One More for the Cabinet! Desolation Row: Alien by Black Scorpion Miniatures

   Here he is! That alien I've been working on for the past two WIP Wednesdays is finally done! Come on in and take a look! I hope you like him. For me, it was worth  the wait, as I got to have a little fun with shiny things.

   So, as you may have read in one of the previous WIP Wednesday articles, I grabbed this guy on a whim because I saw him in FRP's Overstock Sale list and thought he was cool (especially for the couple bucks I was able to pick him up for on the discount rack). I like to snag the occasional "Vanity" models, as we call them over here at LXG (models that we don't need for a particular game but just think are cool). And now was a perfect time to paint him, because the Counterblast stuff is almost ready to go, but we need some Arnts! As Arnts are menial little slaves in the Neiran army (or perhaps gladiators, if you want to be that flattering), they are going to be pretty low on the sculpting priority list, so we figured random aliens by other companies would be a suitable substitute for the time being.
   The sculpt of this model is actually fairly simple. I spent more time on him because I wanted to experiment with my paints to do some funky things with that long, draping vest he's wearing. So here's what I ended up with. I started with a slightly reddish purple for the basecoat. I then mixed that purple with some metal medium and applied it over the regular purple (once I had already reached opacity). I decided I wanted it shinier, so I added another layer of JUST the metal medium on the highlight areas of the fabric. Next, I hand applied some translucent blue (a blue wash would also work, but it was at my other studio ::lol::), strongest in the deep shadows. Then I cleaned up the color transitions.
   The inside of the fabric is actually just a pale skintone interlaced with metal medium, and a light brown wash (I used a medium brown wash on the skin). I wanted to keep the color scheme simple; the opposite of the Taans. His skin tone is a purple-gray, and that staff is not actually black but a purple off-black. All his adornments are done with varying silver metallics, and then the gem on his chest and the stone on his staff were layered up with pure metallic medium. Yup, I like shiny. Even his eyes are done in a bright silver. Cleary, shiny and purple are this guy's national colors. Or planetary colors. Regardless, he sticks with a theme.
   Well, there it is. The Desolation Row miniatures average a total of 32mm tall, so kind of a big 28mm heroic, making him stand pretty tall among the Counterblast 28mm figures, but still not as tall as his Neiran masters. I hope you like him, and I hope you will soon get to see him enslaved to Token Gamer Chic's Neiran Empire forces in Counterblast!