Monday, May 9, 2016

Chibi Swap! Nyan-Nyan and Tabbybrook Mage


A few months back, my friend Chris asked about doing a painting swap of Super Dungeon Explore miniatures. We each picked a single release figure from Super Dungeon and would paint it for the other person, then mail it off. The chosen miniatures ended up being Nyan-Nyan and Tabbybrook Mage.

For today's post, we're doing something special. Chris has agreed to write up a bit of stuff on Nyan-Nyan and how he went about painting her. So that means, there's a guest writer on the blog for the first time ever!

Now let's get to it, shall we? Starting with Chris and his Nyan-Nyan.

Chris' Nyan-Nyan

For the paint and trade Scott picked Nyan Nyan for me to paint up. Nyan is a great looking little cat
girl character and was fun to paint up, but I have to give A disclaimer. She was the first chibi model I've ever painted.

My first order of business was to do some research as I'm not at all familiar with any of the SDE models or the game characters, aside from what I've seen Scott paint. While I normally like to do characters like they look in the main pictures, I wanted this one to be a little different.
A quick internet search had some really cool looking ideas come up and I almost decided on a white and blue scheme. But since I hate painting white I went with a blue and grey scheme that was approved by my boss aka the wife.

I started with priming Nyan with GW Corax White spray which I've been using a lot lately and have been pretty happy with the coverage. Her suit was based with Necron Abyss, an old Citadel Foundation paint and which is by far my favorite blue. It was then washed in GW Druchii Violet and highlighted up with GW Regal Blue before getting a coat of GW Guilliman Blue Glaze.

Her hair started out with a P3 Sanguine Highlight and then washed in GW Agrax Earthshade. Highlights started with P3 Skorne Red which I added P3 Heartfire incrementally in to get the orange and then yellow orange highlights.

Her skin started with a base of GW Bugmans Glow, washed in GW Reikland Fleshshade, then GW Cadian Flesh and Kislev Flesh highlights. Skull White was added to Kislev flesh and worked into the raised points on her face like her nose and cheeks.

Her stripes were done with GW Eshen grey washed in GW Nuln oil. GW Dawnstone was added in for highlights.

Her eyes were done with black, regal blue and ultramarine blue. I have to note that Scott does do the best chibi eye tutorial I have found. It really captures the cartoony anime style that these models use and it was my go to on how to paint Nyan's eyes.

Her claws I wanted to go with a metal look without using the shiny metallics I normally use. So I used Eshen Grey washed with nuln oil then highlighted with Dawnstone.

I went ahead and did her base with what I would have done for a cold base with white in the cracks and a blue glaze, and stones of grey washed in black. Scott had said before hand that he would probably do his own basing to match his other models, which I was fine with, but I still wanted something to take pics of since I already have a ton of commission model pics with plain bases.

Anyways that's about it for Nyan. She was fun to paint and considering I'm colorblind I think she came out pretty good. I'm excited for my own SDE Minis to show up now and look forward to seeing more of these guys done up.

Scott's Tabbybrook Mage

For Chris' choice, he left it up to me between Tabbybrook Mage and the Twilight Knight. I finally decided on Tabbybrook Mage, because I really wanted to paint her more than Twilight Knight.

Since she's a cat-girl, I wanted to give her some special coloring and after looking up different types of cats, I picked calico. I'd never painted a calico pattern on a miniature before though and had to learn as I went. I started by painting all of her fur with white-grey using Vallejo White and Neutral Grey mixed about 5:1 or more. From there, I highlighted it up to as pure white as I could. Then, I started painting black and orange-brown color patches using Vallejo Black and Flat Earth.

The Tabbybrook Mage is a water based spell caster. All of her abilities are based on either freezing or boiling water/ steam. I decided to focus her colors on the more icy blue side. She features at least 3 different shades of blue in her outfit.

The inside of her cloak was base coated with Reaper MSP Arthurian Blue which was then washed with GW Nuln Oil wash, with a minor highlight of Arthurian Blue on the high points.

The outside of the cloak was painted with a mix of Arthurian Blue and Reaper MSP Crescent Blue at about 1:1 ratio and then highlighted up with Crescent Blue. Then, for the back of her cloak, I freehand painted snowflakes based on the Super Dungeon Explore status effect icon.

Her robe was painted with Reaper MSP Atlantean Aqua and then highlighted up with Vallejo White to give it a more light blue look.

The orb of her staff was painted with Vallejo Black and then wet blended with Arthurian Blue, from there I wet blended a tiny bit of Atlantean Aqua into the top of it. After it was dry I added a white dot to

I really like how she turned out and especially the orb on the top of her staff. It came out really night and blended well. It pops even more now that I added gloss to it. According to Chris when he received it, "It looks like its made of glass".

We both had a good time painting up these figures and it was a good bit of fun watching each others progress!