Thursday 2 January 2020

From TomG - To Strip Or Not To Strip - Participation Prize Entry

I'm back peeps, with yet another single mini, but this time with more of a story, so if you're sitting comfortably I will begin...

As I was carefully steered in to this most inspiring and motivational challenge by fellow Challengee DaveS (do check out his stuff it's varied and fascinating) he reminded me that I'd need to enter a prize mini, but what to enter, thought I. Then, during one of our gaming sessions a mutual friend appeared with a model he wanted to gift to me, to enter as my prize figure, mainly to see me work with the material offered by the "Wizards of the Coast Primed" D&D figure range. Now, initially it made up part of my holiday trinity of minis that were left at home whilst we went away.

As you can see, each mini has been primed differently, but with Hellboy and the Terminator Captain, I had the benefit of cleaning up the models myself before spraying the primer on. Losing this luxury with the D&D mini led to some frustrating moments as every mould line removed, took some of the primer with it, however this left me with the eponymous question: to strip or not to strip. Having never used this soft plastic before, I chose to leave the model be and just do as little damage as possible. 

But, having finally got paint to the model I tried something new to me with a pale blue skin tone. I followed this by adding a little bit of England to the mini by choosing a native snake scale colour with the European Adder, although I went against adding the dark zigzag pattern common to the breed as it made the model look very busy. 


Having got the skin/scale tones down, I decided to stay with the earthy palette to try and add a more classic D&D vibe. Having got that down, and the metallics finished off it was time for the spot colour. 

I think that the purple really helps draw the eye up to the facial area, but without wiping out the warm tones and instead tying the blue skin to the red leather tones.

Finally happy with the model itself it was time to get the base sorted, for which I turned to the Lukes APS Quick Basing product range. Consisting of a latex style glue and a tub of mixed basing materials, it really does give a lovely finish in no time. 

So to wrap this up I believe that a 28mm model along with the participation entry bonus I am at about 30 points for this one, but I could be very wrong. Either way, I hope you enjoy this new model, my second of the week and second for the blog, and you might see that Terminator Captain again very soon... Watch this space.

Wow, she (it) is a belter, visions of Sinbd movies rushing through my head. This is a great figure, brilliantly painted . The pale skin tone works really well

26 comments:

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    1. Much appreciated, it was certainly an odd figure to paint.

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  2. Unusual and brilliant work Tom.

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    1. Thanks Ray, I only managed to upload it properly due to your post about Chrome and Firefox, so thank you again!

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  3. Lovely work and a worthy prize.

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  4. Martin beat me to it - this entry totally made me think of all those wonderful Sinbad movies as a kid. Great work Tom, this will be a great prize figure for someone!

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    1. Thank you Curt, and I may have sat down with the kids and wife to watch them again as research haha! I hope that whoever gets her may be inspired to give Sinbad a run for his money.

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  5. Super!
    Totally inspired by Harryhausen!
    Please could a minion tag her “Sarah’s Choice”? Thank you 🎈

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    1. Oh my goodness thank you thank you thank you! In regards to the Harryhausen look, my wife said exactly the same thing leading to this model nearly being all bronze.

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  6. Absolutely smashing work there. You're absolutely right, the blue skin tone and purple hair set the tone. You've got me searching for figures to use a similar palette on!

    How well did the soft plastic hold up to painting?

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    1. Thank you Robert, it's good to hear the palette choices worked for others too! The soft plastic took the paint well, for the most part, although there were occasions on the arms where it would bend too far leading to cracks, but once varnished twice, it was fine. I feel that the only real negative to the soft plastic was that it meant some of the details were below par, but I'm getting picky now, if you know what I mean.

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  7. Outstanding painting work!! I'm so used to boring uniforms that it would be impossible for me to paint this type of models, my creativity must be at all time lows.

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    1. I won't lie, it took a lot of head scratching and input from my wife and friends to decide on a colour scheme. Something I learned along the way is that it takes just as much, if not more, creativity to produce an army of individual regiments than it does to get one figure produced. I've enjoyed your work already and can't wait to see more.

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  8. A very unusual figure but a very effective colour scheme.

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    1. She is certainly an odd creature! Thank you, I wasn't sure the colour scheme would turn out OK.

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    1. I think that's the best description of this... "thingymujig" haha!

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  10. Great looking creature! Nice colour range!
    Best Iain

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    1. Much appreciated Iain, I struggle picking colour ranges.

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