New Projects and Announcements

Lee here with another update from the Beautiful Warfare team...

So today's post is going to be a three part blog consisting of a couple of announcements, a sneak peak at my next project as a bit of a tip for Zenith priming and a look at my latest completed project, mostly as a distraction from beginning to paint as I`m not 100% sure as to what I want to do on this next mini...

So first and foremost; the website is LIVE! yes, we now have our site up as a gallery, list of services and partnerships and a request form. The site is still in Beta stage, with a glitch or two, but for now it serves it`s purpose and looks pretty damn cool - thanks Liam! Check it out www.beautifulwarfare.ca

The second announcement is that we now have a deal with OneStopShopCardsAndGames for great rates on the Warmachine & Hordes, and potentially Malifaux. We are able to offer the lowest price on those lines of figures for anyone wanting any services, from pro-assembly through paints. The partnership is non-exclusive, and I would love to have a partnership with any other store able to offer me a token discount on any other lines of product - We are not store biased, and shop for product and play at various stores depending on product, availability and local community.

Speaking of community, One-Stop is hosting a Privateer Cup, a free weekend long tournament with tonnes of prizes! Check out the event details here. Saturday is round-robin, with one elimination from each group. Sunday is single elimination, so a potential 8 games, and a chance of prizes no matter where you are in the standings with door prizes and raffles.

Ok, ok, back to miniatures, as I said I would post a sneak peak of my next project. Excellent timing too, as the figure is featured on the CMON homepage today. As promised I`ll post a bit of a tutorial, more like a tip, on zenith priming. But first here`s a pic of the model...

Anima Tactics - Legacy of Solomon

I`m not 100% sure of the scheme I want to use yet, I do know I don`t want to use NMM, though I do want to use some similar techniques, I was thinking something along these lines, but more towards the purple tone used in the image above, or a darker blue - I know he wants it to look dark if possible. There`s also going to be some rather advanced water effects on the model, which i`m not entirely looking forward to doing, but will certainly look awesome(it takes a long time and means a lot of down time).

I`m not sure I want to do the cracked effect, it`s more the tones and feel of the shading to look at.

So looking at the schemes and techniques I've primed the model black, and given it a wide Zenith. So why use this technique? most of you probably use this technique or have tried it and understand it. Some of you probably found it not worth the extra effort, when you can probably get a base-coat down for one of the colours in roughly the same amount of time. Well I think that in a lot of cases, people have the technique in practice without really using it well. So I've given another figure a typical bad zenith...

Yeah ok it's not a great shot, all of todays pic from my table are from my phone, care of my DSLR being out of battery from the photo shoot. But if you enlarge that image it'll be pretty clear that the prime is a bit spotty, has not touched a lot of areas where the technique would help to give a bit more pop on the underside areas, and is probably a bit too heavy on the top surfaces. These are all because of one simple thing I did MAJORLY wrong. For this one, I simply held the model at an angle and gave a couple of very light dusts of white from directly above.

So why's this bad? Well you should by now know that when you're priming you don't want to hold the can still and spray at the model. To get a really nice thin, smooth prime you want to hold the can at a bit of an angle and sweep across the figure in very light coats. That's why i got the spotty effect! This of course ruins a  lot of the purpose of the technique. This also has the effect of pooling the primer too heavily in one area and risking some finer detail.

Another thing about this execution was that when you look at the way that light acts on an object and what we`re trying to do, it just isn`t accurate, and it doesn`t help on a lot of the surfaces it`d be really useful for. when you paint zenith, you`ve got to lie a little and drop that highlighting outwards from the zenith just a touch, otherwise the gradient doesn`t look right and the lighting seems a bit stark and unnatural. Think of it this way, it`s a sunny day outside, if you look at the sky, you can see that light from the sun is being refracted in the atmosphere and all other points in the sky are sending light towards you, concentrating towards the suns position.

So here`s how to do it. prime the mini black - WELL, remember the upper surfaces are going to get a few extra hits of prime so keep it light. Hold the model at an angle of about 70 degrees and sweep very quickly one way and then the other with the white, to give a very light dusting. Rotate the model about 45 degrees and repeat. Keep going, making sure the dustings are very light, the true zenith will eventually build to be the most brightly lit. Here`s an example...

So the last piece in the puzzle is scale. The larger the object you`re painting, the more you want to drop that angle down to being a side-on, to at most about 45 degrees. about 80-85 degrees is good for something ``man-sized`` and about 50-60 for something like a tank, 45 for a very large building(just enough for a shadow under window sills). I hope you all find this verbose little tip quite helpful, if not you can always send me a request to paint it for you.

Right, as promised here`s some more eye candy....

The model had every connection pinned to ensure the pose would not be damaged.

Latest completed project was done as a commission, the scheme was set to reflect the codex `flyer` image, where the model fades from light to dark. So having said that I didn`t want to fade it too heavily, and on the lower extreme`s a I used colour-matching rob contrast rather than actually fade the model int black. It`s a feature piece in the army, a caster always is, so I wanted it bright, having said that I didn`t want the basework to steal too much attention from the actual figure, so I painted that quite dark, with very few contrasting hues within the base - contr4asts were the base coat(blue) and the washes(sepia and dark brown). I also painted the small tree you can see on the lower left side of the base very drab tones so as not to pop too much against the base and mini. I think the most imortant step I did was to go back over the whole model and put an extreme shadow of purple into all the deepest creases and edges between the gold trim and red armour. It helped to make the shadows appear very dark without over darkening the figure and got a lof clean edges in between the fine detail.