Nancy (Neko Galaxy) Part 3

This project has been on hold for the past few months while I was getting ready for KublaCon. I wanted to make sure I finished the class figure before the show, so even though this piece was close I needed to focus on that other one as well as the bust for my faces class. Now that all of that is behind me, I can get back to the final touches on my Neko Galaxy project.

Although I didn't show it earlier, after my last post I continued on with the figure and painted her gun, socks, and shoes. I then began to work on the base. I pictured her in an urban setting. The scene in my mind is there was an attach by giant robots and she quickly grabbed what was handy to fight back. The outfit doesn't quite seem right for a dense jungle or some planned battle field. I mean, I at least assume she'd put on some more armor if she knew she was going to have to fight and had time to prepare. So on the street of a city made sense to me. I didn't want an overly large scene, so I picked a pretty tight base and ended up even cutting some of the sculpted ground that came with the kit so she would fit. I built a bent and damaged street sign, I figure damaged in the fight, to help convey the setting. She ended up having one foot that was slightly hanging over the base, so I put her standing on another bent and damaged road sign to help extend the scene a bit over the edge of the plinth. I just attached the standing sign and need to paint the post. I also plan to add some more streaks and weathering to the sign itself. Now that the sign is attached to the base, I'll sculpt a bit of curb around it to finish off that corner to the base. I also want to dress up the base a bit more with trash and debris that you might find on a city street normally or perhaps items that came from the battle. I've got some rough ideas but still need to refine them a bit before I start gluing anything else down.

Nancy (Neko Galaxy) Part 2

 October was a busy month, so not much painting happened. Things have started to calm down a bit, so I got back to painting over the past few days. I thought I'd share an update on Nancy from Neko Galaxy. She's different from my usual subjects, but that's made for a refreshing change. Plus she's just a fun figure, so how could I not enjoying working on her?

After painting the skin and body suit, I moved on to the hair. I tried to play up the shine effect with light reflecting off her hair. I then moved on to her armor. I'm taking more of a NMM approach on this one instead of my usual TMM. I feel like I've been slowly moving in the direction of NMM anyway. I still have some of Scale75's Heavy Metal in my mix, so the metal portions have a slight reaction to the light as you move the figure. But there's a lot of matte color mixed in, so the shadows and shine are pretty much frozen in place.

I started with a 1:1:2 mix of Strong Dark Blue (AK), Amethyst Blue (AK), and Heavy Metal. This formed my core shadow (steel mixed with a dark violet blue). Then I worked up to ~3:1:1 mix of Heavy Metal, French Uniform Base (AK), and Violet Light (RMS). This worked as my metal reacting to the ambient light. Then I shift to a 2:1 mix of Heavy Metal and Lemon Yellow (RMS), for my basic highlight. Then I introduced pure white to that for the top reflections. And, to some of the mid range mixes, I added carnage red so I could pick up some reflected light from the painted portions of her equipment.

Nancy from Neko Galaxy and Painting Skin

I just started on Nancy, a 75mm figure from Neko Galaxy. I've been focusing on improving my use of light and my skin work lately, so I thought I'd share some details of my approach for this figure.

I've been painting cast shadows on my last few projects and I find taking reference photos to be a huge help in making sure my cast shadow placement looks believable. A simple way to do that is to take the unpainted figure and place it under my painting lamp. I can then move the light around until I find an angle that I think works well with the figure. Be sure to keep in mind what your intended 'front' view for the piece will be when you picking your light placement!

For this piece I ended up taking two different series of reference photos, one with the unprimed figure and one after I'd primed her. Why? Well, on the unprimed figure you get more of a semi-gloss reflection off the bare resin. I wanted to create a similar shine when I painted the skin, so the unprimed pictures help me place those reflection points and understand their shapes. Now these reflections will change depending on what angle you're viewing the figure from, but if you stick with whatever view you think is the front, you should be fine. The second set is after priming. The figure now has a matte finish so it's a little easier to isolate the shaded vs lit regions. You can still get that information from the first image, but I think it reads clearer in the second. 

Jump forward to the painted figure and you can see the placement of shadows on the skin based on the reference photos as well as the reflection points. Of course you don't need to match them exactly, you can use your artistic license to make adjustments. For example, I've maybe pushed the shadows a little further towards the side on her face to keep it well lit. And I've added some small reflections to bring out the knees more. But overall I've stuck close to the reference photos and used those to help guide me as I painted.

As for colors, I recommend not getting too caught up in specific paints. You don't need this particular shade of red from this particular brand of paint to get similar results. Rather focus on the colors themselves (that blue was used here and yellow there, whether the colors are light or dark, saturated or desaturated, etc) and pick similar shades from whatever brand you prefer. Okay, end of disclaimer! ;D

I've got a mix of Reaper and AK Interactive paints. For a base, I used a 50/50 mix of Reaper's Rosy Shadow and Fair Skin. The darkest shadows were Reaper's Ruddy Leather mixed with Imperial Purple, Void Blue, and Rosy Shadow (something like 2 parts Ruddy Leather, 1 part Imperial Purple, 1 part Rosy Shadow, and a touch of Void Blue). Normally I'd substitute the blue for purple, but I wanted a more violet ambient light for this scene and hence the change. If I needed anything darker, I'd use the same mix but remove the Rosy Shadow and add in more Purple and Blue. From that shadow mix, I'd work in layers up to pure Rosy Shadow and then continue on until I reached the 50/50 Rosy Shadow and Fair Skin mix. For the highlights, I then began to add a 2:1 mix of Reaper's Lemon Yellow and Linen White into the 50/50 Fair Skin and Rosy Shadow mix. I wanted a yellow feel for my primary light source but if I worked up to pure Fair Skin first, that color would be about as light as the yellow is and thus it'd no longer work for the highlight. So I begin when I've still at 50/50 Rosy Shadow and Fair Skin.

For the reflection points on the skin, I started to add Pure White to the highlight mix but prior to reaching pure Lemon Yellow/Linen White. I liked the results better when I switched over to adding white while there was still some skin tone in the mix. 

Using the same approach as above, I also added red to the shadow tones and midtone (darker red into shadows, lighter red into midtone) and used that variation in areas like the nose, cheeks, and knees. However, I kept the same highlight mix rather than adding red there too. I then use intermediate mixes between the red variant and the main skin version to blend the transition regions. You'll see I still need to do some adjustments around the knees.

For the body suit, I switched over to mostly AK Interactive paints just because those are the shades I had handy. The base was AK's rock grey, a warm grey. For the shadows, I took a bit of Amethyst Blue and Strong Dark Blue (50/50) for a nice dark violet which will be used throughout the rest of the figure. I added some of that to AK's Neutral Grey. I began with that grey-violet mix for the darkest shadows and then gradually worked up to almost pure grey. I wanted the body suit to look white, not purple, so I tried to find a balance between adding in some of the ambient color without so much that it overpowers the primary color for the suit. Into the mix of mostly grey with a little violet, I then added Rock Grey. When I reached pure Rock Grey, I then started to add my Lemon Yellow and Linen White mix. Since the base color here was already pretty light, I switched up the highlight to a 1:2 mix of Lemon Yellow and Linen White (more white than yellow).

I'm debating if I also want to add pure white reflection points on the body suit to give it more of a shiny look. I'm going to hold off for now and wait to see how things look with the metal portions done. Speaking of which, the armor is based coated with that dark violet mix on areas that will eventually be metallic. Then there will be regions of painted metal, which I've based with a 50/50 mix of AK's Burnt Red and Medium Rust. I'm sticking close to the original concept art, but swapping the yellow in those for red just to make mine a bit different.