Hellboy

I actually was smart enough for a change to not attach his arm until the end. Made my life much easier. Might should have done the same with his bag of goodies. i almost left a support on, thinking it was a smooth rope. Thankfully I flashed to the fact that there’s not a smooth rope anywhere else on the model.

All told, a fun miniature to assemble and paint.

This completes the agents—well not quite. Young/pancakes Hellboy and the visitor are left but I don’t feel compelled to play with them. Now I can get this to the table this evening.

Pill have to see how I feel about playing with unpainted mobs. I’ve zenithed them and painted the base black. I’ve found this to yield a nice thematic contrast in other games (particularly Zombicide Black Plague). The heroes bright and colorful while the enemies are black and white can sometimes be better than everything painted. However, I suspect I’ll end up painting all of the enemies…eventually.

First, though, I’m going to get a couple of games in.

I struggled with the transition but in the end I’m pleased with the smoke/flame on the jet pack.

Okay, so I got completely distracted by scenery. Not that I’m upset. That’s part of why I paint—to have a space where my ADHD can run amok with minimal consequences. Thankfully (because I really would like to play the game) that completes any scenery items relevant for gameplay. Now to get back to painting big red himself.

By the by, as you can see, I changed my photo background to grey. It’s less thematic but I think it may show the paint job more effectively. Not sure. Let me know if you have any thoughts.

The pictures are turning out better now with my phone. I mainly just physically got closer with the phone. I also turned the light down. Surely not as good as I could get with a DSLR but there is a nice aspect: of using the phone the lens can actually be quite a bit lower than the mini so I’m not always shooting down but can shoot on level and even up if I wish.

I had resolved to really go extreme on this, to try for a graphic novel cel look. I gave it a decent go but it ended up feeling wrong—at least the way I was doing it. So instead, I’ve cranked my highlighting and shadows up to 11.

Turns out I may paint everything that way from here on. I’ve known I was always a bit tentative at the far ends of the spectrum but this has been a really useful exercise. I still would probably benefit from brightening the highlights even more, particularly when I paint black, but I’m getting there.

Also, I’ve been going in and painting black outlines wherever there’s a break/change in material. That’s another thing I will likely keep doing as it sharpens everything.

For any of you looking to improve certain techniques, I can certainly recommend the Vallejo boxes (like the Wood & Leather one or the Black & White) as much or more for their step by step guide as for the paint. I’m now comfortable enough with some of the techniques to go beyond what is in the step by step guide.

The next step is to figure out how to take better pictures. Maybe if I used my DSLR rather than my phone…

I don’t really feel qualified to give blow by blow commentary on techniques plus I’m not sure anyone is reading this. Nonetheless, if you do happen across this and have any questions please feel free to ask. I’ll be happy to spell out what I did along the way, including paint colors, to the best of my ability.

The ghost of Johann, for example, was translucent. I didn’t want to lose that so rather than priming him fully, I just dry brushed him with primer, then a medium blue, a light blue, and finally a white. I cut him off the resin base he was on and stuck him on clear to get a more spectral effect.

As for the other bases, I think I’ll leave them black and not do any textured effects as they sort of look like a pool of shadow cast by the character.

Anyone who plans to use the vacuformed insert for a game, take note. The first thing to do upon unboxing is to take a picture of each tray. That way, once your childish glee has subsided, you can actually get things back where they belong.

N.B.: this is the Kickstarter edition.