Friday Fun

Well, the blog makes it into double figures in terms of updates, which is nice, lol. And I haven't resorted to cat pics or llamas yet either. This is encouraging.
The first of my little run of commissions has arrived in the post today, so I had best get some models finished and clear the decks.

With this in mind, I made some real progress on Cassandra last night, working through her skin tones. The idea was to make the skin cool coloured, with plenty of subtle (and not so subtle) hints of the other colours already on the model. This involved quite a lot of glazing and adjusting of the skin colour itself as I went along. I also added a couple of cuts and scrapes to her. I think that there was one as a part of the sculpt on her hip, but that may have been me being careless in the clean up. Speaking of which, I wasn't as meticulous on the mould lines as I should have been, and now I shall need to address that. Just got to decide whether to fill them and paint them, or make a feature of them. I shall also now need to make some final decisions on the base for her.

Anyway, pics...

Shiny shiny

Whilst I have been enjoying this model, it does feel like it has been taking a long time, and that I've not made as much progress. However, with this new update, I think that Cassandra is definitely moving towards her finish.

So, what has been done since the last update? Well, being a sucker for punishment, I've gone a bit all out with the shield by adding some sky-earth type non-metallics to the outside around the fish, and then around the rim on the inside. Further, I then decided to paint on a load of electronic circuitry to the inside of the shield.
I've tidied up the glowing areas (and removed some parts that weren't working around the shield and the little faces in her armour), making them more concentrated and enhancing one or two spots, most specifically the glow of the angler fish' lure, which I'm quite pleased with.
Then, most recently, I've painted the rather provocative spear, with its glowing, erm, business end... lol
Lastly, I've started to sketch in the light and shade of the skin. The intention is for it to be the combination of blue and pale flesh that you see, but obviously blended in better. After that I hope that it will be final tidy ups and final decisions with the base as I am torn between two options which I'll reveal another time.

For now here are the pics...

In other news, I've picked up a couple of commissions in the last week or so. While this is really good for me, it will more than likely mean that I won't be showing off anything without clearance from the clients (one commission will definitely not be shown for a while). And so I'll have to fill the gaps with musings about new releases and some older minis. I also will be working at Salute at the ExCel centre in London on April 12th for Hasslefree miniatures, so I'll try and do some sort of report on the show, with pics of what I succumb to buying! lol

Just keep swimming...

I've not spent as much time at the table as usual in the last couple of weeks. I'm not sure whether it is due to me avoiding finishing the Soda Pops walker scene, tiredness in general, or a bit of a lack of enthusiasm for painting.
One thing that I do feel that I need to do is a little bit of shopping, most specifically for some new brushes. I've been a bit harsh on my brushes lately, and as a result they've not lasted as well as they might usually. I'm also feeling the need for some new paints. I'm looking at maybe picking up some of the new Scale75 paints, which seem to be largely positively reviewed. Also, from the videos that I've seen, they look like they behave well in airbrushes, which is a plus for me.

I shall think on with that, but in the mean time I've been tickling along with Cassandra.

Most of what I had been doing was tightening up parts of the model, but the more I fix, the more I see right now. So I'm going to need to stop "progress" shortly and tidy up the bits that I have done - probably after I decide what to do to the skin, for fear of finishing areas that I then blob skin tones on by accident!

What I have done though is carry on with the metals, making some parts look kind of like chrome (I repeat, kind of...) and add a splash of colour for the helmet...

 Having done this I felt that the red needed a lot more shading and I also added some neon style source lighting, but I'm not so convinced by that at the moment - it will definitely need some fixing up.
However, more progressively I have decided upon the design for her shield. A bit of Google-fu on Hoplites and Ancient Greek shields tended to throw up the same images repeatedly, most of which just weren't suitable for what I wanted to do, particularly as I wanted to somehow incorporate the circle which is on one side of the shield.
A lot of versions of Cassandra that I have seen have erred towards Giger, which is fine as she is a cyborg lady. :)
For me, I was looking at Tron, which is a Disney product, and somehow in the midst of my Googling, I was reminded of another Disney product... Finding Nemo! lol!
And in one scene of the film there is a big scary angler fish that nearly eats Marlin and Dory...

And so, the brain started to play join the dots -> Tron style glowing model + Glowing fish with big eye = A quick sketch and this design was born...

Still plenty to do with the shield yet, but the "difficult" part I am quite pleased with :)