So here’s something a little more novel. My Contrast Paint experiment series has so far been emphasising how things have gone well, or taking something that was okay and tweaking it to be a little better, and so on. Today we have an example of when Contrast Paints combined with bad models to create …something not good.
These models are another trip from the Shadows of Brimstone boardgame kickstarter’s extras. The first thing I did was customise them slightly, so they’d be slightly more individual and slightly less a trio of clones. As they’re only designed to be monopose, and don’t otherwise fit well my options for easy modding were limited -and especially so because they’re shit models that I was not willing to put too much work into modding. I I adjusted the arm poses and head tilts. I also gave one of them an old 1st/2nd Edition Space Marine Combat Knife and another one of them a forearm underclaw from a bit of 40k hedgecutter I had in a bits box. Then it was time to paint.
As it happens, my paint scheme aligns with theirs purely by accident, as I’ve only seen the box art for the first time just now after googling it and grabbing the pic from BGG. At one point I considered ochre skin, or green skin with red armour for the “V” look, but decided in the end that I wanted to try out the Ork Flesh and Apothecary White Contrast Paints. You can just how well that worked in the pic above.
Well… that looks shit. I’m just not a fan of that overly saturated and, well, contrasty green. Especially for flesh, and even including giant space lizardmen. The Apothecary White also didn’t perform well, given how soft and badly defined the details were on these sub-par models and just left.. sort of cloudy stains all over. So with that, this trio sat on the desk for at least 6 months. (These were started before I finished the last Brimstone models, which I posted back in September). Because Tray, they ended up in the queue of shit to get finished. Mostly because I wanted to see the end of them. Which ended up giving me an interesting challenge.
How to fix them? Possibly impossible. Silk Purses and Sow’s Ears and all that. How to make them look passable for a tabletop? Well, first of all, that horrible green had to go. I just went over the lot of it with normal paint, and gave it a careful drybrish up a few lightter shades to smooth it out and have it look okay. The armour? I thought of Sandtroopers and the 501st guys who weather their armour. So out came a bit of foam and the brown paint, then the silver paint. I didn’t do a real great job here in the end, but I gave the armour enough dirtying and dinging up that it now at least looks bearable and (somewhat) hides the soft details. Blood Angels Red Contrast in their mouths, then picking out their teeth and being a little careful with the eyes help a lot to give their faces some detail, which in turn draws the eye. The green skin of the faces is also decent enough, so these factors combine with the dinged paint and weathering to make the shitty armour more of a background aspect to the models than a visual focus. Three different gemstone paints on the armour lights was a final choice to firther give a way to distinguish the three on the tabletop.
As with a fair few other models from this month, they might count towards Ann’s Miniatures of Magnitude Challenge for May & June. While they’re not exactly gargantuan, they’re certainly Ogre+ sized!
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
I think you’ve done a great job on these models, especially with your description of soft details, in my book that’s a good win out of disappointing models, which is such a shame as I like the character of the model if not the execution
LikeLiked by 4 people
Thanks Dave. They’re now at the point of okay tabletop models – which is the best you could hope for these!
LikeLiked by 2 people
I was a massive backer of this game at Kickstarter (I’m in it, as a background character) but was so disappointed with the minis when they arrived. You’ve done a good job of saving them, though!!
LikeLiked by 4 people
Yeah – they did a great job of overpromising and underdelivering – and that’s without going into the delays (or how laughable their timelines have been for any projects since – even before COVID….)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Apothecary White looks like it would be fine to stormtrooper armour, but here I prefer your grittier finish. I’d say you did really well here given what you had to work with.
LikeLiked by 3 people
It may well be the way that I paint up my couple of squads of Legion stormtroopers – they were on sale and i had the idea of buying some to build a kill team out of – just use the Scions rules or similar…
At worst I’ll still have a decent looking squad of stormies, and if the Apothecary White doesn’t do a good job on them, I’ll dirty those up as well!
LikeLiked by 3 people
Perhaps not quite a silk purse from a sow’s ear but at the very least a functional handbag 😉 Well done turning some pretty ropey models into something that looks not bad at all in the end.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Functional is a good way to put these – and a lot of the other SoBrim minis, for that matter! – and thanks!
LikeLiked by 2 people
They turned out looking pretty good to mate especially after you toned down that green!
LikeLiked by 3 people
Thanks Pat – redoing that green did make a huige difference to them!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Have to agree that the bright jade green was a bit underwhelming, but i do like the finished colours much more realistic (if that’s the right word for space lizards!).
I have to admit I’ve never done a kickstarter, all the horror stories keep putting me off.
Cheers Roger.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Thanks Roger – it depends a lot on the Kickstarter campaigns really. Brimstone is (supposed to be) a great game in the vein of Warhammer Quest (I just haven’t played it myself yet). These days I’m much more conservative on which campaigns I back, though.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Unusual model- nice job on them.
Cheers,
Pete.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thanks Pete! 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
It was nice to read through your painting process on these guys. Its a shame that the sculpt isn’t better (which is the main thing that scares me away from Shadows of Brimstone as I’m sure I’ve mentioned before) but I think you did a great job salvaging these. The final skin tones look good and dirtying up the armor was about the only way to make the sculpt visually interesting. All in all, I’d say a job done as well as possible with the sculpt and even better, that is a real painting headache that you no longer have to worry about!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Well, I know the game is supposed to be really good, so there’s that – but all of the components need to be assembled (and if you’re like me – painted!) before play starts. So they’ll probably end up being more of a post-Neglected Model project. Dirtying up the amrour might have made it more interesting, but more impoortantly it hides many of the soft details of the armour!
LikeLiked by 2 people
It looks and sounds fun to me as well. It does look like a black hole where you end up spending a $1,000 on it if you really like it but maybe that’s not the worst thing. Its neat that there is a feudal Japan version too. Those are two excellent settings to have but I’ve been able to resist temptation on it so far… I’d be curious to see how enjoy it whenever you get around to playing it 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh, it’s definitely a money pit in Kickstarter form. Probably much more sensible to just buy a starter set and then expand it slowly as you play through it. Looks like we’re going to be running through these D&D Adventure Boardgames for awhile yet, though – so the only Brimstone models in the near future will be those Neglected models that hit the tray. So probably those weird Not-Imperial-Probot-robot-things and the big vagina-dentata-faced demon.
Plenty more D&D models, though!
LikeLike
Job well done mate – nice bit of rescuing 🙂
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thanks Alex. As boardgame minis they work as “good enough”. 🙂
LikeLiked by 2 people
A very effective salvage job!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thanks Mark. They’ll look okay on the table which is as good as these particular mdoels are getting 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Pingback: Miniatures of Magnitude Painting Challenge Round-up | Ann's Immaterium