MASSIVE VOODOO: Tip of the week

Showing posts with label Tip of the week. Show all posts

Tutorial: Tips & Tricks on tiny Astronauts for the MV Challenge

by Roman aka jar

Hey everyone,
by now I guess you all have heard about this years massive MV Challenge 2020?

If not, check this link for all information about our challenge of your creativity:
http://massivevoodoo.blogspot.com/2020/04/mv-challenge-2020-beyond-your.html

I really fell in love with the little astronauts from the #massivevoodoochallenge2020 and the creative flow they sparkle in my brain. With the first amazing entries already dropping into my mail I can not hold back what my mind creates and the joy and possibilities I see with these little astronauts, sculpted by @momogojira, distributed via @mrleesminis ... Please read the following disclaimer:

DISCLAIMER:
I was thinking for a long time if I should show them. Please know: As a judge of the challenge I am not taking part in the competition. Furthermore I do not want to discourage anyone working on his entries or steal any ideas. When you are working on yours and my ideas are similar to yours, please do not worry and continue with joy. This will not influance my judging work together with @josualai.miniatures . I show them to promote the challenge and the beauty of its creative powers even more!

Of course with creating these I found out about some tips and tricks that might help and inspire everyone who takes part in the competition. Here are some:

1. Do not lose arms!
Well, happened to me several times as they are supertiny. If one arm is missing, you have to be creative on your future astronauts.

2. You are allowed to do not like the feet
Man, I do hate it. The feet are so tiny and thin and as soon as I start to cut the model of the sprue they break regularly. I decided to not let anger take over, but let this be a lesson for creativity. What I do? I do glue them back or even change feet position to create different poses.

3. Need a different pose with the arms?
Well, cut them of at the shoulder in the right angle you need. No one will see that you changed the arm length a tiny bit and a different angle of the arms can make a complete new pose.

4. Holding them while painting?
Well, I usually drill a small hole on the lower part of his backpack. A tiny one. Then I use a toothpick with a tiny drop of superglue and put the astronaut on it. Now I can hold and handle it while painting.

5. Allow yourself to convert them!
Well, I just found out - as I was missing an arm - that 1:72 soldier equipment, legs and arms can be put to excellent use to the tiny space travellers. Again, endless possibilites ahead of your creativity!

6. Add cool astronaut utilities!
An antenna, ballons or others from your bitzbox, check MV's tutorial section for more inspiration, here are just some links:

Creating tiny books

Oli explains how you can do some great mini books.

Scratchbuilding a little ladder on a vehicle

Old frozen ladder on an old frozen Sentinel.

Belts in the wind

This guide shows you how you can add belts to your models.

Sculpting Balloons
Want to add balloons to your projects?

Using Accupuncture Needles

Fine needles used to add special effects to your model.

Much more can be found here!

7. Finish old projects you never thought you finsih!
That is what I encountered. Every project can be finished with telling a story of a small travelling astronaut.

8. Create several entries!
Do not think any entry is unworthy. All of them are worthy to be in the challenge's gallery!

9. Think out of the box
Not every astronaut needs to travel space, some could be elsewhere. They do not have to be human at all. Play with different scales!

Now we wish you tons of fun!
Soon there will be an update on the Challenge. Some more random prize pool additions, the judging panel grows bigger in numbers with the MV Team and a counter of recieved entries will be added!

_______________________________________________________________________________
You want to support Massive Voodoo?
If you like to support or say thanks the monkeys of Massive Voodoo in what they do, please feel invited to drop a jungle donation in their direction via paypal or check their miniatures they got on sale here.
_______________________________________________________________________________

3 Kommentare

Labels: Events and Competitions, Tip of the week, Tutorial
Posted On 17 June 2020 at 7:18 AM

Article: Good or bad paints - how to tell them apart, by guest author Hansrainer

by Roman aka jar

Hello Jungle,

today we got an article ready for you by guest author Hansrainer.

Hansrainer is a long time follower of MV and friend of the jungle and he is particular always interested
to look behind the curtains of paint, theories and practical questions when it comes to
miniature painting. This article is not written by me, I am just posting it in the name of Hansrainer.
Please keep this in mind.

Thank you Hansrainer for sharing your thoughts and ideas with the readers of MV.

Good paints or bad paints - how to tell them apart

Every now and then, I read people asking the question “can you recommend a good red” or something
similar on facebook or in forums. Maybe something like “is GW better or Vallejo?” as well.

With the same regularity, the apostles of one manufacturer or the other use this to advertise,
why “their” paint manufacturer is best. But most of the time, when someone asks the question,
what defines a good paint, it turns out that coverage is a main criterion, sometimes the price or
the coarseness of the pigment used, the latter especially, when it comes to paints for airbrush.

Today I would like to dive into the peculiarities of paints, their different attributes, what causes
those and then come to a conclusion how you find the best paints.

Pretty much all paints (bar few exceptions)

consist of three basic components:

Solvent medium
Binder
Pigment or Dye

The solvent medium

is what makes and keeps the paint liquid - in the acrylic paints usually used by miniature painters,
this is water. In oil paints (and enamel paints) it’s usually some kind of organic solvent like white spirit.
As the solvent evaporates, the binder remains and starts forming a solid matrix in which the pigments
are embedded.

The binder

is the component that binds the pigment to the surface the paint is applied to by forming a solid layer
the pigments are embedded in after the paint dried. In acrylic paints the binder is acrylic resin, a kind
of plastic dispersed within the carrier (usually water).

In oil paints its linseed oil. A major factor controlled by the binder is the finish
- usually the binder determines if the paints has a glossy, satin or matte finish.
The finish in turn does have an effect on how brilliant a paint appears
(the same pigment will look way more desaturated with a matte finish compared to a satin
or even glossy finish).

The binder also determines the durability of a layer of paint against mechanical stresses
a.k.a. rubbing off.

The ratio of carrier to binder (a.k.a.dilution) determines how fast or slow a paint dries and therefore
how long it can be manipulated. This timespan is referred to as “open time”.
While these two components don’t have a huge impact on how a paint looks, they do have when
it comes to how a paint handles. (also, of course, this varies a lot between binders, acrylics have an
open time between minutes and hours, oil paints can be open for months!)

You might think now “if I dilute my paint heavily, my brush ends up soaking wet” -
that’s true, after all you just added a lot of water.
But if you apply the same amount of paint, the diluted paint will dry faster than the undiluted paint.

Now, the most interesting part at first glance are the pigments.

Most acrylic paints use solid pigments, the exceptions are probably most inks and glazes
which are likely to use dyes. Dyes actually solve in the solvent (like salt in water).
Pigments are dispersed (think sand in water). Thats why some paints start to settle after
a while and others don’t. For now, I will mostly talk about pigments, but dyes are in most ways similar.

Pigments are basically just really, really fine ground particles of a colored substance.
Pretty much all pigments we will find in paints fall in to the category of nanoparticles and you
won’t be able to discern them with the naked eye. At this point I would like to dispel a myth
with regard to airbrush-colors: No hobby paint has pigments so coarse they would clog an airbrush.
It’s not the pigment, its the binder. So, you can pretty much dilute any hobby-paint to make it go
through an airbrush. Some paint might form clumps easier than others, but that’s not due to
pigment size.

So, back to pigments. Since every pigment is its own chemical substance,
they vary quite a bit with regard to transparency/translucency.
That is the amount of light, that can pass through this material.
Many colored pigments are actually translucent to some degree,
which means they don’t cover very well. (In reality, this is a LOT more complex -
and if you are interested in the physics behind it, I really recommend this article:
https://www.naturalpigments.com/art-supply-education/transparent-opaque-paints/ )

_________________________________________________________________________

Now, if you buy artists paints,

you will usually get the information if the paints are opaque, semi- opaque, semi-translucent or
translucent (its most of the time printed on the tube or you can just see for yourself
- Golden Acrylics for example always paints a dab of the paint outside on the tube.

In most hobby-paints, that information is usually missing,
with Warcolors being the only manufacturer that adds this information, to my knowledge.

Since many hobby-painters equate strong coverage with good quality, many manufacturer
add some opaque filler-pigments to the mix in order to increase opacity.
Usually this is done by adding chalk or other white pigments. A similar effect can be achieved by adding
black or grey. However, this often leads to rather desaturated paints in the end.

There are some amazing exceptions from this rule, most impressive among them may be
Mephiston Red by Citadel. Here we have a brilliant red, that provides a great coverage.
While I would really like to know what pigment mix they use, I honestly have no clue.

Now opacity is a boon if one aims to work with covering layer over covering layer.
But for techniques that involve glazing or that build on previous layers of paint to shine through to
define light and shadows, it’s rather annoying.

Often hobby-paints are composed of a mix of pigments,
while artists colors often try to limit the pigments to a small a number as possible.
Why is that? One thing is the cost of production: If you look at fine artists paints,
you will soon notice that some paints cost considerably more than others.
That is due to the scarcity of the used pigment. It is often possible to
achieve a similar hue with a mixture of pigments to a much lower price.
The tradeoff lies in the fact, that those mixes behave a lot less predictable when
diluted strongly or mixed with lighter colors to brighten them up
(thanks to Alfonso “Banshee” Giraldez for showing that to me).

Another effect doesn’t so much show during the painting but years after:
Many natural pigments have a much higher lightfastness then their synthetic counterparts.
Meaning, the paint will bleach less over time due to exposure to UV-radiation and other oxidizing agents.

So, now coming back to the question of best paint:
There are many qualities a paint has:
brilliance, finish, solvent, opacity, purity of pigment, lightfastness, durability and several others more,
not the least: Price.

How do you determine the best paint for you?
Easy: Find out what you need. What do you want to do with it? Do you want to paint covering layers
quickly, or do you want to create delicate glazes. Do you need a matte finish before anything else,
or is durability important because the model is used in games and faces a lot of wear and tear?
As in all things in life, the more you know, the better the questions you can ask and in the end,
the better the answers will be.

The best paint is the paint, that does best what you need it to do.
Sometimes that’s GW, sometimes Vallejo or Scale75, sometimes a fine artist acrylic paint and
sometimes even a watercolor or an oil paint. Stay open minded,
play around, find out what suits your style of painting and what’s fun to paint with.

Disclaimer: I know I am merely skimming the surface here - there are literally books written on all
aspects I am touching here.

With best wishes,

Hansrainer

1 Kommentare

Labels: Painting, Tip of the week, Tutorial
Posted On 04 March 2019 at 9:54 AM

Tip of the week: Recasting?

by Roman aka jar

0 Kommentare

Labels: Tip of the week
Posted On 24 October 2018 at 10:03 AM

Tip of the week

by Roman aka jar

Make plenty of Work in Progress photos.
All the time. Even if you do not want to write an article about it. It helps you to check back with what you have done during your painting session. Check back with your photos when they are calling you. See things you did not see while painting. Think about them. Take them in consideration. Let your head wrap around ideas and thoughts. Continue.

Keep on happy painting!

_______________________________________________________________________________
You want to support Massive Voodoo?
If you like to support or say thanks the monkeys of Massive Voodoo in what they do, please feel invited to drop a jungle donation in their direction via paypal or check their miniatures they got on sale here.

5 Kommentare

Labels: Tip of the week
Posted On 15 May 2018 at 7:57 AM

Tip of the week

by Roman aka jar

Be a proud geek.
Nowadays the word "nerd" is slowly improving in general social life.
Nerds are not the common weirdo people anymore. Due shows like Game of Thrones and more fantasy and historical material in the world of entertainment nerds gain more "respect".

Well, maybe respect is the wrong word for it. Acceptance.
Working as a self-employed artist now for fourteen years in the industry of miniature painting I can say:

Wear your geekness with pride.
If it is what you love, do not hide it. There is no reason for it.
Stand your ground, being a geek is at least as cool as being someone who goes golfing or fishing. You just live what you love. Do not hide. Never hide.

Keep on happy painting!
Roman

1 Kommentare

Labels: Tip of the week
Posted On 08 May 2018 at 7:46 AM

Tip of the week

by Roman aka jar

Accept that your colors will do what they want
once in a while, often on your wet palette. This is nothing wrong. It is a thing of beauty and it will not let you lose control over your painting. Just go with the flow and let the paint guide you. Embrace beauty where you can find it.

Keep on happy painting!

2 Kommentare

Labels: Inspiration, Tip of the week
Posted On 01 May 2018 at 7:00 AM

Tip of the week

by Roman aka jar

Eat more healthy breakfast!
It will focus your energies through all of the day :)
For me these "superbowl creations" are a real joy to create. They do take about 20 Minutes each morning, but could also be done in 11,5 minutes if in a hurry. It feels like creating a beautiful base for a figure :)

Keep on happy painting!

2 Kommentare

Labels: Tip of the week
Posted On 24 April 2018 at 7:45 AM

Tip of the week

by Roman aka jar

"Don't ever make decisions based on fear. Make decisions based on hope and possibility. Make decisions on what should happen, not what shouldn't."

- Michelle Obama

Kulturpark West - one of the three buildings, the one the MV studio is located.
And winter. Plenty.

Happy painting to you all!

0 Kommentare

Labels: Jungle Spirit, Kong Fu, Tip of the week
Posted On 20 February 2018 at 9:23 AM

Tip of the week

by Roman aka jar

Aloa Jungle,

today our weekly tip is a quick book recommendation.
Of course you got to take into consideration that oppinions on artistic books differ from person to person. You have to make your own conclusions and decisions.

The left book by Betty Edwards was recommended to me by Donal and it is quite the good read with tasks you can fullfill to understand more about color theory. The one to the right gives you tons of color recipes on different topics. If you like working with recipes this is a good book for you!

My recommendation is to buy these books used. They are much cheaper and it doesn't matter if you have a splat of paint or a note by another artist in it. The opposite: It can be really inspiring :)

Keep on happy painting!
Roman

4 Kommentare

Labels: Tip of the week
Posted On 23 January 2018 at 4:54 PM

Tip of the week

by Roman aka jar

Train your eye to study statues of all kind.
Don't just walk by. Stand still, look, observe. Not only on the beauty of the sculpt itself, but also on volumes and how they are hit by light and shadow, color variations in different ambiences, weathering and beauty. This is a free gift we can all appreciate, if we start looking and visualising.

As a figure painter you can only learn from it as statues are nothing else than what we paint, just slightly bigger and often with a little bit more history. If you want more inspiration on statues check this article.

If you see a guy with a camera or pen'n'paper in your hometown, spending quite the time in front of statues, it might be me.

Happy visualising!
Roman

0 Kommentare

Labels: Tip of the week
Posted On 16 January 2018 at 7:37 AM

Tip of the week

by Roman aka jar

Plan projects in your brain, not only on your table.
The more time you take for planning, inspiration collection, planning your paintjob colorwise and light situation wise, the more your brain works before you actual start the work the easier your paintjob will flow and you will not get lost in a labyrinth of painting by numbers. Learn to see your vision in all aspects and figure projects will paint themselves.

Know the music that inspires you.
One day I want to hear this live
- bucket list entry added :)

0 Kommentare

Labels: Tip of the week
Posted On 12 December 2017 at 8:50 AM

Tip of the week

by Roman aka jar

Photo by taleofthebananawhale, done in Prado Museum, Madrid

Look at art, life, nature, your figures,
your friends, family, pets, your car, your world in black and white once in a while. I know. Not with your eyes. Use photofilters to change something to black and white.

This will help you to see how you can achieve contrast in hues, can give you inspiration where to place and compositioning dark and bright colors to see harmony all over or bring attention to a certain spot. There is a reason why I did put my preview pictures on www.romanlappat.com in black/white. It teaches me if a figure and a paintjob I did works in terms of hues. Of course it is not all black and white, there is grey too ;)

Cheers and happy painting!

1 Kommentare

Labels: Tip of the week
Posted On 05 December 2017 at 11:53 AM

Tip of the week

by Roman aka jar

Good Morning Jungle,

today tip of the week is again about MV's challenge that ends this week.
It is more an information post on how this challenge ends this week and gives you all information you need to have a good feeling while taking partor when the challenge is over:

- Sent your entries in until October 19th 2017, Thursday (this week)
as soon as the calender hits the 20th on Roman's time (located in Augsburg, Germany) entries are not accepted. You will recieve a confirmation mail once your entry was checked. Please write your full name and adress to the email. We need this in case you will win a prize or are lucky concerning the random price pool raffle.

- Will I recieve a confimation mail as soon as I sent my email?
No. We do not have a monkey sitting in front of a screen and waiting for your mails to show up. Roman will regularly check his emails and as soon as several entries arrived and he finds time, he will check back with them and sents out confirmation mails. Please be patient on this. You might even find some confirmation mails going out on Friday. If your entry arrived in the given timeframe and we might encounter and issue with photos or such, we will inform you and it will still be valid, even when you recieve your confirmation mail on Friday.

- Can I show my photos of my final entry after October 19th?
Yes you are allowed to. Starting on October 20th everyone is allowed to show his final entry whereever he/she wants to, forums, blogs, galleries, facebook, events, etc.

- When can I expect to see the full gallery of entries?
As we are heading towards and back from the SMC over the upcoming weekend we ask a little patience. As we gave you time to finish your entries give us time to organise everything in the background. Estimated time table to show full galleries are the two weeks after the SMC. We have more information for you at this point. So stay tuned.

- When will MV announce the winners?
Well, as soon as we show the full gallery we already showing you all winners, as everybody who took part in the challenge is a on a big win. You took the challenge, succeeded and learned something new and fun. Of course we will announce the challenge winners and also the random prize pool winners, but this is happening after we showed the full gallery and took our time for proper judging work.
We keep you informed.

- When will MV sent out the prizes?
Well, step by step. Everything. We will keep you informed, but as Roman is handling these things on his own - beside everything else he has to do - it will take a moment or three. Easy. We tell you.

- How many entries have you recieved so far?
Today, Tuesday, 17th October, 09:12 (bavarian local time):

Waterbase Challenge: 12
Infinity Challenge: 18

_______________________________________________________________________________

You want to support Massive Voodoo?

If you like to support or say thanks the monkeys of Massive Voodoo in what they do, please feel invited to drop a jungle donation in their direction via paypal or check their miniatures they got on sale here.

_______________________________________________________________________________

4 Kommentare

Labels: Events and Competitions, Jungle News, Tip of the week
Posted On 17 October 2017 at 9:14 AM

Tip of the week

by Roman aka jar

Go hiking in good company sometimes.
To relax, calm the brain, to talk, to be silent, to listen, to find roots for basing, to find other roots you belong to, to enjoy nature, to find Varus's legions, to find stones and to visualise.

The sound of nature is visual.
Music?

Nothing more from my side on the blog for the rest of the week, as I am on a hike :)
More inspirational photos for every painter on every journey, click.

Keep on happy painting!

0 Kommentare

Labels: Tip of the week
Posted On 03 October 2017 at 7:02 AM

Tip of the week

by Roman aka jar

Well,
what tip do I want to give with this strange photo?
Several ones actually. Everything has its right moment. A photo shot. A dance. Painting on a certain project. Finishing a model. Wait for it. It can not be forced.

Everything has a golden angle you want to take the photo from, especially figures. For example a bust's best photo you show should always show the figures face and even better connects with the look that you painted in the busts eyes. A good example is this mermaid bust painted by Melissa. I was able to hold this bust in my hands while doing judging work at NOVA Open and it is a wonderful example on this. I fell in love with her look from this particular angle. She looks at me. She wants me to come to the ocean with her.

Keep such things in mind when you do photos of your next project.

Keep on happy painting!
Roman

0 Kommentare

Labels: Tip of the week
Posted On 26 September 2017 at 9:18 AM

Tip of the week

by Roman aka jar

This tip of the week is - again - on a very significant topic:
Observation skills.

Learn to obvserve what your eyes see day by day and learn from it for painting. I call this visual studying and what I can tell is that this helps me a lot while on my journey as a painter. Give it a try and read an article about visual studying here and even for different months of the year:; Autumn, winter, spring ... (still missing summer on this one, but in progress).

Others might call it carbage. I find beauty in dead bonsai trees and of course in alive ones too. The color of soil and the variety of elements.

A dark blue night. Colors change by daytime.

The color of stones is not neutral grey.

Reflecting material works different with light and shadow than non-reflecting material.

Take your time to enjoy the small things in life and train your eye to find them.

Keep on happy painting!
Roman

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You want to support Massive Voodoo?

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2 Kommentare

Labels: Tip of the week
Posted On 19 September 2017 at 10:23 AM

Tip of today

by Josua Lai

Base to go ?

Did you ever walked nearby a perfect little twig or a bit of sand who would look too good on your next base but you where not prepared to take it with you?

Here is a simple 4 Step guide for you how I prepared myself for this kind of situation.