As many of you have probably seen, I posted the ducks on Facebook as part of the ‘models for x days’ thing in response to Sascha Herm nominating me. I don’t normally get in on things like that, but the ducks needed a photo shoot so I could put them on Putty and Paint.
I’m quite pleased I did, and have been overwhelmed by the response:
Editors’ Choice? I’ll tick that one off the bucket list!
In other news, I’ve continued being productive. Firstly, the Kiowa demi-ronde is all finished:
This was a really interesting exercise on quite a challenging piece. In some places, the sculpting really works against you (the otter-fur braid wrappings are really designed for drybrushing, which is obviously quite a messy process), in others you have to kind of paint around things (his chin, which I assume is uneven as part of the slight angle to his face).
Nearly every part of him got painted three or four times, but I’m pleased I put the effort in. I reckon he’s a decent piece. Still room for improvement in some places, but I’ll note those for future projects.
Secondly, I’ve been working on one of the Operation Knox pieces from Mr Lee’s Minis. Arbiter in particular really reminded me of the old Aeon Flux animations on MTV (Public Health Warning: Do not watch the film version from 2005). I’m not sure whether they were broadcast in the UK, or how widely they were watched, but I enjoyed them greatly. Anyway, I thought I’d do Arbiter as a sort of homage to that. It turns out that my memory of the colours in Aeon Flux is much brighter than reality because I expected to use quite bright colours.
Image of the antagonist, Trevor Goodchild, from the animations:
(Note that this is a fairly wholesome image of Trevor. If you look up pictures of him, you’ll see him in lots of less than sanitary, presumably erotic activities involving eyes and spines.)
Anyway, I could’ve gone with an accurate palette, but I wanted to sort of update the image and account for the more cyberpunk details in the sculpt. Hence, as he is in progress:
Ignore the rubbed off primer – that’s just me being a little too hands-on as I paint. I’ve been working my way back from the extremities so that I can avoid touching finished parts, because I usually only need to brace the model against my skin when doing those.
Anyway, other than the undercoated (or bare resin) parts, the armour on his arm isn’t finished – I’m waiting on a paint delivery so I can finish that up and then smooth it out a touch, but the light is generally about right, I think.
What you might be thinking is “Fet, I thought you hated NMM!” and you’d be completely right. I don’t typically like NMM in most uses because it feels strongly like pandering to the camera rather than recognising that the model is, in fact, a three-dimensional object that people want to look at in person. Good NMM, to me, works both in the hand and in photographs. Some NMM is, of course, good on that basis. Other stuff just doesn’t work for me (impressive as the technical skill may be).
Anyway, I’d normally shy away from NMM for these reasons, but for this piece it really felt essential. The cyberpunk influence and the source material (Aeon Flux) kind of demand NMM, and I have a sort of get-out-of-hypocrisy free card in that I can argue that none of these are metal surfaces as we might think of them. They’re plastic, or something. Definitely something like that.
As a result, I thought it was about time I actually did quite a lot of NMM. In the past, I’ve typically relegated it to trims and whatnot. Here it’s very much front and centre. It is, of course, still a pain in the arse.
In order to do penance for this outrage, I’m now thinking about getting another bust from the range and doing it in a really gritty, real metallics style. I think Fox Jupiter would suit that. She can be the Aeon Flux to this Trevor Goodchild.
Fet Paints 