Criminal Syndicate
Kingpin
Kingpin was a joy to paint and the process was really straight forward as I just followed Sorastro's video on him (subbing out paints for GW paints). I would not have had the foresight to shade the pants the way I did were it not for that video and I think that is a key component to making the model really look good. I'm thankful that I had enough experience painting white on other minis before I got to him, as painting so many giant white sections on a model would otherwise have been a really negative experience. Thank God for Corax White is all I can say. This is another model where when I look at it I don't really see anything I can improve on right now. I'm sure as my skill grows that'll change (hopefully), but as of this writing I think this is the best I can do.
Black Cat
Finished up Black Cat. She was pretty fun to paint. I think I'm finally at a point to where I'm comfortable painting black, which I never would've believed would be true at the beginning of this project. I've noticed since switching over to Scalecolor that I'm having to relearn how to paint certain colors. Before switching I had gotten rather comfortable with white and now without the benefit of GW Corax White, I feel a bit like a beginner when painting it again. Same is true with yellow and red, which I'll get into when I talk about Omega Red, which I'm working on now.
You might notice that she has some terrain in her background. This is largely because due to her color scheme being black and white and pale skin, I really struggled with pics of her as all the detail kept getting washed out, no matter what I did with my camera settings on my phone. It was a really big reminder that I need to get set up with a better (and permanent) photo taking setup. I'll have to dig into that later. The other thing I think I discovered with Black Cat is that I really struggle with faces and honestly I'm not sure what to do about it. I spent a proportionately large amount of time on her face just because I couldn't quite get where the mask and the eyes begin and even looking at her now I feel you can't really make out a lot of detail on the face. I'm not sure if my eyesight just isn't as good as I remember it being or if I'm just not used to looking at a model that closely or what, but my faces are definitely lacking and I think it really shows with Black Cat. I'm going to have to be more cognizant of that going forward.
Bullseye
Bullseye was probably one of my fastest paint jobs and I'm really pleased with how he came out. After doing the dark blue on Hawkeyes pants I wanted to do a blue on Bullseye that wasn't as dark, but also wasn't really bright. I also wanted to take everything I had learned about highlighting muscles from painting Hulk and Venom and apply that to Bullseye. I'm absolutely thrilled with how he turned out and I have no idea what I would even try to do differently were I to repaint him. Total success in my book.
Crossbones
So Crossbones is a bit of a mixed bag of success and failure for me. On one hand, he's one of the core models and got a thick base coat of contrast paints, which really hurt the overall paint job. On the other hand, playing with the white and the flesh tones worked really well and really helped me to understand how to paint those colors using the new high contrast technique I was using for this project. He also taught me that a number of MCP minis are not painted correctly as the studio painted Crossbones doesn't have the bar on the head painted white, which it is supposed to according to "canon". It's even sculpted into the model. This helped me correctly identify that AMG goofed on their Venom as well, so now whenever I see a mini I always do some googling to make sure I'm getting it right. At the end of the day it's just a personal preference and not really a big deal, but immersion is really important to me so I wanted to get it right.
Green Goblin
Green Goblin was surprisingly rewarding to paint. I had the advantage of having a Sorastro guide on how to paint him (PDF from his website, not a YouTube video). The biggest part that I was worried about that caused me to seek out a guide was I knew I didn't want his smoke plume to look really basic. I wanted to up my game on it, but I wasn't sure how to go about that. This might be my first deliberate attempt at wet blending. I think I've accidentally/unintentionally done wet blending in the past, but I think with Green Goblin I went into it knowing I was worried about the transitions in the smoke plume and wanted to make them as seemless as possible. I coulnd't be happier with how his plume turned out. Smoothest transition I've ever painted.
The rest of the model just kind of fell together. I used what I learned with Ghost Rider on this flames to make sure the pumpkins look "hot" internally and that their plumes looked like they were coming from a fire and I'm really happy with how that turned out. The only thing I wish I had done differently is using blue for some of the NMM on the glider as right now it doesn't really read like NMM. I can add that to another of the long lessons I've learned from this project.
Hood
Still unpainted/unreleased.
Killmonger
Killmonger was really, really fun to paint. I don't have much experience painting darker skin tones, so I was a little concerned about how I'd be able to pull that off, but I'm really happy with how it turned out. In restrospect I would probably change the highlighting on most of his muscles, but learning the appropriate way to highlight muscles has been a long learned lesson from this project and the process of painting him was one of the things that taught me that lesson.
Kraven the Hunter
Kraven painted up pretty quickly. My worry going into it was I was afraid he would look boring with how monochromatic he can be. Thus, I really dug into my earthy browns, oranges and yellows to try to come up with a different recipe for each piece of clothing to make sure his outfit looks diverse. I feel like I pulled it off. In retrospect, I think I should've increased the contrast on him. I think bringing the fur up to pure white would've looked better and perhaps go darker with the musculature. One of the things I've noticed about Scalecolor is although they blend really easily, their whites are fairly muted. As such I tried to mix in some GW White Scar, but I don't think I put enough in to really get the "pop" effect I usually go for. I've noticed in Sorastro's guides he is often using a Titanium White from some artist brand. I've went ahead and ordered some, but it won't be here for a while, so in the meantime I'll have to try to make GW White Scar work.
I tried to play a bit with the blades of his spear and kukuri doing some NMM. I'm trying to get more comfortable with it as I'm trying to work up to my Ultron repaint. Looking at Kraven now I realize I forgot to paint the eyes of the lion on his vest. Whoops. I'll have to correct that at some point. For now I'm moving on to getting my backlog basecoated as it's the most daunting part for me for painting and once it's done I can really knock out some minis.
M.O.D.O.K.
This is, without a doubt, the silliest model I've ever painted in my entire life. The character concept is so absurd and so over the top with cheese. He was also incredibly fun to paint and pretty much single handedly taught me how to paint yellow in a way that I am very, very happy with. To this day I'm amazed at how smoothly the yellow and the skin turned out. The only changes I would make are the purple, the red thing in his headband and the jet blast/smoke. What I learned from painting Green Goblin would greatly help with the smoke and I wish I had painted the red in the headband as if it were glowing, perhaps with some OSL. Outside of that, I will forever be grateful to this guy for teaching me to love painting yellow. Thanks M.O.D.O.K.
Mysterio
Omega Red
Man, where to begin with Omega Red. Everything about this model was an exploration and a risk. Since switching over to Scalecolor paints I am no longer comfortable painting red or yellow. I don't have a recipe down for either of those colors that I feel confident in. On top of that, I decided that I was going to try to do all his metal in chrome to 1.) challenge myself and 2.) because Omega Red has been a favorite character of mine for a long time. Prior to painting Omega Red, the model that held the crown for the model I've spent the most time painting was Thanos. Omega Red has officially taken that crown and honestly I think it'll be awhile until his throne gets challenged. I had to do him in steps and painted full other models in between those steps to prevent burn out. He's easily the most ambitious piece I've painted so far.
As far as how I feel about him; I'm generally thrilled. I think the chrome turned out so much better than I feared it would when I started. I think the coils are incredibly imperfect and there a millions of little missteps on them, but with how nuts it is to even try to chrome like 50 or so little trapezoidal metal panels (per coil), I'm more than willing to leave it alone and just take him in as a model and be fine with the imperfections. For my first attempt at highly reflective non-metallic metal, I really don't think I could've expected this good of a performance, let alone expected more. I'm really glad I challenged myself in this way if for no other reason than that it fully demystified painting chrome for me. I no longer find the idea of chroming Cable's gun or Deadpool's sword to be even remotely intimidating. Even tackling an Ultron repaint seems very doable now. Can't guarantee it'll look great, but I no longer see the idea as some insane feat that only a madman would attempt. It's weird because just typing that out and recognizing it is very empowering. That's pretty cool.
As far as the yellow goes, I'm pretty happy with the yellow recipe. I think it captures "dirty blonde" pretty well. I'm still not 100% on it, but I feel like I've got a better grasp on it than I did before going in, so it's progress.
As far as the red goes, it was almost as big a journey as the chrome was. In particular, I'm having a difficult time finding a level of highlighting and shading on red that doesn't make it look orange or pink. I seem to constantly struggle finding a way to highlight it all the way to white without over highlighting it and making it look atrocious. This is the same issue I run into with black (look at my first Punisher for an example of that). I tried watching several YouTube videos on this exact topic and everything I found didn't really tackle it. What I think I finally figured out with Omega Red was that just because I'm going all the way to white with my highlights doesn't mean everything that gets highlighted has to go all the way to white. It's okay to leave big panels at a brighter version of the base color and not have to get pure white in there somewhere. So when I went to do his highlights I used various red tones to highlight, but saved the very "pink" and "white" highlights for only certain small areas. Overall I feel like it works. I think especially since the model already has an insane amount of contrast thanks to the chrome, had I over-highlighted the red I think it might make the model very distracting and confused. This also makes me think that perhaps in the future when I do black, I should approach highlighting it from the same perspective and I might get similar results.
I feel like this challenge might've helped me grow as a painter more than anything I've ever done before. Feels like I smashed through a threshold with him. Very cool feeling.
Sin
With Sin I decided to try my hand at highlighting red using whites instead of yellows. I've struggled getting reds bright because if I go with yellow the red ends up with an orange hue and I want to break away from that. So with Sin I decided to give it a go using the new Scalecolor paints. Overall I'm pretty happy with how the red turned out. It feels like a true red and still goes all the way to white with the highlights, so I guess that's a mission accomplished.
Also working on getting black highlighted up using a very dark blue with progressively more white mixed in with each layer and I think I'm getting better and better at that. I tried a new recipe for the Auburn hair and I'm not sure I'm happy with it. I think I'm running into an issue where sticking to only Scalecolor is limiting my palette too much. When I was picking out the colors to paint the hair with I wasn't entirely thrilled with my options. I think I might've been better off including some GW paints to fill out the palette. This was painted up as a "quick and dirty" since I'm not really attached to the character in any way, so I'm pretty satisfied with her paint job. It's serviceable.
Tragically, I was really proud of how the skin turned out, but the camera washed out all the highlights, even after I tried to correct for exposure and contrast, so you can't really see it in the photos. I might have to try to retake better photos during the day and see if they come out better.
Taskmaster
Taskmaster was one of several models I painted assembly line style to get them knocked out so I could move onto other minis. In retrospect I shouldn't have done this as I think it lowered the quality on a lot of those minis. However, Taskmaster in particular I think came out pretty well. I think this is mostly due to my comfort painting yellow and white. The only thing about him I would change were I to paint him today as his own project is giving his shield the Captain America treatment. That is, painting it to look like it's got lines of light reflecting from the middle to the edges of the shield. I think that could've looked really good and I probably should've taken the time to do it. I did end up with an extra of this mini (my wife wanted her own Punisher to paint), so perhaps in the future I will do a repaint on him.
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