Monday, 12 October 2015

Colony 87: Finished

New job at work is kicking my arse, but think it's finally settling now.

I started painting Barcoon and he reminded me of Barons Greenback and  Harkonnen in equal measure, so he's got a slightly worn and tatty primary outfit with brown hues, and the accessories almost thrown atop to give a veneer of respectability when presenting himself.

In line with the thinking of trying something new on each project, my experiment with this set of figures is trying different directions with same colour on characters, so his her their skin and golds are from the same base colours as the Lord & Lady, but greener and colder respectively.


Happy with how he turned out, and a little less of the Dangermouse villain about him, but still some things to improve as usual ... thought the cloak was better than it looks under the unforgiving lens of a camera, but hey ho! One left, then that's the set of six wrapped. Which is just as well, as a few recent Kickstarters have landed (Rum & Bones and Rise of the Kage) and that's added an awkward 300+ miniatures to the backlog. Whoops.

Alexi is the one I couldn't "get". Lovely figure, but it didn't click for me while painting, but then it did. He's the first figure I've put a brush to in about a month. Usual notes that there are things I could improve here - but the robes ended up how I imagined Barcoon's originally coming together, a lot smoother. His helmet is a lot cleaner than the rest of him as I pictured that being critical to his adventures, and liked the idea of the old, gold astronaut visor. Plus it gave me an excuse to say helmet. Heh.


I painted eyes on the man too. EYES! Traditionally I'm very bad at them and avoid whenever possible, but these didn't come out too bad. Still room to improve, but they're actually recogniseable as eyes.

For posterity, here's a group shot of the finished six figures.


These were a huge amount of fun to paint. Huge. I may have mentioned this over the last couple of months. Lovely sculpts with bundles of character and a very enjoyable painting experience. I got to try out a few different paint schemes, and used a limited palette across the six - with the same blues and greys appearing several times in different forms, and try out fresh techniques on each, including getting back into layering and glazing, which is probably my favourite way to paint.

One of the nice parts about smaller miniature ranges is the focus on the figures and lack of backstory and reference pieces. The traditional "oh it's a X, I'll paint in the usual X colours" goes by the wayside - which makes it hard for someone like me who is lacking in creativity.

I'm also relieved that it's a project completed. They're rare and to be appreciated. I have a couple more sci-fi suitable civilians that would be handsome additions to this set, but for the moment it's time to return to Guild Ball and get my Fishermen moving.

Which brings me back to Guild Ball ... my poor Fishermen waiting patiently while I was sidetracked - so off we go again! Suggestions on how to remedy Siren's terrible hair colour? I was aiming for a pale, ash blonde but it isn't right at all.