Hellboy (an old Spring Clean Challenge)

So what do I know of glazing, not enough to write home about. I mean I’ve occasionally thinned down a bit of paint to help with transitioning and blending but I’m certainly no expert and I’m about to endeavor on a project where I plan on almost exclusively glazing, ………until I get it wrong. So in the spirit of making mistakes that I can learn from instead of just getting frustrated with I dig out some redundant toy pirates and skellies from my kids toy box and give them a quick zenith and sketch layer so I have some pieces to test on.

Then I think to check my supplies. I figure glazing a full box of Hellboy miniatures will require a fair bit of glaze medium.  I’ve got about 15mm of Vallejo glaze medium, about 75mm of flow improver and no fancy paints like Citadels Contrast stuff. With the number of minis I’ve got to paint I could go through most that just trialing mixes before I make any real progress so I do a quick search on line of my usual suppliers. They’re all completely out of Vallejo stuff short of a few small 17mm bottles, panic buying for indoor hobby time seems to have taken its toll.

I get to thinking maybe I could make my own mediums. If I a can make myself a flow aid, a glaze medium, a contrast medium and maybe a wash medium I will have something consistent to add colour to and not get too lost in the chaos of remembering mixes every time I want a specific effect. I still have access to plenty of matte medium, dish soap, rinse aid, isopropyl and water. All things I’ve used in the past to help make washes and thinners so I guess if I can find ratios for the other mediums I might be able to get by making my own.

My research takes down a few rabbit warrens but after hrs of youtube and reading a few forum topics I have little specific information on washes and glazes but some good info on Flow aid and Contrast medium. Two of better pieces of advice were gleaned from the following

Flow aid- Luke Aps – Geek Gaming Scenics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=28&v=N_9JqC9ykBg&feature=emb_logo

Contrast Medium – Goobertown

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VU0rc0EOOys

Piecing together other commentary and throwing in my own meagre experience I take a guesstimate on washes and glazes, gather supplies and do a little supporting experimentation

Some right some wrong but so far no mistakes. Though I  do wonder if my base is white enough to make the most of the technique.

So I have determined my method but I still have to make it work with a large number of minis to be painted. I scratch myself, wonder, and realize I have little specific experience to weigh any decision on. I decide to start at the start and make it up as I go along. The first decision I make is to use the frogmen with each step as experimental rats so to speak to gauge the effectiveness of each part of process.

I give everything a black undercoat and start with a cool grey before the warm white, get through the frogmen and larger Monsters but wonder if I haven’t gone to heavy, and too light early on given I still have a lighter layer to go. I drop my cool grey back a shade or two and feel more comfortable moving forward.

If your wondering why all the little steel plates, I had a moment in my re-enacting career about a decade ago where I started making a coat of steel lamellar. This is where magnetizing the bases comes into its own as I can easily move the miniatures onto tighter bases to maintain the angle of spray for each coat of successive layers.

So as I work through gluing magnets and stuffing green stuff I become increasingly irritated by the absurdly long long arms of the riflemen. The magazine isn’t showing in this pic but it appears the sculptor couldn’t choose between a 98k or G43 so Frankensteined them.  It may have been artistic license but it bugs the sh!t outa me. So I do something about it. Though by scale the rifles are still a few mm too long I used 2 convenient steps in the model to snip out a section on all the riflemen and use a 2 part plastic adhesive to weld the barrel back in place.

As a matter of course green stuffing always leaves you some green stuff left over so I start twiddling and because a skull always comes in handy and I can always do with the practice.

But I still had left over green stuffing. So I get to thinking about how pulpy Hellboy is and how maybe I could come up something to use as a clue counter to be used in the game, and thought about how I have few other pulpy games of similar scale such as Dust 1947,and  Reichbusters, and then I remembered ….a skull needs a …..

As per my findings painting the BPRD tokens I’ve washed and sorted all miniatures for cleaning mold lines. Thankfully Mantic really know their stuff and the mold lines aren’t too much bother. I’ll also I drop a magnet under each base with a bit of CA glue for ease of handling.

Mike Mignola’s  work stands alone. As a fan of Hellboy there’s the story and then there’s the way Mike told the story.  I did spend some time wondering if these miniatures could be painted in a style similar to Mikes original minimalist, stark, sharp, dark, high contrast style and while I love the idea of it, the original art isn’t constrained by the 3^rd dimension and seems to jump straight to the 5th and 6th.

Whilst the original art played havoc with anatomy, and focused almost entirely on the positive vs negative (ie shadow) to evoke the story rather than tell it, no doubt a stroke of genius,  the Miniatures with the game are 3 dimensional with quite good anatomical proportions.

So I’ve discounted the possibility of imitating Mike’s original style but want to see how close I can go.

Painting a full set with all the Kickstarter goals will be a time challenge even with all of spring (for me Autumn). As of this post I’m staring down the idea of working full hours from home while watching over 3 kids schooling from home. So I have to be smart about this.

Right now my plan is to focus on underpainting a good sketch layer on all miniatures first.  A zenith layer, but taken up a level like Dana Howl does here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGYWYDv8Gq0&t=286s

Then I will attempt to make some glazes based on Mike Mignolas colour pallet. Hellboy comics rely on block shadows and 1 block colour per subject/object so I will attempt to do the same, though my shadow/zenith with be a graded 3d B&W base.

I’ll keep my finger crossed it will evoke the comic style, and be efficient on time.  It does mean my B&W sketch layer will have to be quite good and my colour matching and glaze alchemy will have to be spot on but I wont have to spend hours colour blending or layering . At worst I’m sure it will provide a great base and I will forgive myself further washes and high lights if required.

Technically I started this projects months ago , pulling out the Hellboy character miniatures I made start but was unsatisfied with my initial painting processes struggled with inspiration and put it to one side.

During early February the box re-emerged and me and few mates played our first few games.  We fouind it quite thematic and unanimously we decided to continue playing through the campaigns and really get into the games minutia. Then COVID-19 came and you know the rest.

One of my first visual bug bears while playing the game were the dark grey markers on the dark toned tracker board being difficult to see. Before long I had painted these trackers base white with a blue glaze. I did notice a very small issue of getting base colours to stick and realized I should have washed prior.