Commission Giveaway Contest, Revisited

 Well, some good news I got today is that the Speculo Killer figure painted for doom_of_the_people (after he won the Commission Giveaway Contest) is now safely in his hands after delivery by USPS.

 One slight downside is that despite creative packaging and a lot of well-wishing, the figure arrived tipped over on its side inside the box - that essentially means it shimmied loose from being bound upright through holes drilled in a piece of hardboard that itself was hot glued to the bottom of the box. So much for marking the box "fragile" and labeling all four sides with which direction was "up" - it could've been worse, though, as I'm to understand all the only problem in transit was a somewhat bent monofilament blade (that was easily bent back to shape.)

 The great news I got today - well, for me and doom_of_the_people, anyway - is that "It looks awesome and definitely lived up to [his] expectations." (I was especially leery of the commission getting there in one piece because the figure itself was pretty fragile in sculpt, had a separate wrist join that was flimsy from the start, and was a decent amount of good faith on both ends. I'm very glad it worked out nicely!)

Fun With Shipping, AKA Getting the Commission Giveaway Contest Piece In The Mail

 This is the transport method I'm thinking about running with - the bottom disk is an old 60mm base I made from MDF hardboard:

 I'm thinking that if I hot glue the underside of the disk to the bottom of a sufficiently roomy box, then it should be golden and not shift around at all. The brass beading wire restricts movement but isn't so tight as to chip paint (I hope) and the foam there is for an added barrier to "insulate" the wire I've got wrapped around it. Something like this, I'm sure, would set off the "bomb squad" at an airport even though being completely harmless, no? Good thing it'll likely go overland, since it's being sent to a neighboring state...

Infinity Speculo Killer Commission, AKA Giveaway Contest Winner [Completed 5/13/2010]

 Well, I got word back from doom_of_the_people on the last set of "inches away from finished" pics I passed along to him regarding his Commission Giveaway Contest figure, and I got the "thumb's up" to go ahead and call her done. She is now sealed in several layers of spray acrylic varnish and fully dry, essentially ready to wing her way towards wherever she'll be winging her way towards - as soon as I can figure out a way to box her for mailing in a manner that won't bend the "flimsy" monofilament blade or cause her wrist to snap off at the glued join (yet again). I think I have an idea, though, involving epoxy glue, a small hex nut and bolt, and a small box-end-sized square of MDF hardboard. It might set off metal detectors at the USPS, but it should have enough airspace inside the box to avoid nasty bumps and jarring impacts.

Here's the final set of pictures (post-varnish):

 In making the sludge/ooze on the base, I snuck in a few bubbles(?) and some extra rust on the outpouring pipe, too. Hopefully they're easily visible in the last few pictures, since I took those especially for the guy running Secret Weapon Miniatures, figgering he might be able to use them for posterity so as to show off his handiwork. The majority of the decorative stuff that the Speculo Killer is posed on is one of Secret Weapon's resin bases that I hacked up and converted in order to offset it on the Infinity slottabase that the figure came with - who knew cast resin bases were so versatile?

Infinity Speculo KIller WIP [Update 5/12/2010]

 I think I'm about close to done with the Speculo Killer, especially after this morning's pleasantly surprising work of tying things together - it seemed like my brush was on fire (not literally, of course, I've plenty of water on hand) and there's the nice fact that I was actually able to see without blurriness, as has been the case for the past several weeks. (Allergies? Need new glasses? Remnants of pink eye/styes? Dunno, but I've got a referral to an opthalmologist I will most certainly be following up on...)

Anyway, enough about the blessings of Nurgle, here's the latest update:

 I'm thinking all that I need now is to sort out with the Commission Giveaway Contest winner, doom_of_the_people, what color he wants the ooze coming out of the rusty pipe (although I'm still entertaining suggestions/comments/critiques, because it's "not quite" finished).

Infinity Speculo Killer WIP

Work continues on doom_of_the_people's Commission Giveaway Contest figure, albeit with another commission I'm prepping in fits and starts in the background and a few other things going on (we adopted a puppy last week, for instance, to "replace" the one that died of parvovirus a few months ago - I never realized how much adjustment it takes bringing a new animal into the house!)

At his request, I've done a fair amount of weathering and sun-bleaching effects on an "autumn"-style color scheme. The underlying armor panels are brownish-yellow and orange-yellow, alternating in parts, and the whole figure has been lightly airbrushed with an off-white - I'm still getting the hang of it, but it's a fun thing to play with. It was a lot paler until tonight, when I had the inspiration to add some additional cool coloration that ought to tie the warmer (if muted) browns and autumn colors in with the soon-to-be-glowing monofilament weapon and a few other (surprise!) Object Source Lighting effects. I used an initial glaze of GW Shadow Grey brushed towards the crevices across the figure, followed by a Shadow Grey/VGC Sepia Ink mixture to delineate the panel lines and such a bit more - I'm aiming for a look of grime deep-set in the crevices of the armor, or possibly dust mixed with oil.

Anyhow, here's the figure as of this evening:

I've already started with basecoating the Secret Weapon Miniatures base on which she stands, which ideally will end up looking like broken concrete - I plan for the pipe to be oozing something vile (with continued approval, of course).

Decisions, decisions...

Do I prefer an airbrush or a paintbrush now? Do I paint the segmented protrusion coming out of the Plaguebearer's mouth so as to make it resemble a giant, pasty-looking maggot, or paint it up as a dripping, putrefactingly rotten tongue? Anyone have any suggestions?

I've been trying out some new stuff here over the past few days - one of these figures was airbrushed with some additional shading touch-ups via a brush which were then gone over with an empty airbrush to drive the thinned paint into the depressions, and the other used the same colors but was strictly hand-painted via paintbrushes.

I must say I am certainly loving this airbrush, now that I've finally put it to use - it works especially well with washes. Even using windshield wiper fluid to cut my paints, the extra bluish tone from the wiper fluid adds a little extra something outside of the beige paints themselves. I applied a basecoat, two shading colors, and a highlight in about an hour! Whee! (I do have clear airbrush thinner, but I think I might stick with this wiper fluid for a while...)

I'm also pleased that my prep work on the Commission Giveaway Contest winner's Speculo Killer turned out so smooth. The figure is so delicate in appearance and what angles she has are so awkward - I wasn't sure I got everything or that things were smooth enough. After giving the figure a guide wash tonight on the "unpainted" parts, it looks like I covered both aspects well. Yay, me!

Infinity Speculo Killer, AKA Commission Giveaway Contest WIP

 Like the title says, this is a work-in-progress update on the Infinity Speculo Killer that the winner of the Commission Giveaway Contest I ran a little while back had shipped to me to paint up.

 Before I get to that, though, a little summary of what I've been up to: our one-year-old son is now over his bout with pneumonia, none the worse for wear, and has added four more molars to his collection of baby teeth in the past few weeks. He's also managed to gain some weight with all this going on, so in short, he's healthy and our family's doing better. I finally got a chance to do something(s) I've been meaning to do ever since my birthday last August - clean up my painting area and build a new, narrower spray booth (cheap and easy and made out of cardboard and a shop vac, but still). I got a chance to do both of those these past few days, and actually took a first stab at painting via airbrush - no, not on the Speculo Killer, but on another figure for a competition over at the RelicNews Tabletop Painting & Modeling Forum. It's a GW Plaguebearer, and it now has a flesh basecoat - I figgered I'd take a stab with airbrushing with a Plaguebearer because even if I completely maul the painting, it'll still look good! (I'm breaking in the airbrush for a secondary commission I'm working on, and it ought to make basecoating the massive skin areas much, much easier and quicker.) Oh, and I don't have to serve jury duty as I was thinking I might - I got called off, so my weekdays are now my own again.

 That update of sorts out of the way, here's the Speculo Killer prepped, assembled, and pinned on her permanent display base! (Just ignore the bottle cap - it's not the base you're looking for...) I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had a pin vise drill bit actually small enough to fit within the socket of her monofilament sword arm wrist and even better, that I had something of a narrow enough gauge to glue in for a pin to keep her sword hand from loosening. The display base she's on is going to have a puddle of thick oil dripping out of the exposed piping that will look like it's pooling around the flat top of the slottabase that the concrete round sits on. Adding the liquid can wait until after the rest of the painting is done - I feel that sort of thing looks much better if everything else is painted and highlighted and then any semi-transparent liquids are applied over the top.

 By way of the current paintjob, just her bodysuit is fully basecoated and in an "alternating" pattern of sorts - looking at the figure after priming, I decided that the exposed scalp behind her face mask and her arm with jutting armor spikes might look best in some sort of flesh tone since there's enough open area to have a "triangle" of similar color to balance things out. I'm to understand the Speculo Killer in game background terms is a shape-shifting assassin, and so I think playing this up by way of contrasting "shifting" skin areas and a bodysuit covering the rest will look better than an even color of some sort all round (it also helps that the texture of the areas in question seems slightly different, which I didn't really see clearly until after I primed the figure.)

Here she is, in her current work-in-progress glory:

 I'm also working on a lava-themed display base to cover the large plastic sheet stock oval blank I posted a picture of not too long ago. I'm trying to evenly juggle two commissions simultaneously for the sake of fairness, on top of everything else, even though one is technically "free" via the Giveaway Contest. Pictures of the lava base should be going up soonish, time and luck willing - I need to finish detailing it first, as well as sculpting over gaps I've been filling on the massively diabolical figure that goes with the base.

Commission Giveaway Contest WIP

 I received the figure last week from the Commission Giveaway Contest winner, doom_of_the_people, after a little bit of discussion on what I was actually going to be painting for him. What arrived in the mail was a Speculo Killer from the Infinity figure line by Corvus Belli ("War Crow" in Latin, I do believe - cool!). In doing prep work on the figure over this weekend, although very delicate-looking and more slight in size than the Games Workshop figures I've generally focused on, she has a solid amount of detail and looks like she should be fun to paint up. The Infinity range is a "true" 28mm scale versus GW's "heroic" 28mm scale - more or less comparable to the Ral Partha and Grenadier 25mm figures I used to paint back in my high school days. She is, in other words, small but not "too small" and with a lot more detail to play around with!

The figure in question:

 We've pretty much settled on the color scheme with a little wiggle room here and there, and the basing should hopefully complement things nicely - I'll leave things up to the imagination at this point, since I will be posting work-in-progress updates on the figure as I go along and I don't want to spoil anything. The interesting part (well, one of them) will likely be the Monofilament blade she holds, as the plan is to paint it up with an Object Source Lighting effect on the rest of the figure.