http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/56.page JForum - http://www.jforum.net WIP thread for the first time. Hope you enjoy!

The first miniature I painted was Snaggle, the crocodile berserker. He's the largest of the four miniatures by quite a bit. A "big guy" scale, if you're familiar with Blood Bowl at all.

1) Here's his game art, which I used as a rough guide. I was ultimately going to go for a more realistic look, rather than the cartoon cell-shaded look, but with a matching color scheme.



2) Here is the resin miniature for Snaggle, fully assembled. There are a few noticeable seams that I should have probably sealed, but (if I'm being honest) I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to that and I was nervous about screwing it up. Instead, I tried to blend the seams with shading. Snaggle came with a custom base, but I wanted a bit of a larger base for him so I stuck him on a generic one I had available.



3) I primed him black. This is mostly out of habit at this point. When I first started painting, I read that black was the most forgiving for new painters, so I started there and never really moved off of it. I think it worked well here, given his paint scheme and given my preference for more dark/gritty paint schemes it works well for me in general.



4) Next I blocked out his color scheme using some new paints. Oof - I probably should have tested them first. These are much thicker than I'm used to. Confession - I use craft paints. Yes, the stuff you can pick up from Michaels. I should probably duck and cover for saying that on a forum with so many high quality painters, but hey - learning. I've actually had great success with them in the past, but these new ones were rough getting used to, and for the first time I begin to realize what people mean about craft paint quality. I especially "love" the mustard belly. Still, it's just the first coat. Plenty of time to clean it up.



5) You may not be able to see a huge difference here in the photos, but I've begun to clean up the lines and do some highlighting to break up the flat color blocks in preparation for the wash.



6) Disaster strikes! My "wash" is also new and WAY too dark. Confession 2 - I use the dip method (yes, Minwax). I know, first craft paints and now a minwax wash. I might as well paint in the dark ages Again, it's a habit I picked up from my first painting days. I prefer painting "dirty" for lack of a better term. I admire the very clean painting of others, but for me I like the gritty look that dip provides. This, however, was not good. Color saturation really suffered and for some reason it gave the miniature a grain. The only good news: I love what it did to the claws. It made them seem much more "bone" to me. The picture below is actually after I've already started to fix him - re-added the blood, gave his nails a quick repaint, did a lot of work on the scales. Still a lot of work to do, though!




7) My "final" miniature. I painted over the wash to bring out the highlights and colors that were lost in the initial dip and bring up the brightness/contrast between sections like his stomach and loin cloth. I also smoothed out a lot of the grain, but kept a lot of it, because I like what it did with his skin composition. Hit the whole thing with a healthy dose of matte spray. I also did a rough basing with stones and grass. Overall, it has that swampy look I was going for I think and I'm pretty happy with it.




Next up: Luna, the wolf knight!]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/697725/8800656.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/697725/8800656.page GMT http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/697725/8801024.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/697725/8801024.page GMT