Wednesday 27 January 2016

From SeanS - 4 Ogres and a Rat (21points)

Hi All,

Not as productive as I need to be to get on track, but here is a small selection of figures I finished while watching the Cardinals get shellacked by the Panthers on Sunday.


These characterful little sculpts come from Splintered Light in their 20mm fantasy range here.


I decided to go with the Reaper golden skin triad, but used only the shadow and mid and then wased with the shadow again. I think some areas could have used a dark lining where the golden shadow hits a darker color, but only realized that in hindsight.


I thought I'd show  closeup of these faces as i liked them a lot. Perhaps I should have used a tripod, the picture isn't as clear as I'd like.


Here we have the Giant Rat from Reaper. I got him with the Basic Learn to Paint kit : Fur and Armor. The Drybrush highlight of the fur didn't really come across. In general I've taken to picking out fur with a small brush instead of drybrushing. Funny as that used to be my go to technique.


The flesh was just good ole Reaper tanned skin and the boils were Rosy skin, a wash of red and then a drybrush of rosy skin again. He is 28 mm scale on a 25 x 50mm base.


Here's a shot of the group so you can make a relative size comparison. The Ogres are pretty large, but I've only scored them at 4 points each as many of my 20mm offerings have been fairly small goblins and such. The rat I scored at 5 because he is essentially a riderless mount. So 21 for the lot.


Just wanted to show this weeks change in photo set up. Normally I use static lights, a tripod and a laptop to remotely control taking photos. This time I used some remote flashes. This set up evolved as I was messing around, it's not quite right. All of these photos were still under exposed, so I tweaked the levels in GIMP. But I did manually adjust the shutter and aperture and hand hold the camera for these. Thanks for looking.

Fine painting Sean, the facial detail is excellent and as you say they are very characterful, and rat is particularly nasty looking. Adjusting things in GIMP... hmm wont go there.. Nice work.

36 comments:

  1. Great work Sean. And RIP Cardinals...I love their head coach, but alas, you can take Carson Palmer out of Cincinnati...

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    1. It would bother me more if I was a Cardinals fan. I had just heard everybody around town drone on and on about them and then they got hammered by the Panthers. Perhaps I'm just bitter because my Niners sucked so bad this season. Oh, and thanks. Glad you liked the figures.

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    1. Thank you very much Juan, that means a lot to me.

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  3. Great work Sean! I particularly like that giant rat. I'm also admiring your diffused lighting rig - I need to look for something like that as I'm constantly tweaking my lights for taking photos.

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    1. Thanks Curt. I just got those two flashes on sale from Amazon. I got some stands to go with them but they arrived a little later. Tweaking lights is sort of the whole deal, I find. The main issues I'm coming across are exposure and true color. I'm still falling into the view finder trap. I'm also still trying to figure out how you and some others get the true black background. I can't do it. Perhaps i need to pull my finger out and really do that article for WBQ. I just go through phases where I give a lot of advice and then decide my work is crap and that I shouldn't give advice anymore.

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  4. Great Figures, I had fogotten about Splintered light and its fantasy range. That is an awsome photo set up.

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    1. Thanks Adam, perhaps if I put the photo in a little more context it wouldn't look so fancy. But I have invested some money in stands and lights. I can recommend Splintered Light. Great customer service and cool 20mm stuff. They have even more 15mm.

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  5. You used Millsy to adjust the levels? that was brave of you! ;)

    Nice work on all of these :)

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    1. You have to hose the area down afterward, but yes. Thanks Tamsin.

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  6. Ooooh I really like that Giant Rat. You did a splendid job with his face as well as the fur and the boils.

    Your photography looks good to me. It's well lit and the focus is great.

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    1. Thanks Anne. The Rat is a really nice sculpt, the face has lots of texture so it guides the brush. The areas under the face and body were a little tricky though. The photography is always a work in progress. So is my painting for that matter.

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    2. I can never seem to flood the space with enough light. I've melted bases from the heat of lamps before.

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    3. I remember that entry Anne. I can never seem to get enough light indoors either. I'm starting to play with flash, but it's tricky to get it so it doesn't look obviously like flash.

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  7. Great painting! Your skin tones look nice. Maybe I should give the Reaper tones a try.

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    1. I only just got more than the tanned skin from Reaper and I like all of them so far. I have yet to try the Dark Elf triad. Thanks for the compliment.

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  8. That's a nice looking rat, I really like him. For the fur, I go with multiple drybrushes up to a pure white usually.

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    1. Thanks Iannick. For some reason I followed the guide which was base then wash dark and then drybrush base. For some reason that drybrush got lost.

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  9. Cracking stuff Sean. That rat in particular is absolutely marvellous.

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    1. Thanks Millsy, the rat was a late addition.

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  10. Great figures. The rat is impressively nasty looking.

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    1. Thank you Peter, the rat is a nice sculpt.

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  11. Those ogres are grand, Sean! I like the detail you picked out on them! Great rat too, you aren't kidding about giant rat! ;)

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    1. Thanks David, he's not something I would want to come across. Sort of a Nutria on steroids.

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  12. very nice - the rat is excellent and the ogres are nicely done.

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  13. If it cheers you Up the Cardinals beat the Packers and I am a cheese head!

    On to the figures I was not aware of 20mm fantasy figures so I am eager to see more. They were a real TREAT TO SEE.

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    1. Hi Clint, it doesn't, but I'm not really a Cardinals fan.

      Splintered Light has some very nice 20mm sculpts, and even more 15/18mm. I have quite a bit of the 20mm in the queue.

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  14. Nice work. very nice photo taking set up. cheers

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