Aloa Voodoo people,

again its Roman with catching up with the past.
Tomorrow we will see the results of this week's tutorial voting.
If you did not vote yet, do it!

Another finished 28 mm Hasslefree sculpt, called "Delphine".
A great model that reminds a little bit of "He-Man", a great comic series from the past too.
This one was done as a gift to one friend of Roman: Mitchell.

 





The Magic Powers of Grayskull
Roman added the magic power effect to show the might of Grayskull after he finished painting the model. He used Vallejo Putty 401 for it and carefully applied it in several layers, always trying to pull the "mass" away from the miniature to create that effect. Afterwards it was painted. Roman is working on an article about this, but needs more photos and with it some more models to do the same. A little more patience for the article.

Well, it was a though step "trying" this on a finished paintjob, but happily the result was convincing. What do you think?

Yes, from the side it looks weird though:


 She is also to be found on Putty&Paint.

Keep on happy painting!

Hello ladies and gentlemen,
painters and hobby enthusiasts,

as you might remember we got one of Roman's famous Jar's Beginners Classes planned for Sweden. A rare occasion to find this class held in english and this is even far up north. Great for beautiful summer days.

All information about it can be found behind this link and as we already got a dozen participants it is never wrong to put out a little reminder.

Peter, Markus and Roman are behind the organisation of the class and at the moment we got around 11 participants. We would like to have some more - as fact is - the more students take part, the cheaper it is to bring Roman to Arvika for the weekend.

So if you are from Sweden or are up to travel for such a cool learning experience,
feel welcome!

THE SWEDISH INTERVIEW
To push the class a little bit we had the idea that Markus should ask Roman some questions  about his way of teaching and painting. Let's hear what they both spoke:



- Where came the idea to share your visdome initially, like the beginner’s class? 

Roman: Well, I studied to become teacher. While doing so I learned that I enjoy teaching. I am not the guy to teach as a regular teacher on schools. Somehow my mind and mainly my heart did not go for it. I thought about giving it a try to teach what I love. My passion. For me as a painter and a teacher I see the greatest memories in my students eyes when they got those "click" moments. The moments where they are able to draw conclusions from their experience, their learning, my teaching and do big steps further due practice. That is wonderful to see so many gain and grow from my knowledge.
 
- What can one expect to learn from the beginner’s class, paint like a champion? 


Roman: The title might be misleading. It is not aiming on beginners or starters. It is a class that is a beginning, a start of a journey to understand what is in my heart and mind while I paint. Some rules about color, light and shadow and techniques, but mainly I try to focus on each students individual skills to push him over his "to-date-boundaries". So everyone, no matter what level of painting they achieved to this day is a welcome guest at the class and I am pretty sure he or she will learn something new.

Of course you paint like a champion after the weekend class. You win medals and trophies and will be able to build your own real-life-sized death star. No, in fact not. As we only got the weekend to learn and study many new things it is also up to everyone to put these things to practice and future good use to find his own way of mastering miniature painting. I am just a guide trying to show the path, the direction. See it as a start of a journey. For many of my students it was and still is.



 - Where does all your creative energy come from? 

Roman:  I love what I do from my heart. That's the place.


- What inspires you to do certain minis/vingettes? 

Roman: Emotions, daily life, movies, games, stories, books, music, my soul, the certain miniature that calls for my attention. I can not point a finger to it, but I am open to the world's miracles and see so many I want to learn about or use in my projects to see how they work in miniature scale.  I am an ovserver of daily life miracles and enjoy them.

In my beginner's class I try to open up everyone's eyes for such miracles. My main goal on my class is to teach my students this insight, how you can do this. How you observe, put it to use and how learning never stops if you start asking yourself the right questions. Master to teach yourself is my goal. I am just showing directions.


- I can see that you really love colors, do you like to study everyday life things and see beauty in every corner of the world? 
Roman: You know me, Markus. That question is inappropriate, haha. As you have been to one of my international classes in Paris, France  you are already walking your own path, travel your own journey of colors and you know what I teach. And I know you do too. Love colors, study every day life things and see beauty in every corner of the world. I am happy to know that the first steps were taken on my class back then and I am looking forward to show you some more directions, now that you grew in being a painter.

If you want to join the class in Arvik, Sweden in August, 
check here for details!

Good Morning Jungle people,

while rolling up the past Roman realised that there are quite some finished miniatures left to show here on the blog. Well, let's get it on then, eh?



"On this cold morning Ambiorix, chieftain of the Eburones watched the roman troops wintering in their border fortress. He saw sentries, cooking fires and a calm athmosphere everywhere, but they were on the move. He told them to leave the fortress because of a big germanic force crossing the Rhine and as they had some sort of truce the Roman's trusted his word. Everything was calm but not around his gathered force of gaulish men and woman who were ready to fight. On this day the wrath of the Gauls would hit Sabinus and Cotta in surprise and all Romans under this would be massacred." 

Ambiorix was an ambiotious leader of one of the belgian tribes and in several battles his army wiped out a whole Roman legion and five cohorts. Cesear was rather angry and promised the senate to take care about revenge. This had happened and after a cruel campaign against the belgian tribes many of them were no more.

The bust was started by Roman during his private coaching with Waldemar. If you are interested in some WIP shots and see a little bit of the progress, please check back with the review of the coaching, here.





And yes, he does have looks, reminding on the french actor Gerard Depardieu, but this is not on Roman, but on the sculptors at Pegaso. Thanks to Christian K. from Augsburg for helping out with his historical knowledge and wisdom.

You can find more photos via Putty&Paint.
 
Hope you like him?
Keep on happy painting!
Best Wishes
Roman

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 Massive Voodoo!
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.

________________________________________________________________________________

#01
Step by Step: Dino
In this article you can follow Roman through one of his recently finished projects. A great, but rather small, well yeah ... dwarf that comes with the name of "Dino" in Roman's painted version. In this article see through the process of the model and learn Roman's thoughts behind his work.



#02
Step by Step: Davidé vs. Goliath
In this article you can follow Roman through one of his recently finished bigger projects. A duel in an icecold desert. A gathering of Goliath and Davidé, ready to battle fiercly.

Happy Voting!

Hello jungle folks, 

it's been a while I wrote here, but the plan is to change that.
I was inactive a little while here on MV and if you don't remember me, I am Mati.

Today I'd like to show you the ORCA jetbike I was lucky to design, sculpt and paint for Wild House Models. It was a joy working with them and they have quite few amazing kits you should check out and even more planned for release in a not too distant future.

So let's talk about the model itself. The final kit is in 1:32 scale and measures 160mm in length. It consists of 40+ parts and is cast in quality resin ( not the stinky one! ).

Everything began as usual, with an idea. WHM wanted to create a vehicle and we agreed that a jetbike would be great, no sci fi universe is complete without jetbikes after all. So the first thing to do was to draw a few thumbnails to get some general ideas down on paper:


In the end we settled for another design that was more aggressive and massive and just looked fiercer.
Wild House Models also sells other kits with optional lighting sets to light your models, so the jetbike was supposed to be lit too and had to be planned accordingly. On the inside it is hollow to accomodate the chip that controls the light effects and it has tunnels built in so you can easily run cables to all important spots without having to cut or drill out tons of resin. The engines can be lit, the headlights, two running lights on the sides and the console for the rider too, the console is cast in transparent resin as is the main headlight to make lighting it even easier.

Once we had a basic drawing down it was time to start sculpting the bike. I sculpted it in Zbrush and we agreed to have two versions of the bike. One military and a civil version, which you can both build with the included parts. Here are two 3D views of both versions, the civil one has transport containers and the military one has a wider front with a different silhouette with weaponry incorporated in it.



When the model was done and printed, I also sculpted a rider to ride the bike. You can build it landed with the frontal landing foot out or in flight, so a pilot was a must!

After the kit was finished it was sent off to be cast. Here is a pic of the parts you get in the box (the riders heads are not on this picture though):

The casts are great, no bubbles, no flash no warped parts. There was only little work to be done on it and I could start assemblying it. First of course I washed all parts with warm water and a mild detergent. I decided to build the military version in flight, so I would use the pilot and build it with a closed landing foot hatch. I did not light the model using a lighting kit in the end.



I primed the individual subassemblies with Vallejo light grey primer for the airbrush ( hard to see, almost the same color as the resin )
Then I did some preshading with black and sprayed the first coat of sand color ( GW commando khaki )

Next up I sprayed a slightly darker brown from below and a lighter sand color from above to get the first zenital lights down on it. While doing so I made sure to have a few hard edges with good contrasts in them to make the shapes and angles of the bike pop.
Then I started enhancing the shadows with thinned down scorched brown and to paint highlights with a mix of GW commando khaki and Valleyo ivory to further increase the contrast. After that I began to paint the first scratches wth a mix of scorched brown and black and add a few of the decals that are included in the kit. There are many to choose from:

Some white markings were added to the bike to break up the very even color on it a bit and make it more interesting. I also added a filter from True Earth called Worn Patina 1. Great stuff to dirten your models up a notch.
After the markings the pilot received some color too. For his armor I used the same colors as for the bike and for his jumpsuit I used GW desert yellow. I gave him a few markings to go with the bike and also added a few decals onto his armor.


Then there were only details left to do, painting the console + guns, adding endless highlights for each and every scratch on the model and making the final assembly.

Rider with alternative head, of course wearing some smart goggles as 400+ mph will make your eyes hurt and transform every bug into a bullet:

It was a lot of fun to design, build and paint it. Should you want more information on the bike, visit Wild House Models!

Cheers and thanks for having a look,

Mati