Painting is well underway and even though I said I wasn't going to show any of it, I've decided to give a sneak peek. All of the figures are in varying stages of about 25-50% done. I'm now focusing on Charley so he's about 90% finished. I had to sculpt a watch onto him yesterday after realizing he wears a big-ass one in the show and I didn't have one on him. If I'd realized that sooner I probably would have just chosen a set of arms that already had a watch. But since his sleeves and shirt were already painted with a custom-mixed color, arm patches, badge, buttons - I wasn't about to backtrack on all that so I sculpted a watch myself.
Anyway, here's Charley nearing completion:
I think I'll do Ellison next and then maybe Cromartie. Since I'm painting everyone's flesh to make arms and faces match, I also have to paint eyebrows and *gulp* eyes. I've never done eyes before and I'm scared I'm going to fuck it up. That's why I'm starting with secondary characters! In fact I'll probably grab some damaged Joe heads and practice on them first. You'll know how good of a job I think I did in the end by how close-up my pictures are of the finished product ;)
I know a lot of my pictures have been pretty poor quality during most of this because I was usually holding a camera in one hand and a figure in the other and didn't have the benefit of making a nice arrangement with a good light source. But I do promise large high quality pictures in the end.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10: The Unveiling
Anyway, here's Charley nearing completion:
I think I'll do Ellison next and then maybe Cromartie. Since I'm painting everyone's flesh to make arms and faces match, I also have to paint eyebrows and *gulp* eyes. I've never done eyes before and I'm scared I'm going to fuck it up. That's why I'm starting with secondary characters! In fact I'll probably grab some damaged Joe heads and practice on them first. You'll know how good of a job I think I did in the end by how close-up my pictures are of the finished product ;)
I know a lot of my pictures have been pretty poor quality during most of this because I was usually holding a camera in one hand and a figure in the other and didn't have the benefit of making a nice arrangement with a good light source. But I do promise large high quality pictures in the end.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10: The Unveiling
Comments
1) Paint the face the primary color.
2) Use a small .1mm brush and fill in the balls of the eyes with white. DO NOT WORRY ABOUT SPILLOVER -- IT HAPPENS.
3) Take either a trimmed .1mm brush or a toothpick pared down with an Exacto blade (I use a specialty .01mm paint pen - but they're a bitch to find) and apply black (you can use their eye colors if you prefer -- brown for Cameron, for instance, smaller figures just use black) in a straight line from above the eye down from the brow to halfway through the eye. Perfect size on 30mm pewter figures, and you may have to go thicker (not pare down the toothpick, for instance, or apply twice) to get the right size on your Joes. Again, do not worry about 'painting outside the lines'. Just keep the white clean of stray strokes.
4) Use the original flesh color to clean up the edges of the eye and paint over any spillover from the pupil/white stage.
5) Done!
This usually takes me about 3-5 minutes per mini.
When using a mix, always make more than you need, because inevitably, you need it. Paint is cheap!
I have blank pots (that they sell empty) just so I can make lots of a color I'm gonna use a ton of and fill it with said color. I frequently end with solid puddles of custom colors on my palette.
:D
EDIT: BTW, your Charley is looking great so far. Very clean.
Also, I love the pic with the laptop with the image of Charley on the screen. Awesome. :)
Edited at 2008-07-29 08:46 pm (UTC)
Oh and thanks about Charley. You can't see the detail on his shirt in the photo, but I've got buttons, his badge and a name tag on there. Looks really good I think.
I know I know... mix extra. I did, but not enough obviously. And since I'll be mixing up a different color for each character's skin, I hadn't really intended to make enough to save for later use. What I think I'll do is just mix up a new batch of Charley flesh tone and if it doesn't match close enough when I do eye touch-ups, I'll do a thin wash over the previous flesh tone so it'll blend.
My original plan was to not even paint the eyes, but to scrape paint out of the eye sockets to expose the original factory-painted eyes underneath (I've done that successfully before). And that might still work on the others, but the eyes on Charley's head are so squinty (and they were so pale to start with) that what I was able to expose still doesn't look right. So I think I'm going to have to go for all new eyes on him. I'd like to be able to do custom eyes on everyone so if I get the hang of it, I'll probably do it to everyone.
"Happiness" is a warm gun. "Hope" is a warm, nuclear-powered gun. :-)
Sarah: Isotope? Is this nuclear?
Cam: No, not really.
Edited at 2008-07-30 08:02 pm (UTC)