Hate Board Game

Illustrated by the talented Adrian Smith, the Hate has a unique, deep artistic theme. When planning the color scheme and the artistic direction for this project I wanted to keep the grimdark feel, but also add something distinctly ‘Scarhandpainting” on top. I decided to go with the flow, stick to my personal style and smooth things out a bit with additional airbrushed filters, such as purple for skin and dark brown/black for detail. To test the idea in practice I chose “The Mother Prophecy” set for so called “test batch”…

The tests resulted in a palette finalized with about three dozen colors with a few complimentary colors reserved to distinct particular Tribes from one another. I also chose to go with bases not following the style of the gaming board, as the project is supposed to look great in a special cabinet, rather than fit the paper components. The Test Batch results below:

If you like the project and would like to see more of it – stick around. I will be adding new entries as I go through the rest of the miniatures.

Cheers!

Although the Hate project is a one in a lifetime opportunity to create an exciting piece of ‘art’ – it is not without some downsides. With almost 150 miniatures, none of which is more than doubled throughout the set, standard hobby tricks like muscle memory are off the table. This results in a rather slow-paced and exhausting core of the painting process…

Don’t get me wrong – I’m all about batch painting and challenges. It’s just that, due to diversity of detailed sculpts, what usually takes up a day or two, now takes more than twice that to accomplish. What keeps me going is my experience with similar projects. The more difficult, challenging the starting point – the more payoff in the end stages of the project. At least that’s what I say to myself to keep on going 😛

At this point I got all the initial purple to bright skin airbrush work done and pre-layered skin with a few blends. Started first layer for metallics, which will be split into different color categories afterwards. Fur, clothes, bones and other details to follow, with multiple layers before I move to Washes stage sometime (probably) next month.

Keep your fingers crossed for my sanity to withstand this challenging moment 😉

Wrapping up the Initial Stage, most main colors placed and only a handful left to go. At this point detailed lining and some scratch-like textures will be applied first with a bright color, the Clans will be split between smaller groups that share special colors like red, purple, black etc. These colors will be applied next with  somewhat glaze like layers to juice up and ‘color’ particular areas. Next in line will be washes and thinned down contrast paints, but all that in another entry. For now I think that soon we’ll be out of the boring stuff and into a more juicy, fun part of the project.

Until we meet again!

Today a short update. I’m about half way through wahses, speedpaints, and blends across the entire collection. Just wanted to drop a quick update with results for those who might be curious.

Today marks “the day” – The Hate: Board Game project is entering the final stages. Colors got depth and diversity, bones, browns, skin are now detailed. A bit more detailing, filters, metal depth & weathering, tattoos, eyes, effects such as blood and basing left to go… Not much of tutoring here, just an update to show some of the progress.

One thing I’ve learned throughout the years of painting miniatures is the importance of planning a color scheme ahead of time. It obviously comes with experience, but in this day and age we’re not left for ourselves, but are usually able to tap into online tutorials for some professional help. For me, I can always visualize how the miniatures are supposed to look in the end – what feel and overall theme I’d like them to convey. Still there’s a long road from inside my head to the finish line and I always get anxious before pushing the project over  the sweet spot when everything clicks into place. With HATE I think this moment was basing – such an important part of the color scheme. Just see for yourselves:

Not sure about you, but for me – it does such a huge visual difference! And these pics are only a single layer of texture apart!

Yup, the deed is done… stay tuned for the wrap-up of the project. Gotta take some time off, process all the pics, crop and stuff – lemme get back to you tomorrow or the day after with the final entry 😉 Stay tuned!

Yup, the project is now fully completed. Three months ride is finally over and I gotta admit – I loved every part of it! Here’s a small sample of the thing, the rest you can find at the HATE BOARD GAME GALLERY.

With the Hate: Board Game project being completed it is time for me to move on to another challenge. The work of a commission painted never truly stops. There’s always a bunch of new adventured lined up in the pipeline…
Stay tuned folks!