BB: Orc Head

I didn't feel up to working on all that armor today, so I did the orc head instead. I thought about grossing it up a bit, but decided that would probably not add anything and be more of a distraction.

BB: Jewelry, Armor

Finished off the gold bits and base coated the armor. I'm hoping to be done with her by the end of next weekend. I feel like I'm making good progress.

It's unfortunate that the main view of her will be from the back, as it's not the best angle for her.

BB: Clothes, Leather, Gold

Shaded and highlighted her outfit today. Also figured out why her face looked off - forgot eyebrows again. So I put those in and also deepened the shadows on her cheeks a bit. I also did the leather bits and the base coat of the gold areas. I see from the pictures I missed the edge of one of those and will have to go back to it.

She's coming along. Not as fast as I'd like, but they never do.

BB: Eyes, Hair, Clothes

Gave Barbarian Barbie eyes, did her hair, and started on her clothes...such as they are. I'm pretty happy with the hair, for once. Her face looks weird in this picture, though.

BB: Skin shading and highlighting, face

Finished the shading on Barbarian Barbie and put on highlights. Also moved on to her face, but didn't finish the eyes. That means she looks a little...odd. I'm pretty happy with her skin, but may go back and add a couple brighter highlights in a few limited places.

Barbarian Barbie: Shading Skin

Started the first round of shading her skin. I wanted to get farther, but while I was putting in the shadows the hole under her sword arm was driving me nuts, so I stopped to try filling it with a couple dabs of glue. Then while I was holding her upside down so the glue would stay put while it set, she fell and her sword broke off again. I had to glue that back on too. Then I had to clean up and smooth up the glue spots...

She's not a terrible cooperative figure so far.

Diorama: Putting it together

With the king done, tonight I put together the diorama pieces that are done. That was the club, the mounted heads, and the king himself. This was stressful, as an errant drop of glue or a failure to get something straight before the glue set could have ruined the whole piece. I think I made it through OK, though, and here's the result.

I'm pretty excited to see it coming together.

I also started working on the other main figure for this diorama, who I am calling Barbarian Barbie:

Once I started painting her, it became clear this figure has more issues than I thought. There are some other gaps I should have filled with green stuff. They're not visible unless you hold her upside down, though, so I'm going to leave it and hope for the best. I also found more surface roughness which I tried to cover with sealer.

Then there's her outfit, which is highly, highly improbable. I didn't notice until I started painting her that there's absolutely nothing holding that bra in place. So, I'm just calling her Barbarian Barbie and having a good laugh.

King: Done!

I don't love that sword, but I'm still calling him done. I'm going to give him a once-over tomorrow for any cleanup, then put sealer on him, then start putting stuff together on the throne. It'll be nice to see everything starting to come together.

Finishing him means it's time to move on to the other main figure. I put her together today. Normal I think I'd have chosen to leave the arms off, as having them in place is going to make for a couple tricky spots for painting. However, there were gaps that were going to need to be handled. I suspect the mold she came out of was a little on the older, more worn side, so some of the edges are a little soft and the pieces didn't go together completely snug (though I've seen worse). So, I took care of that. You can see the green stuff around the shoulders. Next for her will be primer.

Oh. Her sword broke off too, so I had to fix that as well, too. I didn't line the blade and hilt up quite right, so that's going to look a little funny.

The King: Sword & other metals

All I have left now is the blade of the sword and his crown.

The King: leather highlights, sword

Put a lighter round of highlights on the leather, and then went on to the gold on parts of the sword.

The King: Highlighting Leather

First round of highlights on the leather. I need to do a second round of lighter highlights. Then it'll be on to the metals.

The King: Shading Leather

Not much difference visible in the pictures tonight. I put a bit of highlight on the dark bits of his armor, and shaded the rest. It's pretty much dark against dark, but once I put the highlights on it'll start to show up.

I'm hoping to be done with him by the end of the weekend. If I am, I think that puts me in decent shape as far as finishing on time. I'll still have to keep at it, but I'll just have one major component left to do. That last figure is pretty complicated, though, and will take longer than this guy.

The King: highlighting kilt, leather

It's funny how much faster it is to highlight something when you only have to do the front half. Putting the highlights on his kilt went really quick, so I also got to base coat all the leather bits.

The King: Shading Kilt

It's soooo much easier to shade something when it's sculpted with such deep folds that they're basically all deep shadow.

Hopefully I'll finish up the kilt with highlights tomorrow.

The King: Hair, Clothes

Put highlights on the king's hair and base coated his...let's go with 'kilt'. I don't know that I'm happy with his hair, but I never am, so...moving on.

With the kilt, I was debating between red and purple. I went with the purple because I wanted to get some warm/cool contrast going with the skin. I like the result.

Next steps will be finishing the kilt as far as shading and highlighting go. I might texture it...I might not. Probably not.

I'm also not worried about the shading on the skin being too dark anymore.

The King: Skin highlights, face, hair basecoat

Highlighted the skin today, including the other hand. I think I'm done with the skin for now. I may come back and lighten the highlights a bit, or I might not. I'm waiting to see what it looks like when there's color on the rest of him. It can be hard to judge when there's still so much white.

So then I moved on to his face. I'm not entirely thrilled with the eyes, but I'm not sure I can make them better. Once again, moving on.

Base coated his hair. I started with a lighter brown, but it was too close to the flesh and shadow color and blended in to that too much, so I went to Walnut Brown, which can almost read as black. I like it...and it already makes the skin look better.

The King: Yes, still shading the skin

I worked on smoothing the shading today, and darkened his lower legs a bit. That'll be more obvious once the highlights go in. The shadow color is awfully dark...I may glaze it up a bit.

I also worked on the other part of him - his hand that's attached to the throne.

The King: Still Shading Skin

I decided to deal with using the wrong shadow color by re-base coating and using the proper middle shadow. Then I went on to the deeper shadow. I need to go back and put in more of the mid-shade and smooth things out.

I'm also not sure about his legs. They are super bumpy, and it looks...a little weird. The box art deals with it by putting almost all of his legs in some level of shadow, leaving just the tops of the thighs highlighted. That downplays all those shapes in the legs quite a bit. I'm thinking about doing something like that.

The King: Shading Skin

Started roughing in shadows on the king's skin. It's really rough; I was mostly focused on checking colors and getting an idea where the shadows should go. I was aiming for a similar palette as the barbarian. I should have actually looked up what I used on him rather than trying to do it from memory. This first layer of shadow is darker than what I used on the barbarian. I think I can make it work, but it would have been better if I'd checked my notes. :p

Diorama: The King

I've moved into the people for the diorama now, and spent most of the week cleaning up the king for painting. That was trimming down mold lines and uneven bits, filing down some of them, filling in bubbles with green stuff, and brushing over rough bits with clear sealer to try to smooth out the surface.

I also attached his arms, which was a bit of work as they had to be positioned just right so he'd sit in his throne with everything correctly lined up. This involved changing how the arm with the sword was positioned. It's meant to sit on the floor next to him, but the platform his throne is on is smaller than the one that came with the piece. Getting everything to sit right left a big gap between the arm and his shoulder, so I had to fill that in with putty.

The prep took a lot longer than I expected. But I finally got primer on him today, and started painting. I need to really pick up the pace or I won't be done in time. At least he doesn't have a lot of fussy bits.

While waiting for putty to dry, I also started on a cup I'll put on the base. I'll probably have it on the floor with some spilled wine. That was something else I experimented with this week - making something that looks passably like wine. I'm going with Realistic Water with magenta and purple ink in it.

Base: Weapons

I got back to the weapons I was thinking of putting at the top of the wall in the diorama. Here they are:

The club is done, the swords still need work.

So I tried placing them temporarily to decide which one gets hung on the wall:

I like the club, so that's probably what I'll go with. I'll likely have the bigger sword leaning against the wall.

On the heads...the big head at the top isn't working for me, particularly once the weapons go up. So I may end up not using it after all.

Diorama base

Panted some cracks on the back wall and put some shading on the vertical edges of the steps and the parts of the throne where Conan will be sitting. I may also darken the outer edges of the floor like I did with the wall, but I may wait until I've placed the other figure to do that.