43 - The Grin Twins

I finished up two more members of the Cosplayers over the last few days, Mr. Black and Mr. White, A.K.A The Grin Twins.  These are the low rep with zero funding Henchmen for the Cosplayers.  When their rules first came out I was not very impressed.  Their stat line was ok, nothing special.  The Twin Rule (which made you assign action counters incidentally to each twin and had to activate them one after the other) really limited their play.  They also could not benefit from Jokers Trickster rule cause you where not allowed to reallocate their counters. 

With the new edition of the rulebook for BMG the Grin Twins got a huge bonus.  The new twin rule gives them +1 Attack, Defense and Willpower as long as both twins are still alive.  So for 19 and 17 reputation you get 2 goons that have an Attack and Defense of 4! and a Willpower 5.  Pretty damn good for the cost!  Then on top of that, they can not use the Trickster rule!  The only downside is that they both have the Elite: Cosplayers trait, so you can only ever use them with Jared Leto Joker.   

The models are simple in their design, but I think that makes them look very sharp.  Black suits with a little red for the tie and white cuffs.  I used the airbrush to do the gray scaling up to white over a black basecoat.  I then used several thin layers of the Inktense Black to shade the white back down.  In the end I got a dark charcoal grey suit look.  The model was very shinny (and not looking to good) afterwards.  I gave it two thin sprays of mate varnish to take the shine away.  I am very happy with the results.  I will definitely try painting black like this again.  It was quick and efficient (I think I will have to try it out on some Grave Guard soon!).

5/7 Members of the Joker Cosplayers are done.  Next up will most likely be Panda-Man followed by Eyeball Man (very creative on the names).

Kevin

41/100 - Suicide Squad Joker

Jared Leto's portrayal of the Joker in Suicide Squad was very polarizing.  Some people loved it, while many people hated it.  I think Leto was in a very tough spot.  He was following in the shadow of Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight.  That was an amazing version of the iconic villain.  One of my all-time favorites!  It would have been bad to try and mimic Ledgers Joker.  Leto had to make the role drastically different.  However doing something different with a beloved character can be risky (fanboys always like to come out in arms if something deviates from the canon).

I actually really liked the Leto Joker.  The insane gangster/thug take was unique and I appreciated it.  It was very different from the other Jokers we got before.  My issue with the character was his involvement in the Suicide Squad movie.  The Joker in Suicide Squad does not effect the film at all.  With the exceptions of the Harley Quinn origin flashbacks, Joker does nothing to drive the film forward.  If you took out every scene (except the flashbacks) that the Joker was in, the movie does not change at all.  That is a very poor use of such a great villain. 

This week I finished up the Joker for my Cosplayer crew.  I used zenithal highlighting and a purple glaze with the airbrush for the coat.  It was a little flat after that.  I decided to try something new on it to add some depth.  I picked up one of the Scale 75 Inktense Violet from my local hobby store.  These inks are intense (I was not going for a pun, but I will take it).  I gave the whole coat a wash with some watered down inktense.  I then did some spot shadowing in the darker areas of the model with inktense with less water.  I finally added some thin lines of straight Inktense in a few key areas.  The ink really made the model shinny so I ended with a mate spray.  I was quite happy with the results. 

I also tried to paint some of Leto's tattoos.  I used some really watered down Abbadon Black and did several thin coats to build it up.  All-in-all I am happy how they turned out. 

I got one of the Grin Twins on the go right now, trying out the black Inktense on it.  Hopefully he will be done in the next few days and then I will be half done the crew!

Kevin

40/100 - Elite Cosplayer: The Goat-headed Priest

This week was the start of our new escalation league for the Batman Miniature game.  I wanted to paint a new crew for it, so I decided to play my Suicide Squad Joker and his Elite Cosplayers.  The only model from the crew that I had painted previously was Harley Quinn.

The league starts at 200 reputation, which is a little low for SS Joker (he would have been over half my points).  So I am going to use Harley as my Boss for the first few sessions.  However since all the cosplayers are "Elite", I can only take one of them in the initial crew (SS Joker has the "Boss: Elite Cosplayers rule", which will allow me to take all of them).

I also wanted to use this crew to practice with my airbrush.  I started with the Goat-Headed Priest and the Eyeball man.  I looking up how to do zenithal highlighting and shading on YouTube.  The spraying worked well for the priest, but not so much for the eyeball guy (I decided to do a page one re-write on him).

The Goat-Headed Priest should be fun in the game to use.  He essentially has a grenade launcher that he can use while in hand to hand combat (which will also hurt him).  I really want to kamikaze him into a group of henchmen!

Looking forward to trying out this crew soon!

Kevin

39/100 - Kaga Brother, Warrior Nation (Wild West Exodus)

Lords of War Games and Hobbies brought in a new game recently, Wild West Exodus.  It is a really interesting game with some beautiful models.  It is set in an alternate history where several different alien entities have influenced mankind over hundreds of years.  The main conflict is set in the American West (hence the name) following the civil war.  When you break it down, it is a western with lasers and aliens.  Reading the source material for it, it reminded me (especially the alien entities) of the last few season of Stargate SG1 and Stargate Atlantis. 

I decided to go with the Warrior Nation for my faction.  I knew none of the rules, I just went with which models I really wanted to paint!  The warrior nation are the Native Americans faction.  They fight for the great spirit to protect to world and stop of corruption of the Hex.  I picked up the "Tribal Retribution Posse" to start with (early birthday present to myself).

I was very worried about how to paint the skin tone.  I tend to paint very pale looking Caucasian skin tones.  I wanted to go a little darker but not make it a caricature.  I enlisted the advice of some great local painters, Chris and Patrick. They helped me pick out some colours and got me started in the right direction. 

I am very happy with the end result.  I think I over-highlighted in places, but I am trying to take shadows and light sources into consideration more.  Can't wait to start on more, and to play a game of it too!

Kevin