts of 10 pictures until you are done with them.

 

Anyhow, looks awesome, great WIP thread.

[Darcstaar]

Here you can see the soles of the boots I made from Green Stuff.

The needles are glued into the hand holes with super glue.  I roughed off the shiny finish with sandpaper first to try to improve their bond.

I pinned into the cloak and base.  The pin is superglued onto the figure.  The figure and pin are attached to the base with a two-part epoxy. 
I got lucky afterward when I tested this figure's balance: It is relatively well balanced on this bigger base despite the base's lighter weight.

 

Here is a close up of the shoto handles.  In the Wookieepedia, they suggest that all shoto share a common handle construction: Ringed handle, conical butt end, and cylindrical lightsaber emitter with a narrow slit on each side.  I think I accomplished that.

 

A couple of views of the "DFA" pose!

[Darcstaar]

After the fact WIP - you can post up to 10 pictures per post at a time, so just do multiple posts of 10 pictures until you are done with them.

 

Anyhow, looks awesome, great WIP thread.

Gotcha!

Thanks Ub3r.

[Darcstaar]

A mix of black and white brush on primers.  I was thinking the leather parts would be lighter color than the end product.  Otherwise, I might have gone all black except the face and sabers.

 

The face: Lining was 1:1 Pure Black:Vampiric Shadow.  Blending went up through the Triad to final highlights of 1:1 Pure White:Vampiric Highlight.

Eyes were lined with pure black and streaked with thinned Vampiric Shadow to keep them gray looking.  No pupils.

 

The cloak:

Base was Nightmare Black

Then I shaded down to Pure Black.

 

His underclothes are based Pure Black.

The boots and leather straps were going to be Oiled Leather and Tanned Leather, but I REALLY didn't like how bright that was going...

[Darcstaar]

 

I ended up switching my approach to the leathers:
I started with a base of 1:1 pure black:muddy brown.

This went through Muddy to Earth Brown and then the final highlight of 1:1 Earth Brown:Tanned Leather

[Darcstaar]

The cloak goes from Pure Black to Nightmare Black to Midnight Blue to Twilight and Templar blues.

I thought it was too bright and grainy, so I knocked it back down with the 1:2 Nightmare Black:Midnight Blue.

After this photo, I knocked it down even more with a very thin wash of Pure Black.

I was going for black cloth with blue lighting from the floor/ambient light, and struggled (in vain?) to keep it looking black.

[Darcstaar]

 

Final post:
A few things to note:
The light sabers go from Splattered Crimson to Gory Red to Blood Red to Lava Orange.

 

The shinies!  Buttons and buckles are True Silver.

The lightsaber handles are shadowed steel as a base.  I painted a line of Pure White and Pure Black to make it look chromed, then painted true silver over it.

It worked out OK as "Shaded Metallics" I guess.

However, the base gave me fits!  I was trying white under blue, a line of white, and then painting very thinned True Silver on top to re-fleck in the metallics, like the tutorials I've seen.  It didn't work out at all for me!  I ended up scrapping any attempt at OSL from the blue cracks in the floor, and ended up just painting lining in black to separate the levels of the panels his cloak touches, as well as the clasps in the floor panels.  I went back over the whole base with Shadowed Steel.  You can see the final result on the Show Off.  I'm happy with the base in the finished product, but the work to get there was frustrating, as I tried a few different ways to get to "Shaded Metallics," without success.  The saving grace for me was that the saber handles ended up looking good, so I may continue to practice the technique.  I just wonder if maybe True Silver isn't a good choice for it.  It ended up putting down a lot of whitish pigment without a lot of flake, as you can see in the second picture in this final post.

 

Thanks for checking it out, everyone.
C&C Encouraged.