Dia de los Muertos – A Special Performance

Do you know what I like? Halloween. Originally I had started a fun and cute Colette gang way back in the day. A fun color scheme of oranges, blues and whites with the beauty of Colette and her gal-pals to make for a lovely crew. Then I decided to scrap that idea. I wanted to make a Halloween, witch themed Colette gang. I repurchased the old metal gang back then and opted to get going on that project once the second edition rules for Colette eventually came out. Unfortunately this idea eventually got shelved, as it took longer for the rules to come out and I had other mob priorities to paint (Gremlins).
So with my old painted gang hanging out in a glass case at my local game store and newly purchased metal figures sitting in a box deep in the pile of miniatures in want of a paint job, what is it that I have done? You are right! I purchased the NEW Colette plastic set (such lovely lovelies) and decided to paint up a healthy alternate to my Halloween theme: Dia de los Muertos – The Day of the Dead

Besides the obvious point of wanting to put these pretty gals on my table to play with, what other goals should I set for myself with this new band? Usually I always try to up my game in some way or experiment with new themes and styles. It helps me grow as a painter and enables a more flexible and broader palette to work with. Get it? Palette. Tee hee.
Most people paint up their Colette crews in a rather colorful and random way. I am one of those guys, who prefers a certain degree of uniformity in my crews and thus I want something that offers color variety and is yet uniform. I decided to tie in all of my models with the same white and black tones (very typical for a skull/dead themed crew). Now where to go on from here? Orange? Almost. I would prefer orange, but most of my crews contain a lot of orange, white and black and it would just be painting the same stuff in a slightly different way. Let’s go with a teal green shaded with purple. Since its such a nice and playful color set up, why not give each showgirl her own unique color combination? This lets me experiment with other colors and combinations thereof.

This was my first gal to paint up for this crew. The prettier girl of the two regular Performers, in my opinion. She has a cute poofy dress and kick-ass everything. Did I mention she has tiny skulls on the straps above her ankles?
Her color theme adheres to the above mentioned idea. Her oddball color combination is the bright yellow, shaded with a darker green for some colorful contrasts. The pink/orange hair is an idea I came up with during painting. Why not give the girls super colorful hair too? Just make everything as colorful and fantastic as possible! She was a blast to paint and she did come off well amongst others. A fun model to paint and I am really pleased with her outcome.

Fluff-wise, each showgirl has her own mannequin to dilly-dally around with. Be it to prepare their own clothing or to just attend to their personal needs. This gives me a great opportunity to unify some of my models amongst each other in this motley gang of power gals.

I had this crazy idea of replacing the regular mannequin heads with some scary looking skulls. I think this helps amplify the whole theme and gives the crew a sugar skull variety as well. Who only wants to see white skulls?
Her color scheme is the same as the showgirl’s above and really suits her well. I am really happy with the outcome of these two. Can’t you just see these two strolling around in-game together placing scheme markers like maniacs?

Originally the five models, which are going to all be presented in this post, were meant to be for a Shifting Loyalties campaign with some of my local group regulars. Unfortunately the campaign fell off a little short and has pretty much died down. Still back when we had planned this I had to come up with a 30SS gang that could be flexible for several encounters. Since the girls I have are all into messing around with a lot of things in game and offer more control and flexibility, I needed someone to come in and slam on some opponents, when needed. Let me introduce: Johanna

She is a lady with a really strong punch. In addition she offers some more scheme marker mechanics and of course the capability to remove nasty and unwanted conditions from my model. She could almost be considered a paladin type of character, with a little less heals and for that a hefty smite.
Since she is a mercenary I wanted her colors to be less vibrant from the other gals. My showgirls will be the truly colorful ones of this growing arcanist lot. New additions may vary. Her yellow/brown pants shaded with purple tie in well with the purple tones already used in my teal combo. I tried to use more of the purples on her than on the showgirl above, just to create more contrast amongst the same colors. It also offers a nice contrast to the yellow tone of her browns. Neon green hair was the right way to go. I tried a couple other colors prior to this. This one worked out the best.

A side note: painting minute details and freehand is harder than it looks. This actually functions as a reminder that I am not that great of an artist. Painting miniatures is one thing but freehand painting on them a completely different league. Usually these girl’s faces require more than one attempt to get to a point, at which I feel comfortable enough with their looks. Johanna looked really odd before. Now she is more sleek and pretty. Practice, practice, practice!

Adding Johanna to the lot makes them look a whole lot better, in my opinion. Even though the models have different colors, they still share a good portion of colors. This is a form of uniformity that I can really dig, as it gives me the freedom to mess around with more colors.

The next girl to the bunch is the lovely lady, in charge of introducing each and every act in the Star Theatre. Wonderful, mysterious and downright sexy Angelica.

She is of the four models the one with the starkest color contrast in her kit. The orange clashes wonderfully with the blue portions of the teal and really makes her pop a whole lot. The orange is actually shaded with a dark green and black, as you can see between her legs. It was an interesting thing to mess around with and trying to shade an orange with a colder color. I have done so with purples in the past and even turquoise (old Colette crew). I must say I am really happy with the outcome and I actually have used this combination (slightly altered) on some other models, which will eventually be showcased in this blog in the future.
This model is just beyond stunning and probably one of the best female sculpts in the entire Malifaux range. Really well model design, if you ask me. Her little stool is something that caused me a short moment of grief, as it was too pale and white initially. It still is, but I believe the addition of tiny skulls helps tone it down a bit and blend in more with the original theme.
Her mannequin wont be showcased until I start posting the next set of models for this crew. It is definitely just as dashing and wonderful as she is. ❤

At first I worried Angelica’s heavy-duty orange would clash heavily with the others. In a way it does but in another way it doesn’t. I feel it blends in well with the general colorfulness of the crew but still appears to belong in there, as so many colors of the kits are shared and based on the same components.
The final addition to this crew and the last model to show off in this post can be none other than Colette’s right hand gal: Cassandra

Wow. Just wow. I like this model a lot more than Angelica. She is just downright awesome and was a blast to paint. To give Angelica credit, she was definitely a close second place. Cassandra is true to her lore and absolutely stunning, as she is depicted and described in Malifaux fluff.
I wanted to replicate the colorful pink hair I used on the first showgirl and basically mix around with more unique ways to use orange. Yes. There is orange in this dress (and the other girl’s hair). I have been having a fixation of adding other colors to orange like purple or pink. This girl gave me an opportunity to test another combo out in a larger scale portion. The flow of this dress is just wonderful and really pleasant.
When I originally was working on her, I shared some of the WIPs online and people joked around, stating her dress looked like a prom dress. Pretty in pink. To a certain degree I actually agree with these comments. However adding the teal color range and the black really knocked off this look and gave her a contrast full look that really demands attention. I especially like how her expression turned out. Her gesture and pose basically flaunt not only herself, but also her comrades and could amount to a meaning of “Do you even want to try? You wont be able to handle it.”. I love it. ❤

With that I have a perfect center piece to my little gang of models. The bright colors really worked out well. The mutually shared colors and base design really unifies them as a unit or a gang and I cannot wait to paint more up for this little troupe. I have yet to finish: 1 Performer, 1 Mannequin (This one will share Angelica’s colors), 3 Mechanical Doves and Colette herself. Time to bust some ass and get the next set ready for a future post! See you then~