Miniature Monday – Oni (female & male)
In a new installment of our “Eastern Encounters” we meet some frightening oni, ogres or demons from japanese folklore which allow for a variety of bright colors. Let’s see what our painters did with it!
(posting by Antonia)
Finally done! This posting was late already, and when I wanted to upload it, guess what…? I had to re-install my browser and firewall completely, just to be able to log into wordpress. *sigh*
First of all a word about the miniatures. They are clean cast with a little flashing here and there, but not overly dramatic. While trimming the mould lines I forund a strange. crystalline spot on the male oni’s elbow which was brittle, completely different from the rather elastic structure that the bones material normally has. I will have a look on other minis to see if that occurs again.
The detail is nice, and while the male only is a relatively simple concept, a lot bare skin and well sculpted cloth and muscles, the female oni is covered in an incredibly detailed laced scale mail. On a side note I’m very happy that she is looking grumpy instead of cute or nice, she is as much in the thug business as he is, I guess 😀
I tried some different colors this week:
I chose different colors for the two of them to see how they would work out, since Oni can have a variety of skin colors, mostly red, blue, green or yellow. I didn’t plan the color scheme much, and I think the female oni could have used another color combination, but fortunately the washes help bring together the whole thing. I painted the fur as tiger skin just to have a bright spot on the mini and then read that oni, in fact, are often depicted wearing tiger skin!
With more time I might paint all the laces on the armour or do some nice blending on the skin areas, for now a wash or to have to suffice. For the scale male I used some of Reaper’s liners, they do bring out the detail quite nicely.
On the male one I used dark reds, a bit lighter on the front, and even this rather basic paintjob looks quite nice with a bit of wash. I love the little skulls on the belt btw., great detail on the otherwise simple feeling mini. And was I the only person that thought the oni was meant to have one eye up on his brow? I made sure to paint it, and now he has three *laughs*
Dirk jumped right into the middle and used all the colors:
When he started, Dirk wasn’t too keen to paint the male oni because he fount the mini too plain and even boring, but working on it changed his mind. The bright yellow skin is mindblowing, especially together with the glowing red horns, I think it looks very much like on a traditional painting.
He didn’t finish the female oni (he has another projet at the moment which he maybe will tell you about one day…) but I still love the bright purple and how it contrasts with the skin color!
Arjen gave the male oni some protective armour:
He decided to paint the oni like a classic D&D 3.5 ogre and even sculpted him some chainmail! How did you do that, I guess a thin sheet of putty and than poking holes in it with a tool, maybe even a classic toothpick? I did that one or two times once, and it’s really a lot of work. I don’t know how they do it nowadays, maybe with a texture stamp? I should look into that.
Anyway, I like the color scheme and the added armour, it fits very nice onto the mini and gives it a completely different look! These makeovers and re-imaginations are what I find so great about this project, good work!
Arjen wrote: “I took the color scheme from the Monster manual and had to add a chain shirt. My sculpting leaves something to be desired. I wonder if you can guess what monster was intended.”
Well… I’m not sure, I’ll see what Dirk thinks about it. After some guessing, will you tell us in the comments?
Michael tried something new with the minis:
He wrote that he just started using primer spray on bones minis to prepare a lot of minis for painting and maybe overdid it a bit trying to get complete coverage and might have obscured some detail. Aside from that, how did the whole priming work out, Michael? I read a lot about people having problems with primers not drying or getting sticky on bones material so I already wondered if I should bring out my simple airbrush and prime my bones this way… of course only if I ever manage to paint more than one mini per week *sigh*
Michael said “I debated skin tone for a while, but settled on a bright green. The male had the same kind of deep cut musculature we saw on the bugbears, so that was good. For the female’s clothes, I got a little silly and painted the cloth parts to look a bit like Goku’s gi.” That’s such a cool idea, it made me smile 😀 I really like how the pale orange contrasts with the skin color, the combination green/red/orange is well worked out!
This week’s gallery:
So what do you think? Nice collection, right?
Coming next:
07/23/18 Bones III Quinn, Iconic Investigator (B3 Core)
(I added some of your suggestions already, I might shuffle them around a bit, but keep them coming! For some minis there are no pics in the online shop yet so I’ll add them later.
As you can see I prepared a lot of date entries but am still looking for mini ideas. Post your suggestions if you like! The ‘Type of mini’ placeholder is just that, if you want something else tell us!)
08/06/18 Catch-Up Monday – your pick from Bones 1 & 2 incl. extras. What about some demons (toad, wolf, slime…), a dragon or a giant?
08/20/18 Bones II Skeletons, as many as you like (like this or this or this one) Here you can find the Bones 2 Core Set picture, look for “Shambling Dead”. On reapermini.com you can search for “skeleton” and check the bones minis to find them. If you have other skeletons to paint just send us pics of those!
09/03/18 Bones III Ogres (guard, smasher, clubber) (B3 Core)
09/17/18 Unhooding woman/cleric (not yet available) (B3 Core)
10/01/18 Bones III Bregan, Valkyrie (B3 Core)
10/15/18 Bones II TBA
10/29/18 Bones III Hobageddon: Hobgoblin warriors (B3 Core)
11/12/18 Bones III Elven Blacksmith (B3 Core)
11/26/18 Bones II TBA
12/10/18 Bones III Animal/Monster TBA
12/24/18 Christmas break
12/31/18 New Year’s break
01/07/19 Bones III Humanoid TBA
01/21/19 Room for your suggestions!
Caffeineforge 
The 3.5 ogre mage actually, it has its own entry in the monster manual and is depicted with black hair, horns and a greenish-blue skin (and a chain shirt, obviously).
Regarding basecoat: I am using a grey acrylic primer from the DIY store (the gaming store has only black and white). I spray like 100 minis at a time, first front, then dry one hour and then the backs. I can do more than 300 with one can, so cost is less than 3 cents per mini. I have no problems with loss of detail as I spray just enough to make them grey. Grey is nice as it is neutral and not looking bad if you missed a small spot (unpainted white Bones looks awful) and there are no problems painting lighter colors over it.
I have to admit, after all the warnings my first batch was a small amount of less nices minis, but when they turned out well I was sold.
Nice work, everyone! I apologize for not contributing this time, but with being out of town, Independence Day and that pesky World Cup, I just barely started my oni. I will try to get them done on the catch-up week. My oni skin color looks very much like Mike’s and Arjen’s.
I really like the skin variations, especially the dark blue on Antonia’s female and the dark yellow on Dirk’s male. I debated the skin tone for awhile. I ended up going with green, hoping to make sure it didn’t look too much like troll or orc skin.
Arjen, I saw the ogre mage immediately, so nice work there!
I did a third eye too! I’ll admit I looked around the internet for examples and saw someone had done that.
I used Army Painter black primer, which was the recommended type on Bones (though they really insist that the Bones models don’t need it). I didn’t wait too long before switching to the other side; maybe that was part of my issue. I don’t have a garage or indoor space to do spraying, so it was in my backyard, and I didn’t want to leave them out there to dry, but maybe I should rethink them. I sprayed several models, including some of the upcoming ones, including Quinn, who I just finished over the weekend. I felt better painting him than I did with these, for whatever reason.
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