Infinity Yu Jing

[Ray Rivers]

Always wanted to do some Infinity stuff (nod to hubbabubba for his very inspirational and beautifully painted figures) and finally tried my hand at a couple miniatures.

These are "test" miniatures so hopefully as I go along, they will get a bit better.



Photo quality, as usual, doesn't help a lot in presentation but in general given my painting skill I'm fairly happy with them.

[Major_Gilbear]

I think they look very good... Although I do have a few suggestions to (hopefully) improve them if I may?

1) The base is flat and too close to the colour of the camo of the armour. In real life, that's great, and is of course what camo's supposed to do. On models, it makes for poor contrast and a less attractive miniature, so the impression of camo is therefore more important. Therefore consider changing the grey used on the base a bit, and adding a bit more interest on the top with some rubble, paving, etc. A light brown wash over the texture could help further too.

2) The blue areas lack tonal contrast with the grey, so even though they are a different colour, they don't really help to add interest to the model. For an example of this, I have desaturated your picture in Photoshop so that colour is removed and only tonal values remain - see how the areas now look indistinguishable? The blue needs to be either darker or lighter.

3) The armour panels need a little more definition too - some very thin watered-down black paint (and I mean thin!) with a drop of matte medium added can be used to make an effective liner to use around the more prominent detail.

4) The guns look good shading-wise, I'd suggest adding a just a few sharp near-white highlights on some of the upper corners to provide a little more sharpness to the guns. Keep these highlights tight as well, so that the guns don't end up looking 'soft' or like toys.

5) If you're struggling with colour combos that stand out, consider the way the colours can be arranged to improve contrast. So dark-light-dark colours across a detail means you get definition without needing to change colours... In effect this is what shading, highlighting and lining all do to some extent. However, you can take it further; adding a black band around the cuff where the blue meets the grey on the arms gives you something that stands out whilst also not adding new colours to the scheme or changing those you already have. Also, adding markings or other details in very light grey around the area instantly bumps the contrast up and adds visual interest. Finally, you can add a touch of colour to the neutral tones (in this case, the grey colours) to 'pull them apart' from each other. In a lot of fancy competition painting you see this especially well with coloured highlights and shadows, but you can easily apply the same principles with much less effort by simply tinting the base colours a little.

Anyway apologies for the wall of text, and also if I have inadvertently offended in any way! Your brushwork is very neat (and your soft blue-blacks are lovely too) and I know those models are both tiny and loaded with detail*. I am therefore only really posting this because I think you are capable of really improving the paintjobs with minimal additional effort.






*I have a complete Nomad faction myself... And since my friend has an equivalent amount of Yu Jing, I've seen those models in person too.

[Ray Rivers]

Thanks for the tips.

I don't want high contrast in the colors actually, so I'm quite happy with the color scheme. Had a bit of a mess with my highlights and such, but I think I have sorted it out. We'll see with the next minis.

The base is minimalist and will probably be replaced by those I get from Sedition Wars.

Cheers

[dijit]

I like them, I've also painted mine in rather muted/realistic tones in an effort to get them to blend in better.
Duncan

[aggro84]

Very nice paintjobs Ray! 

I really like the subtle shading and highlights.

They look great. 

[hubbabubba]

They look pretty good to me, but the Major's given you some sound advice if you wanted to make them pop on the table more.
it's nice to see them in such a different scheme. I look forward to seeing more of your stuff

[Ray Rivers]

Thanks for the comments, and I do appreciate them.

These miniatures represent, at least to me, a new generation of very highly detailed sculpted miniatures which really require special and perhaps I should say advanced painting techniques.

I've always liked the minis but they seemed a bit "scary" to me but I need a change of pace and decided to give them a try.

Sure enough, the amount of fine detailing forced me out of my normal painting techniques (which aren't that great anyway). To try to preserve the detailing I was using very light coats of paint to such a point as it caused me problems with color consistency. For example, I painted the blue grey equipment three times, and each time of course, lost detail in the process. Highlighting the grey uniform lead to various degrees of lightness. Not to mention the fact that even with my optivisor I was at the limit of my ability to paint what I could see.

Overall, they are lovely minis, though the attachment of the arms and weapons was a bit of a pain in the arse and to be quite honest they are probably a tad too detailed for this old painter to really do justice.

Still, I have 10 minis and hopefully I will be able to do them all. Have two more on the workbench and we'll see if I get a bit more consistency out of my brush this next time around.

Thanks once again for the comments.

[Andym]

I think they look great Ray!

[Ray Rivers]

Finally finished a couple more minis... 

Did a bit of change based on my initial two test minis... more highlighting, more depth in shading and a bit lighter highlight for the equipment.

Celestial Guard Kuang Shi Control Device:


Celestial Guard Spitfire


And also repainted a bit on the first two to bring them all together...

Celestial Guard Boarding Shotgun


Celestial Guard Combi Rifle


And here is where they probably will hang out... in my space base hunting zenomorphs:


To be quite honest, the minis aren't destined for Infinity play. Since I started my space base (Aliens) project I was looking for a third race and finally decided on using the infinity miniatures. They will be a superior alien race hunting down aliens throughout the Galaxy... think Predators, but in good.

Six more to go.