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So the mail came in, and with it were my first couple of models to work on for Endless Fantasy Tactics, and I gotta say I'm looking forward to getting my brushes on them. (I also got the replacement glass for my S4, but ya'll likely don't want to read about cell phone repair).

I picked up the Dragoon model, which is easily my favorite so far... but I'm admittedly biased, as I've played that class in Final Fantasy 14, and it's been my favorite class ever since Kain from back on the SNES. But I'm going to be giving him to a friend as a birthday present... which means I'm going to end up ordering another one, butwhatever.

I also snagged a Thief, since I am the rougish type and enjoy me some backstabbery. Plus the sculpt is very sneaky, from the arch of the form and the look that oozes stalking and skullduggery.

The sculpts are impressive. They're a little larger than I expected, which is nice, and they have great detail. I'm used to working with resin, so I knew what I was getting myself into. That being said, good lord almighty the flash. A lot of the seepage from the seams in the molds weren't bad, just large flakes of resin which easily come off with a quick scrape of an exacto. But there were a lot of really jacked angles here and there that had very aggressive lines where the molds seemed to not be quite lined up right.

That sounds like complaining, but I'm really not. This is a small operation, and I'm not expecting flawless stuff here. The sculpts are excellent and I'm very happy with them, I'm just very glad I've had plenty of experience trying to cut my own fingers off, as I had a good bit of cutting and filing to do. No big deal, just good to know what I was getting into.

Okay I'll shut up, here's a picture.




So there is the start of the Thief. I tucked in last night after getting back from this German beer hall (called Old Stein, if you're ever in MD PM me and we will totally go), and broke out the tools. The Dragoon is going to get worked on a bit later, as my friend is still deciding if he wants to paint it, or if he wants me to do it. If he knows what is good for him he'll let me do it. I really want to paint that guy.

After a little bit of flash cleaning, I realized something was missing. So I quickly remedied that.




Ah... that's better.

So now, properly lubricated, I went back to work. I did some... adjustments to his face. I gotta say, I LOVE that smug, stuck up lip on the model. And I also like how smooth the face is.

I then, in my bourbon fueled wisdom, hacked it off.

...I did that on purpose. Don'tjudgeme.




See? What's a Thief without a mask? Needed more mask. Sorry about the blur, my phone was debating between zooming in on my thumb or zooming in on the model. I think my thumb won that round. Without further rambling, lemme just post the rest of the work.









He's about to be based, and he's ready for primer. You can see in a couple of those that I spent a good deal of time on the bag in his right hand. That was one of the worst offenders in the mold line department, but I think I got it pretty much smoothed out. I know the mask doesn't look great, but I am complete rubbish at putty-work, and I'm pretty sure the only thing that got me to give it a shot was a few sips of liquid courage.

I'm happy with how he looks though.

Later this weekend I'm going to hit him with a bit of primer, and get that Dragoon assembled. Then the painting shall begin. Wish me luck, I have zero color scheme planned so far. >.<

I want to see some paint on this, judging by your other painting blogs it will be awesome.

I know nothing about Endless fantasy Tactics so your blog will be a great place to learn.

@Thraxas Not to hijack the thread, but we have a currently running kickstarter which lets you get currently released and/or new models.

kck.st/1iNtagt

There is also a link to the quick start rules on that page, if you'd like to see how it plays.

@CC, excited to see what you do with them, the mask on the thief looks pretty good!

Thanks chief!

I'm starting off slow with it as well. So it'll likely be one of those 'learn as I go' things. So that's always fun. I'm really looking forward to painting these guys though.

The game itself is interesting, and with the Kickstarter going on for the expansion, I'm really interested in the addition of an 'AI Deck'... which is basically a deck of cards that you can use to control one side, that way you can do co-op... which I think my girl would really enjoy.

Hopefully I'll have some paint on em' by the end of the weekend, so likely pics on Monday!

EDIT - No worries about hijacking. Also your link is busted misk. Here you go

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/otlgames/the-miasma-war-endless-fantasy-tactics?ref=card

Hey, good luck on that new project ! I'm more into 40k stuff, but hey

@Yggdrasil – Well thanks for taking a look anyway! I remember when I first stumbled across your galleries when I joined Dakka and spent hours looking at your stuff. Your work is damned impressive.


Most of my Saturday was filled with work, but I managed to get some modeling in on Saturday evening since the weather was perfect for priming. I got the Dragoon assembled, and took out the Thief and a bunch of Infinity stuff to get ready, and then got everything nice and blacked out.

At this point I stared at the model for... way too long. I still had no idea for a paint scheme yet, which isn't too rare. Inspiration will either hit me or I'll poke around in my paint box for something that seems fun. Eventually, I started to work on something, starting with the cloak, and have slowly built up an idea in my head. I'm going to do the cloak a very very dark blue. The leathers I'm going to do in a reddish brown with a cream sort of trim, and the sash in some sort of green. It'll be lighter or darker as my mood decides.

Metals are gonna be some dark, brassy sort of color when I'm done. At least that's the plan. Might try something fun with the blade if I get the chance.

So here's the flats. Very WIP. I usually don't do a full flatwork over a model like this, but I had no idea what I was going to be painting and it helped my brain figure out what I wanted to do in full. Anyway, excuse the mess, he'll get shaped up soon enough.










Enjoy, more to follow, and hopefully I'll get the Dragoon primed up tonight. He's going to be a lot of fun.

Well, looks neat for a start...

As for your kind comment, well... I'm all blushing now !

The obvious challenge is if Yggs can do what he did on his painting competition Dark Elf Assassin can be done to the Thief

i.e. Yggs should buy an EFT mini and paint it up

 Alfndrate wrote:
The obvious challenge is if Yggs can do what he did on his painting competition Dark Elf Assassin can be done to the Thief

i.e. Yggs should buy an EFT mini and paint it up

Ha ha Alf, I'm not even sure EFT has crossed over to France !

Actually, I had never heard of it before that very thread

EFT has most certainly crossed over into France, On the Lamb does international shipping

Grrr Alf... Hopefully YOU didn't cross to France !

 Yggdrasil wrote:
Grrr Alf... Hopefully YOU didn't cross to France !

I have never been to the land of my fathers :(

You're French AND from Ohio....... Alf...... you make it easy to hate your guts

I dunno, if I try reeeeeally hard I might be able to paint up my Thief half as good as Ygg's assassin.

...maybe.

...if I sacrifice someone to dark and terrible gods perhaps.

I like what you did too your thief.

Endless is a great game. It is the first minis game my wife has enjoyed, but it isn't too simple that I lose my interest.

 Galen wrote:
I like what you did too your thief.

Endless is a great game. It is the first minis game my wife has enjoyed, but it isn't too simple that I lose my interest.

Same here. My wife actually wanted to play the other day. And the more I over on the commands....... the more awesome/evil combos you come up with

So! I got cranking away again, and while my cohorts worked on bolstering their Infinity forces, I went back to painting the monster of a model (by comparison) of my Thief. I also managed to get Stabbers Mk2, the Dragoon, all primed up and ready for paint. I'm gonna paint it up, my friend is just going to dictate the actual paint scheme... and I'm okay with that. We'll see what we come up with.

Anyway, the focus of the night was the Thief, and I'm happy to say he's pretty much done. I flitted about trying a few different wash combinations and other tricks to try and get things how I wanted them, and though I think the cloak looks a little lazy, I put a disproportionate amount of work into the bloody thing. If I had the right colors I think I could have just blended the whole thing, (which I did try to do at one point). But the more I worked with it the brighter it got, and though I was okay with the leathers and accent colors being brighter, I wanted the cloak to stay dark. He is a Thief after all.

The blood effect I did just cause I was bored, and wanted to experiment a little. Now that I know how to get that effect I think I'm going to go back and do it in a green or purple to make it look like he gave the blade a quick dip in some sort of toxin. It did make me want to pick up a little jar of GW's Blood For the Blood God and give it a try, because it has just the right color to it. Buuuut I'm not driving out for a single paint pot.

I fidgeted with his mask a little, and I'm not sure if I like it or not. Its a little flat, and I feel like I should have sculpted on the effect I wanted rather than try to paint it on, but I'm better with a paintbrush than greenstuff, so I figured I could fudge it. I'm going to keep it that way for now, as it fits into his fluff, but I might go back and touch it up or repaint it later.

He still needs to be based proper, and get a bit of varnish. After that it is on to the Dragoon. Critique appreciated folks.


As a side note, the resolution on the shots is fuzzy when Dakka compresses them, but if you click on em' and zoom in a little it sharpens them up a bit. But then you have to zoom in on my shoddy brushwork, so maybe don't do that.

So what did you use for the blood ? It looks quite nice on the pic...

I took a 50/50 mix of Blood Red and Baal Red wash and mixed it together a little. If I had any Red Ink around I would have used that, but I couldn't find it at the time. (I found it this morning when I was cleaning up. Figures).

The 'trick' to it, was when I painted on the Mythril Silver, which takes forever to dry, I applide the red when the silver was still very wet. Then I just pulled the color where I wanted it, and let it mix and mingle a bit. It was a weird mix of trying to get the paint to 'stick', and not agitating it too much and causing it to just blend with the silver and make metallic pink.

I dunno, seemed to work okay though.

He looks great Chem. i really like the mask. i second Ygg, the blood looks really nice. the model has an old school D&D feel to me for some reason.....

Shoddy brush work? If that's the case then I'm a terrible painter

Thanks San, and yeah, they definitely do have that feel, and I've been really enjoying the size of the models.

@KingCracker - Yeah, well not really that shoddy, just shoddier than what I think I'm capable of. I've been having to work hard to get the brush to do what I want it to do lately, but that might just be that I'm out of practice. Or it could be my color choices. Either way, we'll see how I do with the Dragoon and see if I can get back into the swing of things.

I hear ya there. I just primed my dark priest and now I'm trying to figure out colors. I know I'm making his metal bits bronze looking...... and I'll try some cool evil spell runes possibly...... outside of that I'm not really sure

The Dark Priest and Dark Knight are definitely next on my list of things to pick up. I love their looks, and they'll be fun to paint.

I've been watching how some people do glowing runes and whatnot, and though a lot of them use an airbrush for the base of it, (since it blends better), I'm thinking I can get the same effect with a brush.

As you can see, I'm a sucker for bronze metals too. I couldn't resist.

Post pics when you get working on em'! I'd love to see what you come up with.

Certainly will do, I just got back from buying some painting supplies and plan on tackling the priest today. At least starting on it, and the risen warrior as well.

So! Thief is almost squared away, I just need to get the rest of my basing done and I'll call him complete. That said, I moved on to the Dragoon.

This is my favorite model in the EFT line, by far. I love the pose and the armor is boss, even if the spear is a little on the tiny side. But it looks functional, so I dig functional.

My buddy picked the scheme, since it's his model, and I've been trying to gradually tweak it to make it work. I really like the armor, and I really like the cloth, but I think that I need to make both of them darker. The red turned out excellent, but it needs to be more like a darker crimson sort of color, and I just don't have that sort of flippin' color in my toolkit. Seems like bright red or bust.

The purple I think I'm going to go back over and darken up some more. It needs to be more blue, and thinking back I could have probably achieved that by mixing it with a brighter blue for my highlights in order to bring it up. I make try that, but I think the next step for him is to get a blue/black wash of some kind and see if that tones him down a bit. He's rockin' the Magneto scheme pretty hard. Thoughts?

Honestly the model is a joy to paint and I've been having a lot of fun with it. Sorry I didn't do more WIP photos like I usually do, but I kinda got caught up in it and didn't want to slow down. Anyway, here he is. I'm gonna take a pic of both him and the Thief in my actual light box when they're both DONE done. Sorry about how glaring the light is.

Nice ! The armour looks like the Dark Eldar ones, serrated & jagged... Great paintjob too

 Yggdrasil wrote:
Nice ! The armour looks like the Dark Eldar ones, serrated & jagged... Great paintjob too

Thanks chief, means a lot comin' from you. You don't find it too garish?

[searches for the translation... ********]

Oh, well, not that much ! I even think you could push the highlights a bit further on the purple "scales" and the trim of the red cloth...

hes looking goor Chem...and remember...its not the size of the spear that matters, its what you do with it P)

as for the colours, hes looking great - im sure your friend will be pleased.