Gloomhaven Proxy Project Pt.1 - Miniatures

So I decided that, as it must be ohhhhh 25 years or more since I last picked up a brush in anger I wanted to have a go at painting something which would be relatively forgiving and that wouldn’t be a focal point during the games if it turned out to be a horrible eyesore (so nothing larger than humanoid or a boss proxy). I also wanted to paint up a mini which would actually see some use with a lot of the scenarios we had available to us so that limited the choices a little further.

I’d managed to pick up 6 of the ‘fatty’ models from Zombicide Black Plague in 2 different poses on Ebay so I plumped – badum tish – for one of those. Their slightly larger than standard size and the fact that I could cover any mistakes with a bit of gore gave me an extra little bit of comfort knowing I didn’t have to be too precious about the paint job.

I had also watched this painting guide by Sorastro a few times which again gave me a little more familiarity with the model and some ideas around how to make it more interesting by introducing colour patterns to the clothing. I don’t mind admitting that for my first paint job I was less concerned with originality than having something at the end which didn’t look like it’d been sat in the middle of a paintball game!!

Below is a shot of each of the scuplts in their ‘straight out of the box’ state which I pilfered from google images. The one on the right is the one I chose to work on first.

As you can see the mini’s come with a pre-moulded base so the first job was removing the model from it’s existing pre-moulded base by clipping / cutting around the feet and then transferring it to a hexagonal slotta which I’d already prepared with a generic stone floor scheme. The base is just a mixture of card stuck down with super glue for the floor tiles, some sand for smaller pieces of debris and cat litter for some of the larger stones – all standard stuff.

As the intention is to play with these proxies on the standard Gloomhaven boards I wanted to try to keep as many of the models as possible on hexagonal bases to fit with the hex design on them. I may regret and renege on that decision further down the line but I’ll be going with it for now.  Luckily these models are quite sturdy and this one stood up to a little abuse without any lasting damage.

There was a little clean-up needed for mold lines and such but nothing major considering these are board game mini’s.

For painting I honestly can’t remember the colours I used now as it was rather a long time ago but it was nothing out of the ordinary – I predominantly use Vallejo paints for miniatures but for spray primers I’m using cheap rattle cans (I just make sure to bathe them in warm water standing upright and then give them a very good shake before using them). The model was primed in Black, then the base colours filled in. I took some time to try to ensure the base colours were as neatly applied as I could manage as for the shading step I was going to ‘cheat’.  After I was happy with the base I applied an all over wash to both the mini and base with Army Painter Strong Tone which gave me my shading.  I attempted to go back over the higher areas of the minis with the original colours I’d used (thinned with water so the contrast wasn’t too stark).  I then went on to add some further highlights using the base colours mixed with a lighter shade of whatever the base was.  All in all a very simple paint job, although it took me quite some time as I’m possibly the world’s slowest painter.

Below are a couple of shots I took of the mini in the work area with only some natural lighting from a window:

So after taking the above shots of the mini I wasn’t entirely happy with the way the colours were represented. I began looking into the best ways of taking photos of miniatures with camera phones, lightboxes and the like (I’m a complete laymen when it comes to cameras) but I picked up a few tips which I hope will stand me in good stead going forward and finding ways of taking some reasonable snaps which have better colour representation.

As it is I ended up adopted an ‘interesting’ setup whereby I sat in a pitch black room, curved an A4 sheet of white paper using the right angle of the seat and back of a chair as it’s support. I then plonked the mini toward the front of the A4 sheet, balanced the camera on the seat in front of the mini at a reasonable distance with my right hand hand to allow it to focus and then held a Daylight Duo Lamp with it’s lamps spread behind the camera and above the mini to try to minimise shadows in the other hand.  Adjusting the lamp backward and forward (which would adjust the light source closer / further away and also more to the front or back of the mini) would cause the camera to adjust it’s own auto-focus and colour representation so I simply did this until I was happy with what I saw on the phone screen then smashed at it furiously to take as many photos as I could without knocking it over before the phone auto-adjusted itself again….. MacGyver I ain’t!!!

Below are a collection of the better shots I ended up with.  Overall I’m quite happy with them and the colour representation on these, the photos feel much ‘cleaner’ to me than those taken in natural light.

No doubt I’ll get a better setup sorted in the future but until then the makeshift one will have to do.

Overall I’d say I’m quite happy with the mini considering it’s my first attempt at painting after such a long lay-off. I certainly learnt a lot even with this simple job and had to do a lot of research into the various tools and paint types / manufacturers that are more prominent nowadays before starting. I think that for somebody re-lapsing into the hobby after as long a break as my own having resources like YouTube, OTT and the internet in general gives you so much more awareness of what’s out there (maybe too much) and also so many helpful guides, most of which make all this stuff look so easy!

For my next miniature I’m going to be concentrating on trying to use layering much more and building up the shades and highlights from a base colour so I don’t become reliant on ‘magic wash’.  I’m not too happy with the highlighting on this model where some are too stark and others not bright enough so I’ll be striving to get much cleaner, smoother blends from shade to base to highlight even if it elongates my painting time even more.

As for this model, for me it’s good enough for ‘tabletop standard’.  There’s a few final touches I want to add – namely some gore (most likely Blood For The Blood God with some darker tones for shading) and a grass tuft or two to add a little interest to the base but but I think I’ll wait until I get the rest of the living corpses painted and then complete that stage for all of them together.

So, What’s Next?

I have a fair amount of choice for my next step with a number of quite varied miniatures to choose from – one of which may I may not have made a sneak appearance in this update. Whichever I do decide upon I’d like to try to make sure it’ll give me an opportunity to paint in a slightly different way from this miniature and hopefully I’ll see an improvement in the overall results in respect to transitions and overall cleanliness of the finished product. I’m not entirely sure when I may manage to put out the next update because of limited time but I’ll do my best for it not to be another 2 years down the line…