July was a relatively quiet month where we did a lot of playtesting of Cyber Pet Quest and preparation for GenCon, as well as wrangle the logistical beast that is shipping and fulfillment for Lunar Rush and Omicron Protocol - Critical Condition Expansion. We are now 2 days away from GenCon 2023 starting, so if you're headed to GenCon, PLEASE come by Booth 2932 to say hi to us and check out the games!
The last week has been surreal... And since we haven’t written a blog post in a while, I thought I'd post this here to share.
Preparing for DunDraCon, GAMA, and JoCo cruise haven’t left me with much free time but I managed to squeeze in a couple hours of painting. Without further ado, here’s Lucky!
The blog has taken a back seat since the end of the Kickstarter campaign. The holidays were busy and we had a lot of logistics to figure out as we finalized our manufacturing plan and got started producing OP. Exciting times! One of the exciting developments is that we produced our first prototypes of the alt sculpt Bolt and Lucky miniatures.
It’s been a busy couple of weeks for Bernie and myself. Starting on the 9th we did LVO, a BackerKit playtest meetup during the week, and then OrcCon in LA This last weekend. During this week and a half we still met up to work on the game 3 nights, doing some major revisions on the rulebook (stay tuned, playtesters) and working through some difficult balancing issues. How, you ask, did I find time for our favorite Mountie? I’m not even sure, but I did find time - that’s what matters.
I had another very fun painting session on the Epic Duck Studios twitch stream on Sunday. I took some time to catch up on base coating during the week so I was able to get right into really defining volumes on the model. I’ve been focusing on improving my painting in a lot of areas, with special attention on creating greater contrast. With that in mind, I’m pretty happy with how the shadows on the horse and the red jacket are turning out.
I had a really fun time painting last Sunday on the Epic Duck Studios twitch stream. I must have been talking too much because halfway through the show I looked down and realized I had base coated 1/2 the horse, shaded the underside, and blended the brown and white of his hooves. I hadn’t even touched Lance himself by the end of the show! All this after discussing at the top of the show how I usually paint a model in the order it would get dressed: skin, undershirt, pants, jacket, etc…
Just a couple models left to go before we have 2 complete sets: Seeker and Lance. I am working as hard as I can on this second set because they have to be my best photogenic models ever. But I also have to get them done because we need photos sooner than later. We have a date with a photographer February 23rd and we are going to be at LVO the weekend of the 8th and Orccon the next week. That gives me next weekend and whatever time I can scrounge up during the week.
I mentioned last week that non-metallic metals are easier to learn for me on our models because there is very little metal to paint. If I’m painting a belt buckle and it looks wrong it’s a matter of a few seconds to start over and try something new. It takes a little longer for a rifle or a knee pad, but I find these are not too discouraging as well. This week I started on Flash, and Flash has the biggest piece of metal in the game so far - his drone.
Painting our models has been a great way for me to start learning NMM. The near-future urban setting has dictated the style of the models, which means the metallic bits are limited to a few small parts of the model, as opposed to many miniature lines out there that are composed of suits of armor, swords and shields, etc, which can be very daunting when you’re not quite sure what you’re doing. I’ve taken a few less successful stabs at painting NMM where I just bit off more than I could chew.
I’ve been trying to take my time to make our first run of metal models look as good as I can so we can take photographs and videos to build our Kickstarter page and attract people to our game over the next few months. It fits well with a long-time personal goal of mine: learn to paint non-metallic metals (NMM). On the other side of the coin is the mounting pressure to get it done already
It’s no secret that painting black on miniatures is hard. I learned a few tricks at GenCon, the two that stick with me are: highlights should be about 1/2 the size of normal highlights, and highlighting from black to grey often just ends up looking grey - it is best to tint your black highlights with another color like blue (cool) or brown (warm). Very few things in life are truly pitch black, tinting blacks can help differentiate materials on a model and reflect the world around the miniature.
I’ve had an airbrush for a while but I could never seem to get it to work for me. I read all about how to use my airbrush, how to clean it, what consistency to get the paint (milk). I did have some success, well ONE success: base-coating my palm fronds for my Guild Ball Fisherman’s goal. Even then the resulting mess and frustration was hardly worth the effort. But in the back of my mind I know I need to learn this skill if for no other reason than to improve my horrible zenithal priming method.
