I just wish these titles could get longer. There is still a point to these long, unweildy blog post titles, though – and that’s so they can be found via a google search. After all, a lot of these models’ primary purpose ends up simply being painted models on the internet, as I paint a wide variety of models and don’t get to play any of the games they go with nearly as often as I’d like to – and so in order to give the models a longer online “shelf” life than the little bump of regular readers once the post goes up, it’s also important to ensure that they can be easily found using a google image search. That applies whether it’s a detailed paint job that’s taken me weeks to get finished, or something siomple like these models that were largely drybrushed over the course of a single afternoon.
The trade-off, then, is generally not being able to use amusing puns for post titles as I used to do, as a lot of my fellow bloggers still do (and I do enjoy that lowest form of comedy myself!). I guess I should talk about the paint process… Uh.. after some cleanup/mold line removal, I mounted these on 50mm bases, added a bunch of slate chips around the eges to blend in a little with the rocks that surround the models, painted dark grey and then drybrushed both up with browns and greys. They then got toned with Green Stuff World’s Liquid Pigments – one in green and the oither brown, and then finally both drybrushed again with light grey and finally white on the highest points to desturate them and tone the pigments back down.
The transparent crystals were masked with blu-tac (poster putty to some of you) and then painted with Green Contrast paint, and after the matte varnish of the entire model gloss varnished by brush. Eyes were simply painted in, red over yellow, though you can barely see them in most circumstances due to the hunched posture. That’s really the majority of the work. After all, we’re talking about a pair of cheap & cheerful PVC models meant for tabletop use.
Good old Berkeley provides us with the scale shot, as is usual, and we have another two minor monsters completed for this month’s Monster MAYhem challenge!
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
Excellent work mate, nice work on the crystals really added depth to them, and the stone work looks awesome
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Thanks Dave. Simple stuff but as long as it looks decent I’m good with it!
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Lovely stuff – those crystals are a nice touch!
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Thanks Alex, the transparent parts of some of these Nolzurs kits can give a nice effect, and Contrast works well on them I’ve found.
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Well in theory they’re quite simple minis but I think they look great! 🙂 Really do like ’em!
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Thanks John. Glad that you like them. 😁
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Nice work on these, and the crystals look great! I can never get the hang of making those look good. I’ve only painted a couple of WizKids minis in the past (a pair of Doppelgangers) and found the plastic to be really delicate to the point of making it almost impossible to get the mould lines off, which has stopped me buying more of their figures.
I feel your pain on the headline thing; I used to be a web editor at a community newspaper and part of my job was making the story headlines as SEO-friendly as possible, meaning I had to delete the excellent puns written by our production guys and replace them with clunky 20-word headlines.
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Thank you. For me the trick with Nolzurs/Wizkids models is to not stress about them so much and just concentrate more on them looking decent from a distance much moreso than looking great up close.
Some of those mold lines always escape me but as long as I can get most of the main ones I’m happy to call “good enough” on them as reasonably cheap reasonable quality pvc sculpts.
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And clunk in my post titles is something I’m all too used to now…. 🤨
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Looking great!
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Cheers! 😄
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Great work on these, and I always enjoy the final “for scale” shot. I oddly find myself looking forward to it when I read your posts…
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Haha. Well with this month holding a monster model challenge you can expect to see Berkeley a couple more times at least….
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Looking forward to it!
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Smashing stuff sir!
Cheers Roger.
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Thank you Roger – and I seee what you did there! 😉
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Simple and straightforward they may be but you’ve done a cracking job on them, especially with the stone effect.
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Thanks mate! The fast and simple was the best part from my perspective! 😀
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Nice work on those, especially the gem bits! Didn’t know those transparent WizKid bits would take Contrast paints that well. I’ve been using the Minitaire Ghost tints, but I’ll have to give that a try.
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Thanks! Yeah, since it was a dark green I wanted, I just thought I’d give it a go and see how it turned out. I can’t recall if I’d given the model a partway-through coat of varnish before I added the Contrast – I do know that doing so with matt or satin always gives a good, still-transparent surface for things like Contrasts and Vallejo’s Transparent paints…
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Oh yea, I think you’ve probably mentioned the pre-varnish trick a number of times. Totally forgot about that.
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Nice painting as always.
I feel your pain on the blog post titles. Mine always end up rather boringly descriptive too, and for the same reasons you describe. I sometimes wonder if it would be more entertaining to use some kind of punning titles each time, but it would come at the cost of actually being able to find anything if I wanted to look back.
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Thanks AB! It’d certainly be a lot more fun in some ways, but as you say, it’d become much harder not only for a google search but as you’ve noted, it becomes more difficult for me to find some of my older models buried behind more pun-tastic post titles…
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Maybe it is because I used to play Magic: The Gathering but seeing elementals and basic fantasy characters like these always makes me happy and nostalgic. I think these two look great and should be useful in a wide variety of settings too. I kind of wish GW made some stone giants for the Hobbit SBG game but then again, the ones in the movies were so big and tall that it wasn’t really practical at the same time.
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Does D&D (and by extension, Wizkids) have an IMMENSE Earth Elemental? 😀 I’m sure with a bit of looking and effort I could 3-D print something good enough to take the title, along with a Hobbit-SBG-compatible spot!
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That is probably true. 3D printing seems to provide infinite opportunities for hobbyists that want them. That is one reason why I’m scared to dip my toe into it 🙂
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Yeah – just ywhat we need – an unlimited amount of additional high quality models! 😬
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Great work mate, I cant imagine doing scales like these would be easy!
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