Miniature Monday – Bat Demon
With the flapping of heavy wings another creature of the night descends on us and our readers!
(posting by Antonia)
First of all: We hope you had a great Thanksgiving! Besides some special offers off- and online we don’t celebrate it over here, but I’m sure you had some nice days with family, friends and/or painting projects 😉
Some words about the miniature: While I really liked the pose (mine was a bit bent over, but hot water would have fixed that), the left paw/hand has next to no detail on the palm side so I had to cut in some rough finger structures. The mould lines on the arms were easy to get rid off, though.
I gave the bat a rock to perch on:
When I first saw the miniature and its slightly bent pose, I immediately thought of some couching predator, ready to swoop down on its next victim, so I spared the mini the hot bath and instead made a base to fit the idea.
The big rock is in fact just a chunk of styrofoam (the dense, smoothly structured polystyrol sort) which I broke of and roughly cut to form, and I think it made an awesome piece of stone!
For the bat itself I ventured into the “cave creature” direction and made it a pale albino version by starting with a greyish ivory basecoat and several watered down red washes, which add some feeling of translucency to the whole creature.
I glued the demon on the stone before I added the blood to make sure it would properly interact with the base.
Arjen wins the prize for the fastest paintjob (or so I guess):
He wrote “Fasted paintjob ever for a mini this size:
– grey basecoat
– black wash
– red wash
– light grey highlights
– green and white in the eyes, red tongue, white teeth
Finished.”
Thanks for the step-by-step, insights into the painting process are alsways interesting. I agree that “naked” creatures are faster to paint, and I always enjoy working with the fur/horn/skin textures and color transitions that are possible here. Funny how we independently came up with very similar color schemes, it must be the “great minds” thing at work again 😉 Do you have plans how to use your miniature, Arjen?
Jim sent us a a dark creature that already “earned its wings”:
He wrote “I think my Bat Demon came out pretty good. I wonder if I should have made the wings a little more distinct but maybe not. The mini was actually used in a game on Friday, so I’m pleased with that.”
I think your paintjob looks great, like a Monster Manual illustration 😀 Just with the grey and brown the creature could also make a fine gargoyle, but the lava base tells us there is more to the bat than just stone. Nice job! If I may ask, what kind of game did you use it in?
Michael’s demon is surrounded by unholy fire:
He said: “Initially, I was hoping to do the Gorilla and Vulture Demons along with this one, but only succeeded in getting them coated in dark brown.
I did put all three demons on large (2″) bases, then realized this Bat Demon is really medium, but with big wings. I needed something to fill the space, so I went with green hellfire. On the model itself, I’m most proud of the wings. I worked hard to blend the color to make the membranes between the fingers look thinner and more transparent. ”
Awesome mini, I love the color scheme, wings are always a great oppurtunity for strong contrast. How did you do the hellfire again, was that some kind of glue? Looks really cool (in more than one way)!
Michael also wrote that he is thankful for this blog and the painting community, and I wanted to share this sentiment with all of 🙂 I’m glad that there are some interested readers and participants out there because the whole project is still a bit of work and takes up precious spare time so I’m happy it’s appreciated 🙂
This week’s gallery:
Coming next:
12/10/18 Bones III Blood Hoof, Minotaur (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.
12/24/18 Christmas break
12/31/18 New Year’s break
01/07/19 Bones III Christina, Female Cleric (B3 Core)
01/21/19 Bones II Cuth Wolfson, Barbarian (B2 Core)
02/04/19 Bones III Wild West of Oz Wicked Witch plus Monkey* (B3 Core)
*they sell them in packs of three (obviously) but in the KS there was only one piece
02/18/19 Bones II Dub Bullock, Rogue (B2 Core)
Caffeineforge 
Antonia – your method of washes produced an excellent effect. May I ask what specific paints you used?
Hi Paul, sorry for the late response! As base color I used ivory or some similar off-white to avoid an un-natural looking snow white. After that I used blue and red washes plus the “soft tone” wash, all three by Army Painter. I did that in several steps, sometimes with mixed washes, to make sure the transition was smooth and gradually.
To see where to apply which wash you can study pictures of naked and/or albino animals or simply your own body: On caucasians hands and face and all joint areas like elbows tend to be darker/more red, blue appears where veins are right below the skin etc.
Antonia: Nice work on the cave/albino effect and the blood really adds to the scariness factor. The rock came out great and the color difference makes the demon show up even better. I think I’d faint if I saw that thing coming at me!
Arjen: Sometimes fast is good! The colors are perfect and it could also work as a gargoyle.
Michael: I’m envious of the wings! That’s what I was thinking was not quite right on mine. The blue/green looks almost … minty?! All kidding aside, I think it looks like it’s from a cold layer of hell, which is a great effect.
I almost went with the cliched colors of red and black, but I’m glad I didn’t in the end. Antonia is right, mine looks a bit like a large gargoyle, which works for me. I took a couple of minis with me to show off when we played D&D the day after Thanksgiving and we just happened to stumble into a room that a demon appeared in. When it happened, the DM just looked at me and said “I think I know the perfect mini for this!”
Catching up commenting on the last few. Antonia, that’s a really nifty base conversion. Over the holiday, when I select a bunch of models to begin prepping, I’m going to think about the potential for big mods like that before I get started. Great albino/blood/vampire effect too. As Jim said, Arjen’s could easily be used as a gargoyle as well as a demon. I’m also going to be looking for some models that I can do a speedy job on, in anticipation of a lot more arriving early next year. Jim, that base is really nifty! I think yours looks like it could be a gargoyle from the Disney cartoon (after the sun has set, naturally).
Thanks for the kind words! I worked really hard on the wings, but the rest of the model was actually pretty easy, using a darker version of the wing color (a combination of Wolf Gray and Angel Green from Army Painter) as a highlight color over black. For the flames, I used water effect, painting it out on wax paper and making pieces that could be glued back-to-back. I painted them after they dried.