Edit: Changed the title. It only really worked for the first few posts. Sorry if anyone got confused by the change. Hello! I started collecting JSA over a year ago but the game never really got off the ground in my area, so I let it lie for a while but have started up again with the new JSA Army Pack (Cause who can resist having "Celty" in their army?) and have been trying to get people hyped for the game. So now I've started painting up my force and am hoping for some feedback on what I can change or improve. I've painted three models so far to try the theme, and it's a bit similar to the studio theme but I wanted to go for a metallic white instead of silver and I guess we'll see how I go from there, but I really think white and red works for them as the core colours. Domaru from the starter box. Keisotsu from the starter box, need improve my face technique... Aragoto, I painted this one when I first started collecting JSA so I'll probably update the techniques I used primarily on the bike, will probably practice some on Asuka's bike now that it's (more or less) obsolete (I'll convert her to a hacker probably), but I'd still love some feedback on what I did back then. Got a ways to go yet, like getting people to play in my area... But I look forward to painting the Army Pack models! :) In an effort to get the game going in my area I bought the Red Veil Battle Pack and painted those models up first of all, didn't put AS much effort into them, but still pretty happy with the results. Figured I might as well post those at the end here.
I think your stuff looks great man! Any paint is better than no paint - especially when trying to get others into the game. But just a few things to keep in mind: Keep thinning your paints! you appear to have a decent amount of consistency for everything but the bike. seriously, right when you think you've thinned them enough, thin them just a little bit more. Experiment with a heavier wash, this will define those large white armor plate areas and give nice shadows and contrast. Finally I would suggest you do a little more with the base, this really helps the model pop and gives a nice feeling of "complete" to each miniature. it helps bring the whole force together in a nicely uniform way. even just a little rocks and/or flock goes a long way!
Welcome back! Faces still give me a lot of trouble. What one of my friends does is actually paints a dark red (well, beef-red) before he starts the skin tones. I usually do things the other way, prime white and black wash, then put 2-3 coats of whatever I'm using for my base coat. I usually use Reaper Master Series paints for my skin tones, but I have a whole lot more. So, Reaper Golden Shadow thinned about 1:1 with glaze medium. Put down coats until the coverage is even, but make sure you take time to let the paint dry between coats. It's easiest to paint ~10 faces in an assembly line this way, by the time you get to the last one the first should be totally dry. From there, I put down a reddish-brown wash (GW Ogryn Flesh was the old color name, I don't remember what the new one is). Even this wash gets thinned down. I usually put a drop of Future (Pledge With Future Shine) in this, especially if I'm starting with an Ink like Army Painter Soft Tone. Future is good because it breaks the surface tension, makes sure the wash gets complete coverage. Once that dries overnight, I go back to my base skin tone, thinned with glaze medium again, but even thinner than the first time, aiming for somewhere between milk and orange juice. Glaze medium increases the surface tension, so the paint only goes where you put it. I hit almost the whole face with this color, except for the eyes and the underside of the chin. I might do this 2-3 times, covering a smaller and smaller area each time. I usually start mixing in the next color (Golden Shadow gets Golden Skin) after that, again aiming for a consistency between milk and orange juice. One or two highlights of that, then a straight color of thinned Golden Skin. This is usually good enough for the guys. Because women tend to have lighter skin than men do, I usually start them with Golden Skin, wash, Golden Skin again and slowly add Golden Highlight to it. There is a much bigger jump in lightness between Golden Skin and Golden Highlight than there is between Golden Shadow and Golden Skin, so the ladies usually take more intermediate mixed layers. If you do a little 'make-up' for blush and/or lipstick, mix a little red wash into your highlight color and add some Glaze Medium to keep the paint where your brush put it. Only put the additional color on the bottom lip, unless you want your female to look like a prostitute. I don't even bother painting the eyes, a 28mm mini 3 feet away is the same size as a 6'/180cm person 65 yards/60m away. You cannot see eyes at that distance unless the person has very dark skin.
What parts are you thinking of in particular? Getting an even layer of white was hard for the bike, so might have put on a bit too thick paint for some parts but I think I've gotten better about that. I wanted to try and get a shiny look for the bike so I put gloss varnish on it, but might try some metallic red instead. Perhaps it's just the gloss on the bike throwing me off. I would also suggest working a little slower with the white to avoid a "chalky" look. Hmm, well I did try to shadow them with a light blue wash, since I want them to be clearly white rather than grey, so not sure how to go about doing that :/ I would suggest using a darker wash JUST for the lines. You can try and be careful about it or apply the dark wash early in your base coats and paint around it as you highlight up to white. Yeah, the JSA models are just Proof of Concepts right now, discussing with a friend what bases to use to make our stuff match and will probably acquire some after I've gotten some money. For the Red Veil models I don't know how to get them to match the mission mat so I just left it black, since the normal dirt/rock/whatever basing would look weird on a space station. I get that. Some people are super anal about matching the mat to the base, so much so they even base on clear bases. Which I find unrealistic and horrid. To each their own!
The only models I'm basing on clear bases are my zero-gee Nomads, because I want them to 'float' slightly above the surface. If I was going to try clear basing in general, I'd use very thin clear blister-pack materials. But Infinity needs some information on the bases, like firing arcs, so it's not super-conducive to clear basing.
Thanks for all the feedback guys, I'll try to keep it in mind going forward! Apologies for taking a while to respond, been busy with other stuff and wanted to have something to show at least. Still working on the three Keisotsu from the Army Box, and man white sure is annoying to work with... No matter what I do it almost always feels like it's drying immediately or is too watery, neither of which is good on small surfaces with dark crevices like the Keisotsu armour plates. I feel I've gotten that bit done somewhat well though, will see if I can clean it up once I'm done with the rest. But for now I'll post some basing I've just done. Still need Line of Fire arcs, but I'll get to that before I'll use them next time. The colour choices was something I worked out with a friend who will be using the same type of bases for his Nomads, so we can have thematically appropriate bases when we face off. A bit weird, but I like the way it looks, and though it's not perfect (as it shouldn't be) there is a semblance of a pattern in there. :)
White looks great on the Domaru, but it's a bit flat on the bike. The trick is to not actually paint pure white. Run something like Shadow Grey (old GW color used as the base for Space Wolves, I think the current color is called 'The Fang'), then mix in some white. But don't go all the way to pure white except for a couple dots, everything else should be a mix. If you don't want to repaint, I'd get that Shadow Grey and thin it down to a wash with Glaze Medium. No, thinner than that, thinner than orange juice, more like apple juice. It will take a lot of coats to build up the shadows that way, and a lot of time between for drying. Probably 3-4 coats to get the darkest parts dark enough. You can also use a black wash or technical pen to neaten up the lines between colors. This gives a more cartoony effect.
Yeah the based Aragoto was the first one I painted, almost a year ago so it's a bit outdated as I found a better paint combo for the white, might redo it later after I've got more models painted but since there's been rumours floating around that the Aragoto is getting resculpts soon I figured I'll just wait for those, maybe update the Spitfire depending on if their profile(s) change at all. The way I did the white on the Domaru* was prime it grey, and then apply a few thin layers of vallejo gloss white mixed with a metal medium, then adding some shading with a watered out guilliman blue glaze. Worked well for the Domaru, we'll see how it works going forward, if I need to do something more for some models then I'll figure it out then. I'll definitely look into the technical pen solution though, sounds like a good technique! But yeah, the intention of the last image was mostly to show of and maybe get some feedback on the basing theme, since people had mentioned the lack of bases earlier :P Thanks for the feedback, I'll hopefully have some Keisotsu to show off soon :) * Edit: Woops, wrote Aragoto instead of Domaru on the paint method... *
They're called Micron Pens, you can get them in lots of different sizes and colors. I bought some green ones in addition to the black pens I use for lines and lettering so I could do the lines on German Splinter camo. Sadly, they only make white pens in the 'Gelly Roll' ball point style, but it works OK for drawing kanji on painted metal. If worst comes to worst, you can get a size-variety pack of black micron pens at college bookstores, but I buy mine at a local art-supply store.
I was looking at some very similar pens (probably another manufacturer though) while thinking of getting some alternatives for lineart, but for the purposes of what I was using them for the ones I have (Fine-Liners for documents) was enough. Originally I bought them to be able to do some text on scrolls and such, but I also used them for actual lineart once the other day, so fun to learn how to do that. I'm not sure if the micron pens are a bit softer than the ones I have or not, but I noticed that trying to write on models was pretty difficult (though infinitely easier than painting text...) due to the hardness of both the surface and the pen, but I guess making lines in crevices would be easier, so definitely gonna try it :) Like this. I'm ok with it but it could definitely be better.
Hello again. Just got my O-Yoroi and I'm considering doing some fairly hefty reposing conversions on it, but before I try I need to plan out exactly how I'm going to go about it since there's a lot of bits that could become unusable if I mess it up... Basically, after seeing the Treason "resculpt" of the model I wanted to make one with a better melee pose (because let's be real, that pose is suffering from "doing everything at once" syndrome). I'm considering either going for a two-handed pose (probably the hardest) or to try and copy the O-Yoroi Pilots pose with the TAG. As you might suspect doing this revolves around making a new sword, but also to remove the gun from the right arm which is definitely the hardest part (I could probably just have it hold the sword in the left hand... But that would be boring). I've got an idea how to saw/cut the gun to do as little damage to it and the arm as possible, but that still leaves me unsure what to do with the actual gun. If it wasn't so massive I'd either put it beside the katana sheath under the left arm or attached opposite it on the right, but I can't see that looking very good... So anyone got any experience building/converting the O-Yoroi and have any suggestions with how to make this work? I'm in no particular rush to get it done anytime soon, but I am hyped about the project itself xD Basic ideas for how to start with the arm, the hand is definitely gonna be the most challenging bit, but I figure I can greenstuff new fingers if I have to. The weird thing about the sword, at least from how it's presented in the Treason kit is that both the scabbard and the sword has that round bit, and since that's what attaches the scabbard to the arm it's obviously needed, but still. Weird detail... Still gonna need to saw/cut the elbows and such to alter the overall pose, but in comparison to the gun, that should be simple... (right...)
Still a ways to go. Gotten most(if not all) of the cutting and sawing done and done some preliminary green stuff sculpting on the right arm. The part I'm having most trouble with is the "guard" bit of the sword, not quite sure how that should look but the katana looks awfully short without it xD I think I'll try to emulate the katana from the Treason kit model, but I don't really know how to sculpt that kind of shape from scratch. I'm guessing I'll have to make the shape first and let it cure before doing any detail work on it... Any suggestions is appreciated! A picture of dread, and then the mock-up of how I imagine it will look (roughly) once finished. It's hard not to start to doubt your decision after cutting up an expensive model. But you just gotta forge on xD This is roughly where I want it to go. The left hand holding the HMG is a compromise I thought of since I honestly can't find anywhere for the GINORMOUS gun to attach to logically. Of course due to the weight of the gun the... white tack? couldn't hold the arm in the pose I wanted it, think O-Yoroi Pilot and you will see where I'm going with it... Logically I think the gun should probably be reversed, since it would be grabbed that way. Still a long way before I really work on the left arm though, so plenty of time to figure that out (plus I need to repair the gun itself first xD)
@RejjeN I like what you are doing so far. As for the Yoroi conversion just go with what works in bringing your idea to life. I think the HMG is good in the position in the last picture. No need to reverse it in my opinion.
Thanks for the feedback Golem, tried the gun in the reverse position but the fit just wasn't there unfortunately. Oh well, I'd say it looks pretty good even if it doesn't make perfect sense. Progress update, TAG is mostly assembled, need to do some more detail work with green stuff and add some details to the sword, maybe replace the "guard" (which I made by moulding the scabbard one, so a bit of cheating there :P). One thing I've noticed upon working the pilot's arms is how low they are positioned relative to the legs, honestly any wrong move and they'll snap their own arms against those thunderthighs xD EDIT: Didn't feel this deserved it's own post since it's still WIP and I just posted (Don't want to spam TOO much), but here's a picture with a bit more polish and the model primed :)
