(WIP) Painting Guide Guys
Added 2025-01-16 07:15:35 +0000 UTCAll of the four army books will include, as an appendix, a painting guide depicting some of their forces in full color and advising on small details. The intent is to aid in painting kitbashed miniatures. I haven't yet colorized the Rygo example grunt; the other three are already finished.
Originally, the plan was to simply pick some unit art from each class (infantry, vehicle and aircraft) to colorize. This was doable for aircraft and vehicles:
...but not for infantry:
What color is the machine gun supposed to be in reality?
It ended up being less effort to do new infantry figures for the painting guide. That also let me do a slightly better job overall: the painting guide figures are a little bigger, more detailed, and I've reconsidered some minor gear details here and there on all of them. Being able to portray the same unit type more than once also lets me show off things the original pose might have missed: the lupar mask-helmet's shape, the use of the Federal battle rifle's carrying handle, and a downward "stowed" position for Rygo construct antennae, for instance. Full color also makes for an extra visual channel. I had to contemplate some things I didn't originally do for the monochrome unit art: what color and pattern is on a lupar's pelt, for instance?
They all represent fairly new ground for me on the artistic side as well. Truthfully I am a very amateur artist in most respects. Narrowly specializing in pen-and-ink is fine when that's the overwhelming majority of Firelock 198X's artstyle, but anything else is pretty shaky. Doing a full-colored special splash art piece for each army book--in a different style, each time--has been one way for me to force myself out of my comfort zone.
