May Commissions: Martin's Pathfinder Society Mini!

I posted a while back about the three painted minis I offered for the Biking for MS. Martin Blake (the British VL for Sydney who may be moving to Denver) won one of the minis (I'm still waiting on John & Matt to tell me what they'd like...).

In Australia, Martin got a cert allowing him to play an ifrit: one of the half-fire elemental/efreet creatures (for full details about the ifrit, check out the PRD). After a quick look at the illustration, I was pretty fired up (hehehe the pun isn't that funny, but I had to). I've been thinking about making a flame-covered flesh for a while. And I have to admit that I met with more "failure" than success. No, I have not posted the many fails... I won't lie that though excited, I felt a little apprehension.

So now I had a mini with skin that would need some new types of effects. I toyed with the idea of adding green stuff to make flames on the body but after thinking about it, I decided against for two reasons: first, there wasn't enough skin on the model and second, my sculpting skills. Once primed, I placed the mini before me and took a good look at it. A fair amount of armor... I hesitated between painting the armor gold/brass or a silver/steel color. After some internal debate, I went with the steel as a means to provide some contrast with the fiery skin. Plus I could always use gold as an accent for the armor.

For the skin, I did a basecoat of typical "skin". Then did the highlights using an orange color and the result was surprisingly like the original illustration! Huzzah! With the skin tone a success, I moved back to the armor. Base steel, then some gold highlights. But I didn't like the result. It the highlights did not pop as I'd hope, maybe it was because of the skin, I'm not quite sure.

So I placed the mini next to a few pots: blues didn't look right, I was already planning on using green on the "skirt", and yellows clashed with the hair. I tried looked at purple, reds, browns. Finally I settled on a blood red (GW's red gore from the 1990s actually) because I thought it felt in the "theme" of the mini best. Just a few highlights of red replaced what used to be gold and the effect popped.

The hair was done in bright yellow. Using orange to give it a flaming appearance did not look right, but yellow shined. I liked...

Because much of the mini relied on bright, popping colors, I went with rather dull green for the skirt. Some simple accents of red and yellow brought it in-line with the rest of the mini.

Another one I'm very proud of! Hope Martin enjoys it!

There is one last part of this story... last night I met Martin face to face for the first time in a while... And I forgot his mini! So he'll be getting it as a "Comic Con Present". This post should give him an idea before getting his hands on the mini...

JP