Super Dungeon Explore - Baby Dragon!

[Will Vale]

I was casting about for something quick and fun to do last week and my wife suggested the Super Dungeon Explore miniatures, which have been sitting in the box for a few months since I bought the game. I thought that'd fit the bill nicely, little did I know how much pain I was letting myself in for vis-a-vis mould lines and assembly! It took about three days of spare time to clean up and assemble the 50-odd figures, and once I'd primed them I had to go right back and do some more scraping. They're still not perfect, but I wanted to get the brushes out and paint something at the weekend.

Hence these two kobolds with slings. The sculpts are cute but the detail is a bit soft so I've been trying to define the shapes with a bit of trompe-l'oeil on the bandages and around the mouth. I'm also trying to kick some bad painting habits (not thinning enough) and paint with a global light source rather than highlighting everything.

Click to embiggen

I'm an incredibly slow (and clumsy) mini painter, but I like the brush discipline the process is painfully teaching me so I'll probably keep coming back to these over time. It's not obvious from these kobolds that the designs are deliciously chibi, but when I get to the heroes the appeal should be clear

Cheers,

Will

Edited July 9, 2013 by Will Vale

[Will Vale]

Did another one last night and varnished him at lunchtime. This baby dragon was quite quick to do since there's only really one colour. I've tried to blend my highlights a bit, with varying degrees of success - the ones on the horns (which I mixed from glaze and paint) came out nicely, those on the body (just paint) are a bit rougher.

Click for bigger.

I like doing the eyes on these

W

[Doug Rogers]

Yes the eyes look great Will, that white highlight really gives them life.

[Will Vale]

Thanks Doug, I spent some time looking at pictures of cats on the internet for inspiration. For some reason there are a lot of them

[Black Knight]

I wish I was as 'clumsy' a painter [as you claim to be], then I could do maybe as good a job as you. These really are excellent.

and I agree, the white hi-light in the eyes does work

[rotorheadtx]

I'd never heard of them before reading your thread; so I looked up some images of the figurines, and they're a hoot!

I look forward to seeing more of your work!!

[Will Vale]

Thanks chaps - the SDE figures are great aren't they - I really like the heroes and the kobold wizards. There's more info (and pics of painted figures) on Boardgamegeek.

I'm currently working on the Kobold spawn points, which seem simple but have ended up being quite fiddly. I think they'll look nice when done though.

I wish I was as 'clumsy' a painter [as you claim to be]

That's kind of you, but I am a pretty clumsy painter - I think they turn out decently in the end but you should the see in-between steps On anything with multiple colours I spend ages doing one colour and go over the edge, then have to touch in the other colour and go over the edge, and so on until I get fed up and decide it's finished Shaky hands set in after a while too, and that doesn't help. But I am improving with practice, and it's such a nice break from "proper" modelling since you have a much more limited range of tools and techniques to worry about. No sanding!

W

[Will Vale]

And here are two of the four Kobold spawn points. They were quite time-consuming - the "lava" took a while to get right but should be faster next time, and highlighting the gem facets takes a steady hand.

(Click for bigger)

That makes five models painted out of just over 50 - only 90% to do!

Time to get back to the sniper, I think

Will

[rotorheadtx]

Sweet!! Definitely takes an artistic bent to get the most out of those.

The color blending on the gems is sublime. Wish I had your knack.

[Will Vale]

If it helps, I watched these fantastic tutorials by Ali McVey recently and found them really useful:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxCCXvK7v_T7ebDXC_ylbEd00T3O13Abz

For the gems, I didn't really blend as such, they're painted a solid black, and then the lower parts of each facet get a (thinned, large, fairly messy) patch of a dark colour - for the purple ones it was a mix of black and warlock purple. I put a bit of thinned pure warlock purple in the bottom of that patch once it'd dried.

This is all quite low-contrast so you don't need to be neat. If you go to the big versions of the pictures on Flickr you should be able to see where the brush strokes are, and it's pretty clear there's no blending, just thin patches of colour which are close together in tone. Again, this was an idea from Ali McVey's technique videos.

Then go over (or for these gems, which are moulded a bit rounded, paint in) all the facet edges with a warlock purple/white mix and dot the vertices with white.

I found once I'd done that I needed to go in with some black and clean up the top corners of the facets inside the lines, and sometimes go along the edges too to make the strokes narrower, I don't have the hang of a consistent stroke width on a curved surface yet. I also went over some of the edges with a thinned mid-tone colour (purple again) to tone them down.

For the little gems I added some diagonal strokes halfway up the facet parallel to one of the edges - I think that works quite well and again you don't need to be neat. For the big purple ones I didn't bother as there were too many of them!

The idea is that the sharper strokes provide the contrast so your eyes don't see the lack of blending in the facets.

HTH,

Will

[rotorheadtx]

AND you're far too modest.....

[PlaStix]

You are a true artist!!! Some interesting techniques to create the effects. Well done!

Cheers,

Stix