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I've finished painting up the Big Mek for my ork army. I wanted to get a glowy effect on the KFF like I did with the Looted Land Raider, but it didn't turn out as well. I should have used darker blues for it, but I eventually will do another one, and I learned alot. I'm really happy with how the highlights came out. Look at the remote in his hand in the first pic, especially.

Eventually, I'm going to buy an epic scale vehicle such as a Trukk or Rhino, add an Antenna to it, and have it on his base so it looks like he's driving an RC while on break.

Comments are always welcome!

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very nice as always, Heffalump.

I can't help but feel the highlights are too strong on his skin. The rest of it is awesome.

Hey-ya Heff, nice ork. Got one of these on a blister just waiting to get painted myself.

Some suggestions, all meant in the nicest way as it is a really great looking figure:

- I think the biggest thing is that the shading/highlighting on the ork's skin is much too severe, makes it hard to sort out all the "natural beauty" of the orky Mek! You have to be careful with "extreme highlighting" as it's very easy to overdo it and overwhelm the figure. You might try starting by painting the skin it's base color, then give it some "less extreme" highlights on the very tops (a gentle dry-brush works well for this), then use whatever wash you like. Since I like my orks with a more neutral skin tone (other than screaming blue-green), I use a lighter green base with a sepia wash. However a lot of folks like a darker skin tone so use the Thrakka green instead. I don't actually highlight the skin on my orks at all as the wash makes it's own very natural looking highlights as it pulls away from the light green base.

- The gem looks good, but it might be even more striking if the upper right part of the gem was a very dark red or black. (Look up "black gem" in the P&M blog section or tutorials. Someones got a great black gem tutorial on dakka that I've totally adopted since I found it. Also keep your gem highlight (on the bottom) a version of the gem color (i.e. red) as opposed to an entirely different color (yellow).

- The edge highlighting looks good, though especially on the blue glass, I'd limit it to the upper surfaces (i.e. where the light would be hitting and reflecting off).

- You might try a little black or brown wash on the boots, wrist band, axe, pouch, etc to tone them down and give them a little natural wear. I typically use either sepia or delvan mud for reds and browns... black for most other colors. Kind of depends what flavor of wear I want to suggest.

- love the duracells in the backpack!

- love the blue glass in the KFF

- lastly... and this is just something I'm learning myself... is that you don't have to wash the entire surface. If you want to darken specific crevices or areas where two contrasting colors meet, you can take a small brush with wash and draw a wash line right where you want it without affecting the rest of the figure. Usually takes several coats but it can really accentuate the joints and make areas stand out.

All-in-all a great figure... just a little too cranked up.... mellow it out a little bit so the highlights and contrasts look more natural and you'll have it nailed.


Hope this helps!

Gits

Thanks for the comments. Especially the constructive critisism from Git.

I agree that the skin contrast is severe, but that's on purpose, as I want the mek to really stand out from the rest of my orks, who have a more subdued skin tone. What I can see I need to do is for the multiple tones underneath the bright green, I should have spread them out more to give a more natural layered effect. You can see there's a bit there in the photos, but I actually used about six tones. However, only three of them really showed up due to coverage issues.

With the lense on his headgear, I agree about the orange. My problem with reds in general has been how to highlight. I've tried mixing in oranges, yellows, and pinks, and haven't been really happy with any of the results. However, the Vallejo Game Color set I bought came in tonight, so now rather than just having two reds to pick from, I have a bunch to play with. If you look really closely at the axe, you can my attempt at using the brighter red I had at the time to highlight. It didn't really show up.

For the KFF blues, I used a darker blue mix for the bottom highlight, but not much. I was more aiming for a "glowing" effect like I got on the Looted Land Raider. What I learned from this is that using a darker blue and a mid tone, rather than a mid tone and a lighter blue, gives a much better glow.

The only wash I used is Delvan Mud, which was only on the backpack and the sand he's standing on. Everything else was painted and shaded by hand. I think I spent about 20 hours on this mini in total. Don't get me wrong, I like washes and drybrushing, but I wanted to do a model with a minimum amount of them to try and push my painting skills.

If I hadn't varnished it already, I probably would go back with some washes. I just got the full set of those tonight too. =-)

Impressive!

It's a great mini... and I suspect a lot of the things I commented on really make it "pop" on the gaming table. Nice job Heff!

I didn't take offense at any of your comments. You gave me exactly the feedback I wanted. =-)

Understood... just wanted to make sure you knew I appreciated your work... it's just very different than my own so my comments all come from a certain perspective.

It's always a balancing act... very subtle figures often look great in close-up but they don't pop at table viewing distance. Techniques like the use of extreme highlighting often look rather crude when magnified, but on the table they look terrific. Since I don't do either particularly well (though I am trying)... my fig's look good at oh.... 15".... which is useless... but what the heck! Gotta find your niche and run with it I always say!!