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Hey, just gonna go ahead and post this here. I'm utterly new at this kind of posting, so bear with me. Any hints/tips/crits are very much welcome!

I've always liked model painting, but not done much high level stuff. I'd like this model to be to the best of my ability, as it is a gift for a friend.

Figone's Minotaur
This will be my first 54mm scale model. I really like it (although how much I'll like it further down the line remains to be seen...)
I really like the Gladiator version of this model too, and hopefully this is in the pipeline - probably for next year though.

Ordered this direct from Figone. It came in a sealed baggy, and in a slim padded envelope.
To be honest, I was slightly taken aback with the lack of protection during postage - especially as I have a rather stiff letterbox. Anyway, all seemed in order - nothing broken!

The model is broken down into: Head, Left Arm, Right Arm, Left Axe, Right Axe, and they were easy to put together - the sockets are solid, with no slipping. My model does seem to have a nasty crack down the side of it - it may be a mould line, but it peters off into nothing. Its a sunken line. There were also a couple of little bubbles underneath the knees.

I've not ever really filled gaps in, but hunting around I thought the best option would be to use some watered down Milliput (standard). After 2 days with 3 layers on each day, I lost patience with it and tried some liquid green stuff from GW. It seems OK now, but I've yet to prime it...
(If anyone is new, like me, to the watered down Milliput, here's a link to what I read - http://massivevoodoo.blogspot.co.uk/2009/10/tutorial-filling-gaps-with-milliput.html) Pro tip - don't mix the water and milliput with your brush bristles. This'll result in loads of air bubbles. Stick to mixing it with the end of the brush handle.

The plan is to now wash with soap to rid of any grease, then I'm going to try a zenithal undercoat thing. Black undercoat (I'll paint this on using VM Black), then the aim is to spray on a grey (used for touching up car paintwork that I brought from The Works), and then spray on a white.

I'd like to try some mud effects on the base, maybe try my best with TMM on the axes, and have a flesh to some as yet undecided colour fade from the body to the hands.

Very cool! Looking forward to seeing it painted

That mold line doesn't look too bad, and might kind of disappear with painting. But do you plan to try to do anything more to remove it without obscuring detail? With how fine it is you might be able to just slightly scrape with an exacto knife to remove it.

I've scraped away, and the photo is an after pic. The mould must've slipped or cracked a little, as the line is not a ridge, but sunk into the mini.
As it stands now, I've done two coats of a black/coal black mix (after a milliput/greenstuff attempt at filling) and it looks OK. You can still notice it's there, but hopefully once painted it'll look less noticable...

Front and back. Didn't go too mad with the white...

Very cool! What state are we seeing it in here, is that a zenithal spray from an airbrush, or did you do the white some other way?

It's a car spray I brought from The Works. First a grey from the top and 45°, and then a white pretty much from just overhead.

The brand name of the spray is 'Hycote Spraypaint Primer'.

I've actually used the lid from the spraycan to put the beast on. I've cut some holes in it to fit the tabs on his hooves, and placed a thin sheet of Milliput over it. To be honest, it looks a little smallfor it, but it will do whilst painting!
Aiming to do a rough bascoat tomorrow. Pics tomorrow!

First shot this morning, maybe about 50min, all done very quickly. Colors decided as I painted. Going to go for (hopefully) sore eyes, a warm highlight on the flesh, but then fading out to a purple kind of color. More ill health than cold I guess, but we'll see how it pans out...
Edit: hands will probably go towards a grey blue rather than purple.

Little bit more...

Bare with me. Pictures will be like a flood when I'm painting, mostly because if I don't do it straight away, it won't get done!
Anyway - a bit of darkening. Mix of coal black into the flesh mix. Going to try and add more colours - mostly red, into the area between the shadow and midtone. May pay around with a turquoise too.

Tiny bit more. Just posting because I think I'll revisit the photo of the undercoat and put a lot more shade in.

Errrrgh. I think the phone is just bleaching out all the colour... Anyway, literally only about 10-20 minutes this evening. Also a pic of my blotting paper.
As an aside, this is the first time I have used a wet palette, and I'm really liking it. I'm also really enjoying the large surface area afforded by such a large model!

Tiny bit more.

Colours are showing a lot better in that light. Looks good mate.

Cheers! I'm going to have to see if I can tweak the phone pics somehow with the setup I have. I have to find a bin....http://massivevoodoo.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/tutorial-how-to-build-photo-setup.html!