Dungeon Saga Elf Ranger figure

The Dungeon Saga figure paint off continues.  I was wiped out by the flu for most of the week so only did one and half figures.

Dungeon Saga Elf Ranger

First off was the female elf ranger.  My base colours were

Flesh - VMC Dark Flesh
Pants and shirt - VGC Dark Fleshtone
Cloak - VMC Olive Green
Armour/gloves - 1/2 VMC Black/Grey, 1/2 VGC Beasty Brown
Boots - VGC Beasty Brown
Bow - VGC Charred Brown
Hair - Citadel Sandri Dust

Dungeon Saga Elf Ranger

I kept the shadows and highlights pretty simple.  The only one of note was the cloak.  My colour range for it (and this was more experiment than anything) from dark to light was

(VGC Night Blue, Black as final shade glazes)
VGC Dark Green
Coat d’Arms Russian Green
VMC Olive Green - Base
AP Necrotic Flesh
VMC Light Sand (which is an off white with some yellow)

By keeping the yellow in highlights I didn’t lose the olive green or end up with chalky highlights.  Near the end of the shadows I started adding in Night Blue to the glaze to get the shadows a bit bluer.

I finished off with a pretty heavy varnish which killed a bit of the colour as the highlights were a bit brighter before.  The pictures were taken after the varnish.  However these figures are going to have a lot of sticky kid fingers on them so they need the protection.

I’ve also done the base colours of the human barbarian (lots of flesh).  Poor old Keldan has stalled a bit after Ear-gate.

Ral Partha Death Dealer (aka Superhero)

While I had the airbrush out for the varnish runs I did some grey and then white pre-shading on the Death Dealer figure to try and help me with the shading.  I did a grey spray first at approx 30 degrees from the top of the figure first, and then did a white spray at approx 15 degrees.  This way only the top surfaces of the figure get the extreme white highlight.

More Dungeon Saga figures (and a Ral Partha classic)

Dwarf fighter from Dungeon Saga

On request from my son I painted up the dwarf fighter from Dungeon Saga as that is the character he is playing.  Nothing too fancy here with the emphasis on quick over quality.  The figure has some ugly sink holes and miscast bits so I didn’t get too concerned with making it a master piece.  Every time I see the figure I just think “Hammer time!”

Next off will be the female elf ranger figure as she is part of the standard adventurer group in the game.  With the male dwarf fighter and the female dwarf fighter (the Reaper Bones figure) that is the main party all painted (my wife is substituting the female dwarf fighter for the human barbarian).  My daughter is using her own figure which makes up the fourth figure.  I’ll probably do the human wizard and the human barbarian from completeness in the quick bake method.  After all there will be many grubby hands grabbing these and the figures are nice, but have the usual downsides of soft plastic mass produced figures with bad mould lines, missing details and sink holes.

Female Elf Ranger from Dungeon Saga

However I’m loving doing these figures quickly rather than the usual spending three weeks to paint a shield like I do on 54mm figures.  I’m also noticing that even doing these quickly how much better they are than all the older figures I painted for RPGs.  Zenithal lighting really makes a difference.  Also my brush control is much better.  I’m able to do the faces way better than before, and without needing a 10/0 brush.

I’ve found most of the figures with Dungeon Saga were bent in some way.  The recommended way to fix this is to put the figure in hot water to make it soft.  I found a better way was to use the heat of a cigarette lighter to make the plastic very soft, reposition and then put the figure under cold water to set.  However you have to be very careful as the heat can burn off some fine details and the plastic gets very soft very fast.

Finally I cracked open a figure I’ve had for 15 odd years.  This is the Ral Partha “Superhero” figure.  Sculpted by Tom Meier it is pretty much a direct take on the Frank Frazetta picture “Death Dealer”.  There have been a few pictures of larger scale Death Dealer figures going around recently so I got all inspired.

Ral Partha Superhero - aka Death Dealer

The figure does show it’s 40 year old vintage (made 1976).  The horse figure is one piece so there were some compromises needed for the mould, like the riders feet not hanging below the belly of the horse.  Also being a very old figure the mould has degraded a bit and some of the details are pretty soft.  That all said still a great figure.  To be honest the horse is really the highlight.  The sculpt totally captures the menace of the original painting.

Ral Partha Superhero - aka Death Dealer

I rebased the horse and rider on a plastic base and built up the ground with some milliput and rocks.  It will probably sit around for awhile while I consider how I’m going to do it.  Not sure if I will paint the foot figure.  The axe is all wrong and the legs aren’t that good.  Plus I’m having too much fun painting Dungeon Saga figures.

Dungeon Saga figures

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Starting back up in teal

To warm back up to painting I first spent a couple of nights playing around with some  colour mixes.  The wife wanted her dwarf to have some teal on it so I needed to work out the mixes for it.

Is this the teal you were looking for?

The base colour is VMC Light Turquoise.  I did a lot of experiments trying to get the shade colours correct.  I tried maroons, dark blues, black but kept ending up with dark green or olive as the shade which didn’t match the base colour.  In the end it found mixing down with VGC Falcon Turquoise (a darker and greener colour from the Light Turquoise) and VGC Night Blue.  For the first few shades it was 2/3 Falcon Turquoise, 1/3 Night Blue and I gradually moved that to 1/5 Falcon Turquoise, 4/5 Night Blue with a touch of black at the end.  This mixture kept the ‘teal’ colour as it darkened.  Going up I went with VMC Sky Blue and VMC Glossy White.  It loses the green somewhat from the base teal but matches with the base colour.

Reaper Bones Female Dwarf

The rest of the dwarf will mainly be metallics as I need to work on my technique for these paints.  I’ve experimented with a rather extreme “lighter on top, dark on bottom” style.  As I work up the figure each metallic is a lighter colour.  The leg greaves are VGC Tinny Tin, the armour skirt VGC Hammered Copper and the top arm pauldrons are VGC Brassy Brass.  Top this off with red hair and the bottom of the figure pretty much isn’t noticed from afar as the eye get drawn upwards by the lighter colours.

I also pre-shaded the resin figure from Dungeon Saga too.  He looks really nice and is super crisp (unlike the Reaper Bones which is missing part of the nose :( ).  Looking forward to doing some 28mm figures and not taking 2-3 months to finish a figure.