Since its been two weeks since my last typical hobby update, I have plenty to discuss and won’t waste any time. Let’s start with the miniatures that inspired the title. Humbled would probably also make for a good title because a board game quality sculpt and challenging subject led me to create one of the worst miniatures I’ve painted in a while. Here’s a look at it.
Wait, that doesn’t look too terrible… What about from the side?
Ohhh…. now I see. This is supposed to be a wolf as you can probably already guess and I did photo reference closely while working on it and to be honest, it doesn’t look anything like the photo I used. This isn’t the exact photo but its close enough.
My version is vaguely similar but definitely not quite right. I didn’t mix the colors as well as I had wanted and the fur is way too long to be realistic. The main takeaway is that wolves are really tough to paint accurately because of their complex fur coloring. I knew I’d have to slow down a bit more on the next one to do better.
This wolf had one less color going on which helped and I tried using shorter fur strokes which I think helped quite a bit too. Having the fur stipples be a bit more random seemed to help as well. I decided to not worry about putting fur on the legs as it is more trouble and time consuming than its worth. I’m much happier with the second one even if a few parts like the tail and face on the first one came out fairly well. I’ve got three more wolves to paint which means three more opportunities to maybe get one of them looking pretty good. We shall see.
Before I started howling at the moon, I finished up painting the Junk Barricade for Fallout. It still needs varnish and then rust and more varnish but its really coming together now.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about this is that I painted the concrete blocks differently than on the first barricade. Not only was this simpler but I think it ended up looking better than the texture I attempted to put on the blocks. Here’s a look at the first junk barricade I worked on a while ago and little dots I stippled on. I’m almost tempted to go back and update the block or two that is one there to make them uniform. It wouldn’t take long to do either.
So barring a disaster, I think I’ve managed to improve upon the first junk barricade which is really cool. I was quite proud of it at the time and still think it looks quite nice. They’re great pieces of terrain to plunk down on your table..
But wait, there’s more! Lots more! I got a lot of tedious stuff done including touching up the Goblin Town terrain so that I can eventually sell it. I prepared two busts to be primed in the near future as well. More significantly, I touched up all of my street terrain I made for Fallout to get rid of the shine on the cracked parts. Unfortunately, the last time I played, the glossy parts showed up in at least one picture I took and that wasn’t acceptable to me so I put the time in to repaint any that were glossy and that should prevent this from happening in the future. It was hard to stay motivated and get that done so I’m glad its finished and they’re off my all too crowded hobby table now too.
This week I got back to playing Kingdom Rush and I’ve been humbled by the game. I started off making a rules mistake which made the game much harder than it is supposed to be. Once I realized that mistake, I’ve played 4-5 times since and I cannot beat the level I’m on. The last two times I’ve gotten closer and closer so I hope that I can finally overcome it and try the next scenario from there. The game is a really tough puzzle and it seems like you have to use some fairly specific strategies to beat it which I don’t mind too much, especially since the game takes an hour to play so if you have to start over, it doesn’t feel like too much of a waste. At the same time, I’m playing on the easiest difficulty so it makes me wonder if I’ll be able to handle higher difficulty levels or not. As I get some more time in, I’ll check back in and discuss how things are going. I certainly need to beat this level before I attempt to paint anymore of the minis!
I promised to discuss Planet Zoo and show off what I’ve been working on but this is week’s update is already pretty darn long so we’ll save that for next week!
Kuribo's Painting 
First off the junk barricades are pretty cool. I think the blocks could use a little texture, but it might be there and we can’t see it from the picture.
The wolf doesn’t look quite right, because there is too much brown near the top. We had a dog that was a wolf/husky hybrid. She was white, silver, grey, and some black. Though as we know, animal fur varies a lot! But if you want it to “read” as a Wolf, I’d drop all the brown or use it sparingly.
I agree the second one looks much better. I also wasn’t sure how much texture you have to work with on the mini, but I think you did a really nice job with the fur. 😃
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Glad to hear you like the barricade so far! The problem with texturing the blocks is you need a really fine pointed brush to do it convincingly. I don’t have one in my arsenal at the moment though I suppose I could see about getting one at some point. I’m not going to finish the barricade for a bit so that is doable.
Agreed with the first wolf. I may revisit it and try to improve it as I’m clearly not happy with it. I tried to move too fast and the end result suffered.
The sculpted fur detail is basically like a lion’s mane around the neck and shoulders. The tail has some texture too. I don’t know why Mantic did it this way but I had to freehand a lot of the fur you see, for better and worse! 🙂
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Ok, I thought you added a lot more fur than was on the wolf and you definitely did a good job of it.
One thing you could do with the blocks is stipple different darker greys on it. Even without a pointed brush, I just go back over the larger spots with the base color (or something close) to make the dots smaller. Basically overlapping each other. If that makes any sense.
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That’s a good thought! It is a bit work intensive but it could lead to some pretty nice results. I’ll see if I can find some time to try that out during the week, especially once I get the next thing I’ve started done 🙂
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Animal patterns can be a real pain, the base colours you’ve used look pretty close, to save the first one, you could paint some of the lighter fur colour across the brown area but keep the strokes very short, if you notice on the reference picture the light coloured fur goes all over, it’s the underlying colour that changes.
The barricade is looking great, but knowing how good your weathering is, it will take it to awesome.
Sounds like the game has a similar mechanic to computer games, where you have to do things a certain way to beat a level, but I’m sure you’ll get there.
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I think some dog breeds and wolves might be among the hardest to do (though I haven’t tried any big cats to be fair). I think you’re right that I can “touch up” the first wolf and get it closer to the quality of the second one. I think there’s a decent chance I’ll work on that later this week or next.
Glad to hear the barricade is rounding into form as well!
Yes, you nailed it. It is very similar to the Kingdom Rush video games. You have to keep playing and experimenting and try to do a little better each time until you beat it. I wasn’t expecting the board game to match the video games quite so well.
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The barricade has come out great, your fall out games are going to look even better now!
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Thank you, mate! I’m trying to build that up, step-by-step. It takes a lot of patience and time. Not unlike building up an army in a Song of Fire and Ice I would think.
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I’d also suspected its similar, it’s just a steady step at a time.
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Well, whatever you think of the wolves, I like ’em! 🙂 Part of the issue may just be that the moulded in fur just has too coarse a texture and that just makes it more difficult. Nice work on the barricades as well!
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I’m glad to hear it! I think the fur sculpting could be better certainly. Its too long and looks mane-like to my eyes anyway. I actually found I did better on the second wolf by mostly ignoring it which is very unusual, in my experience.
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It’s amazing how many colors are in a canine or felines fur/hair. I applaud you for even trying!
The barricade is coming along nicely, that is a lot of different textures to paint on one model.
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They’re not easy subjects to paint for sure. I mostly tried as a challenge to myself and see if I could learn anything new. I will say that the barricades seem daunting at first but once I get going on it, it is hard to stop. I think the fact that most of the items in the barricade are quicker to paint than your typical mini must be part of that.
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I don’t think the wolf is that bad, you’re just being picky. A painted miniature is a success.
and still better than if I had painted it.
😀
I happen to have a game of Fallout scheduled next week. It’s a fun system.
good luck selling the stuff and getting the crush to work. 😀
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Haha, cheers Stew! I hope you enjoy your game of Fallout and I’d be curious to know who you use in the game. The Survivors are wildly different depending on which minis you use but other factions like the Super Mutants play in a pretty specific manner no matter what you choose. Either way, I hope you have fun!
And thanks! Its take some work to get it all together but hopefully there is someone out there who will pay what I want for it. We shall see 🙂
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The wolves are cool man.
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Cheers, mate!
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I love the barricades for Fallout; I know that they are just scenery but I really enjoy what you’ve done with them.
You’re probably being a bit harsh on yourself with the wolves. I’d definitely be proud if I could paint such minis.
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Cheers, mate! In my next post which is coming up later today or tomorrow, you can see the finished product.
Did Sir Andy Murray or Sir Chris Hoy get to be where they are from settling less?! (Yes, I googled most famous Scottish athletes haha) I reckon you’ve always got to keep trying to improve or you’ll never get where you want to be 🙂
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