Lee here again after a rather busy hiatus from posting. 2013 saw the studio take flight from part-time commissions, to being a full-time single artist and growing to include more artists, higher levels of work and the beginnings of 'greatness' adopting the ongoing work to paint the Drake product line.
2014 is off to a great start, with the addition of Arthur to our lineup, the studio now paints 100% of the Drake product line and has a few new commissions to show off over the next few weeks, including some collaborations! Another element I'm now putting a big focus on is 'community', which is something that really attracted me to the hobby to begin with. This year I was able to head up Drake's efforts to be a part of the GottaCon event, and to join Kelly Kim in judging the painting contest. He has put up a post covering the Small figure category on his Blog Sable and Spray, which you can find in the followed blogs section. The coverage of he other categories should be up soon - if not already up(my bad on the delay).
There are a Lot of cool things I'd really like to talk about going on at Drake, but under NDA I can' really talk about upcoming releases - so just stay tuned. What I can talk about are releases that ARE out and painting we've done. So lets look at some recent work...
We recently did a bunch of blitz work for the product line, all a bit of a rush job really. In the end I did get a bit of an extension on the project and was able to get the 5 models done in 6 days, including cleanup, assembly & basing.
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| 5 day speed-paint |
The Rivercrest Unit Commander ended up with a lot of weak points, but I Like how he shield turned out, but maybe that's just because of a little victory over a few challenges getting my TMM to head in the right direction - lesson learned regarding certain grey paints. In the coming years I'd really like to revisit the sculpting on the cape. Our newer models have far more stylish fabric areas, I'd really like to see what Adam can do if he comes back to this model.
Nothing super technical about this one, but I think I'm fairly happy with the result. I did have something in mind for the stonework, but there wasn't time for the layering and freehand involved so I went with something a bit more simple and effective. Maybe I'll do my own up when the model ships and post it back here as an update. I did forgo a bit of the TMM and left model more on the shiny side of things as it's meant to be crystallized chant energy(as are all the power marks).
And last and definitely least, the Deadly Whisperers, Princess Acadias personally trained assassins. you can see some of the newer cloth-work I was talking about previously in this post on the crouching pose.
On a similar theme, I'd like to take just a second to throw out some pics of a personal project, which is actually an elective speed-paint, so to say. This is somehing I've been working on for about 4 hours in 20-30 minute bursts. It's part of my larger menoth collection, which will be entirely done up as rusty speed paints. It's not the most brillian work i've done for sure, but for less than a half-days work I think this WIP is a good starting point.
I really was hoping to complete the model in one sitting, but I have too many commissions on my plate, so I get a few minutes in on this each day before work.
Next up lets look at some actual Commission work, you know, the guuuuud stuff. Recently I had a chance to team-up with Arthur on a mini, another Kara Sloan conversion. The concept here being not only the standard re-posing request, but to expand upon that and give her a lot more of a sniper feel. We were aiming a bit more for dark and subdued aesthetic. I did the sculpting and Arthur did the painting - Kudos Arthur, sexy stuff!
So First-up here's the sculpt without the paint.
Ok, I know, I really have to stop taking shots for the blog with this crappy phone camera. Lets see how that looks with Arthurs point and shoot.
Alright, I'm not going to exhaust myself for material in one post, I'll leave it there for today. Gord should have some pics of a collaboration I did with him coming up fairly soon so there'll be more eye-candy to come. If he doesn't throw up something soon I'll get up shot of some of the things I should have done by the end of the week - along with some announcements regarding Drake stuff.
