Deadly Dance

Well, at last it's time to reveal the reason for the lack of updates on the pasts weeks. I decided to man up and paint something for the Infinity painting competition during the Complutum Belli Sattelite tournament that took place in Madrid this weekend.

As I decided to go to the Interplanetario painting competition, I took this as a training project for what would come. As my expenses were already on the budget I decided to make up something with things I got at home already. I wanted to make a dynamic scene, so static posed miniatures were out of the question and I had no time to start working on conversions.

The Bandit was my first choice as he was one of the most dynamic minis in my growing paint queue. Looking for someone to him to interact with I found the Tohaa pioneer pose surprisingly fitting to create a scene of combat. As if the Bandit was hacking at her and she just managed to dodge the blow.

From there on It was all about setting. I wanted for a long time to try a very dark scene with high contrast focus light and this was my chance to do it. I found a really cool base of a city ruin with a broken lampost in it that would totally give the mood I was looking for.

I had to repair the lampost wiring as the original was broken on several places. I wanted to give the idea that while the post was broken, the electrical wiring still managed to survive the fall so a bit of putty and actual wire was needed for the repairs.

From there on it was all about the painting. I painted each miniature sepparately trying to get my projected lights right and keeping the darker areas deliberately dull by mixing black or dark grey in the mix.

Once sattisfied I mounted them to discover that my lights on the back side of the Kosuil pioneer were all wrong so had to start the coat from scratch and while already assembled which was a bit daunting.

As this was a bit rushed and my first time using such big contrast, some of the areas ended up looking a bit cartoony and blocky. Also, my red sygmaa face under the yellow light ended up looking too much like a human tone but I was afraid I would mess it up If I tried to change it.

This was all painted during the last week of school so I had several exams to correct and review and my time was running short. I also never before had to buy an expo base or transport any figure as big as this one so It was a really cool experience yet still a bit stressful as I messed up base sizes and wasn't sure I could make it in time.

In the end the effort payed out as I managed to get "Best Scene" in the contest. I'm not really proud of the final result and I'm pretty sure is not on par with most pro painters out there but I'm still happy of having gone through this journey as it was an awesome learning experience.