Step by Step: Abalam, Prince of Hell

by Massive Voodoo

Hey Jungle People and Voodoo People,

this week's tutorial voting was close in bringing us the garbage tutorial once again, but just close and it was not enough. The winner with 29 votes out of 50 was the Abalam Step by Step. Next time garbage maybe to really, really get rid of it? We'll see :D



Oh my god now we bring you HELL!!

If you want to keep track with an overview on what articles happened so far  via MV's year of the painter 2 please check this link!

Support MV!
If you like to support 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.

Allright, Roman will take over with the article now.
We hope you enjoy!


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FOREWORD
Allright, you all might have seen my uncommon version of this bust and you will see it again now. The following article will give an insight into my thoughts of painting this bust by Hera Models.


Well I can not explain to you why I came up with this idea. I was unpacking the model for the MV's Miniatures Unpacked, put the bust on a plinth and decided to dive right into my vision. No thoughts about maybe or so, just right into a hell of a paintjob without having a proper idea what I am doing there.

THE PAINTWORK
I primed the model white, no idea why as the next step was spraying a little bit of red/magenta from below, followed by black from above to catch the initial idea. Now all looked like this - you can see pretty good what I did there on the plinth, mostly all white primer was gone:

 
I put him back in the cabinet for this day as I was a little unsure if the my decision to start like this was right. While in the cabinet I took a lighter and put it front of him to understand my vision better. I loved how that looked and took a photo of it:



When home again I took the inspirational photos and printed them for next days work. For me it did not matter if they were blurry or not.

Back at my table it looked like this and while looking at my inspirational prints I saw how far I still got to go with the bust itself. A little magenta and black won't do. As you can see I also printed a black and white version of this to understand the situation of contrast from dark to bright much better:


Ok, these days I am always suggesting to my students: Look at your model close, if you see something that you do not like in the actual situation, think about what it is, find it, name it, change it. I was in need of more reds, magentas, oranges and power of color to see my vision take shape.

I went in with Magenta once again, but put a dark magenta red to it too. Using just the Aero Color would not do it for me as it is rather thin and I wanted to have my powerful reds opaque in the end.
On the tissue you can see what I sprayed via Airbrush:


Some use their Airbrush for detail work on Miniatures, I lovely call mine my color catapult - Harder & Steenbeck would hunt me with forks for this, but I am fast I can promise:

Well, I told you I needed more reds. I slowly added more red and more red to my mix and stopped on the mix of the upper right - photo follows soon:

I also went for the metals. In my vision I had darkness and cold colors hitting the model from the top in good contrast to the lower fire area. I used black metal by Scale75, added a big amount of Dark Sea Blue VMC to it and some black to make my start really, really dark and not to shiny:


While painting the metal parts I slowly went brighter and more shiny by adding more black metal to the mix:

I did not really blend the metal parts, I rather stibbled it with care and joy and I massaged my metal pigments into the surface. Sounds weird, but works. Push it were you want it. Let it dry, go again, make it stronger, more and more. Massage.

I was aiming to have a good look on the metal parts from the right angle. Done:

With the technique of stibbling with a weird brush tip I enjoy recieving weird patterns and texture in my metal:

I told you from the right angle, that means if I would look into the bust from below where I only want to have reds so far I should not see metal color. Test:

Cool, eh?
Ok, I wanted to give his face and body more color. From, below with adding a gentle drop of orange to my reds to intensify the glowing areas. From the top with adding a cold grey, which means a drop of grey and a drop of blue to black. Slowly highlighting it.

I also kept some areas really black to see were shadows might fall if light comes from below. I still would call this a sketch, even my good friend Alfonso Giraldes said in this stage it is done. I know what he meant: it already works and that is most important, now it was just about spending more time on it to push the vision far.


More orange to the mix of reds, more detail work going on. Focusing on stronger light surfaces, edge highlights that would be hit by the light from hell from below. Using glazes of black to bring back shadow contrast once again.


Always checking back with my inspirational prints and my table neighbour, Raffa across.

More orange, adding Dayglow pigments to my mix to recieve more power. MOAR POWA! This is the rythm of my life. Increasing brightness in the areas I prepared before by pushing stronger, but smaller. No addition of whites here, that would kill it all. I go only with powerful color.


Finding more and more volumes, scratches and edges that would be hit by light from below. Once you dig in you find more and more spots you have missed thus far. Pushing! Pushing! Painting Joy!

For the final steps I even worked with pure dayglow pigments and VMC Flou colors, orange and red. Just color to make it as powerful as it turned out in the end.


Cold from the top, warm, nah ok, hot from below. 




In fact my vision worked really well on this bust. I was really happy. This is how it looked in my hand, a quick photo in front of my desk at home:


AFTERMATH
Well, what really helped me through the process was my inspirational print. I was able to check back with areas that will stay in shadow and to see which areas will hit by most of the hot light.#

I do not think painting something up like this is a truely hard thing to achieve. It was just never done so far by anyone in miniature painting. I can recommend that you train your visuals and your eyes and your brain in understanding how to paint a light source first to different shaped volumes. I recommend zenithal light for this. If you are so far that you do not have to think about this anymore you can change the angle of light influance on your project and do crazy, uncommon stuff.

I am looking forward to show you the model on different shows I might attend this year (Duke of Bavaria, Nova Open, maybe Scale Model Challenge and Monte San Savino). The bust is already sold to a private collector and I want to thank this person for his support in my passion, work and art. We both agreed on terms that I am able to bring the models to shows and sent it to him after Monte. My gratitude is yours, Sir!

I hope you enjoyed the article.
Stay focused and paint like hell is following you!

Keep on happy painting!
Best Wishes
Roman

PS: Do not fear new things or you will stand still.

MV Mad Max Car Contest 2 - Newsflash!

by Massive Voodoo


Hello Jungle readers, 


we got good news for all of you who are working on their entry to MV's Mad Max Car Contest:
We are extanding the deadline from March 30th to  
May 2nd 2016.

So far we got two entries and from several directions we heard that many of you are in the middle of great projects and that you are not sure if you can make it in time. Well, here you got more time! Use it wisely!

And a small addition to the Random Prize Pool:

Random Prize Pool #03
Recently Roman showed in an article how to use cars in 28 mm projects. Now one of you who takes part in the contest can win exactly the same car Roman is using in one of his projects right now. You can win the original packed car, not the project of course.
 So far, keep the engines roaring!

Game of Thrones Season 6: Trailer (RED BAND) (HBO)

by Massive Voodoo

Dino, the lone wolf

by Massive Voodoo

Hello Jungle,

time again for Roman to show another one of his recent paintjobs.
The model is by Mpryoec and sculpted again by mastermind Raul Garcia Latorre. The model itself was a limited run, orginally named "Radwulf - the lone wolf"and is already marked as sold out on the website of Mpryoec.

Why is my version named "Dino"?
"Dino travels alone. He is fine being alone. He used to have friends on his journeys, but "Tilda" and "Grumgi" have been eaten by Trolls, his love "Magdar" died in the desert. Burnag, his best buddy just fell of a cliff and even Radwulf's dog "Willy" got poisened by a scorpion's sting and died awful. That is why Dino learned to travel alone as he do not want to have what is left of his heart break again. A heart can only break a couple of times."

There is a famous person in our miniature world who sells plinths. His name is Dino and he is strong. He is older than most of us and by the look of his eyes he has seen more than we all would ever do. This is how I imagine Dino in younger years. That's why. On the paintjob itself I was painting freely to find my version of NMM painting.


Dino, the lone wolf
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Mpryoec




You can find more photos in my Putty&Paint Gallery.

A step by step about my work on this model is in preparation for MV.

The miniature was sold to a private collector!
Thank you for your support in my passion, work and art!

Keep on happy painting! 

Tutorial Voting: A hell of a garbage prince!

by Massive Voodoo

Hello Jungle painters,

Tuesday again and time for tutorial voting via MV's year of the painter 2.
If you want to keep track with an overview on what has happened so far 
please check this link!

Support MV!
If you like to support 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.

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#01
Step by Step: Abalam, Prince of Hell
Roman recently painted up a cool bust called Abalam, Prince of Hell in a rather uncommon way. Burning from the inside and light up from hellish fires from below. Want to know his thoughts and steps on this project? Vote for it!

#02
Equipment - best workspace garbage ever!
You all might have seen the big MV Studio Table we build last year. Now it is time to place the best workspace garbage ever to it. Fun for all painters who sit around the table. You want to know more? Then vote for it!
Happy Voting!
Frankly: Go for the Workspace Garbage or it will always be shown here and might stop you all from seeing new stuff!

Mu80 - Hera Models, Abalam, Prince of Hell

by Massive Voodoo



Hi Jungle dwellers,

today MV is back with another Miniatures Unpacked. This time #80. Wow!
That's a collection, eh?

Today we will take a closer look on a bust Roman painted recently in a very vivid and untraditional way: Abalam, the Prince of Hell.

The bust is sculpted by master Raul Garcia Latorre and is distributed by Hera Models.
There are many great paintjobs on this bust outthere and Roman's version looked like this:


Ok, now let's check the sculpt and why Roman was drawn into it to paint such a version of him.

This is the content of the parcel that arrived in the MV HQ.



This is just too cool!

We are not sure if this print of the original artwork is sent out with every order, but we loved it and already hang it to the wall of good memories; in the studio hallway.

The boxes itself - yes we ordered the normal and the limited version - come in handy with clear and precise format and describtion of the company.

As we will do a review on both versions here is just a small glimpse inside the box. Thick Foam protects your resin pieces and all about packing is wonderful. Of course other companies do more fency stuff in packing, but in fact this is all it takes. Sturdy, enough space, great protection inside.

For Packing MV hands out 4 of 5 Voodoo points.


Inside the non-limited version you find the following. A body, the head, a sticker, a cool gaming card with the artwork and some information about the company.

Abalam, the sculpt itself is easy to assemble as he is just made out of two parts.

And he does look like an angry demon should. Angry. Mr, Latorre is just so good in what he does.

The sculpt is crying for brush attention when you see his powerful presence.

The sculpt of the non-limited version itself recieves 5 out 5 voodoo points. We only give 4 to the limited version, but we will tell this later. Overall we hand out 4 out of 5 voodoo points for the sculpt.



The casting quality is good too. Somehow our example here was a little dusty from resin dust, but this was easy to remove with air from the airbrush and a soft big brush. Still it is not what you expect nowadays.

The head is easy to attach and fits smoothly into its place.

No, not 100% perfect so we had to sand the necks bottom a little bit. No big deal here.
Overall the bust does not present itself with mould lines. At least Roman did not find some.
Lazy tard.

Seeing the model in size comparision to another Latorre sculpt by Mpryoec and a bottle of color.

For the casting quality both busts recieves 5 out 5 voodoo points.



Now to the limited version. Again this is what you get: A bust plinth, gaming card, sticker, extra limited card, main body and two heads. Yes, two heads. Pretty neat.

Again we had the little dust issue.

Both faces:

The limited head looks again... angry but with more samurai-style. Pretty cool.

The concept fits so well to the body and changes the character immense.

There is just one thing that we just do not like on this limited version. We know that Samurais wore such helmets with crests, but this is not a crest, its a banana. As monkeys do like bananas, we still do not understand why this could not have been more uhm ... interesting. That is why we give the limited version only 4 out of 5 voodoo points. Again this is personal taste, but very often when we saw the bust painted up people intend to change the banana for the better good.

Overall, this guy is a really impressive sight too. Even more if you were black gloves.

All two bust parts at once. Maybe we should have done one with two heads. Two-headed demon.

While Roman painted up the normal version, Peter started to get interested in the limited version, so Roman sold it to his friend and now Roman and Peter are doing a private coaching about athmospheric painting on it. Roman teaching Peter. Still not finished, but a cool WIP shot from Peter's table (Peter is using the CrazyGrip) - also without the banana crest:


About the price of the models.
The normal version is at 38,00 € + shipping, the limited version is 10,00 € more with 48,00 €m, which is fine with all the stuff you get via the limited run. Compared to many other companies this is a really good deal and price for a great sculpt and a lot of fun to paint. We hope they do more demons in the future by the hand of Raul.

For the price of the busts we hand out 5 of 5 voodoo points.


Overall points for Abalam, the Prince of Hell by Hera Models:

Well, head over to HeraModels and get yours. We've heard that the limited run is soon to be sold out! And check their new bust, gnnnaaaahhhh!!! A must paint!