Zoontalis – a story of animals, fantasy, and a new painting style

This is my first time experimenting with the cartoon or comic style of painting. The first stage is to paint up the figure as normal using bright colours and pushing the highlights.

After that I had an ok painted figure, normally I would stop there but well this is time to push. So onto the dreaded black lining. I have a pot of Windsor and Newton Ink so using a brand new pro art brush I dived in.

So the finished result, I am kind of happy with it , I know it’s not perfect. Did I do too much in picking out each feather on the head. Or have I not done enough. I am overall quite pleased with how it’s come out.. is it the best paint job I have ever done.. certainly not, was it fun , definitely! I still have another 15 figures to practice on so who knows where I will end up.

I have been painting figures for many years (too many) I have painted many different types of figures of the years. However one style I have never painted is a cartoon or comic style. So this project is going to be my first venture into this style of painting.

So here goes this may work or it may be a disaster. Before I started I have watch several You Tube videos on the different comic styles. I am still not quite sure which to go with but I know it will involve black lining of the figures a a final step.

1. Before I start even thinking about painting I need to prepar the figures. These are 3d printed figures and having dealt with these before I know that they are brittel and can easily have bits broken off, there are also a lot support elements that need to be removed.

Removing Supports

This was done using a very sharp blade and some clippers, I always soak 3d prints in luke warm water to slightly soften up the material, this i believe reduces the stress on the figures and limits snapage.

Damage

Despite all my careful precations during the preperation process the Ranger Rabbit figure (called Gwen) sustained some damage, first of all a finger tip broke away, then one of her ears snapped of. I think this is possibly down to issues with the printing with an air bubble.

To repair these I used some fuse wire drilled into the figure, and then using miliput to recreate the finger and the ear. ( I dont have pictures of this process.

Washing

As i do after all my preperation I wash all the figures in warm water with washing up liquid and an old tooth brush. These i rinse and then leave to air dry.

Bases

So the next element was the addition of the bases. I have a lot of spare round dungeon bases from my Dunkledorf collection (see my other project) So I decided to use these bases. As these bases are cast resin and the figures are 3d printed resin gluing will require a strong bond this meant pinning. So i drilled and pinned each figure and glued it to a base.

After basing becomes the priming stage. After looking at the various videos on youtube about the cartoon style I have seen that there are two approaches. the first is to prime in black, then paint about that then the other was to do a zenith.

After consideration I decided to do a varient on the zenith prime using a several stage process:

Stage 1

Prime in Black – for this my planb was to use Vallejo Black Primer via my Airbrush, this would be quick and easy and Vallejo  Black Primer is a great primer.

This plan however went a bit arwy when halfway throught the process my Air compressor decided to give up and die on me. very annoying, So it was a case of reverting to a brush.

Stage 2

My original plan was to next use Vallejo Grey Primer via my air brush to do build up the zenith. However this was now no longer possible. So Plan B using a cheap make up brush to drybrush the next layer

Stage 3

After the grey I then Dry brushed Vallejo White Primer on.

Stage 4

After the three Primers the figures have a decent zenith on them However my process of zenith does not finish there. The next stage I uses a thinned down wash Vallejo Wash FX (black). This provides definition to the figure an sets up my final stage.

Stage 5

The lasts stage of priming for my zenith it to pick out the highest points of the figures using a thinned mix of 50/50 Vallejo Pale Sand and Vallejo Game Air Dead white thinned with several drops of water. this provides a decent zenith

Interestingly having completed the zenith prime process I could leave the figures like this as a black and white versions of the charaters, they look quite good. Although I am not going to stop here.

Next Steps

After the priming I am going to paint the figures up using bright colours with the highlights turned up to 11. Then I will be attempt to use black ink to create cartoon or comic lining for the figures. Not sure how it will work but it’s something different.

From here on I will do a separate post for each if the Guilds.

After playing my first game I took at look at all the options there are, so many lovely figures, so much choices. i know that I will end up getting more as time goes by but for now I limited myself to only 4 guilds.

So what did I choose.

Badgers

Like a well known OTT presenter I have a thing about Badgers (Although I was there first). My love for badgers started in the early 1980’s when I first saw Badgers in the wild. So they were always going to be my first choice.

Foxes

Foxes were the first guild I played, and really enjoyed it so this was my second choice.

Rabbits

Not sure why, a bit quirky, but seem to be a bit a fun to play.

Ravens

Something different, Birds rather than mammals and the figures look fab.

Zoontalis is a fantasy skirmish game in which each player takes a Guild of four anthropomorphic animals. The animals include Badgers, Bats,  Foxes, Ravens, Rabbits, Cats, Allosaurs, Axolotls, Dogs, Guinea Pigs, Krocs, Owlbears, Penguins, Platypus, Rats, Squirrels ( one for Gerry), Stegosaurus, Triceratops, Turtles, Walrus. Apparently that’s phase one

Each group is made up with a Mage, a Fighter, a Ranger and a Rogue.

You can either go with a Guild of the same animals or you can mix and match.

Zoontalis is a game that can be acquired by purchasing physical items or via digital downloads and stls.

This is available via the Dice Heads website.

www.dice-heads.com

I acquired the digital version, and have had a friend arranged for the 3d prints if the figures.