Kingdom Death: Pinup Wet Nurse

[Guindyloo]

I have a very large collection of Kingdom Death models. I think they're absolutely gorgeous and they are generally in an art style that I adore. Unfortunately, though I've continued buying them, I have not painted a single one. It's been a combination of fear of assembling them (they're notoriously fiddly - this model was in 8 pieces) and a fear of painting them because they're such beautiful figures and they're expensive as well, so there's added pressure tacked onto messing them up.

So I decided that it was time to face my fears and get one painted. Since this particular figure is one that I have accidentally purchased 3 times (if you've never bought figures from the Kingdom Death shop before - they are put out in small batches that often sell out within minutes, so to get everything that you want, it's unfortunately very easy to accidentally re-purchase things you've gotten before because you don't have time to check) I figured it wouldn't be the end of the world if I messed her up.

 

I've been working on her for a few days now. First of all, it took me 3 evenings to get her prepped and assembled. The first night, I clipped her from the sprue and worked on cleaning up mold lines (which I didn't do a fantastic job of and is really something that I have got to work on improving) the second night, I had to make a store run to buy plastic cement. This was my first hard plastic figure and I have heard countless times that it's best to use the plastic cement for them rather than superglue, but I didn't have any. Unfortunately, assembly didn't go well and I quit halfway through out of frustration. I thought that the difference between the Testors red label tube plastic cement and the Testors red label square bottle with the applicator was just that one had an applicator and one did not. Turns out the square bottle is liquid and the tube one is gel and the gel one sets up faster and was therefore easier for me to use. So I was able to finish assembly on the third night. Unfortunately, I had melted the plastic in some places and left gaps, so I had to do some repair work with some Bondic. If you're not familiar with Bondic, it is a liquid plastic in a tube that cures with a little UV light. It's great for quick and dirty gap filling. It probably wasn't the best thing for this particular application, if I'm being honest, because all it does is gap fill flat without any sort of texture buildup. I probably should have used some greenstuff, but I hate messing with greenstuff.

So there are problem spots on her where there's some weird texture and it kinda just is what it is at this point and I'm ok with that.

 

The following 2 nights were spent "priming" her with Brown Liner (spray primer is not an option for me and brush on primer was not sticking to her) and then I started in on her skin, painted her eyes (they are TINY and also half closed,) her tongue and her hair. The skin still needs some touch up here and there but this is the absolute happiest I have ever been with a skintone I've painted. It was a lot of very, very sloooooow layering working back and forth between shades with paint that was thinned nearly to a glaze consistency and then smoothed over with a glaze of the midtone.

 

 

Her skin is varying mixes between MSP Chestnut Brown, MSP Golden Shadow, MSP Golden Skin, and working all the way up to MSP Golden Highlight. The pictures are washing out the highlights a bit.

Her eyes were done with Warcolours One Coat Beige, Warcolours One Coat Blue, and Warcolours One Coat Black.

Her tongue was a basecoat of MSP Rusty Red, then some MSP Blush Pink added in, then some Golden Skin mixed in for the highlight.

Her hair was a basecoat of Warcolours Turquoise 3, then shaded with Warcolours Marine 4, then highlighted with Warcolours Turquoise 2, MSP Spectral Glow, and a final touch of MSP Spectral Glow with a bit of MSP Ghost White mixed in.

[Crowley]

I love her hair! And yeah, her skin is great too!

[Sophie was taken]

Is she missing a left hand, or is it the angle?

 

Love those skin tones, they really bring out the zaftig quality of the figure.

[Cyradis]

She was in EIGHT pieces?! Why in the world does she need to be in that many?! 

 

The hair is lovely on her. She's a heck of a figure. She has a figure to make a Kardashian look like a curveless twig, haha. 

[Auberon]

5 minutes ago, Cyradis said:

She was in EIGHT pieces?! Why in the world does she need to be in that many?! 

 

The hair is lovely on her. She's a heck of a figure. She has a figure to make a Kardashian look like a curveless twig, haha. 

 

As I understand it this is due to the limitations of casting hard plastic.  Since the material isn't really flexible and the mold isn't flexible you can't do undercuts or else you trap your plastic in the mold.  Thus any kind of complex piece needs to be cut up in such a way that you avoid this issue.  The more complex and detailed the mini the more pieces you will end up needing to make.  Some of the KD hard plastic is way over 8 pieces.

[Cyradis]

11 minutes ago, Auberon said:

 

As I understand it this is due to the limitations of casting hard plastic.  Since the material isn't really flexible and the mold isn't flexible you can't do undercuts or else you trap your plastic in the mold.  Thus any kind of complex piece needs to be cut up in such a way that you avoid this issue.  The more complex and detailed the mini the more pieces you will end up needing to make.  Some of the KD hard plastic is way over 8 pieces.

 

What are the advantages of hard plastic as opposed to other materials? 

[Guindyloo]

13 minutes ago, Sophie was taken said:

Is she missing a left hand, or is it the angle?

 

Love those skin tones, they really bring out the zaftig quality of the figure.

Whoops, yes, I meant to mention that I left that hand off because she blocks half of her face with the device she's holding. So I've left it off until I'm sure I've finished painting all of the things that are blocked.

 

8 minutes ago, Cyradis said:

She was in EIGHT pieces?! Why in the world does she need to be in that many?! 

 

The hair is lovely on her. She's a heck of a figure. She has a figure to make a Kardashian look like a curveless twig, haha. 

That hair was an absolute joy to paint. It's really, really beautifully sculpted.

 

As far as her being in 8 pieces, yeah, what Auberon said.  As appalling as 8 pieces was to me for her, I know many of the figures are much, much more. This is why I "joke" (I'm really not joking) about Buglips assembling my Kingdom Death figures for me. I don't enjoy assembling nor prepping figures at all, it's just a non-stop source of stress for me. Which is why I haven't done very well with improving that skill thus far.

[Silvervane]

Oh!  My!  Wow, that's some phenomenal work.  Such smooth blending.  I've yet to jump onto the KoD train.  This is just a personal preference, but I think if it went a touch higher on the highlights in few key spots it would ratchet it up that much more.  Unless that's what you meant by touch up...

 

BTW I'm totally jealous of the hair.  I can never get mine to look that good.

[Auberon]

15 minutes ago, Cyradis said:

 

What are the advantages of hard plastic as opposed to other materials? 

 

Plastic is cheap and durable, which is why it is all over the place in modern living.  The molds themselves are made from metal and so are quite durable as well.  The downside is that making a metal mold costs a pretty penny so it is usually only economical if you will be casting a lot of plastic.  I.e. the shell of a mass market coffee maker or a Hasbro game where there will be a million little plastic pieces.  OTOH if you aren't making a lot of casts then you will need to charge more per piece to make your money back.  Eventually it's just not worth doing, so if you only need 500 casts of something you don't do hard plastic.  If you want all the gory details someone like Talespinner would be better to ask. 

[Guindyloo]

2 hours ago, Silvervane said:

Oh!  My!  Wow, that's some phenomenal work.  Such smooth blending.  I've yet to jump onto the KoD train.  This is just a personal preference, but I think if it went a touch higher on the highlights in few key spots it would ratchet it up that much more.  Unless that's what you meant by touch up...

 

BTW I'm totally jealous of the hair.  I can never get mine to look that good.

So the camera is doing two things, 1. it's making my blends look a little bit better than they are 2. it's dulling down my highlights. However, I worked on both so maybe better, maybe worse, who knows? 

 

The hair is very much benefited by how nice the sculpt is. Also Warcolours. It's tricky paint with a bit of a learning curve, but when it works well, it works really, really well. That happened to be an excellent combination.

 

Here's where I'm at after tonight.

 

I worked on the skin a bit more. I tried to fix some of the bad texture by smoothing it out with GW 'Ardcoat. I should have done that at the basecoating step because glazing over doesn't do a great job of dulling down shininess, but I think those spots look a lot better than they did.

 

I basecoated her dress with MSP Rusty Red, or at least mostly basecoated it. I'm doing it super slowly so as not to have any brush slips onto the skin.

I also added Warcolours Marine 5 to the very underside of the hair for darker shading. I'm not sure if that looks any different in the pictures.

[SisterMaryNapalm]

Great work so far. I love the smooth colour transitions.

 

I will definitely follow this.

[Glitterwolf]

Awesome so far!

 

 

[WhiteWulfe]

11 hours ago, Auberon said:

 

As I understand it this is due to the limitations of casting hard plastic.  Since the material isn't really flexible and the mold isn't flexible you can't do undercuts or else you trap your plastic in the mold.  Thus any kind of complex piece needs to be cut up in such a way that you avoid this issue.  The more complex and detailed the mini the more pieces you will end up needing to make.  Some of the KD hard plastic is way over 8 pieces.

 

This is why a popular games company (wanted to use Kickstarter type lingo to refer to Games Workshop ) has their "most popular" guys (Space Marines) in quite a few bits (legs, two arms, weapon is usually by itself, backpack, torso, and head, are all cast as separate pieces, making it seven pieces - add two for shoulder pads since I think those are cast separately too).  You can go fewer pieces (the old 3rd edition almost click fit ones were only two pieces, as an example, body, and gun), but you lose a good amount of detail by doing such.  The newer "no glue required" ones are still multiple pieces (almost as many as the "regular" Space Marines) 

 

 

And back on topic, Guindyloo, I love her hair and outfit, she's looking great! 

[Guindyloo]

These are the pictures that were meant to be posted last night, but my phone died on me mid-picture taking and I just shrugged and went to bed. 

Not a ton has changed since the previous pics. I messed with her face a little bit more an what took up the most amount of time (although it was a short painting session) was going through with Brown Liner to line all of the areas where skin meets cloth. I did it slowly and carefully and still made some oopsies, a couple of splotches here and there (that I cleaned up pre-pictures) and a couple of lines that came out thicker than I'd like.

 

 

Lining is one of the scariest steps, but it's really so worth doing.

[Guindyloo]

Here's where I've wound up after tonight.

 

The highlighting on the red was done by adding MSP Clear Red to the MSP Rusty Red, then more and more MSP Candlelight Yellow until I arrived at pure Candlelight Yellow. Then I glazed Clear Red over it. Then I added shadows back in with about a 50/50 mix of the Rusty Red with Warcolours Violet 4. Then I recaptured the midtone with straight Clear Red, then dotted back in Candlelight Yellow over the highest highlights.

I'm really happy with how it looks in person, not so much in pictures. I tried every angle possible and got into a fistfight with my ottlite. It's just too frigging dark in my apartment since there's no overhead light, so there's no ambient light and no matter what I do, the ottlite makes everything super harsh. Angled pictures seem to work out a little bit better.

 

 

Her face continues to vex me. I keep telling myself to leave it alone, but I don't listen and keep messing with it.