Monster Bottle from Maow Miniatures

I'm really happy to say I managed to finish another mini.
Monster bottle from Maow Miniatures.

 

cmon

I know there are few weaker spots, but I must say I'm happy how it turned out. Especially eyes and teeth.
I hope you'll  like it as well.

cheers

'eM

Hall of Shame Part 3

Time for Episode 3:D
Mostly black and white, not particularly artistic, simply preshaded.

cheers
'eM

Hall of shame Part 2

Another portion of minis found in my deepest drawers.
If I didn't miss anything, there will be at least three more episodes:)

Cheers

'eM

A very, very fast WIP

A very fast photo (please do appreciate the background:P) of the back of the bottle.
Very bad colours, due to a flash and messy surroundings, but the Maow logo looks good enough for a first draft, I'd say.

The black line under the Logo is not supposed to imitate the word 'miniatures', I'm not going to recreate the whole logo. I just thought it would look cool. I think I might be wrong;p


Cheers

'eM

Glossy eyes and other works - WIP

Monster bottle:

As you can see, I added lots of delicate redish and blueish veins in the corners of the big eye, gloss varnish and some light reflections. I'm affraid I need to redo them, because the natural ones from those two lamps, I was doing photo under, look way better:)
But other than that, I'm quite happy how the 'face' of the bottle is looking now.

The Grinder:
Not much to say for now. This is an extremely early stage. Only the leather elements are touched. I'm hoping I'll be able to try oil paints on this one. All these flat surfaces seems to be perfect for that, but I can't be sure if I won't chicken when it comest to that.

Menhom, Dark Shadow:
Next project I'm about to start;p
It's almost ready to be glued together, and I'm really excited to paint this one:D I even have clear vision of colour scheme and base, and that's rare for me.

At this point I think I should start new part of this blog: Hall of Shame, for all those started and abbandoned minis. I got the feeling that my HoS is allready huge, but I tend to hide unfinished and abbandoned minis in my drawers, so they don't make me guilty for starting a new one:P Maybe looking at them all in one place, would motivate me to finish at least some.
I do envy people who are able to work on one project from the beggining to the finish without distractions. Or at least are able to work more methodically than I do.

And how would you describe your workflow? Methodical or rather chaotic and full of various projects 'on hold'? I'm really curious if I'm the only one with ever growing  Hall of Shame?

cheers

'eM

Monsters, monsters... WIP

My little monster bottle is progressing quite well I think. The 'face' part is almost ready. Still eyes will need some more attention, few touches to clean the area a bit, and of course gloss varnish. But there is the whole back of the bottle to take care of. I'm planning to try and recreate at least some prints from the real Vallejo paint pot, maybe mixed with some Maow stuff, but I'm not sure if I can manage to do barecode properly. If not I'll try something else.

The other one, Raggarth, is not such fun to paint. The shade of blue I took for skin is tricky for me to work with, and I still struggle with the shining (the layer of dullcote didn't help, maybe it was too thin?). But leather elements and the bones on his elbows and neck look good, and metal parts at least promissing, so maybe I won't trash it yet:)

That's how it looks at the moment.
Below you can find photos from earlier stages, almost back to the  basecoat.

As you can see, the skin doesn't look much better now than on the oldest photo. Sure there are some delicate highlights and shades, but there is still work to be done and lots of it.

cheers

'eM

Walter Proof

As I said earlier, Walter is ready for a while now.
For a while long enough for me to find out what I could do different, better:P
For example now I know,  I could emphasize the bags under his eyes a bit more with other colour, I could add frog like spots on his skin, mostly on his head and legs, I could....

But I didn't, and I because decided that he's ready, so I'm not gonna change it.
I'm simply gonna use that ideas with another mini:)

So here he is, with splashes of water and without all those alterations I mentioned above.

cmon

I still like him. And I hope you do too.
It's a cute mini, real pleasure to paint, and a pleasure to look at in the cabinet.

cheers

'eM

Monster Bottles - review

I just bought yet another Maow minis.
Monster bottles this time.

(c) Maow Miniatures

Packaging:
Again bottles came to me in zip bags. But, like Matou from Maow Miniatures, said in a comment about my Hell Baby review, it's a deliberate decision to keep prices low.

 

Minis(??):
I'm not even sure if the word miniature is the right one to use. Monster bottles are the size of an oryginal Vallejo's bottle (or Rackham's), and that makes their 'faces' seriously huge.
Here are photos for comparison: one with my other Maow stuff, and the second one with real paint pot.

Impressive, isn't it?

Quality of the cast:
The pictures are mostly self-explanatory:)

Again very funny and original minis and quite good casts. In fact the only parts that need serious work are under caps, so when you're planning on painting your bottles with caps on, you don't even have to worry about that part at all. At the back of the bottles you can find a knife trace after removing a mould line, well at least I can find it;p But fixing it is not a big problem.
No airbubbles though:D After cleaning and preparing both bottles, I must say, I didn't find not even one.


Sculpting:

As you can see on the picture above, both bottles are completely different in style when it comes to sculpting. First one full of sharp edges and rather busy, the other one, with tentacles, is more soft, with nice smooth surfaces for freehands.

Ah I forgot... You probably noticed that bottles are not standing straight:) It's because both of them have a huge chunk of resin underneath. It's probably cast vent or something like that (I was never very familiar with casting process to be honest). I guess I could remove it before taking pictures, but I prefer to present mini excactly as I get it:)

Conclusions:
Both bottles are awesome when it comes to the concept and a huge fun to paint:) I bet they are not the last ones in my collection:)

Cheers

'eM

More Maow in progress and other WIPs

Before I'll post photo of finished Walter (he's ready for a while now, but I forgot to post pic here) I want to show you something else from Maow miniatures: early WIP of one of the Monster bottles, the one with lots of eyes... and even more teeth:

As you can see this is indeed very early WIP. Nothing is even close to be finished. I just marked more or less lights and shadows on the 'skin', and did a bit more work on teeth an tongue. Because I can't make my mind how to paint eyes: more like humans or maybe animal with pointy pupils? I just left them with unfinished basecoat.


The other mini I'm currently trying to work on is Sphere Wars Raggarth.

Huge pain in the neck if I may be honest... Not very great cast (and that's an euphemism, trust me), horrible in assembly, and, because I couldn't see a possibility to glue it together after painting, quite tricky to paint.
At this point, I managed to do some preshading here, but it's not working very well on this model, so I decided to start with colours today.
I'm going with the Sphere Wars idea of this creature, and I'll paint it in a blue-ish colour, a bit more turqouise maybe, and of course true metallics.
If he'll be lucky, and I won't lose rest of the patience I got for him, tomorrow some more pictures should be ready to post:)

cheers

'eM

Let's splash some water:)

I managed to finish yet another mini!!

Well... almost finish...
I forgot about water splashes around his foot. He's running after all, and even if the water is very shallow, it shouldn't be so still.

I decided to use method presented by Scalerama in one of their online tutorials (you can find it here and here, or here, if you're interested) to create some 'fuss' in the water.

The method itself is quite simple. You just use clear plastic as a shape for a wave and build weter effect on it to create splash of water, or very dynamic and high wave. Of course building a nice thick and varied splash will take few layers of water effect, some work and patience (in case of such a small mini it can be also a bit tricky) but I think it's worth it.
 

And what do you think?


'eM

Little Devil in a nappy - review

Next mini under a 'microscope' - Hell baby from Maow miniatures.
Review posted on Chest of Colors website for a change:)

'eM

Every girl loves shopping!! part 1

And I'm no different:P

But in my case it's not only shoe shopping, but also mini shopping that makes me extremely happy.
And during last few weeks I bought so many minis, that it should keep me happy till the end of the year.

So without further delay, that's my new Treasures (at least the first bunch):

Hell baby (Maow) - so sweet I couldn't resist

Shark boy (Maow)

 Succube (JMD)

Menhom Dark Shadow (Andrea)

Volgor the Skull Hunter (Andrea)

Hopefully, soon I should be able to post short reviews and some photos of unpacked minis.


cheers
'eM

It's been a long time:)

It's been a really long time since I posted anything here. But there is a good reason for that.

First I was on holiday in Poland (combined with Hussar 2K!!).
You know the drill while wisiting friends and family... not much time for internet activities (but plenty of time to be hangover);p

And then, after safe return home, I found out that my graphic cardwas boiling slowly for quite a long time, and I can see 'Things' on my screen that shouldn't be there.... So no processing pictures, not even using my computer for a longer period of time;/

But now everything is working again so I can post some news and photos:)


cheers

'eM

That's what I've done so far

Here are minis I've painted in the past, starting from early 2009. I'm not gonna describe every and each of them, but I think it might give you an idea who I am as a painter, what's my style and what can you expect in the future.

Miniature painted for 3rd Chest of Colors Mini Exchange  for Szczurek.

2nd place in 'Monster' category at Salute 2011.

Miniature painted for 4rd Chest of Colors Mini Exchange for Irkuck.

And yes, I know he should be in blue armor, but it's 'emo librarian':)

cheers
m