Ral Partha Town Guards sculpted by Jim Johnson

[72moonglum]

Good morning my Reapertonians!

 

So recently I've been not only just doing individual figures, but also "sets", figured belonging or previously belonging to blister packs and today is no exception.

 

I just finished painting a set of Ral Partha Town Guards, sculpted back in the 90's I think by Jim Johnson.  As I go through a lot of my minis, it's impressive of what a large library of work Mr. Johnson has created.   All this and I know virtually nothing about the guy.

 

Anyhoos, being that these are town guards from the same town, I wanted them to all have a similar color schemes so all their shirts got purple amethyst to start out with and their pants are red.  I did want to make sure they all got unique skin tones however, as not to make them too uniform and boring. After seeing these all close up with the merciless camera lens, I see tons of errors that were impossible to pick up with my naked and bespectacled eye, and even with my nerd goggles, I didn't really see certain issues. But alas, once I get to the point of ending, very small chance that I'll be going back to update.  

 

As of yet, I haven't put them on bases, but will probably do so in the near future so they don't fall over.  The redhead with the spear is especially a little top-heavy.

 

Derek had mentioned in a post about a previous lady giant that I needed to make sure I hit my metals with white.  I always do so, but I'm hoping that these pictures can reflect it visually a little bit more.  Tried not to be overly heavy-handed with white but at least make sure it got in there to be properly represented. 

 

And for the spearman's shield on his back, I really had no idea or inspiration of what to do, so I just painted on some white stripes.  Not at all very exciting, but I couldn't invent anything that exciting.

 

So there you have them, my last five little mini-babies, enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Chaoswolf]

Very cool! I like 'em; you did a good job of making them unique, but still look like a unit.

+10 points for painting figures by Jim Johnson, based on my figure collection, I am also a fan of his work.

[Paintfully_aware]

These are so good, I especially like the crossbow man with his hood half down.

His face is a picture of determination, definitely my favourite of the bunch.

I'm just trying NMM for the first time myself and I suck at it, when I grow up I want to paint like you.

Signed Jon, age 41 and 3 quarters. :)

[Glitterwolf]

Great job!

I love the purples and it seems you have quite the diverse town there, good job on the different skintones, I like it!

[72moonglum]

1 hour ago, Chaoswolf said:

Very cool! I like 'em; you did a good job of making them unique, but still look like a unit.

+10 points for painting figures by Jim Johnson, based on my figure collection, I am also a fan of his work.

Thank you Chaoswolf!

 

Yeah, I’m a really huge fan of his sculpting style, angular and a little bulky. He’s kind of the opposite of Meier, but there is tons of personality in his work.  He did tons of miniatures for Partha with their TSR ranges. I really dig his work!

13 minutes ago, Paintfully_aware said:

These are so good, I especially like the crossbow man with his hood half down.

His face is a picture of determination, definitely my favourite of the bunch.

I'm just trying NMM for the first time myself and I suck at it, when I grow up I want to paint like you.

Signed Jon, age 41 and 3 quarters. :)

Thanks Paintfully Aware!  My NMM is always so hit and miss and I don’t think I’m ever going to get it to look in any way realistic, but it’s one of those things that almost all figures end up having some metal on them, so I’ve been getting the practice with virtually every mini I paint, so some day, maybe twenty years from now (I’ll be 73) I will actually be able to say I know what I’m doing. 

2 minutes ago, Glitterwolf said:

Great job!

I love the purples and it seems you have quite the diverse town there, good job on the different skintones, I like it!

Yup, it’s the World of Benetton at that little village!

[Metalchaos]

Great work on all of them. The colors you selected and the precious stones they wear make me think that they are the sophisticated guards of a big city or maybe even a metropolis. Also, I like the hairstyle of the crossbowman.

[72moonglum]

9 hours ago, Metalchaos said:

Great work on all of them. The colors you selected and the precious stones they wear make me think that they are the sophisticated guards of a big city or maybe even a metropolis. Also, I like the hairstyle of the crossbowman.

Thank you Metalchaos!  I wanted to stay away from brown and green, and wanted a slightly more sinister look, so thought of black and red, but then afterwards I don’t know how the lavender color plays out as a combination.

 

Yeah, I like his hair too. He’s really the only guard that has actually left his grand mane totally exposed.

[dks]

I like these guys! 

 

Yes, their metallic things look more like metal. 

I'm realizing that my own advice was vague or misleading. 

The key isn't just "go up to white", but rather it's about controlling the rest of the colors on the NMM and using the white as glints of reflected light within a full black-to-white range of contrast.   If you use too much white, it will look less like metal and more like light-gray stone, because the white will be too broad to look like reflections of light.

Alas, words aren't as good as images to convey advice about miniatures.  It would be much clearer to see one example of NMM that doesn't look right, next to the same figure with better NMM.   Maybe I should make some side-by-side comparisons -- take one of my figures where I didn't do the NMM very well and then paint over it in Photoshop, or take a figure whose NMM was good but then make it worse in Photoshop.

 

Anyway, I also never met Jim Johnson or heard anything about him, though I also painted a bunch of his figures in the late '80s and early '90s. 

But I think his style influenced my own sculpting, such as the scale of details and the degree of abstraction, allowing the painter to add texture and detail with paint. 

He sculpted many figures for Ral Partha, including boxed sets of official D&D minis and minis based on Larry Elmore's art.

I painted the figures for one of those boxed sets: "Reflections of Myth" (10-315).  The characters were based on pen-and-ink drawings by Larry Elmore, so there wasn't any official color scheme to follow.  I deliberately painted each of the 8 figures with different skin and hair colors, like you did with these guards (and other sets you've painted). 

And you painted at least one of the figures from that set -- Dragon Lass!: https://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/80677-larry-elmore-dragon-lass-from-ral-partha/

I painted mine with pale green skin, dark green hair, red clothes, and a purple dragon.  I think the art director was surprised by those colors.

 

EDIT: Here's another one from that set, which you painted (the female pirate): https://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/76216-two-ral-partha-pirates-and-a-larry-elmore-chick

 

Derek 

[Poilu_1914]

That's a real nice group! Great job! If you have issues with coats of arms I use, this site: https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/ch.html

This has all the coats of arms of all the cities/towns/villages, counties (communes) and states (cantons) in Switzerland. I've been using it for a while, great practice for freehand as well.

[Rob Dean]

Stripes (bends sinister in this case, or perhaps bendlets since they are thinner than the base color) aren’t a bad design, but you could play around with some other geometric divisions if you wanted something a bit more.  I like “gyronny”, usually 8, quartered and with each of the quarters divided.

 

Like this, minus the counterchanged annulet:

 

 

 

[72moonglum]

16 hours ago, dks said:

I like these guys! 

 

Yes, their metallic things look more like metal. 

I'm realizing that my own advice was vague or misleading. 

The key isn't just "go up to white", but rather it's about controlling the rest of the colors on the NMM and using the white as glints of reflected light within a full black-to-white range of contrast.   If you use too much white, it will look less like metal and more like light-gray stone, because the white will be too broad to look like reflections of light.

Alas, words aren't as good as images to convey advice about miniatures.  It would be much clearer to see one example of NMM that doesn't look right, next to the same figure with better NMM.   Maybe I should make some side-by-side comparisons -- take one of my figures where I didn't do the NMM very well and then paint over it in Photoshop, or take a figure whose NMM was good but then make it worse in Photoshop.

 

Anyway, I also never met Jim Johnson or heard anything about him, though I also painted a bunch of his figures in the late '80s and early '90s. 

But I think his style influenced my own sculpting, such as the scale of details and the degree of abstraction, allowing the painter to add texture and detail with paint. 

He sculpted many figures for Ral Partha, including boxed sets of official D&D minis and minis based on Larry Elmore's art.

I painted the figures for one of those boxed sets: "Reflections of Myth" (10-315).  The characters were based on pen-and-ink drawings by Larry Elmore, so there wasn't any official color scheme to follow.  I deliberately painted each of the 8 figures with different skin and hair colors, like you did with these guards (and other sets you've painted). 

And you painted at least one of the figures from that set -- Dragon Lass!: https://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/80677-larry-elmore-dragon-lass-from-ral-partha/

I painted mine with pale green skin, dark green hair, red clothes, and a purple dragon.  I think the art director was surprised by those colors.

 

EDIT: Here's another one from that set, which you painted (the female pirate): https://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/76216-two-ral-partha-pirates-and-a-larry-elmore-chick

 

Derek 

Hi Derek and thanks for the kind words!  I think it would be an excellent source of inspiration to see two versions of the same miniature that you would have painted where you consider one set of NMM better than the other.  

 

In respect to Jim Johnson, I just find it so interesting that he was so prolific, both for Partha and for Reaper, but I've never heard of anything about him,  as a person or professional.  For example, Tom Meier has been out there on the internet with his own company's page (when it was still active) and he had the beginnings of a blog.  I hear about Julie Guthrie and Bob Ridolfi every so often via Reaper itself, as they guest on some of the Twitch shows.  

 

I've seen the back of that box, Reflections of Myth, and love all the work you did on them all.  I guess I didn't consciously realize they were all painted with the different skin and hair colors until looking at it right now.  I'm guessing your painted minis of these are all scattered throughout the seven winds.  I was told that when Ral Partha closed a great deal of their painted figured that were in their display cases were "liberated" by the folk at their factory.

 

I think if I recall correctly I have all of these figures and like you mentioned above, two of them are painted.  After being a miniature in this box, Dark Sword also did another version of the pirate chick, I think if I remember correctly sculpted by Bobby Jackson. 

11 hours ago, Poilu_1914 said:

That's a real nice group! Great job! If you have issues with coats of arms I use, this site: https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/ch.html

This has all the coats of arms of all the cities/towns/villages, counties (communes) and states (cantons) in Switzerland. I've been using it for a while, great practice for freehand as well.

Thank you Poilu!

 

I may use that site for future reference one of these days!

 

10 hours ago, Rob Dean said:

Stripes (bends sinister in this case, or perhaps bendlets since they are thinner than the base color) aren’t a bad design, but you could play around with some other geometric divisions if you wanted something a bit more.  I like “gyronny”, usually 8, quartered and with each of the quarters divided.

 

Like this, minus the counterchanged annulet:

 

 

 

Hey there Rob!

Thanks for the suggestions, it looks quite a bit better than just drawing some straight lines.  I really didn't have that spark of shield inspiration this time. Normally I do some kind of freehand, a face, a monster, or maybe a tower, a moon, something.  This time I just didn't know what to do.  I'll try to be a bit more creative in my future shield endeavors.  I saw a few days ago on Twitch Anne doing some designs on carpet and I could probably apply a similar principle to a shield, which is kind of what you're doing above.