I got my Core Box of Marvel United in the wave 1 of two wave shipping. I chose to paint Hulk, Red Skull, and Ultron first, who oddly enough all have roughly the same pose. I'd been searching for the right green color paint in preparation for Hulk, and decided to use the Vallejo Model Air Olive Green from the Model Air starter box.
This looked to be the easiest to paint of the bunch. I decided early that I'd be doing him with metallic silver paint, instead of the NMM I plan to use for the rest of the box. Too much metal on him, and I wanted to try the Vallejo Air silver through my airbrush. I primed him completely black, as metal paints look much better over black.
Now we're into the batch paintings. It's goblins and orcs, and to be honest painting seven more orcs sounds like a better job for future me. These guys were the first I recorded video of me painting, although I missed the first three colors.
The process was slow going at first, but once I got passed the large areas, things started coming together more quickly.
Greenskin was the logical choice for the goblins skin, and Leather Brown is a great brown for coverage. Necromancer Cloak has become my favorite black-that's-not-quite-black, and I use it here for the hair.
I also start using Ivory as a white replacement. I find using both pure white and pure black is not favorable, since those colors don't occur naturally and it is impossible to highlight white or shade black. Also, pure white often goes down chalky if you're not extremely careful and applying very thin layers.
The only (intentional) difference I painted between each goblin was the color of their hair tie. I'm not sure it's necessary, but it might make things easier to differentiate when it's on the table.
I highlighted the green with Pale Green. I generally think of goblins as having lighter skin than orcs, but when I initially didn't highlight their foreheads, I found that large dark surface made the goblins look overall much darker. I had to work around the warpaint, but by just highlighting that part, they became much lighter.
Speaking of which, the warpaint was my first freehand painting of the box. There are a few slip ups, but I imagine goblins applying their warpaint before battle isn't the most meticulous process.
For a thief, her questionable outfit choices sure do draw a lot of attention to herself.
Big thanks to the CMON painting Arcadia Quest painting tutorial by Miniature Mistress on YouTube [link] for Scarlet. I am thrilled with her cloak and her hair. The purple-pink hair stands out beautifully, especially against the blondes and brunettes of the other heroes. The direction of the eyes compliments the sly smile perfectly. Great sculpt, one of my favorites! This mini turned out amazing.
It's been a month since my last paint order, and I've got a couple items waiting on Customer Hold at my friendly online game store, so it's time to add to the collection. I've come across a lot of praise for Vallejo paints, and decided I should give them a try. They have two primary brands of acrylics for miniatures, Vallejo Model Color (VMC) and Vallejo Game Color (VGC). VMC is a larger palette of a real-world colors. VGC is tailored more toward fantasy realms and brighter, fun colors.
I've been impressed with them so far. Here are the new paints I've added to my arsenal.
Seth was a little tricky. His card art is much darker than the others, as if he were in a cave. I imagine this was to accentuate to light from his wand. I chose to brighten up his colors for the model, and make my first attempt at object-source lighting (OSL).
Below you can see a few work-in-progress shots of him. I overdid it with the green lighting on his face trying to hit all angles the light would touch.
