I started this project in August 2010 and it took its time to be finished.
The crazy and old conversion work on Figone's Minotaur was a pain in the ass to paint, really.
I just wanted to finish him and so I did. When I look back on the conversion it is like "whoha?" - wtf was going in my brain, but well, sometimes those moments are full of joy :)

You can also find a Miniature Unpacked of the Minotaure here.

I was very happy to see that this conversion even inspired Figone to do the "Gladiataure", or at least that is my guess when I look at his cow brother. Great model to paint, whatever you do with that cow!


I even wrote an article about scratchbuilding that fantasy weaponry back then.
You can find it here:








You can find more photos in my gallery on Putty&Paint.



Project Log

Well, with this figure I was struggling. Easy to see when I say I started it in 2010 and finished it now, in 2015. Why? Mmh, I try to explain.

Let me show you the first concept ideas of the base. Two big candle sticks:



Conversion work went on - using mainly green stuff and Magic sculpt:



After the conversion and sculpting work was done he got primed, black and white:



I like to start with a rough sketch, so I did with some wet and wet blendings on his skin. No idea yet where the journey will go:



I started to paint him with some basic colours back then, but still was not sure about the base yet:



Finally I did build a base on top of a plinth by Sockelmacher.de. I used Hirst-Art Gypsum parts for it. Interesting in using them? Well, check these tutorials:



Base looked like this:



Testing the model on the base:


Well, from this point on the cow often stood in my cabinet of shame. A place with too many WIPs and no interest from me to finish them up for the moment:


Why? Well, I think I lost the vision. Lost track on how the end result should look like. I was exhausted already from the conversion and somehow the conversion showed me the vision already. I was bored in painting him and somehow frustrated of all the added stuff. It confused me. So time went by. More and more. Sometimes I took him out of the cabinet to do some paintwork on him, but quickly he returned to the cabinet of shame.

Painting/Project Motivation
Roman speaks about a project related motivation curve.

For example during the years I was in need of the cow skull on his belt. I added to the model and I just took it, thinking I will not finish the model close in time. Priorities, but with this actions I lost even more motivation. One day I sat down and sat to myself get this boy together again. So I used a skull of a mouse to replace the gone cow skull and added some more skulls on his beld. The beard was made new and some minor changes here and there to get him back on track for painting again.

Recently I gave him colours again. All cold and grey. Maybe fitting to my mood. I was again not happy with him in this state.


I always say, there comes the right time for every project and well it was the same with this one. I just wasn't happy with the colours I used so I enjoyed to repaint the athmosphere in the whole project:



And that is something I can recommend: If you are searching for something different, or a stronger light or a darker shadow or more colour here and there - PAINT IT! Do not hesitate.

I hope you like him!
Keep on happy painting!

Howdy Jungle Painters,




this weekend the Adepticon - a big gaming convention - takes place in Chicago, Illinois and within you will also find the Painting Competition called the "Crystal Brush" run by CoolMiniorNot.

As the judging work during this contest also depends on online votes, we would like to remind you all to get ready for judging and to throw in your vote. May the best entry win. Stay updated when the judging is about to start via the Crystal Brush page.

Our Monkeybrother, Ben is over at Chicago and entering the contest with a mysterious project. So if you see him, give him a monkey hug and throw a banana at him!

We wish all our friends, all the painters and all the gamers going there a great time. May you have a great weekend and celebrate life!

User Fluisterwoud from CMON forums already uploaded a bunch of photos from the contest:
click here! 

UPDATE:
Voting is live here: CLICK!
Remember try to vote for each category, not randomly.

Good luck to everyone in the contest
and a great time at the show!

Art Inspiration
Frank Frazetta - Art Gallery
The 10 Rules every Artist should live by
Connections: Wyeth, Fischl, Frazetta

Miniature Art Inspiration 
Rise of the Terminators

Miniature Article Inspiration
Model-Making  Basics - Creating Surfaces
Lightone's: Orc Bomber - Chipped paint Tutorial
Arcane Paintworks: True Metallic Metal vs. Non Metallic Metal
Serpentarium: Just a great blog with some wonderful painted models
Iron Sleet: A blog about great miniature conversions and madness
Newbold World: Gallery of Roman's work
Tuffskull's Blog: Fast paced Interview with Roman
Woman and Miniatures

Miniature Useful Tools
Wamp Select Series Paintbrushes

Music Inspiration
Reagge Shark
Traditional Mongolian Music & Dance
Mongolian Hip Hop!
Japanese Drummers Kodo - "O-Daiko"
Kodo - Spirit of Taiko
Naomi Wachira - African Girl
Naomi Wachira - Anywhere
Wadruna - Helvegen

Fun & Movie Inspiration
The Freestylers - That Friday Feeling
Motoped Survival Bike Black Ops Edition
Wanderers - A short Film
Cardboard Warfare 2
ScholaGladiatoria
RocketJump
No Jump Dunks!
Black Dynamite Trailer - Adult Swim

Hey everyone!
This time I want to share a very unusual bust with you.
Some time ago, Romain Van den Bogaert released a bust that had a very unusual look and I just had to get it.


By the way, Romain is an absolutely amazing artist (and a great person too), so if you are not familiar with his works go and check it out NOW! 

So, some days later I got a cast and even if it is not a small bust or a typical bust, I wanted to start painting right away.

I had an idea in my mind for quite some time to replace a busts eye by a custom set of eyes, created basically like real eyes.

It bugged me for quite some time that miniature eyes are so flat ... and especially seen from the side, look very unrealistic.

So, for this bust I planned something special. I drilled the busts eye at the place of the iris, gave it another smaller hole in the middle for the pupil and painted it with the rest of the bust.
In the end I gave it a cornea made of 2k clear resin. No reflex point was painted.

I really like how the effect turned out, but judge for yourself :)




I hope you like the bust and maybe it gives you a bit of inspiration to try out some new things on your projects, sometimes it works, sometimes not :)

Keep chasing your dreams
Raffa

Welcome everyone to the third Theory Thursday!

If you are not interested in understanding how the world works, especially light and shadow, color and harmony, you should better skip reading this post and future Theory Thursday editions.
Opposed to the very direct and practical tutorials you will usually find here, these series of posts will go in depth to answer questions that many painters didn't even ask themselfes.

Be reminded that these posts are written by Raffa alone and reflect his understanding of the topics.
He is not always right and if you found an error or you want to discuss, use the comment section!


Have you heard this saying? I am pretty sure most people have.
But how much truth is in this sentence?

Let's start with a photo taken at daytime.

We cann all agree that night- and daytime look different by a huge degree. But why?
Let's first analyse the one thing we know for sure: it's darker!
At night there is less light than at daytime (we're not talking about places with artificial light like lightbulbs, fluorescent light or similar, just the moon)

So if we take the photo from above and make it a bit darker, we should have a night scene.

Hmmm, this doesn't look like a night scene at all, more like the look through sunglasses.


Let's try to understand how the eye works at night to get a better idea why "all cats are grey at night".

The eye is a really complex piece of evolutionary excellence. We can see at night and day.
Compare this to a camera and you will quickly notice how awesome an eye is and how much range we are able to see.

We talked about color cones in the first edition of Theory Thursday.
Color cones enable us to see colors and brightness levels.
But they have one limitation, they need a lot of light to work, so they only work at daytime.

In low-light situations, their brothers, the famous rods are used to see.
Rods, like cones, are located in the back-inside of your eye.
They are much more sensitive to light, so they are useless at day (too much light).
Also, they need much longer to adapt to new light situations.
While cones can adapt to a maximum degree in several minutes, rods need more around 30-45 minutes to fully adapt to a low light situation.

And, the most important difference to the cones for our question:
Rods are all the same - to see color we have three different kind of cones (Red, Blue and Green).
Rods are all the same, they do not detect wavelength of photons but the amount of photons incoming.
So they produce a monochromatic image. Basically a Black and White image.

So, we already answered the question!
That's the reason all cats are grey at night.

But... isn't this a bit boring? Yes!
Let's dive a bit deeper into night vision!

Rods are not detecting different wavelengths of light, but they have a sensitivity towards a certain wavelength - blue (~500 nm) and they are almost blind to others - reds (~620 nm).


If we look at the visible light spectrum,...


We will notice that the sensitive area of the rods is pretty much on one side of the visible spectrum.
While rods are sensitive to blues and greens, reds and yellows are much less strongly perceived by them.

You can easily see the effect on a red rose. 
Look at it at daytime and the red will look much brighter than the dark green stem.
If you look at it at night (without artificial light), the stem will look brigther than the red rose.

So, not only will everything be grey at night, colors will shift in the appearing brightness compared to daytime. 
This is very important when painting night scenes or trying to understand the theory behind it.

Did you ever notice that the military uses red light at night? 
(sometimes, other colors [blue light to see blood] are used for different situations, just to state this before we get a shitstorm in the comments :D )

It's a trick to keep the rods adapted to the dark light while beeing able to see better at night.
Rods are basically blind to red light, so the cones are used to see it. Because the cones are used, the rods stay adapted to night vision.

Let's have a look at the first photo again
At night, it would look more like this:
Pay special attention to the reds and yellows, blues and greens!







Hopefully you enjoyed this third edition of Theory Thursday and read you next week :)

Always remember, painting is not algebra or physics.
Theory Thursday is about fun facts and interesting things around us.

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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.
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Yesterday Raffa found some really cool and nostalgic photos and we have to show them in here in your daily jungle of Massive Voodoo.

Photos of "Behind the Scenes" of the Movie "Blade Runner".
A movie from the year 1982, which is the year Roman was born.
You see, that movie and Roman are pretty old :D

For those of you who do not know the movie here is the official trailer:



Well, why post it here? 
Let's get back to the photos. While Raffa and Roman watched them, they really felt looking at ladies and gentlemen doing exactly the same as we all do: Working on too tiny stuff with plenty of passion, but all transported in a time machine. Just one example:


Looking familiar to you?
Have a look at the whole gallery over here!
It is just great and inspirational!

Isn't it a pity that in modern movies most of the special effects are made on the computer?
What is your oppinion on that?