Sunday, June 3, 2012

Saito Togan: The Most Difficult Model I've Ever Painted

While I love this figure, he was so difficult to paint due to his pose. Even when finished, you just don't get a good view of his face. I should have angled him backwards more to reveal it. I love the model though. His arms are another attempt at NMM and he's also what is prompting me to abandon my efforts there. True Metal is just as cool, easier to paint and also begs for skill and practice to execute well. And there are perhaps more possibilities with it. Yet something about Infinity figs begs for NMM. My Nomads are getting ready for paint and they'll be done with true metal. I suppose that will tell us whether I should finally abandon NMM.



8 comments:

Antisocialnerd said...

First infinity figure i don't like

WTF is he doing.

a kick, falling over, trying to put the sword up his own ass?

As regards painting i always go with personal choice.

If I prefer it I do it NMM or true metal...which do I prefer...choice made.

rooster4796 said...

I like your paint job. Saito is the first infinity model I bought and the only one so far I finished. The hardest part so far has been his J pants(stereotypical Japanese pants). I painted them bleached bone, washed brown, an highlighted with more bone. Sounds ok right? Well a combo of old Devlab mud and poor skills naked them look chunky and splotchy. Not unlike a particularly embarrassing gift from papa nurgle. I think I'll just paint straight bone and highlight white. What do u think?

Ludovic V. said...

I think that your NMM looks pretty good, so in my humble opinion, you should go on with it.

Ludovic

Tim said...

@ROOSTER,

Devlan mud isn't very good for shading bleached bone. I would suggest Gryphonne Sepia instead.

rooster4796 said...

Thanks I'll give it a shot and let u know how he turns out.

rooster4796 said...

He's doin a kick after cutting w the sword. I had a scenic base w a stone lantern in 2 peices with him checking the top off. I still have it but i didn't use thin the end.

Cobalt Cannon said...

I have Saito Togan also, and I am wondering about how yours managed to look like he's about to do a forward dive roll. I'll get mine out and see if I can figure out what the deal is. From looking at your images, the things I see are his head angled too far downward and you might have mounted him on his toes rather than the balls of his foot.

I think the paint job looks good. The shiny metallic parts have a matte finish and that could be taking some of the effect away.
Consider how it might look if you put a gloss varnish on the sword blade, or add a light grey line along the blade's edge, to show the different angle on the cutting edge, then gloss varnish the blade. There is one last thing that I think is really stealing the thunder form this model.

The hair color. I think black (natural) hair color with brown to golden/sunny white highlights might help. The bright hair is so distracting from the rest of the figure.

By the way,.. the Tau script on the Saiya (sword scabbard) is AWESOME! LOL

I hope these suggestions help your thoughts.

Tim said...

Hi Colbalt,

Yeah I'm not sure the yellow hair was a good choice. It's good feedback, thanks! He looks a lot better in person though so I probably won't change it - though I might buy another one of him and do him over. I really like the model but somehow he didn't turn out right. There is a lot that is 'off' on this paint job and a second time around I think I can do much better.