Terminator Genisys human resistance figures

I started the week with the last bits of tidy up on the ADV Mujahideen figure.  It was nice to do a quick figure and learning how to do dark skin better than what I could do previously was good.  I need to do more figures like this.

Terminator Genisys figure

I’ve got the 16 human fighters from the Terminator Genisys game to paint up.  I painted the faces of two over a month ago and left them at that.  So this week I made the effort to get them going again.  Whenever I’m painting up a force of similar figures the first few are the hardest as I need to work out the look of the force.  Also you learn about the details on the figures as you paint.  There is a bit of blending on the figures (i.e. where an arm morphs into a rifle) but that is expected on plastic figures with are not multipart.

Given how little play time these figures are likely to get I wanted to keep with the quick and easy method for them.  However given all the layers of clothing they have that’s a bit harder.  My goal was 1.5 hours per figure which I came close to.

Given they are future army men I had to avoid going all green on them.  I needed to break up the areas of cloth to make the outfits look a little more random and scavenged.  On these first two I probably went for too much green.  More brown on the next ones :)  After all they don’t wash much.

My base for the green was JS Green Oxide.  To this I added a range of colours (black, yellow, a few browns, tan) to give me the various green shades.  I usually highlighted up by adding in yellow to lighten the green and fade it.  Sometimes a warm white was added.  Shading was done by adding black, Dark sea Blue or red (or mixtures of these) depending on the base colour.  On what looked like harder, more rigid pieces of armour I added some scuff marks.

The plasma rifle (which I consider the weakest part of the figures, has a bit blob on the bottom of it) was painted in AP Gun metal, shaded with dark sea blue with a VMC Smoke wash, highlights in AP Plate Mail.

Also I’ve been trialling some water effects for the Reaper Spirit of the Forest figure.  Might get started on that one next week.

ADV Mujahideen 1/35 figure part 2

This week I pretty much finished off the Mujahideen figure.

ADV Mujahideen, sans mine and AK-47

For the green pouches I shaded down with some VMC Red and VMC Red/Violet.  I highlighted by adding more Indian Yellow to the base mix, then some JS Light Yellow and white.  The small pouch toggles were painted white.

For the hat I used VMC Khaki highlighted with JS Light Yellow and white, shaded with VMA Armour brown and VMC Dark Sea Blue under the rim of the hat.

On the jacket I had a few attempts.  I found my dark brown kept going to light purple during the highlights.  I was trying to highlight in yellow/white and this wasn’t working.  In the end I went back to using VGC Beastial Brown and Leather Brown and the final highlights in a warm white.  I stippled the top of the shoulders with a warm white/white mixture.  Shading by adding in Dark Sea Blue and black.

Figure on base

The clothes were a bit of a trial.  I was trying to use JS raw sienna as the shade and that was making a flesh colour (not unexpected as warm white + raw sienna are the base of most flesh mixtures).  Then I remembered that on Adokul the Monk I had used VMC Smoke as the shade colour for his linen cloth.  Hate it when I forget how to paint a colour that I worked out previously.  Once I switched to the Smoke things went a lot better.  Highlights in white.  I also make sure I mixed in some flow aid into the mixture to try and stop the white paint from getting lumpy.

For the base I liked the cover art that had the rocks in an off white/blue colour.  Makes the ground work look nice and barren as you would expect the mountain areas to be.  The figure was glued to the base with two part epoxy with a small rod drilled into the wooden base and the resin base of the figure to give support.

Last to do is the anti-tank mine and AK-47 which are half done.  Need to finish them off now that they are glued on.

Worm bust part 2 and Mujahideen 1/35 figure

The worm bust

Over the last week or so I’ve been working on finishing the worm bust.  The areas that I worked on were the eyes, robe and collar and green skin area (esp the neck).

For the eyes I wanted to bring out the faceted shape of the eye (modelled from a cheap plastic bead).  I highlighted the edges quite strongly but that didn’t really get the effect I was after.  I then added in some streaks radiating from the pupil and added some darker adjacent lines to help with the look.  I made the inner eye a triple colour, being purple, inner white, black pupil.

For the cloth area I added some light blue on the shoulders and back to give a few points of contrasting colour and to add some details to the figure.  I used a base of VMC Prussian Blue and highlighted with white and shaded with VMC Dark Sea Blue and orange.  For the collar I made a crisscross pattern and then filled in the lower triangles.  The yellow areas were then highlighted with JS Light Yellow and white.

For the green skin area the neck needed a lot of work.  It was a uniform dark area so I went back and repainted with the base colour and then was more selective on the shading.  On all the small ridges and muscle areas that I had sculpted on the neck, these were highlighted up like the top of the head but not to the same level.  I also redid some of the top of the head adding in some more contrasts to break up the large areas on similar colour.

After that the under base was painted a very dark maroon/purple and the figure was glued into the wooden base.

So that was the first figure that I designed (well, made up on the fly), sculpted, cast and painted.  Not sure how many I will do but really glad that I did one and it worked out ok.

ADV Mujahideen 1/35 figure

Awhile back I purchased some 1/35 figures off eBay.  One was a Mujahideen from the 1980s by ADV.  Really liked the natural pose of the figure and the flow of the clothing.  Also I have not painted non-caucasian skin much (read almost never) so this was a good reason to try to see if my colour mixing skills had improved.

Well the have, but not much wrt to skin tones.  I have always struggled with skin tones.  Hence why I didn’t try non-caucasian skin.  My first attempt used the below mix

JS Raw Sienna
JS White
JS Yellow Oxide
AP Black
spot of VMC Red

This colour struggled, being too grey/purple and the highlights too pale.  Wasn’t happy by the time I had painted the skin areas.

Looking in my skin colour recipe book (yes, why didn’t I look there first?) I used the mix of

JS Burnt Sienna
JS Yellow Oxide
AP Black
JS White

But this just gave me purple/grey which is a sign of too many complementary colours in the mix.  Of course I had painted all the skin areas and shaded/highlighted before I stepped back and went “nope”.  I think the AP black is on the purple side slightly.

So I revised and tried

JS Burnt Sienna
JS Indian Yellow
JS Black
JS White

This gave me a great looking dark skin.

Shades - Burnt Sienna, Black, Red, VMA Armour Brown
Highlights - Indian Yellow, White, Red, Light yellow

Again I went and painted away and the skin looked good.  However it was too dark (almost African).  So I went back, made what was previously the first highlight colour the base colour and repainted the skin for a third time.  This time I think I’m in the ball park.  I also started blocking out the rest of the figure with the base coats.

AK-47 and anti-tank mine

Dress of the area is very plain, with tops and pants the same colour.  The clothes are Raw Sienna plus white, the ammo pouches are JS green oxide plus Indian yellow.  The hat is tan and the jacket a mix of Burnt Sienna and black.  For the clothes I made the pants a slightly darker base to avoid the two pieces of clothing blending together.

The base will just be the rock base that he came with.  No fancy 3 month dioramas this year.  Well maybe one but that will be later on and the Reaper Bones figure “Spirit of the forest” may be getting the fancy base treatment.

MOAB 2017

I’ve been away on holidays for the last two weeks hence the lack of posts.  I did manage to get to MOAB 2017 on the final day.  I mainly go to MOAB for the bring and buy (second hand stall) so I expected that by the third day it would be pretty picked clean.  However to my surprise there were still items there.  Makes me wonder what was there on day one.

I also got a few normal purchases from the various traders as well.

- Billionaire card game $3

Very fond memories of playing this as a kid so got it to add to the family game stash.

- Roman pillars $5

Some plaster casts of Hirst molds, for dioramas.

- Egyptian bits $5

Some plaster casts of Hirst molds, for the kids.

- Israeli paratroopers $2

Four figures for $2, why not.  Just couldn’t help myself.

- Misc 1/35 germans $6

19 figures in total from various sets.  Got it for the Tamiya tank loaders, but some of the others are good.  One day will start painting all these 1/35 figures I’ve collected.  But again, at $6 for 19 figures why not.

- Renedra fence $15

Nice addition to the diorama stash.

- Ex Manus demon figure $15

Interesting figure that I liked.

- Reaper Bones Spirit of the Forest $12

Another figure that I saw and just could see so much fun to be had with all the extra details on the figure.