Kingdom Death - First Brush

Okay!  I think the Survivor Pinup from Kingdom Death is as good as it is going to get.

Kingdom Death: Monster is one of the first Kickstarter Games I pledged for.  Two years later, it's still not here, but this summer looks likely.  The campaign went nuts and raised more than $2 million.  Production for all the expansions added while money was flooding in are blamed for the delays, but the owner has put a lot of effort into creating high quality minis.

The game pieces are made from the same hard plastic (polystyrene) that model airplane kits use.  These are expensive to make and rare for games, but they are very high quality.  The hard plastic retains a lot of detail.

The company also raised money for the game with limited edition resin miniatures.  These were made in a revolutionary way at the time - all digital.  They are very popular and sell out in hours.  As well as resin game pieces, there are "pinups", characters from the game re-imagined as 1940s-60s style pinups.  They are pure collector pieces and are not used in any game.  Love them or hate them, they are very popular.  KD released a boxed set of 8 made in the same plastic as the game, and I got these to start practicing assembling and painting them.  Here is how they come - just like a model airplane, but smaller.

In the game, 4 "survivors", 2 men and 2 women, fight various monsters, collect bit and pieces and craft them into armour, weapons and other items.  You assemble the minis to represent the armour & weapons you have.  Perhaps I spent too much on the game (my wife was pushing me!)  but I have kits for more than 66 different survivors.  I really need the practice to get them put together.

So enough intro, here's the pinup:

Here are some different angles to show her face and head gear.

She on CMoN if you want to rate her!  Click on this link and pick a score in the red box on the right.

I deliberately painted a darker skin tone.  The four survivors as shown in the game have very different skin tones, so I need to be able to get some variety.  Also, I have painted a lot of pale skinned anime women lately.  I am not sure I like how it turned out ... she's a bit muddy.  I also tried using a limited palette, because I have never done it before.  Most of the colours contain VMC Flat Earth.  Hey, I said she looked muddy.

I tried non-metallic metals (for the second time).  NMM means using normal paints for metal, not metallic paints.  You need really strong shading skills and good colour theory to pull it off.  Look at the pole axe blade, the lantern, the gold helmet and bangle to see if I pulled it off (almost, but not quite).

But I have to say, I am pleased with the result and I think it's a really cute mini.

Feedback is welcome in the comments.

Kingdom Death - First Brush/WIP

Now for something completely different.  Kingdom Death: Monster is a huge game funded by a $2 million Kickstarter campaign quite sometime ago.  Another part of the funding comes from Kingdom Death collectors miniatures and the Pinup range.

The Pinups are a crazy concept: they are characters from the game re-imagined as buxom 1940s-60s style pinups.  By and large, the pinup minis are female, regardless of their initial gender and they generally more scantily clad than the original.  And they are pure collectors pieces, not part of any game.  Love them or hate them, they have been insanely popular; the limited edition resin minis sell out in hours.

I bought a box of 8 hard plastic pinups to practice assembling and painting these little fellas.  These are first hard plastic minis from KD and are the same material and quality as the minis in the game. They are very well made, meaning lots of tiny details, so they need different skills.  Also there is a lot of flesh and skin tones can be hard, especially since the studio models have 4 very different skin tones on the heroes.

Here is my first KD pinup.  I wanted a dark skin tone, as I have been painting light skin tones recently. It is also my first limited palette mini; almost all colours contain VMC Fall Earth.  Finally, it's my second go at non-metalic metals.

Better pictures to follow, once I've looked over mini in daylight, cleaned up errors and taken the photos in better light.  

One thing I really like about the game is that although you play with 4 heroes, there are several versions of the the heroes in the game.  Each new miniature is wearing different armor and carrying different equipment, representing items you pick up or craft as defeat the monsters.  You get to assemble the miniature, just like building a Airfix airplane kit, with any combinations parts you fancy.  I need the practice getting these done:  I have more that 66 versions of these four guys!

By Crom, It's Conan

Monolith Board Games LLC have just launched their Conan Kickstarter.  It's going nuts!

Here is an edited image showing the Barbarian and King rewards, annotated with all the stretch goals that have been opened.  The Barbarian pledges gets all the stretch goals.  It's been a generous and exciting campaign so far, and it has not been up for 24 hours yet!

You will have to right click on the image and "open link in new tab" to see anything useful!  You can zoom in at that point.  It's huge.

Big Hair Day

My first mini of the new year is Rin Farrah, from Soda Pop.  She is part of my Cerci Speed Circuit crew.

I struggled with the paint scheme.  Generally, I don't like copying the studio colours and I already had a strongly orange mini in the crew, so I had two reasons for going my own way.  But the studio colours are great and I did not think I could do any better.  It's always a bad start knowing your colour scheme is not the best, even if you can pull of a perfect paint job.

Anyway, I came up with something in the orange region of the spectrum and I think she's just fine.  I'm not good at the flat black guns and she is very tiny, so some of the layering got covered over, but still I'm happy.

She's no Farrah trademark blonde, but that's still some big hair:

So I now have a 46 point Cerci crew.  Pretty close to 50, one of the standard sized games of Relic Knights.

Hey! Where's Rollo?