Mini Mondays: A Crowded Field
As January comes to an end, I can’t help but think about how in two months or less, I (and several of my readers) will be inundated by a flood of minis from Reaper. In the lead up to such an event, you would imagine a calm before such a storm. A period of eerie peace and stillness while you wait for the next shoe to drop. If Kickstarter has its way though, this will not be the case. This week a whole slew of mini-centric projects dropped into an already crowded field.
Between tracking all these new projects, and working on the ones I already have, my bandwidth is feeling a little maxed out, but that’s no excuse to tune the new arrivals out .
Let’s explore them together.
When I started writing this segment, I thought I would spend a great deal of time updating everyone on a handful of niche products, but there is quite a bit more activity in this field than I anticipated, and it seems every week I will have new projects to share with you. This week there are four that I think merit discussion:
- Red Box Games Miniatures – This is the second mini’s project for this company. The first project (currently being fulfilled) raised $80k, selling Norse mini’s to everyone. This project looks to be goblin themed, and has raised over $10k in its first few days of existence If you like goblins, check it out, but at present I am not backing this one.
- Mythos Foundry – It stands to reason that the only thing that should do better on Kickstarter than miniatures is Cthulhu (or steampunk) miniatures. Well – someone figured that out and launched a project to capitalize on the needs of the market.So far they have raised over $5k, and show no signs of slowing. If you want a Cthulhu kit that is over a foot tall at a price somewhere in the realm of reasonable, now is your chance.
- Discovering the Painting Pyramid – This project is a wonderful set of how-to video’s on miniature painting. Really – the creator’s technique is pretty amazing, and I would love to learn a trick or two from him. Unfortunately the rewards are significantly overpriced, and I have every reason to believe that when they go up for sale in the post Kickstarter marketplace, the bundles will be substantially cheaper.
- Games and Gears Pro Studio Brushes – This one I did back. If you want a nice brush set, it is hard to beat this price. The updates have been a little too frequent for my taste, but I’m willing to put up with it for the tremendous value and novel design of these brushed. On a side note, if you Kickstarter is offering several of something as a reward, then offering one more of that thing if you hit a certain financial milestone, and presenting it as a novel and unexpected stretch goal might not be the best move.
Even though I spent all that time looking for the latest and greatest for you, I still had time to sit down and do some painting:
First up, I tried another Bones mini – this time the troll. I went with red instead of the more typical green on whim – and was pretty pleased with how it turned out. Rather than try to paint this one in a subtle and semi-realistic way, like I did with the purple worm previously, I opted to paint this model in a very exaggerated way. The rippling muscle that was covering this mini was just begging for extreme highlighting, and I am pretty pleased with the results.
Clint and I also kept up our weekly painters duel using identical models. This time we used a generic dark elf. I tried some wet blending of red and purple, and am very pleased with the results, especially in the weapon. My paint job is the top, and Clint’s is the bottom.
So who do you think won? What could I have done better. This week was our third installment of this challenge – we only have 2 more identical models left to play with. Next weeks victim will be:
Caffeineforge 
Both the Kabalites look good. I think Clint’s looks great close up but, as a unit, the fact that you did more fade and less detail would look better on a table with a whole army of them (I just find too much detail hard to notice, when you’re looking at forty models). But both look nice. Although Clint just HAD to show you up with a super-pretty base.
PS: Your troll seems to have banana-fingers.
I am conceding this week to David. He did a lovely job and the glow effects on his rifle are superb. Mine is a muddied mess that oddly looks better in pics than in person (that NEVER happens! WTF?) I did learn alot about highlighting metallics, and were it not for the deadline, I’d have stripped my mini and started over. I do have two critiques for David.
1) Bases. Seriously. I know you are waiting for stuff to arrive. Until then, go outside, get a couple of pebbles and use the oregano in your spice cabinet.
2) Great job on the shadows, now gotta work on highlights. Red’s a tough one to highlight, granted, but I think you could have gone a few levels higher in value. It’s not just your DE, look at your troll. Maybe it’s due to my colorblindness, but I can’t tell if he’s wearing clothing or not. I think there’s a loincloth there, but am not certain. Moar hilites!
Congrats! Great job this week. But now I am going to have to spank you on next week’s mini.
What are you using for grass, Clint?
Grr, can’t reply to Grayson directly, but hope he sees this.
I’m using a “summer static grass” and “summer foliage” from Skullcraft, a company that seems to have fallen off the planet. Which is a damned shame, since they were the best source of birch seeds I’d ever found. The guy fell behind on orders and pretty much hasn’t been heard from in nearly a year. You can read more at:
http://privateerpressforums.com/showthread.php?94624-Skullcrafts
The pebbles are medium ballast for model railroads that I picked up a bunch of from Micromark.