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

New arrival, and Bombel the Inspector:D

My latest purchase arrived today:D

First historical piece, new company in the collection.
Awesome BadA$$ Viking Chief from Pegaso Models.  Scale 1:20, so he's quite big, impressive, and expensive:(.

Ahh look at him! So bold and beautiful;p
Staring somewhere at the horizon. His whole posture screaming: I got the power!! (and I won't hesitate to use it, but I guess just my gaze should make your knees tremble!)

(c) Pegaso Models,
sculptor: Andrea Jula,

painter: Diego Ruina

And of course my Not So Little Green Eyed Monster (not that he's jelaous or something... he just has green eyes... and is a true monster most of the time) had to check everything first.

And final conclusion??

Hmmm lemme think...

Nah! I prefer minis with boobs:P

Can you blame him??:>

cheers

'eM