Pandora and Teddy

At long last, Pandora's at a state I am willing to declare 'done'! There's still some minor tweaking, as there always is, but with her done, and Teddy almost done, my Pandora crew is almost complete and table-ready! Tonight I'll be basing them, I hope.

Her cape's purple is the same as Candy's dress and Teddy's belly, which helps tie the crew together a bit. Her boots got a plain leather. I'll have better pics of her when I get the chance to take them on a day with better lighting. After a bunch of back-and-forth, I went with a relatively basic metallic colour for her box of evils, figuring doing anything too ornate would pull attention from the rest of her.

I'm happy with how the wisps of power look coming out of her box. It was well worth covering with blu-tac!

Next up is the beast that is Teddy. His claws have earned their gloss black, and I've painted the patterns on the patches. I wanted to make them look like parts of kid's blankets, as though they were sewn in after being 'found' elsewhere. I still can't decide how to do the eyes though. Glowing green, red, and fiery orange are all possibilities, as well as just leaving them as dark black as I can make them.

Something else I'm debating is whether or not to gore up the teddy himself. On the one hand, it fits the style. On the other, I've never been much a fan of the heavy use of gore on models, and I want him to appear adorable if you take a quick glance, with increasing creepiness as you really take in the various elements of his enhanced form...

I'll probably sit with this for a while, and then perhaps add some gore if he makes a particularly noteworthy kill in-game.

Update for May 2-4

Somehow, this weekend is not the holiday, despite being the 24th. That said it's time for a painting update! I've had a busy week and not had a lot of chance to paint, but I have gotten some things accomplished.

Pandora's skirt is fixed, and I had the weirdest thing I've ever seen. Somehow, mixing 50/50 dark angels green and snot green, and leaving it on the wet pallette for a few hours turns it into a colour-change, neon-green! Goes on subtle, ends up crazy bright!

As a result, I'll have to down-blend some of the squiggles, rather than highlighting them...

I also started painting the Teddy yesterday. My intent with him is to make him appear faded, for the most part, since they're turned into these horrible monstrosities from old kids' bears. The detail level is crisp enough that a drybrush works to bring out all the details. I'm going to go with ivory teeth and gloss black claws, with probably pale stitches and glowing eyes. The bow will be green to match with Candy's dress, of course!

Finally, I've narrowed a Nomad scheme down to the point of tweaking final elements. I know the colours aren't the best in this shot, but it's drab green gun, boots, and webbing, dark red pants, pale armour with white shoulderpads, and a bright cyan blue for data link and guide-lights on his backpack. I'll be adding more distinct elements of rank and delineation to his shoulderpads, and likely a bit more ID-type stuff to his helmet as well, before moving on to the Wildcats!

I am going to stick with my idea to have the more... aggressive units in this army depicted more brightly coloured. Hellcats and Tomcats will retain some of their aggressive colouring, as would be appropriate for people who launch into battle from above!

More to come once I manage to get some painting done!

Let Me Show You What's In My Box...

I've started working on Pandora's crew a bunch. I love these models. The poses are so much stronger, the detail is fantastic, and in a lot of cases they've cleaned up the look of the models as well.

First up is Pandora herself. I wanted the skin-tone for her to be dusky, but also slightly creepy. I mixed my first brown layer with a bit of purple, and highlighted up from there, so she seems just slightly off in a way that's hard to put your finger on.

Then, I highlighted up to my proper skin tone, before giving her makeup. Green eyeshadow and lipstick adds to the unsettling quality of her skin and look. I'm debating how to do her clothes, though, so she ended up sitting for a while, with me debating tones, detail level, patterns...

Next I decided to work on Candy. Her skin treatment was similar, but I went far paler overall. With her dress I wanted to be not the goth black of her new look, nor the bright pink of before per se. My fiancee came up with the idea of a plum dress, which worked marvelously. I was also lucky enough to find an illustration of a dress that is almost exactly hers!

I wanted to do the white lacy frill around it, so first I painted that lower hem of her dress in grey (as with the wide collar) and then carefully painted an almost-white grey over top that, before accentuating the highlight sections:

Starting with just the basic pattern as you go around will let stuff dry, and allow you to touch up as needed.

(Sorry for photo blurriness) eventually I had a nice lacey pattern. I'll likely go back and really accentuate the lines once I know I'm done the rest, and am not worrying about stuff rubbing off.

The gloves were painted before I realized in her illustrations they're not supposed to be, but I prefer the look of her having nice cute white lace gloves. The wrist bangles will still be a good dark black though.

Also around this time the new Teddy came out, and I had to get one to accompany Kade. The new model is head and shoulders above the old one. Both in physical size and design. My one issue is something that is also 'wrong' with the Pandora spirits as well, and is an issue it seems with a lot of model makers. I'm tempted to call it the Miley Syndrome. Why does everything have to have tongues sticking out?! It's not terrifying, it's not even truly creepy, it's just goofy! On the Teddy, the old model's row of needle-fangs was just all danger. Whenever I see one with a giant snake of a tongue sticking out, I just picture them chomping accidentally on it!

That said, the new plastic would also provide much more (and much easier) conversion opportunity for those who want multiple Teddies; wholly separate head, head in two parts right along the jawline, and arms that are actually split at the shoulder combine to make this a model with great potential for modifcation.

My final photo for this version is the Teddy in dry-run assemble. I'll have to fill in a bunch of mold lines, and convert the mouth so his tongue is properly inside, but otherwise it's a sweet model.