Staying Productive during Lockdown

Just wanted to show off some Dark Souls miniatures I have been working on, to add to my fully painted core set.

First off, the Dark Root expansion:

All these I have tried to stay true to the video game in terms of colours, as well doing the garden bases with green tufts (its sand, painted green with a black wash).

A closer look at them:

The Scarecrows that tend the Darkroot Garden. 

The Demonic Foilage that ambush you in the Darkroot Basin.

Mushroom Parent and Mushroom Child.

Stone Guardians, and...

...Stone Knights.

The moss effect was achieved by glueing 'snow' effect flock to the model (pva and green paint mix). It was then washed black then green and finally drybrushed.

Next, Iron Keep expansion:

The colours are also true to the video game (even the blue/black armour of the knights) and the bases were pumice, painted dark red and black washed then wet blended lava (orange, yellow, yellow/white) and a red wash over that. The base edges need to be painted black to finish. And the models still need to be varnished.

Lets take a closer look:

Ironclads. There armour was washed with a black/green mix to give them a tarnished look.

I also slightly modified the figure - SFG have a habit of doing shit poses for some reason. These looked like they were doing ballet with the back foot (leg bent, on tip toes)!

I heated the back leg in hot water, bent it flat and glued it down. Much better.

Alonne Knights, some with blacksteel katana and some with greatbow.

There armour is a blue/black mix and black washed.

Alonne Captains. Painted the same as the knights, but given a blue sash and black washed shoulder pads with dull silver motif.

I started work on the Crystal Lizards, too - they are not quite finished. Need more blue glazing on crystals and bases finished:

I have also been working on some extras to expand my game further. These are all things in the video game that were not in the board game, but I managed to find comparable models for:

Dogs. Everyone hates dogs - they attack so fast! These follow the colours from Dark Souls 1, with purple/black skin.

Was thinking about making these move 3, 3 physical damage, 2 to dodge.

Rats! These are coloured from (mostly) Dark Souls 2, but with the plague elements from Dark Souls 1.

Was thinking these are 3 physical damage and cause poison.

The Butcher from Dark Souls 1.

She will be slow but hit hard!

Will probably cause bleed (I know they dont in the video game, but it seems fitting in the board game).

A Blacksmith and a Firekeeper. Purely asthetic for my collection.

The Blacksmith looks more like Steadyhand McDuff from Dark Souls 2. The Firekeeper is a mix between the firekeeper from Dark Souls 3 and Anastasia of Astora from Dark Souls 1.

Some dead hollows with items on them!

Love these, but, again, purely asthetic.

It was achieved by using warhammer skeletons, then pinning a milliput ball to them and shaping the milliput with a modelling tool.

It was hard to get the colour right on the item glow, but I am mostly happy with it (I used a light blue/grey wash).

And finally:

I am working on ambush tokens for the Demonic Foliage. They are not finished; need to add the green to them (not 100% sure how to do it, yet).

They are basically garden brush bristles pushed into modelling putty and covered in pva to hold them in - they are fairly solid!

So, thats my painting productivity! I need to do all the bosses next.

Praise the Sun! \[T]/

I have painted the whole of my Dark Souls the Board Game miniatures and want to take the opportunity to show them off.

Caution, this post is image heavy!

The design brief I had for myself was to follow the video game art as much as possible and to favour DS3 over the others (as that is where most of the generic models are from, such as the hollows). However, some things look in digital art than physical miniatures, so I did make some changes where it looked better to do so (such as the Silver Knights cloaks).

All models have been gloss varnished for protection while gaming and then a matt varnish over that to remove the shiny finish of the gloss.

Anyway, on with the pics.

First, the Hollows:

The Hollows miniatures do not have a huge amount of detail on them and, to be fair, they dont need to; they are basic enemies. I went for the DS3 colour scheme as they are the DS3 hollows character models (personally, I would have prefered the DS1 hollows).

Next, the 'Anor Londo' enemies - Silver Knights and Royal Sentinels.

The Silver Knights, in the video game, have brown cloaks, but these did not look interesting so I opted for this blue-green colour. The Royal Sentinels do not have this brown-red colour on them but I thought it made them more interesting than just white and gold.

Now, the Mini-bosses.

The Outrider Knight (or Frost Knight, as it is better known). I tried to make it 'frosty' as an overall effect by highlighting the armour with a mix of silver and white. Along with the sword blending I think the knight does look somewhat 'cold'.

 The Titanite Demon is pretty straight forward and he is simply one colour (as sort of 'metal-stone' effect). However, I made it a little bit more interesting by adding the blue colour to his face and catch-pole. 

The Belfry Gargoyle has been kept close to the video game colour scheme, with the very verdigris bronze armour. 

The Winged Knight has a standard colour scheme, complete with the heraldry on his surcoat (which I have painted in an abstract way, but it works as long as you don't stare too closely... 

And now, the main bosses.

The Dancer of the Boreal Valley was interesting to paint. The model is aweful out of the box as it looks like she is falling foward (both of her feet are close together). The current theory was the model was changed to fit it in the box (though SFG blamed Bandai). Anyway...

I changed the model to be taking a half step forward and it looks loads better (still not anywhere near as good as the the concept model we were shown).

In the game, her cloak is very thin and transparent but I settled on white. Her sword is meant to be on fire but the model is weird and has no flame on it, so I just ignored the weird pattern on top of it and blended it like fire.

I think she turned out ok, all things considered.

Ornstein and Smough; is there a more iconic Dark Souls boss as these two?

Lets deal with the elephant in the room; Smough's bollock helmet. Smough does not have a bollock helmet in the game; there is a bulge, but it is a single bulge and not a pair of bollocks.

Anyway, lets move on. These two are pretty awesome miniatures (excepting Smough's very heavy hammer and the haft cannot bear the weight). 

The main colour for these is gold, so that is what I did; did not want to play about with the style of these two. The gold turned out a little more muted than I expected it to; would have prefered one shade more yellow gold. But I think they look good. I painted a little more red on Ornstein than the model suggests (because the model does not follow the video game fully; Ornstein has a ragged red kilt under his armour). 

That is all the enemies, now for the heroes.

I followed the game art as much as I could with the heroes and I think they look pretty close to their video counter-parts. I like the way they turned out (how many shades of grey can you get on 1 miniature?!).

And a bonus figure.

This is a Reaper Bones Blacksmith but looked quite good as an Andre miniature. Keeping my eye out for a firekeeper.

No doubt there will be more Dark Souls miniatures posted when October rolls around...