Ha. Nice title. Remember the ol' saying: the perfect is the enemy of the good. i.e.: know when to stop messing with something in the pursuit of perfection, else you'll mess up something that was already good.
Anyway - lovely first paintjob. Welcome to the painting hobby! Nice work on the eye lenses, btw. My only suggestion, since you asked, would be to do a pin-wash. Would really help break some of the colour up (that's where you carefully put a dark wash only into the lines between armour panels and whatnot).
Hope you had fun and do loads more :)
I think this hobby fuels my perfectionist side perfectly. Every mini I find something to improve on, something new to try, and something detailed to focus on. And I find that I’m almost always making pretty amazing improvement. Keep at it!
Hi, welcome to Plastic-Crack-Users Anonymous!
First off: Great job for the first mini!
Now some feedback:
Do you have a Hobby Knife (someplaces call them exacto knife)? If so, use it to clean the plastic pieces before assembly! Fortunately the Assault Intercessors dont really have a mold line issue (the left over plastic where the 2 halves of the mold GW uses to create the sprues connects), but older kits certainly have them and its a good habit to clean them before assembly. On your Modell you could have cleaned up the right elbow where you clipped the arm from the sprue.
Easy way to improve the overall look is to clean up the base coats at the end, looking at the pistol holster (some blue splashes on there) or to the left of the pistol holster it looks like some black on the blue armor. Maybe clean up the shoulder pauldrons as well?
The next steps wuld be crossing into advanced terrain, something we really dont expect on the first modell ;)
As someone else already said, do a recess wash of the panel lines between the armor plates to give the modell a lot of depth, its actually easier then it seems if you use a really thin wash paint, it will flow directly into the recesses if you apply it carefully!
Next up: Highlights! You can either do Edge Highlights where you use a lighter color and paint fine lines around all the edges (for it to look good its really important to do it with all visible edges, so a lot of work!), on macragge blue armor the first Highlight would be calgar blue. If you wanna go even further do another, finer edge highlight on your first with an even brighter color, that would be fenris grey on the calgar blue!
Other Option would be volumetric Highlight, here you try to simulate light shining from (usually) above on the Mini and highlight the points were the light reflects, this can be achieved through dry brushing with a lighter colour on the raised armor panels or (I have not yet done this, because it is actually quite hard) wet blending the colors with a normal brush on the surfaces.
For all the described Methods exist really good tutorials on Youtube, just search for the keywords (Pin/Recess Shading, edge Highlights, Volumetric highlights, dry brushing)
The last step is usually to do something with the base, even just giving it a single coat with your prefered terrain color already helps a lot, but again, you can go the extra mile and use texture paints, drybrushing & shading and then adding some basing material like plant tufts and rocks onto it!
Sorry for the wall of text, I hope it helps! ;)
Ha. Nice title. Remember the ol' saying: the perfect is the enemy of the good. i.e.: know when to stop messing with something in the pursuit of perfection, else you'll mess up something that was already good. Anyway - lovely first paintjob. Welcome to the painting hobby! Nice work on the eye lenses, btw. My only suggestion, since you asked, would be to do a pin-wash. Would really help break some of the colour up (that's where you carefully put a dark wash only into the lines between armour panels and whatnot). Hope you had fun and do loads more :)
I think this hobby fuels my perfectionist side perfectly. Every mini I find something to improve on, something new to try, and something detailed to focus on. And I find that I’m almost always making pretty amazing improvement. Keep at it!
Hi, welcome to Plastic-Crack-Users Anonymous! First off: Great job for the first mini! Now some feedback: Do you have a Hobby Knife (someplaces call them exacto knife)? If so, use it to clean the plastic pieces before assembly! Fortunately the Assault Intercessors dont really have a mold line issue (the left over plastic where the 2 halves of the mold GW uses to create the sprues connects), but older kits certainly have them and its a good habit to clean them before assembly. On your Modell you could have cleaned up the right elbow where you clipped the arm from the sprue. Easy way to improve the overall look is to clean up the base coats at the end, looking at the pistol holster (some blue splashes on there) or to the left of the pistol holster it looks like some black on the blue armor. Maybe clean up the shoulder pauldrons as well? The next steps wuld be crossing into advanced terrain, something we really dont expect on the first modell ;) As someone else already said, do a recess wash of the panel lines between the armor plates to give the modell a lot of depth, its actually easier then it seems if you use a really thin wash paint, it will flow directly into the recesses if you apply it carefully! Next up: Highlights! You can either do Edge Highlights where you use a lighter color and paint fine lines around all the edges (for it to look good its really important to do it with all visible edges, so a lot of work!), on macragge blue armor the first Highlight would be calgar blue. If you wanna go even further do another, finer edge highlight on your first with an even brighter color, that would be fenris grey on the calgar blue! Other Option would be volumetric Highlight, here you try to simulate light shining from (usually) above on the Mini and highlight the points were the light reflects, this can be achieved through dry brushing with a lighter colour on the raised armor panels or (I have not yet done this, because it is actually quite hard) wet blending the colors with a normal brush on the surfaces. For all the described Methods exist really good tutorials on Youtube, just search for the keywords (Pin/Recess Shading, edge Highlights, Volumetric highlights, dry brushing) The last step is usually to do something with the base, even just giving it a single coat with your prefered terrain color already helps a lot, but again, you can go the extra mile and use texture paints, drybrushing & shading and then adding some basing material like plant tufts and rocks onto it! Sorry for the wall of text, I hope it helps! ;)