Starting the Year with True Metal Metallics

New Year, New Outlook

January 1st, start of the new year—start of a new outlook on the channel. Hopefully today we’re downstairs with coffee and speed paints working on warjacks. I’m going to cut all the black in real quick off camera and try to finish at least one jack, hopefully all the big guys today. Starting the year off strong.

Cutting in the Black

We got the black cut in using Grim Black speed paint. It looks pretty good. In some cases I had to do two coats since this isn’t really how speed paint is meant to be used. I did a little bit over there which is going to drive me crazy, but it doesn’t have to be perfect.

The Silver Base Layer

Time to use Broadsword Silver—anything that’s going to be silver or gold, we’re going to hit with this. Two developments: that Broadsword Silver actually comes out pretty dark. I don’t think it’s the paint’s fault—I’m doing it over the green in a lot of places.

I’m abandoning the idea of getting everything base coated at once. I’m going to push these other guys out of here and just focus on this one. My goal this year is to actually finish projects. I’ve started so many even just on the channel in the last hundred-something days, and I want to change that.

Treating Metallics Like NMM

I’ve got that Broadsword Silver on everything that will be metal or gold. Now I’m grabbing Mithril Silver and the wet palette. We’re coming back in and hitting all these areas while keeping the recesses untouched. We’re leaving our shadows in.

With these parts, you can see how the light’s hitting it—really only the center gets super shiny. We’re just using the light from our lamp. It’s almost like we’re painting scratches, really. It’s pretty rough and we’re going fast.

Working with the Light

Right now I’m just moving around the model where the light takes me. This panel specifically is going to be brighter than those other panels. Make sure we’re painting the undersides too. When we come back with our final highlight, I’ll do a better job hitting these bottom edges of the circles. That’s what’s going to grab the most light.

Quick Shield Work

Let me show you the sloppy painting technique and how it’ll still look pretty good. It doesn’t have to be uniform. I’m keeping that area in shadow because of the shadow from the hub in the middle. I’m just working the paint off the brush, using the fact that this is a longer brush with thicker bristles.

Now our shield is almost reflective. You can see as the model moves with the light hitting it, you can see the different shading effect we created.

Dry Brushing the Back

I went and got a dry brush—a makeup brush. We’re going to speed through the back pretty quickly. The trick is getting a lot of pigment off the brush. I really just want those bright speckles in it. Now we’re just pulling it down from mostly the same direction, being careful not to hit any of our green.

What this does with true metal pigments is it almost buffs it out—the same kind of thing you get with an oil wash. It adds this matte kind of luster that you don’t get if you don’t dry brush. It’s like a polishing effect. The more we do this, the brighter that backpack is going to get while keeping the shadows in.

Fixing Mistakes with Water

That spot where silver got where I did not want it—I’m just working it out with water on my paintbrush. These pigment flakes are there so it’s going to look a little bit shiny. I dried the brush off on my shorts and I’m pushing the water away from this crack and off the panel, collecting those metal flakes. I’m glad I got to show you how to fix those kinds of things.

Adding the Gold

Now Excite Gold for the test. We’re going to start coming in. I think we’ll be able to finish getting him to tabletop level today, but we’re definitely not going to fully finish because I was starting to get all these other ideas about what I still want to do with him.

You can see how the top of the face mask is a lot brighter than the bottom. We’re just going to keep moving on and hope it comes together.

The Case for Airbrushes

I think if you’re serious about the hobby—go ahead and insert boogie gif—you’ll definitely get an airbrush. If you’re at the point where you need to paint an army, it’s probably worth it to pick up an airbrush. And if you can afford to buy a whole army, you can afford to buy an airbrush.

Even if you’re not using it every day to paint, an airbrush changes your ability to prime so much. Being able to get a consistent prime job done regardless of the weather outside, regardless of what time it is—knowing that I can go prime this model and get a smooth finish without a textured mess—that makes airbrush worth it by itself.

Three Hours to Tabletop

This guy is looking really good for tabletop level. The black took 20 minutes, but I did everybody—all the other jacks and everything. The airbrush work where I airbrushed everybody at once took about an hour. So on this one model to get to this point, we’re probably sitting at a two or three hour mark.

The sword I’m leaving alone because I don’t know what I’m going to do with it yet. I think I might add a cool glow effect—I don’t think I’m going to keep it metal. But this right here is tabletop three-color. If you showed up to play a game at this point, a lot of people would be happy to play you.

Next Steps

We got to let all this dry. I’m going to mix the green we used with a pastel white for highlighting all the edges, nuts, bolts, arms, and shield. Then we’ll hit all the metallics with a wash and do one final highlight. And then I think we’re there.

Very happy with how this turned out. Happy New Year! I’ll see you guys tomorrow where we’ll definitely be able to finish this guy up.

Transcript

This is like you can see as I’m moving the model around and the light source like you can really see the work that we did by going in with that silver first January 1st start of the new year uh start of a new outlook on the channel and hopefully this video we’re downstairs coffee speed paint warjacks. Uh I’m going to get all these guys. I’m going to cut all the black in real quick off camera and I’m going to try to finish uh at least one jack. Hopefully all the big guys today. Starting the year off strong with some finish.

We got the black cut in. Uh and I I’m using grim black speed paint. All right. It looks pretty good. On some cases I had to do like two coats just cuz obviously like this isn’t really how speed paint is meant to be used.

Uh I did a little bit over there which is going to drive me crazy but it doesn’t have to be perfect. Um time we’re using broadsword silver for this and anything that’s going to be silver or gold we’re going to hit with this. Okay, two developments that broadsword silver actually comes out pretty dark. Uh and I I don’t think it’s uh the paint’s fault. It’s probably I mean I I’m doing it over the green in a lot of places.

Uh so I’m abandoning the idea of getting everything base coated. I’m going to push these guys out of here and just focus on this cuz I I want to start this year actually finishing projects. That’s my my goal this year is to finish [clears throat] projects. Not I’ve started so many even just on the channel in the last 100 and whatever days it is and I want to change that. So I’ve got all the metal anything that’s going to be metal or gold.

I’ve got that broadsworth silver on. I’m going to grab that Myithil silver. We’re going to start moving away from the speed paints now and into more traditional acrylic. All right. So now myithil silver uh and the Alido tin palette.

So again, we’re just coming back in here and we’re just hitting all these areas and we’re going to keep the recesses untouched. Like we’re going to we’re going to not hit the middle of that. We’re going to leave our shadows in and again because you can kind of see that light is working up under there. And same thing now. So with these like you can you can see with how the light’s hitting it really only the center of this gets super shiny and we’re just using the light our light from our lamp.

And it’s almost like uh like we’re painting scratches really is how it looks. Like it’s pretty it’s pretty rough and we’re going pretty fast. Cuz like right now, like in here, we’re going to be careful. We’re going to hit the metal parts with a wash again. Uh just to clean up these areas where that or not contrast, the speed paint just ran over.

And so here I’m just moving around the model where the light takes me. This panel specifically is going to be brighter than those other panels. And we want to make sure we’re painting the unders sides. And when we come back in with our highlight again, like to do our final highlight, I’ll make I’ll do a better job at hitting these bottom edges of these circles. But that’s what’s going to be what like grabs the most light.

And the sword. Um the sword is I’m probably going to airbrush the sword. I’m not quite sure what I want to do with the sword yet. I don’t know if I don’t think I want to keep it metal like how it is on the box art. I think it looks kind of cheesy.

But we definitely again just very roughly think of it almost at this stage is like we’re painting in scratches, the contrast we’re making. And this I’m pretty sure this part is going to be gold. Uh it’s going to look crazy once we put the gold on it. And then hit each of those. And I’m just edge highlighting like chunky edge highlighting these pads here.

All right. And so now I’m just going to work this right through the middle of the knee pad. I’m not even going to go into the sides. I’m just going to follow the light of where that lamp is hitting this straight on. And I’m just painting it in.

So now, like, as I move it, because it’s metallic, like it is going to shine at you. But you can see how on the recesses on the right and left of that knee pad are staying darker even with the light hitting it directly. So, this is We haven’t really done much. Let me get you in focus. There we go.

Uh to this shield. So, let’s uh I’m just going to leave the middle of that that darker silver. And then same thing, I’m going to catch the edge. And again, for the silver parts, we’ll come back in with another highlight. All right.

So now uh let’s get a bunch of paint on our brush so I don’t have to keep doing it. I’m going to hit all these dots, all the rivets in. Make sure you’re focused on here. [snorts] So now uh what we’re going to do is just paint in like scratches. And I got probably way too much paint on the brush right now, but we’ll fix it.

So, think of this as like we’re highlighting it, but we want the scratches because this thing’s going to be getting like smacked and prodded. We want to kind of keep our our shadows in there, but I’m really just trying to show you like how sloppy I’m painting this and how it’ll still look pretty good. Like it can still pull like it doesn’t have to be uniform. And like I’m going to keep that in shadow right there because of the shadow from the from that nub or the hub in the middle. And again, I’m just working the paint off the brush.

I’m using the fact that this is a longer brush with the thicker bristles. So now like our shield, it’s almost like reflective. And you can see as the model moves, I mean, the light’s hitting it, but you can see the different shading effect we had in there. All right, I got to clean my brush out. I’ll be right back.

Okay, we’re back in. Uh, I just really gave the brush a thorough cleaning cuz I had a ton of dried that paint was wicking up. Just hitting a couple of areas that are a little bit too dark. All right, I went and got uh just a dry brush uh makeup brush. And that’s how I was I think we’re going to be able to speed through the back of this pretty quickly.

So, the trick here is just getting a lot of the br the Let me show you. I’m getting a lot of the pigment off. And I really just want those the bright speckles in it. And now we’re just going to pull it down just all from the same mostly the same direction. And we’re going to be careful that we don’t hit any of our green.

And what this does is it with true metal pigments, it almost like also buffs it out like the same kind of thing you get with like a oil wash. So, it adds uh this like luster, this matte kind of luster to it that you don’t you don’t get if you don’t dry brush. It’s like a polishing effect. And you can see this, the more we do this, the brighter that backpack is going to get. And I’m going to keep the shadows in.

And let me hit this. Let’s hit our corners. And again, we’re going to hit that. We’re definitely going to hit this back part with a wash and we’ll come in and paint the gauges and stuff too. But there we go.

Easy peasy. Let me maybe hit this back part a little bit. Some print lines there that are print lines really bad right here, too. But there you go. So, now we’ve got uh we’ve got all of our silver mostly in there.

Right. So, now we got to come back over. I’m going to let this sit and dry a little bit. Work on some other stuff. But we got to still hit got to hit our mask.

So I’ll do our mask. Let me do that right now actually. So we don’t want to dry brush that cuz it’s too close to important stuff. So on this gray, we’re just Well, there’s a lot of paint on the brush. We’re going to slot paint on so it covers all the detail up.

We know this is going to be gold. So I’m not I’m going to like stop painting halfway down it. And then that will by keeping the dark silver like literally like halfway. I’m not even going to put any bright paint on it. That’ll add a really cool effect when we go over it with the gold and add a little looks like a looks pretty gnarly in there.

That’s just like a misprint from the from the printer. All right. And then we’ll hit this. This is silver. So, we’ll just kind of paint some highlights on that and call it a day.

fixed up. Um, right there. We got to figure out what we’re gonna do about that that spot. Uh, I might hit it with the Tyrion blue and see if I can like work it out. Or actually, you know what?

I might be able to come in. So, there’s just water on my paintbrush right now, right? There’s just water on my brush. And what I’m doing is I’m just working out that silver that was in the spot where I did not want it to be. And these pigment flakes are there.

So, it’s going to look a little bit shiny, but uh I’m hoping So, now I just dried the brush off on my my shorts and I’m pushing the water away from this crack and off the panel and I’m collecting those metal flakes. Okay, so now uh it’s wet, but hopefully we’ll be good. And then I I’m glad I got to show you how to fix those kind of things. All right, we’re all dry. Coming back in.

Uh excite gold the test. So, we’re just going to start coming in and I think we’re going to be able to finish like getting him to tabletop level today, but we’re definitely not going to be able to finish him today because I was starting to get all these other ideas about what uh I still want to do with him. Okay, so now I just I just started with this face mask and you can see hopefully how the top is a lot brighter than the bottom is, but we’re just going to keep moving on and hope it comes together. So, uh, these legs are actually gold. I didn’t realize.

And like I said, there’s still I’ll probably still do a wash over all the metallic parts and I’ll need to do a highlight layer again. And we need to highlight our green. So, we’re actually not as close to done as I thought, but we got a lot of hours into them today. And I think it’ll be good. I’m finishing this guy.

It’s I was originally doing all of them at the same time, but I think it’ll be good to have one finished uh as like the the reference model. Because right now I just have a big image up of the box art. And again, like my goal with this was to re get as close to the box art as I could without needing a bunch of different paints or any like crazy techniques. And I guess you could argue that airbrush is a crazy technique, but if you I think like like an airbrush should be like if you’re serious about the hobby and go ahead and insert boogie gif. If you’re serious about it, I think you’ll definitely get an airbrush.

And really like it just comes to that point of like if you’re if you’re at the point where you need to paint an army, it’s probably worth it to pick up an airbrush. Uh, and if you’re if you’re at the spot like financially where you can afford to buy a whole army, you can afford to buy an airbrush. And even if you’re not using it like every day to paint, like if you don’t want to actually paint with it, uh, an airbrush changes your ability to prime so much. And it really like it for me like one of my the first two hurdles I faced as a painter was getting a good primer coat. And then the second one was paint consistency and figuring out how my paints actually worked.

But being able to get a consistent prime job done regardless of the weather outside, regardless of what time it is, uh regardless of anything else, and just knowing that I can go prime this model and get a smooth finish on it and not get a textured mess or a bunch of garbage on it, uh that makes airbrush worth it by itself. And you don’t really need a crazy expensive one for that. Uh, but there’s got to be some compromises somewhere. Like you can’t I think I probably could have like dry brushed white over black and then put the speed paints over top of that. And I don’t think it would look as good, but I think it looks like as good enough if you don’t have an airbrush.

But also, my thinking of using an airbrush here was like if you 3D printed this stuff, uh, you should definitely have an airbrush if you have a 3D printer. Uh, it’s pretty crazy. I don’t I mean, I don’t think that’s a pretty crazy assumption of if you’re 3D printing, you probably already have an airbrush. Like, if you’re that deep, at least resin printing. If you’re resin printing, um, I would imagine you already have an airbrush.

And if not, you should definitely get one cuz I don’t know how you’re going to get your stuff painted without one. So, you can see already like this looking like a model now. Um, and that work we did, like I have a light, my light source is directly on these knees, but you can still see the shading effect in it. And once we come back in with a wash, like it’s really going to start to make this look awesome. Okay, cool.

I found a picture of the rear end of the Tora. And actually, uh, there’s even less gold back here than I thought there’d be. So, I’m glad I took the time to look up cuz it’s going to save us a ton of time. Uh just this little door here. I think I got it a little bit too.

There we go. So far, this guy This guy’s looking really good. uh for a tabletop level. I think um the black took like 10 minutes to do and or actually the black took me the black took 20 minutes but I did everybody like all the other jacks and everything even those other guys back there. Uh the airbrush work I airbrushed everybody at once and that took me like an hour.

So I I would say on this one model to get to this point, we’re probably sitting at like a two or three hour mark. And this so this is three hours of work to get to here. I think in like the sword I’m leaving alone cuz I want to I don’t know what I’m going to do with it yet. I think I might add like a cool glow effect or something. I don’t think I’m going to keep it metal.

Uh but like this right here is tabletop threecolor. Like if you showed up to play a game at this point, uh I think a lot of people would be happy to play you. Um the B except for the base. I’ve got to do the base. But even without putting any more paint on this model, like we’re there uh to a tabletop standard in my opinion.

So pretty happy with it. We got to let all this dry. Um I’m going to I’m going to mix in the green that we used with a pastel white. And that’s how we’ll highlight all of the all the edges and the nuts and the bolts and the arms and the shield and stuff. And then we’ll we’ll hit all the metallics with a wash.

And then do one final highlight on the metallics. And then I think we’re there. And also uh this is the the panel I fixed. You can see now that it’s dry. There’s no except for that overage I did.

But uh that fixed our little stray paint mark. But very happy with how this turned out. Thanks for watching. Happy new year. Uh I will see you guys tomorrow where we’ll definitely be able to finish this guy up, I think.