28mm Anime Miniature - Klukva "Sniper Waifu" (Yoko Littner) Complete

I've always wanted to see someone make an anime style figure in 28mm scale. A few manufacturers out there that get close, but none of them really seemed quite right or were really what I was looking for. I often check out what Klukva miniatures are up to (https://klukvaminiatures.com/goods - you can find them on Instagram and Facebook too), and I was delighted to see them branching out into some anime style miniatures. Some long term readers might remember my review for their vampires from a year or two ago (https://tabletopapocalypse.blogspot.com/2018/05/klukva-miniatures-review-little-resin.html). After that initial purchase, I knew I could rely on them for good quality. I'm not really writing a review this time, but I have to say that I think their casting quality is even better this time!

You can see the work I did on her eyes from this angle

Anyway, I picked up this "Sniper Waifu" miniature from them. She was a pre-order along with some other bits, so it was a bit of a wait till everything shipped out, but for a fun purchase and a painting project I don't mind waiting. If you know your anime, you might recognise the design as being based on Yoko Littner from Gurren Lagann. I basically followed through and tried to paint as closely to the original character as possible.

Speaking of painting, she made for quite a fun project. I finished her in a day over the weekend. She is incredibly tiny and fine though - see the picture below! I did wonder if I'd be able to paint her eyes and things how I wanted as although they're big for the scale of the miniature, they're still pretty tiny. In particular, I used some washes to get more defined shading and did a blue/black highlight for the gun which was something new that I haven't tried before (but I probably will again!)

I use that bit of sponge propping the penny up to weather tanks!

That about rounds it out. I've actually been doing quite a bit of hobby lately, so there should be more posts soon. Like a lot of people, I started working on some of the new Sisters of Battle over Christmas as well as other projects, so more soon. I've also got a few more Klukva miniatures in the pipeline...

E2046 GK Competition 2018 - Anime Figure Complete!

With about a month to go till the big competition, I decided it was time to defend my second place title from last year's event. It turned into a bit of a rush a week or two before the deadline (which passed yesterday), but I made it in the end. Here are the final results:

If you missed my efforts last year, you're looking at the Champ! The best man here, the best man there, and the best man anywhere.... well that sure is the plan for this year anyway. I actually took second place last year, and I figure I have to at least turn out for this year's event.

So yeah, rewind a year, and I was entering the E2046 GK competition for the first time. They're a Chinese company that make resin "Garage Kits", which is basically code for resin anime girls you build and paint. There are also robots and stuff too. I got the second place prize with my Rage of Bahamut figure that I painted in an uncharacteristically marble effect based weathered style that I think won me a lot of interest as it is very different from the style that most of the figures are usually painted in.



Last year's entry. She is a big figure at about 8" tall.

I wanted to do something equally interesting and different this year, so I opted to base my scheme around the idea of creating a strong OSL look from two light sources (OSL is Object Source Lighting, and basically means replicating the look of a light source hitting a model using paint).

Handily, I have quite a few of these figures to chose from. I had bought a few when I first entered, and the number is now out of control, as the win bought me $250 worth of the resin ladies in store credit. Yes, I have a few spare now to work on...

I have to admit that I wasn't sure what to do until I got the idea fro the OSL. Handily, I had another figure from the same series as last year's entry that was really cool and would be perfect for the job. Getting these models ready for paint is half the battle, but I cleaned her up and built her into sub-assemblies. This is something you always have to do. A lot of people work on all the parts individually and then glue them all together at the end, but I prefer to get them into about half a dozen chunks. I normally divide them up this way based entirely on what I want to airbrush and what I think will make it easy. Never build them fully and then paint them thought as they're very big and delicate and you'd just never be able to reach to get the details.

Anyway, for the first two parts, I painted the base and the legs. I put a pin though the bottom of the foot to hold the model together and it's nice and strong now. Basically what I was going for is for it to look like the crystals are glowing, and I think it has come out well. I've tried to keep most of the model quite dark so the effects will really jump out, but this is new ground for me.

The basic technique was that I assembled the model completely using pins. I then undercoated it in black and then went in with white on the airbrush and highlighted just where the lights would be. Then, when I disassembled the model for painting I had a guide of the rough area where I wanted the lighting effects to be... in theory.

The basic areas where the light would be hitting were defined early on with the undercoat.

After the legs, I worked on the torso, head, hair, arms and wings in that rough order. The whole time, I tried to keep the highlights going in one direction; straight towards that orb. To complicate matters, I ended up doing the yellow gold parts Non Metallic style as it gave me better control of the reflections and the lighting effects.

I've done some glow effects and things like that before, but these were just after-effects added onto a model that I had painted as usual. For this figure, I angled all of the highlighting on every piece specifically to crate the lighting effect, so for example the handle of the sword is a much darker colour than some of the other gold details as it would be less illuminated by the light from the orb.

Overall, I'm happy with how she came out. It was new ground for me, and there are a few things I will try to improve on when I try this technique again later. One thing that is really important is actually the background (literally the backdrop behind her) as if it isn't black the effect doesn't come across as well as other light sources tend to interfere. It's worth bearing in mind if you're planning a diorama or something.

No camera trickery, I just painted a blend all the way from black to light grey across her body! (thank God for airbrushes!)

Anyway, wish me luck for the competition. We'll see if I get de-throned this year or if I'll be taking another title home in a few weeks once the judging is completed!

TT Combat Japanese Style Terrain

I picked up some laser cut MDF terrain recently at Salute for a project that I've been working on. For a while now, I've been slowly building up a collection of Yu Jing miniatures for Infinity, but I really wanted some matching scenery for the faction. Most of the Japanese style pieces I has seen were a bit expensive and I couldn't really justify it for one skirmish game (especially when I haven't finished painting up my force yet!).

My normal board is really very 40k centred; with a pretty heavy smattering of ruins and gothic buildings that just look completely out of place for Infinity, which has a much more modern-day up-to-date feel. Infinity is really a near-future sci-fi. Sure, there are aliens and robots, but the main aesthetic is nothing like the barren post apocalyptic gothic that we're used to in 40k. With that in mind, I'd always been tempted to get some terrain specifically for the game.

I headed off to Salute determined to come back with one or two things specifically for Infinity. By coincidence, I was going with my brother who was also looking to buy a bunch of terrain, so we had the same goals in mind. It was at this point that we stumbled on the TT Combat range at the Troll Trader Stand. It turns out that at some point, they branched off into MDF terrain, and from the look of the number of products on offer, they never looked back. I'd always fancied some Japanese-style terrain (having been to the country a few times) and infinity gave me the opportunity to include some in my games. The aesthetic is very much traditional for these pieces, but it blends in well for Infinity and should be nice and characterful to play on.

One of the real selling points was the price. This stuff is seriously cheap compared to most products out there, and the Salute discounts made it absolutely irresistible. For example, the total cost for both buildings was £13. When I compared the price to Games Workshop's latest scenery releases following Shadow Wars, which come in at £30 for one small tower, it really is shocking. You could cover most of a table for that price with TT Combat products! (incidentally, they actually sell a bundle pack for ruins that is well suited to 40k, and breathtakingly thrifty).

Price aside, the quality is really good. They do take a little bit of building though - with a lot of separate components to cut and glue. Another thing that is worth mentioning is that as the kits are wooden, you have to use PVA glue to stick them together, which can increase the amount of time it takes to build them compared to good old fashioned cyanoacrylate! It is worth mentioning that they don't come with instructions, although they are available online on the website in pdf format, and are fairly easy to follow once you get used to the material.

The wood isn't heavy either, which some people might be concerned about. The pieces are thin, but strong and the fit has been very good so far. The kits are supplied in sheets, with the pieces being laser cut through with one or two connections left to stop them falling out of the boards. The parts don't take a long time to prep and have been a lot of fun to put together for the most part (although some of the more fiddly bits can be a bit difficult!).

The TT Combat terrain sets are available online direct from Troll Trader if anyone is interested (the range is pretty massive and you can get it on eBay too). For mine, I went with Japanese as a bit of a change, and because I knew we'd be able to use it to spice up my brother's industrial parts for a nice characterful  board. The other ranges they make variously include sci-fi, gothic, fantasy dungeons, a Venusian style cityscape and other styles too. I was a particular fan of the gantries, cranes and  that they make. The massive ship was a really tempting piece too, as little skirmishes across a container ship would be awesome. I only managed to hold off on that one because I have nowhere to store the thing.

Painting wise, I've heard that MDF needs sealing with PVA and that it will "suck up paint". I was a bit weary of that at first, but I was determined to blast the stuff up with the airbrush as fast as I could whilst still getting a good result. I know some people really love to lavish a lot of time on their terrain and I can only applaud them for it. For me, I want it to look good and enhance the battle, whilst still leaving me plenty of time to paint my actual miniatures and get a game in occasionally.

In total, these pieces took me about 2 hours to paint (and a lot of that time was spent cleaning the airbrush!). It turns out that primer applies fine directly onto the MDF, so it was pretty easy in the end. I used a lot of tricks to get some tonal variance and interest into them fast too!

Resin Anime Figure - Part VI

Almost there now. I finished and attached the second lance, so it's mostly just finishing off the detailing now and adjusting to taste. On the downside, she barely fits in the light box; having become rather wide!

Not too much to say at this point; if you missed the rest of the project, there are plenty of other posts that take her all the way back to bare resin. I'm still experimenting with improving my photography too, which does seem to be working out so far.

Anyway, enjoy the pictures...

Resin Anime Figure - Part V, Lance 1

Well, despite several New-Year related setbacks, I've been busy again. 

I've painted up one of her lances to look like a piece of marble. This is just a quick post to show the progress I've made in that regard. I'm also trying out some different photography techniques and set-up, which is coming out rather nicely actually. I still have no idea what to do with lights etc, but generally moving them about and taking a ton of pictures tends to yield a few good shots.

I still need to paint the shaft of the lance and the green stuff on her head where I repaired the hair gap as well as patch up a few bits here and there, but the end is in sight!

Resin Anime Figure Part 4 - Assembly

How's that for an update!

Thankfully, I finally got to the stage where I could start putting her together. I did a bit more airbrush work over the Christmas Holiday - mainly painting up the hair, the base, and the capes/flames. It was a big batch of stuff to do that took a lot of coats of paint in the end. I was a bit undecided whether to start sticking her together, but after a bit of indecision I decided to just go for it - with the thought that either way it was going to be hard to paint up the remaining details. The one part that was a real struggle was the shoulder armour, as I had to paint the whole thing assembled and she is getting rather spindly and difficult to handle at this point. It was pretty funny to work on though as I was painting her at the same time as my brother was working on his Bio Titan (see my Christmas Post for more on that one) and we were both at weird angles trying to paint round corners. It was like a lesson in how to paint unsteadily with bad posture.

I really like the cape/flames thing going on here. It was a lot of individual bits to do, but the effect is quite cool.

Oddly, one of the other things I had difficulty with was the base. Not because of the detail so much as it was that the thing is so smooth and large that the colour had to be applied really evenly as any uneven bits looked absolutely terrible. I tried to varnish the thing at first, but it didn't work and came out really blotchy. I ended up going over it with a few coats of dark grey with the airbrush to even things out again. It seems strange, but it really was unlike painting anything I've ever had the need to do for 40k or any game system.

At the moment, I'm thinking that the Red looks a little too strong, but I think a lot of it will be blocked when I get her weapons on. They'll also be a source of a lot of black and marble colours, so it'll reinforce the look of the whole thing and strengthen up the scheme a bit. Likewise, I was a bit unsure of what colour to do her hair when I started working on it, but after about a dozen coats of various browns, I settled on something that had a bit of red to it as well as some lighter tones. I didn't want to make it too stark and risk overshadowing the whole piece.

The other thing I need to work on is the gap between her two hair sections. At this stage, I think the best thing to do will probably be to fill it and then paint it in by hand. I have no idea how I'll get a colour match though! I think it'll be a job for a lot of layers of thin paint to get a smooth blend, although maybe I'll be able to sculpt some detail into the gap that'll help it mesh. I guess we'll see. I also need to finish painting the horns.

Well, that about sums up the progress for the minute. I'm happy so far, but this is turning into a real project and there's still a long way to go till the finish line. I reckon one or two more posts to go till the end (like maybe one per lance, and a final roundup). It's a strange thing though - I feel like I'm looking at someone else's hobby from the outside and it can be surprising what a steep learning curve it causes. Then again, that was kind of the point at the outset; so I'm calling it mission accomplished so far.

Resin Anime Figure Part 3 - Painting Marble and Verdigris

Well, it was a bit of a slog, but I've just finished the first pieces - namely the torso legs and head. One of the reasons I took this project on was to give my painting muscles a bit of a stretch, and I'd say they're now suitably sore!

The good news is that so far everything seems to have gone really well. One technique that you don't usually see used on Warhammer, but that I've used a lot on this model is Stippling. Essentially it is just jabbing your brush at the mini (but with finesse) to build up a series of circular marks. It builds great texture and is good for weathering.

On this piece, I used a bit of light stippling on the marble as a first coat to build up a bit of colour difference and make it look more natural; before painstakingly adding the veins by hand with a series of glazes. I also stippled on some of the verdigris to get that blotchy aged look.

As if that wasn't enough for that technique, I used a real messy stippling of different Browns to build some interest into the belt.

Everything else was painted with an airbrush and brush technique.

The verdigris was surprisingly easy. I painted the brass with Brass Scorpion (one of the best paints ever hands down). I then gave it a wash with Rhinox Hide, before washing a mix of Vallejo Blue Green, Olive Green and White over the appropriate areas. Once that was dry, I added more white to the mix and started washing some into the recesses again and stippling small dots to get a corroded finish. I did one more coat, just adding little dots and finally a wash of Caliban Green into the deepest recesses to get the tone back where I wanted it. It sounds like a lot of steps, but it was all washes and stippling, so the basecoat was by far the most difficult bit (although it took some artistic eye type stuff to pull it off).

I also did the back. It's a shame her hair will be covering a lot of this. The cool thing about this shot is that you can see the highlights I did with the airbrush on the back of her elbows.

I also finished her legs with the same verdigris. Next up is her hair and base and then I can finally glue what I have together - I just hope she'll be worth the effort.

Resin Anime Figure Part II - Painting

My new project is continuing at a good pace. I had the opportunity to get her primed over the weekend. She is so big that it was a bit of a task - in the end, I gave her a few thin coats of Vallejo grey primer and then topped it off with some GW white spray in the hopes of not only getting good coverage, but also impenetrable hardness, as I'm a bit weary of painting resin. Especially when a lot of it is so smooth and has nothing for the paint to get its teeth into.

After that fun, I got the chance to actually start painting her last night. Like usual, I took some time to plan out the colours I wanted to use and the order I was going to paint them in. This might seem a bit superfluous, but with the airbrush accurate planning can make a lot of difference. It's mostly to do with hitting the large areas first, but I would also normally paint the darker areas before the lighter ones to prevent some of the problems with overspray.

Speaking of overspray, I've found a trick that works really well to remove unwanted paint should you happen to miss with the airbrush. It isn't so good that you don't have to mask areas off, but it does help a lot with small mistakes. What I do is paint finished areas with a layer of Satin Varnish (it has a sheen much like regular paint, so you probably won't even see it once it has dried. Anyway, with that layer in place I then paint the other colours and hopefully I don't miss. If I do I apply a small quantity of Air Brush Cleaner (the Vallejo stuff) on the end of a very clean paint brush to the discoloured area and gently scrub it once the paint is dry. It seems to take it up pretty quickly without doing any damage as long as you then flush the area with plenty of water afterwards. I guess it works because the cleaning fluid is formulated to dissolve paint in the mechanism and so in moderation it works well on overspray, although only in fairly minor cases - don't expect to spray the skin with 10 litres of black and then just get it back off again.

Anyway, I was really happy with the way the skin came out. I actually used a few different colours to get the effect - It feels like a bit of a shame that most of it won't be visible when she's finished as it'll be underneath her dress and only visible from rather crafty angles!

I laid down a base coat with a mix of Pale Flesh and Dark Flesh. This gave me a slightly yellowish tone that had a bit of warmth to it. I then added some orange to the mix and shaded round the edges of her clothing. I then did a few small highlights with pure white (points of light). At this stage she was looking a bit blotchy due to all the colour variations, but I then smoothed in all of the transitions
with a thin coat of Pale Flesh. I'm really happy with the skin tone, it's definitely a recipe I'll be using again in the future.

Shading the face was fun too - I used the orange to add a shadow above the eyes as well as some colour to the cheeks. One of the cool features of this figure was that it came with eye decals, so after I'd whited out her whole eye (as this would show through the clear areas of the decal), I just had to apply them straight over the top - although it took a bit of lining up.

I'm also having a bit of an experiment with "Micro Sol". It's a solution that dissolves the decal into the paint to supposedly give it a painted on look. We'll see if that works, but either way I'll do a bit of varnish over the top of that to really mesh it into the figure.

Finally, I had a bit of a start on some gold edging and a bit of a rough start on some white marble for the armour. It's still early days, but it's looking pretty good. I didn't manage to get a very good picture of the marble, but maybe next update!

Resin Anime Figure

At a bit of a loss at what to do next, I've changed projects completely. After spending a few weeks in Japan this year, I picked up this anime figure as a side project. The last time I went, I tried out Gunpla        (Which is Gundam Figures to most people - it turns out they're rather interestingly made, but maybe that's a post for another time). This time I have a rather interesting Demon girl to make. She's 100% resin, which should be familiar to most people in these parts.

The fun of a project like this is that it not only gives me a break from Warhammer and army construction concerns (like that pile of infantry that everyone has somewhere they still need to paint), but also gives me a chance to try out some weird and outlandish painting techniques, which in the long run will probably improve my hobby skills. 

I've started taking on a lot of odd projects over the last few years, they normally end up leading to an improvement of some type. I think the real change was how I see myself. In the past I always thought "I'm a Warhammer player" but for a year or 2 now I think of myself more as a miniature artist - maybe it's just that I spend so much more time painting than playing; or some kind of delirium brought on by proximity to so much plastic.

After several hours of building, I'd finally built her to the stage of having several large airbrush-able bits rather than several dozen resin pieces. Interestingly her resin is almost nothing like the stuff you get in the west - it feels a lot more like plastic and is considerably lighter in both weight and colour. I don't think it would take the level of detail needed for tiny marines (she is rather large as you'll see in the size comparison with a daemonette below).

The parts hang together quite well themselves, which is lucky for test fitting.

That's one big weapon! She has a pair too, so I'll have my work cut out for me.

With something this large a big challenge is always getting some interest into the big-ass panels. A base coat and edge highlight doesn't really cut it anymore when you're about a foot tall!

I'll post about her later. I've already done a bit of heat bending to get the parts in shape and some gap fill, so I should be painting her next time.

ではまたね