The Number 1 Reason Games Workshop Minis Look So GOOD

this video is sponsored by rage Shadow Legends do you want your minis to look just as good as the ones you see on the official Warhammer box art yeah me too is what I would say when I started but after studying all that precisely painted Warhammer I finally figured out the main methods that you can use on any mini so it looks perfect so what are these methods well it's better if I show you right at the source [Music] um when analyzing the style that Games Workshop uses on their box art you have to ask what exactly are they trying to achieve well it's clear that the minis have to look good for the box art but not just that if you go to some of their articles or if you inspect the rulebook you can see the minis in all kinds of angles [Music] so it's not like the minis are painted so they look the best just from one angle and there definitely are techniques for that that means that pretty much any of their minis look good from the front profile or the back come on man Focus aside from looking great from all angles we'll do all Warhammer minis have in common be it a Space Marine or a squake this right here is the most important thing that you can use on any miniature to improve it to put it simply all Warhammer box art is readable [Music] means that every kind and clean you see Games Workshop doesn't really paint minis to portray art or to make something look realistic but to sell more Minis and there is nothing wrong with that but it means that the presentation of the miniature the plastic the actual sculpt is more important than the painting So if you are looking for something more artsy or expressive the Warhammer box art might not be your cup of tea but as I said you can still learn from it so how do you make your minis more readable we'll talk about cleanliness later but let's talk about definition there are two components to make the overall look more defined all the edges are highlighted and the recess is darkened in fact you can literally use only base coats on your model Define the edges and the recesses and it will look great and you know what to prove this to you I'm gonna [ __ ] do that [Music] foreign hey you did you know that this video is sponsored by Rey Shadow Legends it's free to play Fantasy RPG with millions of players oh so kinda like whatever you say it's better with over 650 Champions you can build teams for a campaign dungeons or PVP for glorious melee combat so they don't have archers I mean yeah they do have archers or magicians yeah they do have Mages but that's not the point if you download the game now radar running a special 12 Days of Christmas event for new players just copier player ID and head to 12 days of raid.playerium.com to win some amazing in-game and real-life prizes including Amazon gift cards worth up to a thousand dollars are you sure that sounds a bit too good to be true that's the thing it is true and if you use my link in the description you receive bonuses that are in-game equivalent of steroids that 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all angles which is another important aspect of Warhammer books art if you are wondering what the hell is the other options to using metallics it's using non-metallic metal which is essentially painting something to look metallic without using any metallic paints other than that now it's just a matter of putting the right color at the right spot I mean that's kind of the entirety of painting miniatures but what I mean is using just one color for each part without shading them or stuff like that after base coating the entire mini this is what we got and yeah it's really [ __ ] boring but it's clean which is NOT saying a lot because you could literally take just one color paint the entire miniature with it and say that it's clean however what it's not is defined because there is no clear separation of elements as I said Games Workshop uses mostly two things to Define their Miniatures recess shading slash black lining and Edge highlighting so even on the box art you'll see minis with flat base coats that have these two additional components believe me when I say that adding these will make all the difference and remember when I said that we will talk about cleanliness later yeah I will expand on that in a little bit but as you can see just using fully opaque and clean base coats will do the trick now however I am adding all that necessary shading with a very thin brush I apply straight black paint into recesses okay hold up right now you must be like zumikito why bother doing that when you can apply washes on your miniature okay if you think that it's a good idea to apply acrylic wash over the entire miniature you either haven't tried it enough times or or hear me out you are smoking crack you can't tell me that Games Workshop painted this by applying a wash over the entire mini that just cannot work and I know that because I painted 45 white Space Marines like that and it took [ __ ] 6 months that's because I spent all that time cleaning the wash with my base coat color which was white I'm sorry I got a bit too emotional there so Precision recess shading like this is much much better and even though some people call it black lining and you can use black for this it's absolutely fine to use any color that is darker than your base coat hell you can even use those brown watches but why not just thin down your regular brown paint okay before we move on a few more things one you absolutely can use washes but it's better for textured Parts like this one right here to save yourself time 2. oil washes are more convenient because they run just into recesses and you can fix them later and I talk about them in other videos three most most likely even when you Blackline your minis you'll have to fix some of the mistakes later like for example when you make the black line too thick however it's still faster than fixing the mess after washing the entire mini and 4. do whatever you like as always this is just my recommendation and if you don't like it don't do it when you compare these two next to each other it's pretty obvious that the right one is more refined because there is more depth this is why every miniature looks better once you apply a wash over it but when you do that you lose that clean finish using recess shading you keep the cleanliness and make the mini more defined but do you see this part yeah it's too soft For Recess shading so I'll have to apply a few layers over it to shade it however let's define our miniature further with Edge highlights when it comes to Edge highlighting Games Workshop actually applies multiple ones this can be seen on this in cubai I painted a while back I applied like three different paints on most edges to do that simply start with a bit thicker highlights that are not as bright and then paint thinner and brighter highlights inside of the previous one not all edges require multiple rounds of edge highlights and just one round is enough keep in mind that miniature painting should be fun and doing three rounds of edge highlights on the entire miniature sounds like the opposite of that also more soft edges like the ones on the fabric can't be too bright because it would look weird sometimes I stretch the layer too much so to fix it I come back to the base coat and make it thinner never think that painting minis is straight linear process there is a lot of back and forth going on and you can always fix anything that you don't like okay this is pretty good and we mostly use just base coats recess shading and Edge highlights and yes this isn't exactly the same color scheme that you see on the box art but the point of this exercise is to show you how to get there not which exact colors to pick the basic principle is readability and by applying these methods you can get there but there is one big disadvantage to this method I want you to imagine painting something like a Pokemon using this method yes a Pokemon just really think about how you would paint a Charizard like that I'll give you a minute foreign thought you are either like come on man Pokemon are stupid to which I will reply no Pokemon are awesome think again but more importantly you came to a conclusion that using this method on Charizard is not happening let me explain you see one thing about the most Warhammer Minis and I really have to emphasize most because it's not all of them is that they are very good for beginners most of their minis have a good amount of details sharp edges and recesses so by using very simple painting methods you can get great results however if you picked something like a Charizard or other Minis that don't have sharp and defined details GW approach doesn't work very well and hell even softer Warhammer minis like squix or nerd links in my opinion don't look as good painted like that okay so what do we do if our goal is to have nicely readable minis we have to find a different way to define them and because we won't use just one flat base coat we'll actually have to put in some effort to keep it clean let me show you how to do it on this cute miniature of nerd links the starter is pretty much the same just plain old base codes the deepest shades are filled with black but then it's all different I picked slightly lighter green color and covered like 90 of nurgling skin leaving only the deepest Shades this however is far from the last layers but if you progress like that you'll Define the miniature by painting volumes tummy of this little guy is pretty much like a ball or a sphere and therefore I highlight it as such there are no hard edges so we are not talking about Edge highlights but volumetric highlights that's a fancy term that essentially means to paint something to look more 3D like as I progress with each layer I cover less and less with lighter and lighter layer there is plenty of opportunity to mess up here but my most important tip is to not make each layer too different so the transition is not harsh and the second tip is to make every layer fully opaque so it doesn't look splotchy other than that it's about practice and patience this isn't the only way to paint volumetric highlights although I think it's the most straightforward if you have a feeling that some of the layers are splotchy or too harsh you can always go back to that layer and fix it so the definition in this case comes from the fact that you see where is the light and where are the shadows and cleanliness in this case comes from the smoothness of the gradients I painted the other nurgling pretty much the same way but because I already explained this approach on the green one the unedited footage for both will be on my patreon in the end I think they came out pretty great so two different approaches to make your mini readable by combining them you get a miniature that is nicely readable but also not flat and that's pretty much it if you like this video give it a like and I want to thank great Shadow Legends for sponsoring this video because it sponsors like these that make running this channel possible I encourage you to try it for free using my link in the description and see you in the next one

Channel: Zumikito Miniatures

Views: 134,279

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Id: ZzGJ1Wqblog

Length: 13min 41sec (821 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 31 2022