--- tags: > #hobbies/models #public #painting --- ### Metadata ![[IMG_4231.jpg]] - **Figure:** Northern Wind (Big Child Creatives) - **Completed:** March 2023 - **Focus:** First high quality miniature purchased/painted. Practiced faces using the sideshow/bruno papa technique - **Hours Spent:** idk ## Intro I purchased some painting books, and a couple of the figures they use are from Big Child Creatives. Of course, I had to go order those so I could follow along, and while there I found this Northern Wind miniature. Having just played Horizon Zero Dawn, I bought it (very similar look to Aloy). This was my first "miniature" I've really worked on, smaller than the normal 1/6 or 1/7 scale figures I tend to buy. Northern Wind isn't super tiny, but definitely smaller than what I'm used to. I was also curious to find out how the quality differed from the kits I normally do from e2046 or GK-M. I hoped it would be significantly better - for the size and price of it anyways. Ultimately, it's a nice miniature, but the quality is about the same as what I'm used to for cheaper and (much) larger kits. These Big Child Creative miniatures are pretty expensive for what you get in my opinion, but I digress. I did not stress too much on this kit nor track time spent. I had recently finished my huge printing and painting spree to get my [[3D Printed Team]] completed as a long effort, so I just wanted to get back to simple enjoyment. ## Photos ![[IMG_4241.jpg]] ![[IMG_4230.jpg]] ![[IMG_4232.jpg]] ![[IMG_4233.jpg]] ![[IMG_4234.jpg]] ![[IMG_4235.jpg]] ![[IMG_4236.jpg]] ![[IMG_4237.jpg]] ![[IMG_4238.jpg]] ![[IMG_4239.jpg]] ![[IMG_4240.jpg]] ## Lessons Learned - **Be very patient and subtle with sideshow/bruno technique.** It does build up, but it takes time. If you rush it with heavy paint, it's easy to overdo it and then backtracking is hard. - **Painting tattoos is tricky to load brush properly.** Finding a small enough brush is not the issue. Instead, it's getting the right amount of paint on the brush so it comes off smoothly when painting, but not too heavily. - **Always pin.** I'm not sure if I've actually learned this, because this has come up 3-4 times now. I glued but didn't pin the waist, and of course during the course of finishing up it broke. I did drop it, so there is that. But I have a bad habit of not pinning when I think there is enough surface area or it won't be a problem. It's usually a problem eventually. - **Try less stark background:** I posted on reddit r/minipainting and while I didn't really get much feedback, the only feedback provided was the skin looked like plastic like barbie. That's unfortunate. I didn't think it was that bad. They did say perhaps it's because figure is darker and most of the background is stark white, try a neutral background. Maybe I should try gray more in the future.