by Pesren
As a primer, this isn't a thread to show off badass Cthulhu: DMD minis and bask in praise, if you want to do that, check out some of the incredible work done by much more talented painters like these:
[user=PaulJima][/user] [user=Shinnentai][/user] [user=Benwax123][/user] [user=trabiniu][/user] [user=noahshu][/user] [user=Sepultor][/user] [user=Wheekers][/user] [user=Davicroquette][/user]
...and so many others in the image gallery, and lavish them with much-deserved praise. This is meant to show how a no-talent beginner can pick up a brush for the first time in decades, and with practice can progress to making decent looking minis even with cheap paint supplies. If I can do it, you definitely can!
Hi all! I'd been inspired to try generic prime + washing after seeing someone with no experience improve minis in this
Dungeon Alliance thread, and after seeing my Project Elite minis vastly improved by just slathering gray primer and Army Painter's Quickshade Washes on them, I thought it was worth trying to brighten up CDMD as my first painting attempt... mainly because I'd seen the limits of only using washes when I tried to halfheartedly use wash on figures with large surface areas.
I knew that paint was an important step if I wanted anything beyond some colorful 'sundropping', so because CDMD is a top 5 game for my wife and I, and the minis are pretty sweet overall, I decided to just throw caution to the wind and try. No tutorial videos, no beating myself up if I made mistakes, no buying any huge sets of expensive paints in case it didn't go well... I figure, I have no skill/practice (haven't touched a brush since paint-by-numbers sets when I was a kid), and my hands are quite unsteady due to mild tremors... but even if it looks like a kid did it, some color would be better than the base minis, so I went with a cheap set of craft acrylic matte paint and the cheap brushes & primer I already had.
And I gotta say, I'm
really happy I did. There've been some times I was thrilled with the results, some times I was disappointed, some times I made big errors, some times I had "happy little accidents" and certainly others where the accidents weren't as happy. Yet the game is full of vibrant minis now of varying quality, and it's been fun to trace my progress as time went on.
The investigators I'll save for the end, because some of them were among the first things I painted, and others were among the last, so my compilation picture of them is a great before->after picture in its own right.
I started out with the Fire Vampires and Byakees strictly because they were the Episode 1 enemies, but honestly they were both good choices anyway. The Fire Vampires had fairly simple colors and very broad surfaces to learn applying paint with, and few difficult details sans the amount of little claws to hit up. The Byakees I knew would be good washing practice due to the textured wings, and it allowed me to see the difference in how the washes would affect the paint coloration, as the 'flesh wash' byakee turned out reddish, and while I was trying to go for more of a stone gargoyle look on the other, the bright craft paint stays pretty bright even after using the 'soft tone' that tended to give more of a Bone-colored look to things. The things I enjoyed most here were tracing the bones of the Byakees' wings, trying to gradually alter the color of the Vampires' tails, and seeing the wash fill in the details of the Vampires'.. uh.. flower/mouth?
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Anywho, there's tons of evidence of rookie mistakes/areas I could have improved: I was inconsistent on my painting of the FV's stomachs, I didn't try to mix/blend the paints in a way to make its chest transitions more natural, I didn't make any attempt to paint the veins, I didn't know about techniques like drybrushing that could've made the black paint stand out more, and I missed a lot of potential areas I could've highlighted on the Byakees. That said, I had some painted minis in the game and it looked cool to see them on the board, so I was happy to continue! We were playing Episode 1 versus Cthulhu, so I figured Cthulhu's minions were up next.
Star Spawn was a great lesson for me in the realm of color intensity.. in my mind I wanted him greenish but dark, so I figured okay, use the green paint, then a dark wash. What I got, of course, was a
Hulk-Green Star Spawn, and the wash only slightly stopped it from being neon green. That said, because I'd already washed some appendages on my Project Elite minis, I tried using only the wash on his tentacles without any paint to see if that would work and honestly.. even now that part looks okay to me. Sure it would look better with both (see Shoggoth near the end as a comparison), but it's a solid reminder that if you just want a quick improvement, wash alone can be fine in many cases. Either way, Star Spawn was a great lesson - mix some colors
first, don't expect wash to correct for that later.
Amusingly, because of the Star Spawn coloration, I decided to practice on the cultists, figuring I didn't want them to be ultra-bright, and I wanted to be ready for Cthulhu. So I figured if I wanted dark red, take red, add equal parts black to darken it, all good? Well uh,
no X) Instead I got a putrid black with hints of red, making them a horrible mess. I tried putting the paint on fully to make sure it wouldn't look different on the minis, and nope.. awful looking. So I improvised and used water-thinned red to apply as a second coat and hey, now they looked dark red! Though I've since improved in carefully mixing colors, I just rolled with it here and kept going. I definitely had some troubles tracing the garlands/scarves? of the cultists, but otherwise I was pleased that they mostly looked evil and were easily discernible by color.
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I was slightly nervous headed into Cthulhu, but I'd learned a bit about ensuring the colors were right and carefully mixing before applying.. in doing so, I found that once I'd mixed some brown & yellow into the green, I'd gotten more of the sickly green I'd had in mind. And honestly, because he's mostly a lot of big thick surfaces, I found painting him comparatively quite easy. On his beard I'd rushed and rubbed off some of the paint accidentally, but upon adding the purple wash to it, it kind of made for a cool color-blending effect, so hey, happy accidents! Otherwise my only concern was that using some shiny paint on his nails was meant to be intimidating, but almost gave off a nail-polish vibe. Oh well, nothing fancy, nor too intimidating!
So, onto something intimidating, then! I'd taken a jaunt to do Wilbur Whateley, but I neither tried that hard nor had any real problems with him, so nothing to say there. But instead, I looked at Yog-Sothoth and spent some time looking at all of his contours/areas/appendages, being intimidated of how to even start.
That said, I love how he turned out! Now don't get me wrong, it didn't go ultra-smoothly and I was right to be intimidated. My unsteady hands fouled up on some of the tiny teeth multiple times, his feet turned out way too bright of a pink, and multiple times I did an area, didn't like the result, and painted over it afterward. But those were all good lessons too, because hey, things can be fixed and touched up, and it's okay to change your mind a bit over time. Originally I expected to wash his whole visage in a sickly tone, but then I ended up enjoying the contrast of some lighter areas, and some reddish/fleshy spots. Definitely the biggest confidence booster so far.
I took some time to go toward Episode 2, meaning I'd do the lesser enemies like the Ghouls, but honestly I found their designs uninteresting enough that I stuck to just washing them. Nowadays I've slightly improved them with some drybrushing, but I wasn't there yet, and nothing about their design inspired me to be creative. Conversely, the Chthonian/ic Entity was a design I thought looked very cool, and that I largely had fun painting:
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By this point I'd done a better job of landing on my desired paint colors, and I endeavored to make the tentacles my wife's favorite color of teal, so in that sense, this was a solid success. This is also one of the ones I've gone back and touched up more, though. The "feet" on the bottom just aren't washed enough to stand out from each other in this image, nor were some of the armor-plating spots not visible in the photo. The various areas that jut out of his armor were great drybrush targets later on too, so he looks cooler than he did at this point, making him a good lesson on how to take something that looks fine and improve it with additional washing/highlights.
Hastur's minions were a different story - I changed the color of their jewelry/skin tones to differentiate them, but as you'll see in the compilation later, I made a similar mistake that I'd made previously with Ahmed, and didn't match the wash color properly, making some of their robes just look dirty/filthy rather than textured. Altogether, lessons on the way to their preferred elder god.
So, if you're here and not a savant, you've probably at some point hit that 'brain wall' when playing a heavy or complex game where suddenly your brain feels exhausted from trying to figure things our or keep up with the amount of rules? Amusingly, for the first time I hit that exact same point of brain-exhaustion while painting Hastur. The culprit? His tentacles.. I'd mix the paint, paint the tentacles, move on, and then later on realized I'd blatantly missed part of the tentacle when viewed from above or the other side. Then I'd find another later, and another later, often while trying to do other areas.
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Now that said, ultimately I'm quite happy with the results. I wanted more of a greenish color on the bottom to look more like a venus flytrap, and I'd found I consistently enjoyed highlighting teeth with white colors to make them stand out. Having the tentacles transition in color made for a pretty neat effect, if only I hadn't burnt my brain whie doing it! So, a solid success, but an important lesson I'd take with me into doing the Black Goat/Dark Young/Shoggoth.. if there's tentacles/appendages, wait and make sure you've got ALL angles of them covered before you switch to different paint.
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I took a break here to head to the next episode, adding the Hunting Horrors to the mix. Not a whole lot to say here, I enjoyed working the evil dark-red coloration (mind you, this is what I thought I was doing originally for the red cultists!) and the mechanized coloring of the other. When compared to say, a similar figure like the Byakees though, this was some notable progress on my part. I also did the Deep Ones around here, focusing on using their shark-like appearance and our fondness of Monster Hunter to make some look like Zamtrios.
Almost finished the core box and bosses! First was an intimidating crew, the six Dark Young that go along with the Black Goat, before I'd take on the Goat himself. Because their designs had connections to nature, I felt this was a cool opportunity to try to go really out there with coloration, and see the results if say.. what if I paint green, wash brown? Vice versa? Can I start with a goal of making something look one way in my mind and end up there? Can I make six distinct figures and not be disappointed with one or two?
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This ended up being a fun experiment overall... things like green/brown alternating paints/washes didn't change much all told. Instead, it was an opportunity to try different things, like thinning the paint to fill the gaps in the branches prior to washing to have them stand out even more. The veins on the legs ended up being an excellent canvas for trying out the dry-brush technique as well, as it makes that area stand out well without having any contrast paints. It was good reinforcement for everything to date as well, as color mixing, getting all angles, adding enough wash, making mistakes and correcting them (I had too much paint while dry-brushing occasionally and would have to patch areas up)... all of them came up here. Which meant it was time for the Goat...
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So far, I think this is the longest I've spent on one mini... but it was of my volition. It could've been very quick if I'd made his appendages and tentacles the same colors. But I'm glad I didn't, because particularly in person, it really makes his figure look menacing when different aspects catch your eye for different reasons. This in many ways was the time in which I worked hard enough on it and the result was good enough that I wanted to change my caption from "beginner" to "novice".. but I decided I should probably finish one game box first.
Anyway, at this point, the Black Goat was largely a culmination of lessons learned.. I was careful to approach all sides of appendages & tentacles, plan out the colors ahead of time, consider what would change upon washing, dry-brush some minor details etc. And honestly, I still made happy mistakes - but using them and pivoting from what I wanted was part of the fun!
Which meant all that was left was a few investigator minis, and Shoggoth from the core box. So, here he is, as the last enemy from the core set:
Not much to say at this point.. by now, I wasn't intimidated about any aspect of it, it didn't take me ages to do, and while it doesn't look mind-blowingly amazing, it looks pretty solid to me! Just fewer mistakes, more confidence and practice. I could've done fancier stuff with his tentacles, but he's a new color variation and still looks scary/intimidating enough.
Which leaves the investigators... I didn't take individual photos, so to see the order I did them, "read" from the back left (earliest) to the front right (most recent).
Core box folks have a lot of rougher paint jobs and mistakes, but once you get to Morgan in the front, it looks like a completely different person painted him, which feels great to see.
I did the Season 2 box later on, so a lot of them look overall better. More details about my mistakes and issues are written in my replies to the images posted.
Finally leaving me with the entire Core Box done.. as a reminder that much like I started with essentially no knowledge, talent, skill, practice, or expensive equipment... if I can end up making some cool looking minis by the end of a single box, you
definitely can too!
Best of luck to all future painters as you begin your journey! =) And thanks for reading along about mine. If you have the time to try, it's worth a shot!
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Don't you guys feel the same? Shrek's world is already very ''Unmatched'' and their characters are expressive and fun.
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