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.