While I feel particularly with Kingdom Death I've more often been doing models on the gloomier side, more recently I've been interested in more vibrant paint jobs, even when the midtones or general sentiment has been darker. With this set where my client asked that I do something that I felt fit each piece, the unifying characteristic is a general reference point in more classic fantasy book covers and movie posters, or just an older sensibility of miniatures painting.

 

Painting this gal felt like walking into a minefield: it was so easy for it to look kinda trashy like a sexy Halloween costume, or like a furry. I don't have a problem with the latter; I think my value judgement is pretty obvious in my description of the former, and I wasn't going for either look, regardless.

This is a mix of more traditional (the grave markers are based on my time in Japan, and the mask is actually fairly strictly based on a specific papier-mâché festival mask I have) and more pop culture (referencing a few versions of more stylized anime etc. horror sources). I tried to get something simultaneously more naturally shaded (with a lot of blues and browns mixed in to avoid pure colors) while working with an almost chalky white that shows up in both early modern prints and in some anime.

Yasunori's got to be one of the most colorful minis I've painted recently, and I was really happy with how he came out. Obviously, a lot of that's his wings/man transitions, which was something of an experiment to work on, but, I was very happy that I was able to control the color and shade well enough that it didn't come off as something bland, and there are a couple other models where I've done dull feather designs that I'm tempted to redo to get something this punchy going.

I'd seen these creepy things around every now and then, but never knew that they're called. Apparently, Yin is a Penanggalan. (Thanks, Wyrd, for the mythology lesson.)