Kick Off and the Return of the Weekly WIP

by Tyler Provick · January 2, 2017

I don’t recall why I stopped the Weekly WIP. Most likely it was a gradual process of missing one or not painting enough in a week. Regardless, it’s time to bring it back. Let’s call it a New Years Resolution since this will be posted after New Years despite me writing in on the 31st.

Speaking of New Years and the Holidays, I hope everyone had a good one. Do me a favour, post your favorite hobby-related present or activity in the comments below. My best gift was the new Guild Ball Kick Off boxed set. My favorite activity was playing board games with some new friends.

A Small Diversion

This week I spent my time building a Gundam model from Bandai and painting Friday from the Brewer’s Guild of the Kick Off box. I’ll get to Friday in a moment, but if you have never built a Gundam I highly recommend it. They are snap-fit pre-coloured model kits engineered to an amazing degree. The kit I built, a HG Stargazer, featured some challenging foil stickers which gave the model a metallic gold and iridescent effect. The kit was full of gimmicks despite being a lower-priced choice. I’m not really a fan of the Gundam universe but the kits that Bandai makes are so compelling I enjoy building them none-the-less.

Painting Friday

Brewer’s Guild Friday for Guild Ball by Steamforged Games.

After some discussion with a friend I hope to rope into playing Guild Ball with me I decided to paint the Brewers first. Basically, I gave my friend a choice of teams and started painting the other team. This way if I accidentally damage the in-progress paint job it’s my own fault.

The rough surface appearance of the flatted miniature above is due to the way I primed it and not the actual finish of the cast miniature. The surface isn’t as pebbly as it appears, it’s just white specks over black.

Brewer’s Guild Friday for Guild Ball by Steamforged Games.

As normal I started with the skin and hair. My plan is to reach the same quality as my Infinity miniatures, such as this Interventor Hacker. I experimented with the flesh colour for this miniature. Normally I pair VMC¹ Beige Red with Mahogany Brown as my base flesh tone. Instead I used Chocolate Brown. This is a colder brown which can be seen by comparing the colour of the straps on the arms and boots with the colour of the wooden barrel and spaulders. The straps are Chocolate Brown and the wood is Mahogany Brown.

Brewer’s Guild Friday for Guild Ball by Steamforged Games

I painted the vest and skirt VMC Khaki Grey. Here is definitely an area which would have received more attention but in keeping with my plan to paint this model quickly I forced myself to move on.

Brewer’s Guild Friday for Guild Ball by Steamforged Games

The simple tartan I painted here really hides the worst flaws of the skirt. To make the tartan more realistic I should have mixed my stripe colour (Dark Blue Grey mixed with Black and Mahogany Brown) with Khaki Grey and only applied it full strength to the intersections.

The pants were painted Dark Blue Grey as well. In fact, I painted the pants first and used the left-over shadow colour for the tartan stripes. I highlighted the stripes using left-over mid tones from the pants as well, although this is more obvious on the back.

Brewer’s Guild Friday for Guild Ball by Steamforged Games

The next thing I’ve painted is the black boots and wooden parts. For the black I googled some black boots and tried to replicate what I saw. This is something that I want to do more – look at real-world examples of objects I have trouble painting (which I failed to do with the tartan) to better understand where I’ve gone wrong.

I’m not sure I succeeded on the boots but by trying harder to replicate reality I think I will get the hang of it.

The barrel and spaulders where fun although I missed some highlights on the right shoulder when I took the picture. I’ve since fixed it. This was one of those situations where my first pass blocking in opaque colours came together very well and I didn’t need to spend more time trying to smooth things out. This is a good example of looking at how the paint is behaving instead of slavishly following steps.

Guild Ball Brewers Friday for Guild Ball by Steamforged Games.

I just finished this miniature late Sunday night. That makes a full week of painting which isn’t too bad. That means at least three months to paint both teams in the set. If I’m lucky I’ll be able to speed up the process. It sounds like a lot but then I’ve gone far longer than that without painting a single miniature in the past.

Don’t forget to tell me the cool things that have happened to you this past week.