1 Day Pro-paint, Pre-production Yeeve 3D print

Hello hello,

It`s Lee here with another update on my activity. Today`s post covers an 'emergency' 1-day Pro-paint of a pre-production mini for action games miniatures. The game they produce, Drake, is currently shattering it's Kickstarter goals and will be launching soon. As part of their campaign they were putting together a rules video, to demonstrate gameplay.

You can view the video here: Drake Rules Video

Ben gave me a call on Sunday saying the mini's would arrive by courier Tuesday and the video was shoot was set to start on Wednesday 10 am. I didn't realize it at the time, butt I would actually be painting a pre-production 3D print of the model. They have a lot of their lineup currently already in pre-production metal casts, but this mini is not one of them; but I digress... I was to paint the Yeev of the Rish force.

So the project was something really exciting for me as there were 3 models going in for the painting to 3 different artist, one by Nick from Else-Where games, who I will be mentioning at a later date. The other model was headed off to Chad Lascelles, who's work you will see all over the Infinity line. I was very excited to see how my work would stack up to a well-known international painter's, seriously his work is awesome.

So here's a shot of what I received at 1pm after a discussion about scheme:

I know it's really hard to see much detail from the shots above, but most of the mini is covered in a very strange texture that just wouldn't fille or sand off, and of course I had to be gentle with the prototype, as there wouldn't be time to get another one shipped from Texas in time for the next days video shoot.

The above picture shows the primed and based mini. I primed the model black and then hit it with white to help a little with some zenithful lighting. The mini had to have a lot of contrast for use in video as the shots wouldn`t be closeups. After the prime, I took the airbrush to it with a custom dark blue, I can`t remember what I used for the airbrush basecoat. The scheme needed a dark blue back and a grey belly with some flesh tone worked in, so I used the flesh on the wings, and based the wings on both sides with the same colour. Now I mentioned the texture of the printbefore at this point the texture started impacting upon my stress level as it would just suck paint up and leave exposed areas with a stippling, stripey effect, so layer after layer, after layers, after layer were applied in rapid succession to get coverage in clog up a bit of the texture to even the surface out somewhat(i know, but you totally can`t tell on the final result).

to make the wings shading I used different washes in series over the creases in the folds of the wings, Sepia on top and ogryn flesh, sepia & agryx shade on the underside, tapering towards the exposed sections. The base was primed with a very watered down Cardon granite, which is wonderful as it fills in between the gaps, gives full coverage, but doesn`t clog up detail. The horns and teeth were done with my darkest brown, with a transition to desert yellow, then hit with a heavy dose of agryx shade, tapering away from the base of the horn or tooth. The belly was painted a dark grey.

The mid-tone and highlight stages were a nightmare, moving between techniques to get around the texture issue, from a standard transparent layering technique to a brutalised version of wet-blending and then combining to ensure nice clean transitions and clean edges. at this stage I started transitioning the grey belly into the blue hide and shading the inside of the legs, feet, throat, etc. 

The highlights on the hide were brought all the way up through blues and into white, then hit over with a very watered down blue to ensure that the blue tone wasn't lost. The horns and teeth got a hit of menoth base, then brought up to full white with white scar. the grey was highlighted up using a standard layering technique with exceptionally watered down paint to ensure that little errors wouldn't show.... at this point I'd vowed never to paint a 3D print without having at least a day to fix the texture before painting... the tail was hit with an additional stage of white and then a cover of blue to make sure it stood out, as the video was going to be mostly top-down shots.

The wings were brought up through flesh tones from the GW line, then washed again, then given another watered-down hit of a very bright flesh tone in multiple layers transitioning into the extreme highlights. I think i used a watered down ulthan grey as the highlight on the belly, just picking out the edges and a giving a freehand bit of transition through the shoulder to give the impression of musculature.

The base was finished off using various mid-tone browns as dry-brushes and overpaints with a light hit of a watered down sepia wash to add a touch of red contrast to the base. The rock base was a quick effect i use on rocks all the time, using heavy Agryx shade and sepia washes in opposite directions over a grey basecoat, then dryrushed very very lightly with the grey and then highlighted lightly with a watered down white. I spent a bit of extra time adding the static grass and flock to make sure the base didn't look like a hack job.

And here's a terrible shot of the final model.

The next day I went down to the set, to help and meet the rest of the team. Unfortunately I didn't get to meet Chad, but I did get to put his work side by side with mine, here's another aweful shot from my phone:

I was very happy with myself for producing something, that was not only very comparable quality(obviously his is a little better, but they are very, very close), but that matched his scheme so closely with absolutely no direct communication, which I think definitely paid off for the video, here's a better shot of the whole army.

So I have been on here too long talking about the Yeev for too long and have to get back to my Khador commission, but I'll find some time to post about that this week before I hand the models over to the client. I have one finalised and I'm down to the details on each of the other minis and will be painting a mini a day at this point (yee-pa!) So stay tuned for that and some more from Gord. We have our next projects and will be posting in updates on those as well.

Comments always welcome, if you like our work, please share the blog, and tell your friends we are accepting new projects!