Dive into something new!

A friend of mine asked me to paint a few miniatures for him. The miniatures? SUPER DUNGEON EXPLOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!!! (Insert explosion SFX)

Six models in total. The main goal of the project was a) to help my buddy knock off some ‘to-be-painteds’ from his shelf and b) to experiment with color ranges I usually never to rarely use.

The first one I approached was this dwarf warrior dude. I felt it would be a good start as he was to be painted in a range of colors I feel comfortable with. He surely is a funky little character. I really dig his simple eyes. Very Gimly, if any of you are into old anima/manga classics…

Number two was this cute barbarian girl. As mentioned above she had a good range of colors I am accustomed to. The heavy red was surely a fun color to paint. Painting large anime eyes is pretty fun to. Oddly it is a way to practice simple free hand. Really a fun project.

Number three was this spear girl. I was supposed to paint her as on her box (same goes for two of the following models). It was a challenge to somehow get her hair to work. I think if I had more time to put into the project I could have made a better transition ion there but none the less it was fun to paint. Yellows, blues and pinks. Ugh! Not my favorite colors to paint. Still good practice.

This is a model I enjoyed a lot. She has a really nice shade of purple hair and her golden and brown clothing really worked well together. Of the six models this is my favorite in results.

A gunner gal came up fifth. Box art painted, I would say I nailed her in that aspect the best of the miniatures. My favorite model of the bunch and one I enjoyed painting a whole lot. The hair was a real challenge and I really pushed myself to paint something nice.

Being a pirate is alright with meeeee. You are a pirate!
She surely is and color wise pretty savvy too. I dig reds and oranges. To be honest she does have a bit too much red. But her box art was rather limiting. A fun and cute model to paint as a grande finale to a project.

The whole bunch before I shipped them back to the states. To sum up my experiences in a few points with these models:
a) Super Dungeon Explore miniatures are highly detailed sculpts that are practically ruined by the poor execution of the company’s way to pour and mold them. The plastic is of such a poor quality that any file would literally rip open the surface than smooth it down. Cutting the material was difficult and a terrible task with numerous mold lines on such nice and detailed miniatures. This is the worst aspect of the miniatures I encountered and unfortunately the first.
b) They are damn cute. I really enjoy the look of the miniatures. Very anime and chibi, they offer a nice and fun distraction from my usual style of miniatures (Infinity, Malifaux, Dreadball, etc…). Personally I wouldn’t purchase these myself (Though I would LOVE to have a Nyan Nyan model of the range). They are just not my taste to enjoy them for a longer duration.

c) Practicing with colors I usually do not use is a nice refresher. Painting these minis gave me many ideas how to incorporate some of the colors into my current and even future lines of models I plan to paint. Mostly not as stark or bold as in these miniatures but definitely snuck in there somewhere.

All in all a great and fun experience. Thank you Jim for your endurance in this project (I took well over a month longer than anticipated… Sorry buddy!). Do feel free to go and visit the guy at his blog: http://mydnightshobbycorner.blogspot.de/