CodeBlade

I’ve only painted one model so far, but I thought I would capture my first impressions.

As always when I am forming opinions, I have a quick check of my own biases that I might be bringing to the situation…. On the one hand I am biased towards the creators here – I love CodeBlade, it’s a great and innovative game, and I am rooting for them. On the other hand I came to this really quite skeptical about AI-generated miniatures.  3D printing kind of pushes my boundaries on its own and genuinely, the first thing I did when I opened these models was to count their fingers!!  We’ve all seen how AI can struggle rendering humans in images, so I was quite happy to see everyone anatomically correct!!

So, I concluded that my biases cancel out and I can be objective. Yay me!

I said this was a quick paintjob, and this really was QUICK.  I had the basecoats on in no time and really enjoyed the process.  I’ve done a lot of experimenting with speedpaints and the like recently, looking for ways to get armies on the table quickly.  Here, I decided to paint ‘traditionally’ (basecoat, wash, layer, highlight) as a controlled experiment.  But the process was probably faster than my recently speedpainted Eldar.

Why? Firstly the scale.  These are a generous 35mm. Compared to my previous 28mm cyberpunk minis these have nice large areas to get a fat brush in and paint quickly:

Secondly, and this is something that has been discussed a LOT on OTT in recent times, the minis are not too busy in terms of gribbly bits and details.  The details are crisp, yes, and the models are thematic and characterful, but they aren’t covered in an excess of paraphernalia that slows you down.

So this model painted fast, and it was an enjoyable and relaxing process.  I’m looking forward to the next one!

To be honest, once the primer was on, I completely forgot it was AI-generated and 3D printed.  It was just a refreshingly enjoyable thing to paint!