The local RPG club, where I spent several hours every week in the past year either playing or running a game as a DM, has recently become one year old. There were loads of ideas on how to celebrate the anniversary: throwing a party, having a cake, a charade, etc… – everyone was excited and busy with organizing the event.
We decided to give some kind of an award or memorabilia to gamers who have really outdone themselves. There was a surprise only two of us knew about: Crooked Dice Studio had a miniature with an uncanny resemblance to one of the iconic members of the club. The head, the pose and the cargo short were spot on, so we decided to paint them in gold, silver and bronze and make them our “Oscars”.
First I removed the hoodies from the miniatures, because we have never seen the previously mentioned player in a hoodie before, and we wanted to keep the figures as similar to him as possible. Then I made some scenic bases using skulls, various leftover pieces from my bitzbox and some Citadel Astrogranite.
Painting metallics is quite tricky. The real professional solution is the technique called NMM or non metallic metals, which is basically painting metal effects without using any metallic paints, simply by mixing black and white to the base colour, which creates a convincing “shine” on the figure. I have never done this before, and given the short deadline, this wasn’t the best time to learn it.
This left me with the classic solution: metallic paints. However, I wasn’t completely happy with my metallic paints either. Most of them are good enough for small metallic bits on minis, – for example a piece of jewelry or a weapon – , but may not look convincing on a full figure. Varnishing was a challenge too: varnishes can make metallic surfaces look dull, but a figure without a protective layer is too vulnerable.
Luckily, I had a set of metallic paints: the Vallejo Model Color (70.996 – Gold, 70.997 – Silver and 70.998 – Bronze) and a bottle of their Metal Varnish (77.657) too. I used these only on smaller test pieces previously, but I liked the result; they had very fine pigments and created a nice shiny surface. After applying a white basecoat, I covered the minis in gold, silver and bronze.
The minis looked much better than I expected, but I wanted to go one step further, so I added some shades as well. I gave the golden one a wash of Gryphone Sepia, the silver one Nuln Oil and the bronze one some Agrax Earthshade. When they dried properly, I drybrushed them with their base colours and added a bit of extra highlight to the most prominent details.
Finally, I gave them a fine layer of the metallic varnish and I was glad to see that it didn’t ruin their shine.
That’s the end of the story of the “Oscars”. The party was nice, the winners were happy with their awards and I found a great way to make metallic paints work.