Marvel: Crisis Protocol

Decided to get the Black Order finished up so I can be ready to play with all factions. I had started Black Dwarf many moons ago and I was reaching burnout at the time due to lack of interest in the characters. The Black Order flunkies are definitely not Marvel’s A-List of villains. Eventually I had to switch over to other character in MCP to keep my motivation up and Black Dwarf and the rest of the Black Order gathered dust in the meantime. His skin and the armor on his left arm (the one holding the axe) were already done and you can tell based on the difference between the NMM on that gauntlet and the NMM on his shoulder pad/legs. It’s a little noticeable to me, but I’m not sure most people will notice and I really can’t be bothered to start over on him, so it’s going to have to work.

Now I just gotta knock out Corvus and then I can tackle the mad titan himself.

Corvus was actually really fun and quick to paint because I feel like I finally found a recipe for black that works and it goes really quickly. Super happy with how he came out and it makes me really excited to tackle repaints on models like Venom, Black Widow, Black Panther and Punisher.

I also finished basecoating Thanos, so hopefully in the next day or two I’ll be adding him and finally being done with the Black Order. Just in time Dormammu and the Dark Dimension.

Almost managed to finish Thanos this weekend. Still need to do his gems and his base. Going to try to finish him today, wanted to get him posted with my progress so far. I used Sorastro’s YouTube guide if anyone is interested in steps or paints used.

Blocking the shaded areas of his gold was a bit of a grind, but the rest of him was really, really fun to paint. Overall I’m thrilled with how he’s looking and I can’t wait to get in some ultimate encounter games with him.

EDIT: Updated with a pic of him finished.

I’ve been putting Thanos off for quite some time due to frankly being intimidated. He’s a big deal in game. There’s an ultimate encounter where one player just plays Thanos with all the gems and he goes against an entire team by himself. As such, I really wanted to do the model justice. I’ve seen Sorastro’s video on him for some time and I wanted to use that video to paint him, but Sorastro specifies a bunch of Scalecolor paints that I didn’t have a way to get due to my location. In particular the blues he used are much more vibrant than the ones I was using, so I really wanted to get ahold of those paints before I tried following the guide. Now that I’ve moved and was able to get a full range of Scalecolor paints and I’ve gotten more practice in doing things like NMM and OSL, I decided I’d bite the bullet and finally sit down and paint him.

My goal was to have him done by the weekend, but destiny had other plans. Work and family life gave me a helping heap of obligation that took my focus away for most of the weekend. As such, I was only able to work on him on Sunday. You’d think an entire day on one model that isn’t particularly large would be enough, but the NMM process really ate up my time. The blue went relatively quickly and smoothly, as did the face and skin. However, once I hit the gold and in particular when I was blocking out the shaded areas of the gold for the NMM, the process was kind of a grind and took several hours. I almost decided to give up and work on him another day, but due to how much mixing is involved in the NMM and the gold I decided I wanted to at least finish blocking out the shading before calling it a day.

Then, a funny thing happened. Once I finished blocking out the shading I realized that all that was left for the gold was the highlighting, and due to how much of the gold was to remain shaded or with the base color, the highlighting would actually be relatively minimal and would likely go really, really quick. This breathed a lot of life into me and reenergized me and I was able to knock out several layers of highlighting, all but finishing him save for his infinity gems and base. One of things I’ve noticed about paint projects is that the earlier processes before you get to see the end results can be kind of daunting and feel like a bit of a grind at times, but once you get that part done and you start doing highlighting and you get to see what is closer to an end result where the model starts to pop, the painting immediately becomes really fun and suddenly I can paint for hours, even if I’ve already been painting for hours. That’s what happened here with Thanos.

I didn’t get him finished during the weekend like I planned, but all that was left was coloring in the gems and doing his base, which is really easy to do, so I managed to knock that out today and got him finished and ready to lose me some games.

As far as how I feel I did on him, overall I’m thrilled. The NMM feels really good, the transitions seem pretty smooth save for the spots on the NMM where I was intentionally trying to make them look a little rougher. The only area I can see where in retrospect I should’ve done things differently is I think some of the NMM on the boots isn’t blocked out rationally. Especially in the rounded tips of the boots, I think I should’ve relied more on Sorastro’s guide as what he did looks much more natural than what I did. However, since I’m very new to NMM and this was my literal first attempt at NMM gold, I’m not going to be too hard on myself about it. I wouldn’t have been able to do half as well on him had I tried this 6 months ago, so I’m not going to overthink it and I’ll just call it a win.

Finished up my Scaly boy in preparation for the Spider Foes that drop next week. He was pretty fun to paint and painted up really quickly. Although when photographing him I’m reminded that I need to find a way around my whites getting washed out as it’s really noticeable on his coat, where you pretty much can’t see any of the detail on it. I think I’m going to have to get set up with a permanent photo station so I can work on testing out different things and working on these photograph issues.

In the mean time I’m on to Kraven.

I had actually finished up Kraven last week, but I’ve been so busy I haven’t had the time to post him.

It was really fun digging through browns and trying to figure out which recipes I wanted to use for each part on him. I really didn’t want him to come across as crazy monochromatic and boring to look at. Also took it as an opportunity to try out some NMM. Overall pretty happy with it. I think in retrospect I should’ve increased the contrast on him. Take the shading in his muscles darker, bring his fur fully up to white. Things like that. Now I’m ready for Carnage and Mysterio to drop on Friday.

Finished up Mysterio. Used Sorastro’s guide to get him painted up. Pretty happy with how he turned out. The only thing I feel mixed about is his dome, which I don’t think looks bad per se, but I feel like I never really nailed that textured, yet smooth look. Either way, pretty happy with him.

Now I’ve just got Carnage to finish up and my Spider Foes will be complete… for now.

Finished up Black Cat. Tried using a different background than the normal black as all her detail was horribly washed out due to how much white and pale skin are in her paint job. The terrain in the background definitely helped a bit, but it’s still not great and really reminds me how much I need to get a better photographing setup. As far as painting her goes, it was really straight forward and fun. I’m pretty happy with my black recipe and I feel it did her justice.

Now I just gotta knock out Omega Red and the Criminal Syndicate are complete. Then I can move on to Carnage and the rest of my villain backlog so I can be ready for the Dormammu drop sometime this fall.