The Newb's Do's and Don'ts of CMoN Posting

DISCLAIMER - Everything presented here is the viewpoint of a newb.  If you believe that I don't know what I am talking about, you are probably right.

So I had been lurking on the coolminiornot.com (CMoN) for over a year now and I've only recently been bold enough to post any of my work on there.  I hadn't built up enough confidence with my skills and I lacked the proper setup to make quality photographs for presentation on there.  Just recently I posted pictures of my finished Inugami and was surprised to see it get a rating of over 7.0.  That's not too shabby for a newb!  If you are interested, you may find my gallery post here.

I mainly attribute that success to my observation of how the CMoN community operates in general and over the past year I've gotten a very good feel for what does well there and what does not.  To that end, I've compiled a list of my own do's and don'ts for a successful CMoN posting:

1. Finish painting the damn thing!  There are a lot of what are tagged as works-in-progress on there.  Based on my observations over the past year, these are generally not well received in the gallery.  Feedback in the gallery tends to be very sparse at best mostly because it seems the majority of people on there do not seem interested in writing up meaningful critiques.  They generally just want to see pretty pictures. There are exceptions but in general comments are only made on the extremes of the quality spectrum.  So if you are looking for feedback, go to the forums or network with other artists if you can.
2. Understand what the gallery is, why it's there, and what kind of audience you are presenting to.  It primarily functions as a source for inspiration for other artists.  If people like what they see in an image post there, they will generally rate it favorably on their 10 point scale.  It's also important to note that there are a lot of biases for/against different artistic mediums, styles/genres, and manufacturers.  This really is a function of how saturated that audience has become of a particular item.  For example, I think space marines are boring and there are way too many of them to keep my attention.  I really don't bother rating most of them and that's just my own bias.
3. Get a halfway decent camera and lighting setup.  Mine was fairly makeshift but moving forward I will be using my mark II light box which should yield better results.  There are a lot of tutorial resources out there on how to do this so I suggest you check them out.  You may be surprised how affordable such a setup can be if you know what you are doing.
4. Get as many angles on your work as you can.  Take shots of the front and back at least.  Doing so demonstrates that you have given attention to the whole model and not just the front.  Also, if you've painted some really intricate details that you are proud of get a tight close-up shot of them to show them off.
5. Do not post the same model as different posts but at different angles.  I know CMoN only allows you to upload one image to a single gallery post, but the problem with this approach is it doesn't give you an evaluation of the work as a whole and some people just get annoyed when they see that.  The best rated artists work around this by merging the multiple angles/close-ups into a single image file.  You can do this in just about any image editing program that's worth its salt (you don't really need Photoshop for this).
6. Get the highest quality picture that you can.  Make sure the model is well lit, in focus, and accurately shows the colors.  There are a lot of decent posts on there that lose points simply because of poor photo quality.
7. Put a good descriptive title on your work and say something about it.  Nothing says "I don't really care about this" more than when the title is nothing more than a question mark.  If you don't care about it why should someone else?
8. Be responsive, respectful, and friendly to those who do comment.  Do not feed the trolls.  Any online community will have them and CMoN is no exception.  Also it goes without saying... do not be a troll either!
9. Do not apologize upfront for anything and do not self-critique.  If you have to say you are sorry for something (poor photo quality, for example) it becomes an automatic red flag.  Doing so alerts the audience that something is off and its simply asking for a lower score.  Same thing goes with self-critique.  No matter how bad you think that one problem is, you really shouldn't draw attention to it.
10. Be open to criticism and be realistic of your expectations.  But at the same time, allow yourself to be optimistic if your only real critic so far has been yourself.  Chances are you aren't going to get any comments unless you do something exceptionally awesome or horrid so don't let this hold you back.
11. Keep everything in perspective and don't be obsessed with the rating.  It can give you a very definitive measure of your skill level but at the end of the day it's just a number.  Don't let it take away from the joy of the hobby!

Impact! Miniatures - Chibi Asian Adventurers Limited Edition Inugami

 

So it's been awhile since I last posted anything.  Life's been a little hectic lately.  Between work, winterizing the apartment, and having to deal with a minor medical issue I've not had any time to devote to painting.  But now that I've fully recovered I'm back at it.

 

So about two months ago I got into Impact Miniatures' Chibi Asian Adventurers Kickstarter and pledged for the limited edition pewter set.  This is one of those figures which arrived in the mail not too long ago.  This will be both a walkthrough of my technique as well as a bit of a review of the figures themselves.

 

So to start off after much work was done sanding and polishing the surface of the model, I decided to prime with a brush-on primer since it was too cold outside to use a spray primer.  All paints were Reaper Master Series (RMS).  Most of my work was on the hair and I used various shades of RMS reds for this.  One thing that I noted was that the RMS reds are EXTREMELY transparent and once a darker shade is down it's next to impossible to override it with a lighter shade.  I remedied this by highlighting using Fire Orange and then going back over with Brilliant Red as a glaze.  The blade on the sword was painted with Show Shadow, Ashen Blue, Ghost White, and Linen White.  The hilt was done with Tanned Leather highlighted up with Buckskin Pale and Linen White.  For her clothing I chose to go with a bit of an aquamarine color to complement her red hair. Skin tones were primarily just Rosy Shadow layered up to Caucasian Flesh.  The ears were painted with Chestnut Brown with Rosy Shadow on the inside of the ears.  The shoes/socks were just black and white.

 

Chibi eyes seem intimidating but really they are quite simple once you understand the basics.  For this particular model I chose to start by outlining the eyes with Muddy Soil (all outlines are done with Muddy Soil, by the way) and then use Pure White for the white of the eye.  This goes against normal convention of using an off-white for the eyes but for this style I am going for maximum contrast over realism.  I've tried off-whites on other chibi type projects and it looks too muted for my tastes.  I rendered the iris by first painting a red circle on both eyes and then outlining that with the Muddy Soil.  Then I painted Muddy Soil over a little more than half of the upper iris leaving color on the bottom.  Two white light catches were placed on the dark portion of the iris.  The pupil is more or less implied at this point (it was never really rendered explicitly).  As a finishing touch I highlighted the color of the iris with a little bit of Fire Orange.

 

Once I was satisfied with the paint job, I coated it lightly with dullcoat, flocked the base with some Scene-A-Rama (Woodland Scenics) Earth, and added a couple of Army Painter swamp tufts.  For the remainder of the figures in the set, I will likely use the same terrain on the bases to maintain a sense of unity.

 

Now onto the review section of my post.  Artistically, these are great figures.  I love the concept and the design of just about every single one of them.  I started with this one because she's my favorite of the bunch.  There isn't a single figure out of the bunch that I don't like and I do believe my money was well spent in that regard.  I have to be honest about the overall quality of the figures themselves, however.  Earlier I had hinted I had to do a lot of sanding and polishing.  That's actually standard for just about any metal figure I get my hands on but this seemed more so than most.  All of the figures seem to have a lot of bumps and ridges that I simply have not seen from other manufactures.  If you look closely at the rear view bellow you can still see some of these ridges showing through the paint.  I could have covered that up with some putty but that would have taken a bit more work than I was willing to put forth on this particular project.  So in terms of artistic design and concept I give Impact an A- but in terms of quality I can't say it should be any higher than a C.  I don't believe that metal is their strong suit, however.  It will be interesting to see what quality level they can produce in resin once they fulfill the bulk of the Kickstarter pledges next year.

 

So the "finished" product is shown below (I am still doing some tweaking) in my makeshift light box.  I'm hoping to get a better light box put together shortly, however that will be easier to deal with:

 



 



That's all for now.  I will probably post another one in the next week or so depending on how my schedule works out.

Building a Better Police Box (Part 3)

It's been awhile since I last posted an update but I have made some progress on this weekend worth talking about.  I want to backup a bit and talk about why I am doing this first though.

What I want to do is build a small display diorama with the Doctor and his TARDIS which I could potentially exhibit at ReaperCon in April.  There are actually a couple of different pre-made versions that I've seen but I really don't like either one.

There's this one, which looks completely wrong to me:
http://www.coolminiornot.com/234409?browseid=7009747

Then there's this one:
http://www.coolminiornot.com/331987?browseid=7009747

The first one (from Fenris Games) has the right overall dimensions, but the panel details are completely wrong.  It may be possible to rework the panels but I would rather not do that.  The second (from Ainsty Castings) looks more correct but it has a number of dimensional issues.  The size in general is too wide, the columns are too wide, the panels are slightly off, and the roof is pitched too steep.  I know, I'm picky...

Interestingly enough, Reaper is adding a police box to their Bones line-up in their latest Kickstarter campaign and it actually looks pretty close to what I want.  Unfortunately that won't be out until around this time next year and that's too late.  With little else out on the market, I have to build this one from scratch.

So here's what I have done so far.  The basic box  was relatively easy to put together.  I started by cutting out four 45.25mm x 18mm rectangles measured precisely with digital calipers:

 

 

Each of those were then glued to one of the 3mm square rods using plastic cement:

 

 

Finally those bits were assembled with a 21mm square base at the bottom and an 18mm square at the top to seal the box:

 

 

I went through a lot of trial, error, and frustration on this next pat but I finally made a breakthrough that made this work.  I was originally thinking I could cut out the 6mm x 7.5mm rectangles for the panels but this proved to be far more difficult to execute than I had anticipated.  Typically what would happen is I would get close and then wind-up going over the target measurement.

 

So back to the drawing board, I decided to make some compromises to the measurements and the execution of the panels.  I decided that I would get better results if I reduced the amount of fractional measurements and use precut strips.  I had actually tried this approach last year but I had issues with adhering the pieces to the model.  Plastic cement couldn't be used because it would melt and distort the strips.  That left super glue which wouldn't distort the pieces but I didn't have a whole lot work time either.  The pieces would have to be placed in a matter of seconds before the glue would set.  Not good when you are trying to get a precise placement which can take... several minutes.

 

What I didn't know at the time was I actually had a 3rd option for an adhesive: gloss varnish.  Using VMC gloss varnish I was able to place the strips fairly close to where I wanted them.  Then I painted over the piece with  more varnish to seal it into position.

 

This approach took me 4 hours to complete the panels (1 hour for each side).  Here is the result of last night's work:

What I will need to do next is clean-up work on the panels.  While this looks much better than what I did before I still need to fix the following issues:

1. The precision of the strip placement is a bit off on some of the sides, making the top rectangular areas for the windows much larger than what they should be (1mm+).  This looks bad and I will probably just need to redo the slat placement.  I can kind of see it in the side shown above but it's not the worst offender.
2. There are multiple gaps that will need to be filled in with putty.  Most of these are at the bottom.  In the photo above, there's a rather large one on the top left slat that would be directly below the window.  I have to decide if the slat gaps can be filled or if I should remove the slats and replace them with tighter fitting ones.
3. The 20mm square on top should line-up perfectly with the extra 0.5mm added around the outside of the box and it doesn't.  Putty should clean this up.

After I get those clean-up issues resolved, I will need to add the trim, which will be additional plastic strips glued on with the gloss varnish.  The headers will be the next major step and at that point it will look a lot more like the target object.  I was originally planning on constructing them with the sign inset into the bar, but I am probably going to make another compromise with the design and go with solid rods for simplicity.

Anyway, it may be awhile before I have another update on this.  I have a Shadowrun game to prepare for and I probably won't have much time for this project again until November.  That's ok, though because I have plenty of time and the figure that I want to use for the Doctor isn't going to be released until November anyway.

Two Night Challenge - Reaper Bones Isabeau Laroche (Female Paladin)

So I feel like I've been neglecting my blog a bit so I am going to compensate a bit by doing a single Reaper Bones miniature in two nights.  For this challenge I chose Isabeau Laroche, female paladin.

The first step (as with any miniature I do) is to clean off any mold lines and degrease it.  This is especially important with plastic miniatures like this one so that the paint sticks better.  Bones do not require application of a primer.  Normally I would prime regardless on these with a 50/50 mix of black and white brush-on primer, but in the interest of time I will skip that and proceed with basecoating.

My strategy for the basecoating is to simply block out all the individual parts with the basic colors.  For that I've chosen RMS HD Twilight Purple for the cloak, RMS Tanned Leather (tabard and other dangling cloth), RMS Russet Brown (vest, gloves, and hair), and VGC Cold Grey for all the bits that will be metal.  I also used RMS Muddy Soil to cover all the dark areas that will be hard to reach and to create some initial outlining.  This is the result:

With the basic colors established I go through the process of shading and highlighting.  I do the skin and hair first.  After that I do the cloak and the rest of the cloth parts.  Finally, I finish off the metal bits and other small details.

The shield has a very large blank area so it needs to have something on it to keep it interesting.  Isabeau Laroche is a French name, so I've chosen the fleur de lis for the basic design of the freehand.

All said and done, this is what I have after two days:

 

 

There's still A LOT left for me to do.  The blending on NMM needs  to be cleaned up, there are 3 gems (2 on the sword and one on the shield) that need to be painted, and there is still the detail on her chest/abdomen that I have yet to do much with.  I also want to go back and give a bit more depth to the fleur de lis on her shield so that it's not just a flat 2D pattern.  But for 2 nights worth of effort, this is ok.

Building a Better Police Box (Part 2 - Creating the Master Plan)

I went in and replaced all the real world measurements on the diagram I found with the scale millimeter measurements I calculated and came up with this:

So working with this I start laying out the basic build of the box itself.  When I did this before I simply constructed a rectangular box and then built around that.  This time, I am going to take a different approach.

To help me visualize the design in 3D, I'm using a program called SketchUp Make (formerly Google SketchUp and now owned by Trimble).  I start with the basic box construction which will look something like this:

Note, the 21mm x 21mm square sheet on the top actually extends over the dimensions of the inner box.  The panel assembly will fit into that section and will be flush with that part.



 

The next part of the assembly (which will probably be the most time consuming) will be the panels.  There will be four of them with the following design:

 

Another somewhat involved part will be the headers.  I first created a "T" block in SketchUp and then drew in lines to indicate how the individual pieces will fit together:

 

The roof will be a bit tricky because I have to cut angled pieces.  All 4 of the roof sides will be cut as trapizoids and will slant up to the central column as shown here:

 

Fully assembled, the model will look something like this:

 

 

As a sanity check to make sure I got scale correct, I put in a couple of reference objects in the model (the 4th Doctor scaled to 32mm in height and a quarter which is ~24.17mm in diameter):

 



 

 

Yes, I know... this is going to be DAMN SMALL!

 

I still need to figure out what I am doing for the lamp on top as well as the other details (windows, door handle, etc.).  But for the most part, the design is mostly complete and I can start in on this as soon as I get the materials which SHOULD be in the next week.



Super Dungeon Explore - Starfire (Part 4)

Ok I'm FINALLY done!  Here some pictures I took of the finished product in my makeshift lightbox:

So rather than go with the VGC Fire Orange, I decided to use RMS Phoenix Red followed by RMS Fire Orange.  These models aren't particularly detailed which actually gives painters some opportunities to add detail in.  In this case, I stippled in both RMS Fire Orange and RMS Buckskin Pale in an attempt to hint at a scale texture.  I also used gloss varnish over the eyes and in the mouth to give those bits a bit of a wet look.

I could have done A LOT more.  I could have removed all the mold lines, gone much thinner on the paint in general, and maybe put some reflected highlights underneath.  At this point, however,  I feel it's at the target quality level I was going for.

Now on to something else!

Building a Better Police Box

So Starfire is taking much longer than I had anticipated and part of that is due to the fact that I have been fighting the lighting in my studio area for some time now.  I believe that I may have a solution to that but I will cover that in the 4th installment of that series.  So I'm setting that down for a moment to do a bit of planning for my next major project.

To give a bit of background, last year I put together a Doctor Who themed diorama as a Christmas present for my girlfriend.  This is the result of about 4 weeks worth of effort:

It wasn't bad, considering my skill level at the time and the paints I was using.  I know I can do much... MUCH better now!

The build itself was pretty basic working from the inside out.  I started by building a box out of styrene plastic conforming to the inner dimensions of the police box.  Around that, I built the panels, the four columns on the corners, and the top bar.  I then topped it off with the roof which consisted of one square of styrene topped with another.  The roof was sculpted out of epoxy putty and sanded down.  I finally topped that with the characteristic lantern... or at least the best I could do to reproduce it at the time!  All of the text was put in using custom printed decals which... sort of worked.

So as I look to re-approach this project, I try to think of how I can do better.  So I looked at what I had come-up with for plans and turns out I had very LITTLE planned out at all!  I had taken some scant measurements and then just went with it.  For what I want to do, that's NOT going to be good enough!

The first thing that I need to do is determine scale.  This helps me translate real world dimensions into the scale world that I will be building.  This will be critically important since this will need to be part of a diorama with other figures of roughly the same scale. What I want is a constant value I can use to translate a real world measurement into the scale world I am going to create.  We can assume that any figures I chose for this diorama are going to be in the 28mm scale range (the scale for MOST miniatures currently in production).  The best calculation I can find to convert real world measurement to this scale is a 1:56 ratio.  So, anything I see with real world measurements can be divided by 56 to give me the 28mm equivalent.

So with a bit of Interweb magic research, I found the following diagram with measurements that should prove useful (source found here):

At this point, I could get into some real serious calculations and spend a lot of time trying to figure out how all of this translates into the scale that I am trying to create.  What I really want to do is normalize these measurements into a metric form that fits easily into the scale that I am working with.

I think that anything beyond 1mm is going to be very... VERY difficult to perceive so I will be rounding all measurements for simplicity (rounding to the nearest millimeter).  Starting with the base, which is showing a real world measurement of 50"x50" = 127cm x 127 cm = 1270 mm x 1270 mm.  1270 / 56 is roughly 23mm.

I'm going to simplify things a bit here.  23x23mm is going to be VERY close to 25x25mm.  So if I take all the measurements as presented above and divide them by 2, I will have approximately what I need in millimeters.

So here is the build list I will be working with (some of which I already have):

1. Styrene plastic sheets (1mm and 0.5mm thickness)
2. Square styrene plastic tubes/rods (3mm x 3mm and 2.5mm x 2.5mm) that can be cut to form the outside columns and the top beams
3. Styrene plastic strips (0.5-0.75mm wide)
4. Milliput standard epoxy putty

That's about all I need.  Hopefully I can get started on this in the next week or so after I have the dragon done.