Now after 2 rounds of highlighting.

Nice choppers Tim.

Looking at a bunch of B&W pics from the flick, the big guy seemed to be on the dark side. With some stark highlights that can be a combo of that semi shiny look of a reptiles skin a bit of high contrast in the photo. So that's what I am going to go for.

Photo use for discussion purposes only

1st thing was to take some oil Lamp Black and mix in a bit of white, so it wasn't dead black, and a few drops of Japan Dryer so it would dry this year. I brushed in as thin a coat as I could down into every crevice. Then some dry paper towels were used to wipe that off all of the high parts. Some cotton buds used to get in between the toes etc.  Then lastly it was very softly wiped down with a paper towel that was barely damp with white sprits to clean those high parts a bit more.  So little spirits that anyone that didn’t see you do it would swear it was dry.

GM, Nemo's looking very good!

Tim, Conan's choppers are most impressive. Well worth the extra work.

Great progress guys, almost wish there was enough time to do another figure.

GM - I'm liking the metal look on Nemo, and can see how foil masking comes in handy to form around the organic shapes of a figure.

Tim - nicely done, those teeth look fantastic!

regards,

Jack

jibber, thanks, but sheesh, crack the whip why don't you, is 3 in a week not good enough

Thanks GAF.

Nice set of nashors Tim

Tim: Great job there on the flesh tones and great advice there by Jack and execution on Conan's chompers!  

Bish> Wow!  Lord Vader certainly turned out well.  I think you captured his "sithness". 

Tim> You had a miniature set of dentures made and stuck them into Conan's mouth, didn't you?  Those look great.

Conan's new chompers:

That one was a little blurry. Let's try another.

Anyway, much improved. Thanks for making me take a second look at that one, Jack!

Tim, very nice touches on tinting and especially the hair. It's looking very intense, very nice.

Jack cool work on the teeth and how you displayed the progression.

Bish another great build, get busy will ya. It's not like you have anything else going on…..

Nemo is really coming along, love the boots and ties.

There's been some unbelievable work during this GB, it's really nice seeing different themes but I still think my favorite is the nautilus with that menacing Sea Monster. Terrifying..

Thanks guys.

marc, no, he didn't say that, but he wasn't to happy that the mug was empty when I put it next to him. I am sure I heard milk and 2 sugars.

Gamera, thanks. There was quite a bit of brush work on this, which made a change.

Bish: Impressive!!! You're wielding that paint brush like the saber of a Sith Lord!

GM: The brass looks fantastic, love how he's turning out. I must admit though foil mask made me think of those cone things they put on dogs to keep them from scratching their ears though!

So when vader was done, and looking so real, did he say, "Bish, I am your father"

GM, that looked like some kinda weird silver cape. neat mask.

Looking good GM. That's a novel solution for masking, nice idea.

So Nemo finally got his boots on, although they need buckles for the straps.

Thanks a lot guys, its been a real pleasure.

Don't worry Tim, I will defiantly be sticking around, to much great work here to miss Mike's article was very useful and I will defiantly be using that for inspiration when I start doing large scale aircraft..And I also routed the edge of the base, its the first time I have used one of those and it a real nice toy I will be making the best of.

Jack, the badge was cut out with a copping saw, the holes around the edge were the trickiest.  

Phil, thanks. Getting the shin on the armour, especially the helmet, is something I really wanted to achieve, and I am really glad its come off.

Bish - most excellent work for this embodiment of the dark side.  

From the various finished sheens, to the details on his chest, simply great stuff.  From here, that imperial symbol looks like it it was cut from a tool and die machine, nicely done.

regards,

Jack

Bish - Excellent job on Darth Vader! You nailed it, and the base is stellar. I'm glad Mike Muzyka's article was helpful. I'll add Darth to the Hall of Fame in the morning.

Bish

Tim, Aaron, thanks again for a great GB and the chance once again to do something different. And thanks to everyone for all the help and the great builds, and a big thank you to jack for the advice on painting the cape. It made a real difference. 

You're very welcome! Thank you for joining us. Stick around for the rest of the build. Some of us stragglers are starting to pour on the gas. Plus, we'll announce the next FSM Group Build here first.

Marc, Gamera, and Greg - Thanks! It took me forever to get to that point today. Lots of blending, mixing colors, throwing mixes out, and remixing colors. Aaron at one point asked what was taking me so long. I flipped him a long, solitary bird in response. Tomorrow, hair, eyebrows, and then on to the rest of the his body.

jgeratic

1.)-  fill in the teeth area with a suitable gum colour.  I'd suggest  a bit lighter than his upper lip, somewhere in the pinkish brown range.

1.a) - optional, but to give more contrast, darken the lower area where the bottoms of the teeth will be.

Jack,

Thanks! I appreciate the support. You know, that's exactly what I did, up until step 2. I mixed up a bone color and left but a very thin strip of pink. Then, I compounded my folly using a just-off white to paint in the teeth. If you look carefully, you can see them in the pics. But, at your suggestion, I'll repaint them tomorrow morning before beginning on his hair and finishing up those eye brows.

Tim - Excellent work on Conan! He's beginning to look properly terrifying. I'll have to try completely airbrushing fleshtones one of these days, since you're providing this excellent tutorial.

Bish - Most excellent Lord Vader, and the base with the Imperial emblem is the icing on the cake. Can't look at your photos without hearing the electric sizzle of the light sabre. Truly epic!

Marc - Great seam restoration work on the GillMan!

Bish

Great work. I know how hard it can be to get a good shine on a kit and you hit it right on.

Phil

Looking really good Tim.

Ok, finally, here he is in all his glory.

As you can see, I re painted those 3 white buttons a light grey and did those inlays a mix of gunmetal light grey. I am really glad I did those, so thanks for raising that Tim. And Trabi, thank you for those links, they were really helpful not just for this but for the Stormtrooper I just finished. I will be saving that site.

As I mentioned before, I took some tips for the base from an article in FSM from last year. And the Imperial badges was made from 6mm MDF, and that was a real chore cutting that out. That's was an idea I got from plasticjunkie.

The lightsabre blade is a piece of clear acrylic rod painted clear red and I got the chain from a local jewellery store and decided to leave that silver. Gives Darth a bit of bling.

Now for the pics.

And finally, the now traditional mug shot.

Tim, Aaron, thanks again for a great GB and the chance once again to do something different. And thanks to everyone for all the help and the great builds, and a big thank you to jack for the advice on painting the cape. It made a real difference. 

Marc - the gillman is looking great!  Looks like you've  solved the missing detail problem, and super glue is likely the method I would of used too.

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Tim - looks awesome so far!  I usually steer away from using black in shadow areas (something imbedded into my brain from art instructors), but some people can pull it off, which is exactly what you seem to be doing here.

Regarding the teeth, if you have the time and are inclined to do so, here is a little toot I put together.  I took a crop of one of your in progress images, and used the upper set of teeth to illustrate the process.  It basically is how I would approach this detail when painting on canvas, but is useful here too;

1.)-  fill in the teeth area with a suitable gum colour.  I'd suggest  a bit lighter than his upper lip, somewhere in the pinkish brown range.

1.a) - optional, but to give more contrast, darken the lower area where the bottoms of the teeth will be.

2.)  - fill in the shapes of the teeth (might want to do some photo research on this).  Use an off colour white in the ochre to slightly blue range mix (guess depends on how much black coffee the individual drinks- ha!).  Again optional, (not illustrated) you can make the last few visible teeth in the back of the mouth a bit darker than the front ones.

3.) Add highlights, reserving straight white for maybe just the front two teeth, and less so on the remainder.

-------------------------------

regards,

Jack

Today I concentrated on getting Conan's face close to done.

His eye brows aren't finished, but everything else is pretty close. The fig just has solid walls for Conan's teeth, so I painted individual chompers. I might go back and define them a bit better, but I'll wait for final detailing.

Right side.

Left side.

Tim....SWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET!

Shiv: Thanks, and I'm looking forward to seeing the wallcrawler with all the webbing done.

Tim: Very nice work there! Picard was my first attempt to do a figure with an airbrush but I chickened out and did most of the detail painting with a brush. Learning a lot from what you're doing there. To be honest I prefer something with the hyper-definition like Conan there, to me it's easier to paint than just broad flat areas.

That's looking really nice there Tim, some really interesting technics being used there, I am watching closely.

Last Friday, I added the gray primer to Conan and Belit. 

I sprayed this from directly over Conan's head to give me a visual guide where the strongest light would fall as if beneath a noonday sun.

Some of you were wondering about the effect: Here it is! 

For me, the gray helps me block in the base flesh and first shadowed flesh colors. I suppose it also acts a little like pre-shading. Now, I have to get painting.

OK, time for an admission: I've never airbrushed a figure before. All of my figure painting experience is with a brush. I'm breaking new ground here! I mixed my own base flesh tone using Vallejo red, white, deep yellow, and deep green -- ratio 5:9:6:2. While Conan hails from Cimmeria, essentially Northern Europe, I thought he'd be darker complected right now because of all the time he's spent sailing around in the tropics without a shirt on. Thus, I went with a darker base flesh.

I'm blocking in the base flesh tone on those places that were almost purely gray and fading the edges into the places that remained black. My plan is to complete Conan's skin, mask him off, paint Belit's skin, then work the clothing.

I made the basic shadow color by adding a bit of green to the base flesh mix. You can see it in the cup.

Here's Conan with the basic shadow flesh color blocked in. It looks a little stark right now, but I'll work in a deepest shadow color and then highlights, and it'll look even worse. Then I'll start blending everything together. I'll resort to brush work on the face, and probably for some of the more subtle blending on the rest of his body.

The base shadow color will serve as the base flesh color in the shadowed areas. Then I'll add subtle highlights and shadows there--nothing too stark. Because of the nature of the figures pose and the amount of shadow cast by Belit, I'm forcing the light thing a bit, both for realism (hopefully) and dramatic effect.

Again, I'm revamping what I would normally do while using a brush and transferring that over to the airbrush. We'll see how he turns out!

Gamera-nice job with Captain Picard. The colours for the uniform look great.

Wingnut-good job with the bumps and the fill in on the zippers. You hid everything up nicely and they are very hard to see even with knowing where to look.

starting to feel the pinch with spidey. So close to being finished that I started to rush a bit and mussed up the last bit of webbing. So had to redo the one leg, and have the webbing all lined up nicely now. I should know better than to get too anxious about trying to finish. a couple more pieces of web to place than paint.

Nice job everyone on your builds, and cya at the finish line.

And then they were gone. Nice fix Marc.