Thrud the Barbarian: Step by Step - Shading

Now that the main colors are done, it's time to add some shading with washes.  These can be a bit tricky.  I can't count the number of times that I've used too dark a wash and had to repaint sections of a miniature!

I started by applying a heavy wash of sepia to the base.  This helps to bing out the texture of the gravel.

Next, I applied a darker brown wash to the belt and axe haft.

Then, I applied the same sepia wash that I'd used on the base o the loincloth.  I was tempted to use the same darker brown that I'd used on the belt, but in the end, I was glad that I'd gone with the lighter wash, as I think it made the loincloth stand out from the belt a bit better.

Then, it was back to the darker brown was for the boots.  I was careful to avoid the straps at first.  This allowed me to use a slightly watered down dark brown wash on them so that they would stand out better.

Next, I used a muddy greyish black wash on the helmet and axe head.  This helps to bring out some of the detail in the recesses and also makes them less shiny.

Finally, we come to what I consider to be the trickiest part of shading, the flesh.  When I mess up, this is usually where it happens.  Fortunately, this time it didn't go too badly. I applied the wash to all of the flesh colored areas to shade the muscle lines and facial features.  In then end, I wish that I had watered the wash down just a tiny bit, but overall, I'm not too disappointed with it.  Thrud has just been well bronzed by the rays of the ancient sun!

Next:  Highlighting!

Thrud the Barbarian: Step by Step - Painting

So now we get to the meat of the process, actually painting!  For the first step, I used two coats of flesh colored paint to cover most of the model.  He is a barbarian after all.  I also painted the base and the haft of his axe in a light brown,

Thrud with a base coat of flesh paint

Next, I painted the leather areas, boots, belt, and loincloth, being careful not to get any on the flesh areas.

Thrud with his belt, boots, and loincloth painted

The boot straps were time consuming,  I chose a lighter color for them, so that they would show up against the brown of the boots.

Thrud with his boot straps painted

Next, I moved on the the ornamentation on Thrud's belt.  I decided to go with a coppery color for some contrast.  The small metal studs along the belt were done in a dark silver.

Thrud with some belt ornamentation

Next I moved on to the metal areas, helmet and axe head.  Again, I had to be careful not to get any on the flesh colored areas.  Not that I couldn't have fixed it, but I just wanted to avoid the extra work.

Thrud is totally metal!

Finally, I painted the horns on Thrud's helmet, and the main painting was done!

A good helmet needs horns

Next:  Shading with washes!

Thrud the Barbarian: Step by Step - Priming

Now we come to possibly the most boring stage of the painting process, priming.  No amount of flavor text is going to make this exciting, but that won't stop me from trying.  :-)
Of course, we all know that priming is a very important step in the miniatures painting process, at least if we want the paint to stick for any length of time.  Spray primer is the way to go unless you live in a place where you can never go outside.  It gives a smoother and more even finish than any brush primer I've ever found.  I generally use three colors of primer, white, black, or grey, depending on the paint colors that I'm using, what I have around the house, and my general mood on the day of the priming.  For light colors and pastels, I generally use white primer, as it makes the colors appear brighter.  For darker colors and heavily armored figures, I go with black as it can help out as ready made shading in cases like chain mail armor.   Finally, when I'm using colors somewhere in the middle, or I just can't decide, or I'm out of both black and white primer, I'll go with grey.  In the case of Thrud, I decided to go with black, even though he was going to be mostly flesh colored.  I knew that this would probably necessitate two coats for the flesh areas, but I decided that I was fine with that as it's a big miniature, and more coats are better for durability anyway.

Thrud primed and ready for painting

  
Next, we'll start with the actual painting!

Thrud the Barbarian: Step by Step - Assembly and basing

Since every warrior needs good footing, and because most of the experts tell us that the keys to good miniatures are faces and bases, today we will focus on mounting Thrud on his base.

Step one is to cut a hole in the base and fit the miniature in to determine appropriate positioning.

Thrud trying out his new base

Step two is applying epoxy to the base so that Thrud actually sticks to it!

Thrud epoxied

Third, we coat the still wet epoxy with basing material.  In this case I'm going for a desert look, and to the I'm using tiny gravel to bury Thrud.  No doubt, he'll face far worse dangers in his adventures in the  future.

Thrud in gravel

Finally, after the glue has set, we brush away the excess gravel and are left with Thrud happily installed on his new base!

Thrud suitably based for painting

Next we shall focus on priming and adding the first coats of paint.

Thrud the Barbarian: Step by Step - Preparation

Thrud may well be everyone's (well, maybe everyone in the U.K.'s) favorite pinheaded barbarian.

Years back Citadel Miniatures put out a limited edition set of Thrud the Barbarian miniatures.  I've recently acquired one of them and plan to use it as a walkthrough of the process for prepping, assembling, and painting my miniatures.  The first step, and also my least favorite, is the cleaning and preparation of the miniature.  I clean all of the mold lines with small files, fine grit sandpaper, and steel wool.  Without doing this, washes will pool near the mold lines ruining the end result.  This can be one of the most labor intensive parts of the process depending on the quality of the miniature's casting.  In the case of Thrud here, it wasn't too bad, despite the fact that this is an old miniature.  Once the mold lines have been cleaned, I wash the miniature in a solution of dish liquid then rinse it and let it dry thoroughly overnight.  This removes any oils left over from either the casting process or my fingers.

Thrud, cleaned and ready for basing

Hugh the Barbarian

I'm rather on the fence about the whole Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG.  While it's nice to see Goodman games embracing the whole old school feel vibe (although old school barbarians never wore bellbottoms as far as I can remember), I'm not sure the world needs yet another retro-clone.  The whole old school renaissance thing has done that to death in my opinion.  Honestly, if you want old school, give Tunnels & Trolls a try.  It's been essentially the same game for 35 years, and didn't need a renaissance to bring it back. :-)

Miniatures Monday

A mysterious insect-man warrior lurks in the deep forest!  Is he friend or foe?

Miniatures Monday

In tunnels far below the earth lurks this cycloptic horror, waiting for unwary delvers to crush beneath his huge spiked club!

Conan

Many artists have drawn Conan over the years, but in my mind, none has done it better than Frank Frazetta.  This will always be Conan to me.

Miniatures Monday

Today, we have a blast from the past!  Here in glorious lead, we have the barbarian from Grenadier's Dungeon Explorers set circa 1981.

A Wild Day in the Woods

A bold swords-woman assailed by ravenous wolves in a forbidding forest

Retro Miniatures

I'm happy to say that over the years my painting skills have gotten a bit better.  Below are some examples of my much older efforts.

These were painted around 1985

These were painted in 1992

Miniatures Monday

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From the steaming southern jungles come the evil snake warriors, bent on the subjugation of all warm blooded beings!

And the aren't much friendlier from the other side either!

This miniature has been brought to you be special request. :-)

A busy day in the Caves of the Magic Realm

This is what the wily swordsman revealed on his first turn.  The octopus and the goblins are bad news.  I just hope the octopus doesn't crawl out of its pool and chase me around.  Yes, Magic Realm octopi are shockingly mobile.

And it just keeps getting busier in there...

Crom!

     So, last night I ordered a pizza and settled in to watch the new Conan the Barbarian movie.  I had avoided it in theaters partly because it was in 3D and partly because I was concerned that it would be bad.  But it was a slow night, and I figured that as a $4.99 rental, it was worth a shot.  So here are my thoughts.
     First of all Jason Momoa as Conan.  I think he was perfectly acceptable as a Conan early in his career around the time of the Robert E. Howard story "The Tower of the Elephant", an adventure that is referred to in the movie, but sadly not seen.  His voice seemed to have been digitally deepened, sort of like they did with Christian Bale in the previous Batman film, and he made the occasional terse barbaric pronouncement like the corny, "I live, I love, I Slay, and I am content", but he didn't seem to have much conviction in his dialogue.  Not that I was expecting super dialogue in a sword an sorcery film, but his Conan never seemed to get very wound-up about anything.  Also, he needed to call on his god Crom a bit more.  Not like Arnie did back in the original film where every third line seemed to be,"Crom!", but a few more Croms would have been nice.  Also I have to mention his costume.  Not that it was bad, just odd.  He wore a blanket wrapped around his wait for most of the film.  Not a loincloth, a blanket.  It was distracting enough that I started referring to him as Linus the Barbarian.  Maybe he needed frequent naps after all his slaying activities.  Who can say?
The supporting cast was OK, not great, but OK.  The female love interest/girl needed by the evil villain was good and not stuck with the thankless role of being a full time damsel in distress.  She could fight and had a nice little bit of sarcasm about her.  I particularly like when Conan told her his name and she replied, "Conan?  That's it?"  The villains were passable, but somewhat lacking.  The evil sorceress was suitably creepy, but I'm not sure that her daddy issues really added much to the film.  The male villain seemed more like a thug than an actual villain bent on resurrecting the dead and conquering the world.  James Earl Jones as Thulsa Doom, this guy was not!
     "But it's a Conan movie," you say.  "What about the fights?"  Well there was plenty of fighting in the film, and while it wasn't watered down and family friendly (like the fight scenes in Conan the Destroyer), the fights seemed to lack the same solid feel of the ones from the 1981 version of Conan the Barbarian.  I just didn't get the sense that anyone was being hit with a sword, axe, hammer, rock, or whatever, in spite of the fountains of blood spewing across the screen.  As for the blood, there was just too much of it.  Now, I'm sure that people are thinking that I've gone old and soft and can't handle blood or something crazy like that.  I assure you, that's not the case.  What I mean is that everyone who got cut down in a fight in this film seemed to have been on a very high dose of blood thinners.  Huge amounts of blood splattered everywhere from any sort of wound however minor.  Maybe people in the pre-dawn of history had more blood in there bodies?  Who knows?  The special effects were OK, but strangely intrusive in my opinion.  A lot of times, they looked too much like special effects that I would have seen in a Sci-Fi,  oops, sorry, Syfy channel movie.  There was a very cool skull cave, that was called interesting enough, "The Cave of the Skull".  I wish that they had fought in front of it instead of inside of it, as it's exterior was way cooler than its rather low rent Mines of Moria interior.
     The story was the fairly standard 'my village and people were slain by the evil sorcerer, and I must avenge' them tale.  That's not a bad thing, and in truth it's what I would expect from a sword and sorcery film.  Do I think they could have done better, with all of the available Conan source material that was available to pull from?  Well, yes, but they were making a movie to make money, not to please Robert E. Howard fans.  All in all I enjoyed it well enough.  There were some cool enough moments in it, but I'm glad that I saw it an 2D and didn't spend the extra cash to see it in the theater.  In my opinion, it's definitely a rental rather than a purchase.  In truth I would recommend the Michael Stackpole novel based on the screenplay over the actual film.