The Final Mouse

I finished the last figure, Lilly, for the Mice and Mystics project.

Here are all the heroes together.  Watch out minions these mice look like they mean business!

The first game hasn't materialized yet but I am sure fun will be had when it does.  I am already starting to think about the next expansion assuming this turns out to be fun and interesting for the mini-me's.  It's nice to have a project fully completed.

I'll be sure to post a final review once we play the first game, meanwhile I will be working on collating, editing, re-shooting, and posting all the pictures together in the gallery on the full website.

I'm going to take it easy over the next few weeks.  I'm looking to clear a couple smaller projects out of the work zone.  Thanks for tuning in.

More Mice

I finished Maginas and Tilda for the Mice and Mystics Project.  Both rather challenging when it came to painting the cloth.  My normal process is to base coat with my middle color, drybrush a highlight, followed by a Vallejo black wash mixed with the base color.  After that I go back in and drybrush/re-layer in the highlight color and one brighter.

The brown wash turned out super dark and obliterated the highlights.  I had to layer back the whole thing.  I think I lost a lot of depth but I called it good enough.  3 Layers just really does not do it.  If you want a nice layer effect with good depth and shadow I think you need to have 5 or so layers for it to work nicely.

After the brown experience I knew that using any kind of dark wash on Tilda's white palette would be ruinous.  I decided to forgo the wash altogether and layered the whole thing up ultimately using 4 to 5 layers on the cloth and 6 layers on the fur.  I wanted the fir lighter than the cloth so I used the last 2 whites for that.  I wish I had achieved better depth (3 layers used) on the purple hood but its not too bad.  Its not nearly as important as getting the white (the dominant color) to look decent.  Here is the palette used.

The first three and last are Reaper Master Series Paints and I thought they were excellent.  I had way less issues with the pigment separating when thinned as compared to Vallejo.  Sometimes when building up layers using thinned paints I get a hard edge on the layer when it dries.  Its especially prevalent the lighter the color I am layering with. I must be thinning too much.  Either I am getting better or the Reaper paints don't separate as much.  I think the paints had a lot to do with it, I like them. I will use more of them and if my suspicion is true will be collecting more.

Though I continue to have issues with photography here they are:

I could never figure out what Maginas is holding with his tail.  I decided it was an hourglass in keeping with some of the game material so I tried to paint it as such.  Perhaps it will be revealed whilst playing.

Be sure to drop a comment if you like or hate them and please add me to your blogs followed.  I'll be checking in next week with Lily.

3 down, 3 to go

I'm getting down to the wire.  I need to finish 3 more by Friday afternoon.

Collin, Nez, and Filch.

Stay tuned!

Minions!

I finished the Mice and Mystics minions!  The spider is complete.

I really knocked this creep out.  I used some google images of tarantulas and went for high contrast.  I finished him in one sitting of about 1 1/2 hours using this scheme from my palette as I described in a past post.  I just layered it up using drybrushing on the fur and thin layers on the legs.

I lost some of the detail in the leg joints and just roughed it in.  I don't know why I didn't bother to sort it out other than I still thought it looked pretty good and my eyes were having trouble finding it.  I also figured it was some thing organic and the fur coloration would not necessarily be perfect or uniform.  Some of it may have been the pressure to wrap this project up by next Friday and some of it was undoubtedly that I really don't like spiders and wanted to move on.  I have a rule: they are fine outside, inside they get swashed,

Here's the whole gang of minions.

Next up are the heroes.  I'll probably paint them all together or at least 2 at a time.

Please leave a comment if you can give me any pointers otherwise be sure to add me you to your followed blogs or your reader subscriptions.

Go Broncos!

Centipede

I finished up the next monster for Mice and Mystics.  It's the Centipede and he's very large compared to the mice heroes I'll be getting to next week (cross my fingers).  I found this picture on a Google search and liked it as the model for my painting.

I ended up with this.

You might notice the base is slightly warped.  There are definitely some limitations to plastic miniatures and that's one example.  I did clean up a few mold lines but they are present and I didn't feel compelled to fix everything on them.

The bug is pretty big.  I've pictured it here with a Reaper 28mm figure along with the other baddies.  Certainly a large foe in 28mm and gigantic in smaller scales.  I think the ratman would be oddly proportioned as a 28mm monster.  Perhaps a were-rat Champion?

Next up is the spider, I hope to have it done by the weekend.  The deadline is next Friday, argh!  I hate rushing myself, it takes the enjoyment out of it.  Hopefully the kid's reaction will make up for all the late nights I expect next week with the mice.