In my previous post I shared a small band of pretty girls able to kick some serious butt (They actually do in-game; holy shit!) who are also themed around a very colorful and not so dark approach to Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. In this post you will see the finished crew (Colette starter box + Johanna + Angelica).
We’re going to start out with something simple: the second Mannequin. This one is dedicated solely to Angelica. Thus she bears the same vibrant orange, shaded with dark greens and has a slightly different pattern to her apparel as her helper sister. I adore this models stance. I placed the head in a slanted angle to add more dynamic to it and make her look stricken with emotion. I must say that some of the model does not mix well with me. The sculpt and how it was molded make it really odd to paint. Some of the frame of her dress is uneven, dented or slanted in a way that makes it really troublesome to paint. Hence you will see quite a lot of mistakes here and there. Eventually you just ‘give up’ trying to paint the perfect miniature to play with.
The next model to show off would be the second Performer from the starter box. She is a frail and small little thing. Very petite and not really a model I enjoy visually. You can kind of tell this due to the half-assed paint job. Still I tried to experiment with a light blue tone shaded with a red-brown. A color combination I am actually pleased with, even though it is not as prominent on the model as you may think. We will have to wait until I can get started on the third Mannequin to test out that color combination again.
One thing unique on her that my other girls does not have is her hair style. It is bright as the other girls’ hair is. But it is divided into two differently colored segments. The front portion being a poisonous green and the rear a sunblazing orange. This is an idea I plan to test out on other upcoming models in the future. It adds a bit more flavor to the hair structure and will help me not to repeat myself that often.
Before I unveil the grand Colette DuBois herself, I will have to dazzle you with some of her other iconic tag-alongs: Mechanical Doves.
These are her personal totem in-game and are iconic and well associated with Colette. When I decided to start painting them, I had to think of a way to make them fit my crew’s theme and not make them bland and boring as most people paint them (Sorry, no offense!). Usually people will go for some simple metals and make them look rather uninteresting. The old sculpts were a lot better as they had some magical effect added (like magical swirls or a hat and poker cards flying about). These aren’t that fortunate and I needed to find a way to compensate.
Why not paint them in bright and colorful schemes? Why not paint them black too? What? Ultimately I painted them black and decided to hint at a skeleton, by painting some bone structure on the models. Add bright colors and fancy dots and swirls here and there and you have a few birds ready to fly around the rest of the rainbow, which is becoming this crew.
Colette has always been the main attraction of the show. The coordinator, lead role and heart stealer par excellence! An interesting fact about this new sculpt is that the artwork originally did not depict her having a top hat. It looked really odd and kind of took away from her old feel (She had one there as well. It is basically mandatory.). Luckily they managed to add one before production and she looks complete. Now with long locks instead of short curls. I like it!
I have to paint all of my master models orange in some way. This crew has not been swarmed with orange as have many other crews and models of mine before, due to the experimental nature of color composition here. Still, Colette had to have some orange. Since I already had a warmer orange with Angelica, I decided to attempt at a slightly cooler one with a dark purple shade and a more yellow tint to it. I am pleased with how it turned out and my shading. It really looks interesting and purple is definitely a solid color to shade orange with.
All of my showgirl models have a uniform set of colors and the teal/purple combo had to go more purple than teal. Reasons to this were to compliment the purple shading of the orange bits a bit better and because her hair is blue/brown and having too much blue would have been overkill. I wasn’t too pleased with how her skirt turned out so I added some black stripes, which turned out to be a really good choice. I like the look and feel of the skirt a whole lot better now. Its dark and still colorful enough to lend plenty of contrasts to the rest of the model.
One thing I thought was kind of fun, which probably wasn’t necessary, was to paint her boot design like some old 80’s neon color design. You would see bright combos and designs on otherwise bland clothing and I just couldn’t resist! What a blast of nostalgia.
Overall I really have to say that I am pleased with the new sculpts. I was really unsure of them at first, as they differed heavily from the back then already ‘perfect’ crew. I can gladly say I have a fully finished and painted Colette crew. Extras will be coming more and more in future updates. I actually have more already, but my blog posting is pretty backlogged at the moment. Been painting more than typing. Haha. With that I will end this long post. Thanks for reading and see you soon! ❤
Bleached Models - A Hobby Blog 
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