[PAINT] Inquisitor minis
John Hwang
I highly recommend them, especially on sale.
I've just finished painting my Inquisitor Covenant, and he came out really
nicely -- the extra room allows for much smoother blending and shading in his
overcoat, for example. But the overall detailing isn't *that* much better. For
those who want to add detailing via patterning and such, the larger canvas is
excellent. For me, this is a way to showcase the more "subtle" things I do
well.
Model-wise, facial detail is somewhat better than what we've seen before, and
things which aren't paper or ribbons came out really well. The fact that
they're all-metal causes problems with making adequately thin sheets of paper
or ribbon -- as molded, they're not even close to being scale. If I ever get
around to re-doing him, the ribbons and parchment will be replaced with foil or
epoxy-soaked paper.
Comparing the Inquisitor with an ordinary 40k mini, he looks positively
"normal" (i.e realistic) in proportions. However comparing with some 1/35
*scale* minis I've got, the Inquistor mini shows the GW non-scale "heroic"
distortions: a bigger head, thicker limbs, larger weapons, etc. The larger
size of the Inquisitor range means that they don't need to upscale weapons as
much, but they're still overscaled. For example, Covenant could comfortably
palm a 1/35 .45 ACP pistol, while his sidearm is just as long and at least
twice the thickness of a 1/35 HK MP-5 SMG; the book on his back is the size of
the average 1/35 scale man's torso. Extrapolating from this, I think if GW
were to sculpt 4x scale (1/16), I think things would be true scale.
Anyhow, assembly-wise, I ended up not using the wierd shoulder-gun thing, as
the barrel wasn't round, but elliptical instead. For a pseudo-scale model, it
needed to be truly round. Just as well, as this gave me more flexiblity in
positioning the head, and more importantly, kept his head at the top of the
mini, keeping visual focus on him, rather than his gear. To me, it's vitally
important that people always know where the mini is looking and focused. I
also ended up milling out a lot of the inside of his coat, significantly
"lightening" the model as the slits in his coat now pass daylight through.
Another subtle detail which helps considerably in pseudo-realism. Turns out,
the wrists are very weak, and both broke while I was trying to get the arms
properly pinned into the shoulders. This was an annoyance, but as with the
shoulder-gun, it turned out for the best -- I ended up pinning and puttying his
wrists, giving a bit more posability to the arms.
I primed him with Rustoleum's fast-dry dark grey auto primer, and this came out
nicely. Detail remained good, coverage was excellent. Surface came out a bit
rough, but a little time with the toothbrush solved that.
I painted the overcoat a dark blue, and the armour in a "bright" natural steely
color for my primary color contrast. For contrast, I painted the holster and
shoulder pouch in darkish browns, along with the stock of his shotgun -- these
are all warm where the armour and coat are cold. The book was painted in a dark
red, while the shotgun holster was painted in a very dark brown. Parchment and
ribbons were painted as linen, and all fittings were done in bright silver so
they'd jump out against their dark blue or brown backgrounds. The foremost
wires were done in bright yellow, as a very subtle, indirect contrast against
the dark blue of the coat. And of course, everything is lightly edged and
highlighted.
I originally tried painting the coat in a deep red, but it just didn't work --
too bright, and I would have either lost a lot of the contrast or detailing
that I needed to make the mini "work". I also tried stronger edging and
highlighting, a la so-called 'eavy Metal, but this also doesn't work well: the
effect is simply cartoonish, and the lighter touch works better. I have no
idea how well it'd photograph, but looking at the box art, I think that it's
just not necessary.
Sorry, no pics for now, but when I do get a digicam, I'll be sure to put this
up somewhere.
--- John Hwang "JohnHw...@cs.com.no.com"
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