Re: Caprasauridae's Lizardmen (New Skink Priest!)
Hi all!
This time, I have a special treat for you. Instead of my sloppy brush strokes, you can feast your eyes on a Gor-Rok painted by Neveroddoreven as a freebie for his commission painting portfolio!
The story starts couple months back, when Neveroddoreven posted here, on Lustria Online, that he is thinking of starting a commission painting service and would like to increase his portfolio and get some experience on running a service like that. I thought for sure, that he wouldn't want to go out of his way to paint something for somebody living in far away Finland. Nevertheless, I contacted him and asked if he was up to it. And he was! I was super excited, I love his plog here and genuinely think his work includes some of the best miniatures I have ever seen!
He PM'd me his email, and I asked some general questions about how the thing should go down and send him a picture of a scheme I would like to see (For those of you who are interested, it was Kroxigor on the GW's How to Paint Lizardmen ebook) and said I would like to see that on a Gor-Rok (got that bad boy as a birthday present and had just build him). One thing I want to mention here is that he always answered very quickly and made it very pleasant to deal with him. He also gave me a time table on when it would be ready. This is where he slipped a bit, saying it was harder to achieve the light green colour than he had thought, and the miniature took few days longer than expected. Neveroddoreven still kept me in the loop really well and even send me some WIP pictures to make sure it was starting to look the way I wanted. It was.
When the package arrived, I couldn't wait to open it. The model was very carefully packed in bubble wrap and made immobile inside the package. A band of foam sheet was also wrapped around the miniature as extra protection. Miniature survived the trip beautifully, I found no postage-induced injuries.
But, that is way more than enough about that. Here are the pictures!
Neveroddoreven asked me how I would like the bases to be done. My wish was to have something similar to what my own bases are and advised him to check my plog for guidelines. He did a fantastic work with that. Even though Gor-Rok will easily stand out when amongst my troops, the basing and the rim colour of the base will make it look like it belongs. He also inquired what the marble should look like, and again I pointed towards my plog (increased traffic, yay!) and said I would like it to look similar to the howdah on my Stegadon. The marble is by far my favourite part of the model, it looks so life like! All the subtle lines and colour differences don't really show in the pictures that well, in real life it looks even better, I assure you.
I promised Neveroddoreven a review of how I felt about this process. Of course much would depend on the pricing of his services. I was extremely happy with the end result and the service I got. He was very pleasant to deal with and I really appreciated how he kept me in the loop. I saw this system on one commission service's web page, where he divided the quality (and pricing) into three categories. First was basic table top quality, with base colours, washes and some highlights and details. Second was detailed job with more shading and even more intricate details picked up. The third, and most expensive category was the quality of second with lots of added freehand or difficult blendings. To put the Gor-Rok on to that scale, I would say it belongs to category 2 or 2.5. There's lots of shadings and all the details are picked out, and especially the marble effect on shield and weapon push it over the second category, but maybe not all the way to the highest third category. This I'm basing on what I have seen on Neveroddoreven's plog. Especially his added scale effects on Sauri and Skinks are mind blowing, and definitely category 3 stuff.
I hope Neveroddoreven finds this review useful. He definitely has the painting skills to make it in the commission business, I think the next step would be to figure out the pricing and get some kind of website running. Also, an important thing to learn / take into account, is the pricing of your time. How much can you spend on one miniature so that your hourly wage is not on the level of a sweatshop worker... Maybe you can buy some popular models (like the new End of Times minis), paint them up and put them on eBay. You can see how much people are willing to pay and get an idea of the work/pay ratio. I wish you all the best and hope you can succeed.
- Caprasauridae
)or tetto and i wonder are the parts hollow? and do you think that the brittleness of the smaller parts will be an issue in play/transport? is the material flexible at all? was there a lot of flesh to be chopped away? so many questions >_<' would it be possible to have a macroshot of the face area to see how good the details came out on the actual mini?
