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| by Restoration Games |
A Greenhorn
So, on possibly the BEST day that it could have arrived, Fireball Island by Restoration Games showed up on my doorstep on Black Friday. This is important because Black Friday is the day we celebrate Thanksgiving with my wife's side of the family, and they all LOVED the original, as I discussed in my write up of my interview with designer Rob Daviau.
We had a great time with it, and my full review will be coming at a later point, but for right now, I'm going to focus on something that a lot of people will find intimidating: painting these minis.
Painting in and of itself can be intimidating, but especially with these minis. I mean, look at this! This is the Green Fat Guy next to one of my A Song of Ice & Fire minis:
These suckers ar SMALL, so if you haven't done so already, I HIGHLY recommend you read over my painting tutorial on the BASICS before we jump into this. I'm starting with the Green Fat Guy because that's who I played as when we played last, and I just figured he's got a pretty simple sculpt, so it would be a good one to start off with.
But if you're ready, then let's go!
We had a great time with it, and my full review will be coming at a later point, but for right now, I'm going to focus on something that a lot of people will find intimidating: painting these minis.
Painting in and of itself can be intimidating, but especially with these minis. I mean, look at this! This is the Green Fat Guy next to one of my A Song of Ice & Fire minis:
These suckers ar SMALL, so if you haven't done so already, I HIGHLY recommend you read over my painting tutorial on the BASICS before we jump into this. I'm starting with the Green Fat Guy because that's who I played as when we played last, and I just figured he's got a pretty simple sculpt, so it would be a good one to start off with.
But if you're ready, then let's go!
1. Gameplan, Prep, and Prime
Okay, so there's not any real information about what these guys are SUPPOSED to look like all painted up, other than the pre-packaged, pre-painted set of minis from the KS.
They look FINE, but some of the color seems very flat to me, so I'll be veering in and out of this color scheme, but I'll be trying my best to represent the original color of plastic on the mini somehow.
That said, I've assembled the following paints:
I've got Dark Sand, Flat Earth, and Basic Skin Tone from Vallejo, though any tan, brown, or flesh colors would make a reasonable substitute. From Target and the craft store I have this yellowing green and black and white.
As you can see, I've already primed the mini with Matt White by The Army Painter. I always suggest, even if we're trying to keep the painting costs as low as possible, to prime with the good stuff. This primer itself has a good grip to it, so it creates a nice surface for the paint to hold onto, which is important since these guys are going to get bashed around a lot by marbles.
2. Basecoats
Alright, so, unless otherwise noted, all of our paints should be thinned in a 50/50 ratio with water. Now that that's out of the way, let's start with our basic skin tone.
You're going to have to use one of your smaller brushes for pretty much the whole mini, and that's fine.
Paint the basic skin tone on the exposed legs, arms and hands, and the head. You don't have to be TOO careful around the glasses or beard, as we'll be covering all of that up anyway, but make sure you don't forget his bottom lip.
Now we'll move onto painting the green. Again, don't worry about getting on the camera or camera straps, but make sure you get all of it, including the sleeves and the collar, especially in the back of the figure.
Next, we'll use our dark sand/tan to give him khaki shorts. Because nothing says "Fat Guy on Vacation" like khaki shorts.
After that we'll move onto painting the shows, facial hair, rims of his glasses, and camera strap with the flat earth or standard brown. Use your smallest brush for this detail as the mustache and beard can be a bit tricky.
For his "Cool Guy" hair in the back, instead of painting side to side, paint individual lines going up and down in a ring pattern around the back of his head. This helps give the hair a more natural looking start and finish.
The last thing you'll paint is the camera. I never use pure black on a miniature because it doesn't leave you anywhere to go in terms of shading it. So, my formula for painting black is actually a 50/50 mix of black and white. If you've read any of my other tutorials, this should be very familiar.
Paint the camera with this mix, and when that's done, take this time to touch up any details that got accidentally painted on, like repainting the lenses of the glasses white. Once it's all dry, we move onto shading.
3. Shading
Other than buying a good primer, having good shades and washes is a must. I typically use only Army Painter. For today, I've chosen the following:
We've got Flesh Wash, Dark Tone, Soft Tone, and Green Tone. Yes, that's a lot of different washes for quite a small mini, but they will all add up to create a nicely shaded mini by the time we're done, and the nice part is that the surface area we're covering is so small that you'll only need one drop per color, if that.
First things first, apply the flesh wash to all of the skin. Just a thin layer on all of the skin, and don't let it pool in one place. Do your best to avoid the lenses of the glasses and the shirt. We don't want the fleshy tint to color the shades that we'll be adding later.
Then, use green tone for the shirt. Try to keep in on the shirt itself, and not on the camera or its straps, and DEFINITELY keep it off of the skin. Don't be afraid to use your detail brush, and again, just a thin layer over the entirety of the shirt. Just enough to darken the details, like the folds underneath the collar or at his biceps.
Now, we'll apply soft tone, which is kind of a brown wash, to the khaki shorts. Nothing too special here.
The last shade we'll be using is dark tone, which is a black wash. Apply this to the shoes, socks, hair, facial hair, and glasses, including lenses.
Be VERY CAREFUL when you're applying this to the glasses as the black wash is very STRONG and if you get some on the skin, you'll likely have to repaint and reshade that portion of the skin, so go slow and use your smallest brush.
4. Highlights and Finishing Touches
Okay, so highlighting is always completely optional, because, honestly, if you've come this far, your mini is going to look better than any unpainted mini out there. However, as we grow as painters, you'll notice that certain minis lose a little POP without highlights, so take that for what you will.
So, the first thing you'll be highlighting is the skin. Taking your basic skin tone that you used during the basecoat stage, paint the center of the nose, the cheeks and the top of the head, but make sure you leave room near the edges of those features, as they get darker. You're just trying to make the part of the skin that sticks out the most pop.
You'll also do this with the knees, just paint the front of the knee caps and the front of the shin.
For the hands, the best thing to do would be looking down at the mini with a bird's eye view and applying what I call top-down highlights. Anything that you can see from the bird's eye view is what the light would catch, so it needs a highlight, but be sure the try to do the fingers individually, and don't paint over any creases or recesses that have been darkened by the wash.
Next, we'll highlight the shirt. For his belly, highlight the center of the belly and work your way outward, leaving the bottom of the shirt and his chest unhighlighted. This helps give the mini a sense of roundness. For his shoulders and collar, apply top-down highlights as described above to make him pop.
For more info on top down highlights, click here.
After that, use your dark sand/tan to just paint the front of his right khaki shorts thigh, pulling the color in each direction, without actually painting the sides. This will keep the thigh highlighted, and keep the depth of the shading on the sides.
Now using your flat earth or standard brown, we're going to highlight the top of the camera straps and toes and heels of his shoes.
If you want, you can also paint a highlight along his mustache, but that is VERY difficult as it is a thin, thin area to paint without getting it on the nose or mouth.
The very last thing we'll highlight will be using your white to highlight the socks. Just do the front of the socks and the anklebones sticking out on either side, and that should be enough.
You'll also want to put a TEENY TINY dot of white in the top right corner of each lense to give it a sense of reflection, and I also did the rim of the camera lense, to make it look reflective as well.
5. Steal Some Treasure!
That's it! I DO recommend you spray him with some protective matte spray varnish (I use Krylon Matt Finish which is the cheapest and most effective that I could find) as that will protect your paint job from the bombardment of marbles coming at him.
I hope you enjoyed this, and if you found this useful, please consider becoming a Patron of mine to keep this blog ad-free and flowing with giveaways like the one below! Be on the lookout for more tutorials for Fireball Island coming to this blog soon, and I hope to see you around Vul-Kar again!
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