Painting the Modelu HO Scale Transitional Era Crew Bundle - Part 8 Finishing Up

Time to wrap this up. These are relatively simple figures from a painting perspective. After the overalls, jackets and caps its just down to gloves, boots and touching up the skin a bit.

To start off I wanted to try something to try and bring out the features on the skin a bit more. I took some Army Painter Strong Tone and thinned it down about 50:50 with their glazing thinner. I painted all of the skin and the shirt with this mix and let it dry. It feels like it added quite a bit of depth to the face and filled in the eyes better than my initial effort, however, my highest highlight was really emphasized and looked very odd at this point. Didn't work as I had hoped on the shirt though, I think the detail is just to fine there to really take advantage of this technique. It also dried pretty glossy, but I expected that.

I went in with my mid-tone skin color. Ammo's Burnt Sand (A.MIG-0133), touched up the skin a bit which covered most of the gloss and tightened up the transition to that highest highlight.

From there I moved on to the gloves and boots, following pretty much the same process as the jackets and overalls; a dark, a mid-tone and a highlight. These areas are small and don't need those transitional 50:50 mixes that I used on the larger areas. I went with brown for the boots and dark grey for the gloves. I'm not quite sure what would have been a common color for railroad workers' gloves in the 50's so I went neutral.

Next its time to add some "nature" (a phrase we use when our Great Pyr brings in an assortment of leaves and twigs on her coat into the house). For me these will be diesel crews for warehouse row served by the Rio Grande. On to the dirt. I used two colors from my Pan Pastel stash, one dark and one light.

Since it is powder I might continue to play around with this, but for now I’ll call them done.

Painting the Modelu HO Scale Transitional Era Crew Bundle - Part 7 The Blues - Jackets

Now its time to lighten up the jackets. I'm using some colors that I was trying to avoid because they are part of Reaper's HD series which is not out of production. However, they look like they are going to work pretty well so I'll work with them now and then figure out some replacements.

The first color up is Solid Blue (29816). Its dark enough that I didn't bother to mix it with the Nightmare Black (9280). Its a good step up without needing an intermediate layer of the two colors mixed together.

I followed that up with Solid Blue mixed 50:50 with Nightsky Blue (29818). Trying to limit it to the higher areas now, leaving the two deeper blues in the folds creases.

Next up is then just a layer of Nightsky Blue. I failed to mention that I have been thinning all of these colors with water (since I'm not doing a wash or a glaze at this point). I just want the paint to flow off the brush and if it takes a couple of passes to get the color intensity I want that's just fine.

Final color is Winter Blue (29817). Again with the colors so close I skipped the intermediate mix and went straight from Nighsky Blue to Winter Blue for the final highlight. And of course that ended up being to big a transition so I glazed it back a bit and did a 50:50 mix then followed it up with Winter blue.

I think the jackets are looking pretty good. I like the contrast between the dark blue of the jacket and the more faded blue of the overalls.

Painting the Modelu HO Scale Transitional Era Crew Bundle - Part 6 The Blues - Jackets

For some reason I thought the jacket colors might be different but it seems like the only color photos I find have everything in blue denim. So more blue. the tricky part here becomes the need establish and maintain a blue jacket that is going to be a different blue from the overalls and cap.

To start things I off I went with Reaper's Nightmare Black (9280) which really seems to be very deep, dark blue. Now I need to tone it down with a different selection of blues than I used for the overalls and I think I want to lean towards a darker end result, the overalls ended up being a bit more "faded" than I was anticipating. Sometimes this is just a learn as you go process.

Its pretty dark but I like the contrast

Painting the Modelu HO Scale Transitional Era Crew Bundle - Part 5 The Blues - Overalls

Rather than post each successive layer I figured it would be better to just show the finished product.

Let's start the beginning though, and some of this is probably excessive, I pulled three blues from Reaper to work on these overalls. I'm keeping these all at the same level of "wear" just because I want to keep things simple. If I do another batch I'll try some fading.

Reaper Ezren Blue (89528), Ultramarine (9188), Ultramarine Highlight (9189) and Moonstone Blue (9317)

I started off with the Ezren Blue in the last post but I had to go back and paint the caps so it was one step back to catch that little detail.

Next was a 

50/50 mix of Ezren Blue and Ultramarine. I thinned this down a bit and covered most of the overalls and caps with this, trying to keep the Ezren visible in the darkest areas of shadow.

I followed that with Ultramarine with just a hint of the previous mix in it. I try to keep working the brush in in downward direction as I go. In theory, this should keep this base color away from our shadows. This is the midtone the base color for the overalls.

Working our way up is a 50/50 mix of Ultramarine and Ultramarine Highlight with just a hint of Ezren blue added. Again, I went from top to bottom concentrating on just the higher areas of the clothing at this point. I managed to get a little enthusiastic with this and went a bit deep. I made a glaze of the Ezren Blue and toned down this highlight. It also helped to deepen the shadows and basically pull all the colors back together. I repeated this highlight and didn't get quite so enthusiastic with it this time.

I followed this up with Ultramarine Highlight with a bit of the previous mix in it and just kept hitting the highpoints. I thought this would be the final but things were still looking a little dark so it was off to one more color.

I had Moonstone Blue nearby from doing the study in blue so I mixed it the the Ultramarine Blue for one last highlight using it on the highest points. 

They look a little rough but its time to move on I think.

At this point I'm finding the details on these miniatures to be a bit to fine. While I'm not a huge fan of exaggeration there is a point when exaggeration is absolutely necessary. While the folds in the clothing is excellent, any other "softer", "smaller" details are lost at this scale. In particularly all the definition in the face has been lost. A sculptor would be able to exaggerate facial features to give the face depth and character. Difficult at this scale but I have seen sculptors do some amazing things at this scale (I have also seen some abysmal failures).

Painting the Modelu HO Scale Transitional Era Crew Bundle - Part 4 The Blues

Carol Highsmith photo from the Library of Congress

Sometimes you just come to a crossroads and you need to stop over thinking things and get some paint on the models. I picked Reaper Heather Blue (9231) for the base color on the shirt and Reaper Ezren Blue (89528).

I thinned them just a little bit and went to work. Pretty pleased with the result, the Ezren Blue dried a little darker than it was looking. Looks like a reasonable shade for newer denim. The Heather Blue isn't a bad start for a blue shirt color. I want to try a wash at this point, put haven't quite decided what color to use yet.

Painting the Modelu HO Scale Transitional Era Crew Bundle - Part 3

A study in blue. I'm trying to figure out the next set of colors for the transition era clue and without a doubt blue is the color to use. Between shirts, jeans and overalls it all just screams to be some shade of blue.

I grabbed a bunch of Reaper paints and decided that the easiest way to figure it was to do some swatches. Here is what I came up with.

After all that, I'm still not sure what I'm going to use. I guess I'll study it for a bit.

Painting the Modelu HO Scale Transitional Era Crew Bundle - Part 2

I started things off a little differently. Normally I just move straight to the skin tones but this time I decided to start out with a wash over the entire figure. Some of the detail is subtle enough that I needed something to make things pop a bit. For this I used Walnut Brown (9136) from Reaper Miniatures. I thinned this down to a wash consistency. I used Vallejo Airbrush Thinner for this instead of plain water. 

I then painted each of the five figures with the wash and let them dry.

Time for the skin. My normal process is to paint all of the skin tones first, on these figures that's just the face. I painted all of the skin with three paints from Ammo by Mig. The first layer was Burnt Red Brown (A.MIG-0134) I thinned this down a bit, regular water this time, I didn't want the paint to be to thick. The second layer was with Red Leather (A.MIG-0133) again from Ammo by Mig, I applied this over most of the face trying to make sure the deeper areas weren't covered like under the brim of the hat.  My final color was Burnt Sand (A.MIG-0118),  thinned with water, I mostly, gently, dry brushed this straight down from the top of the head, catching just the higher areas to make everything pop a bit. Everything tends to look a little rough at this stage so I made a glaze of Burnt Red Brown and applied it on the entire face to help blend the colors together. A glaze is thinner than a wash and I used airbrush thinner rather than water for it.

I think I deleted a picture here, but at least two of them have the shadow skin color applied

Now the second layer, this is essentially the base skin color.

And then a combined step. The drybrush with the highlight skin tone with the shadow glaze,

With all of that done its time to sit back and ponder what colors I want to use on the rest of the clothing.

Painting the Modelu HO Scale Transitional Era Crew Bundle - Part 1

I know I haven't finished the church yet. However, since that is giving me some frustrations at this point I need to have something else to turn my attention to while solutions simmer for the church. So I pulled out the Modelu Transitional Era Crew to work on. I elected to start with the HO scale crew first. 

I had an initial look at this and they look like they will be a challenge with all of the fine detail. I removed all the supports from the printing machine and did a little cleanup. Since these are 3D prints there are no mold lines or injection marks to fill in. I think the print resolution is really high since I don't see any layering that needs to be cleaned up.

After I cleaned them up a drilled out a small hole in the foot for a piece of wire and super glued the wire into place. After trimming the wire to length I mounted them on one of my painting sticks. This one that I used previously for the Preiser work so its double thick and has holes for the wire already. So far so good.

After that I pulled out the airbrush and primed them with Badger Stynylrez Grey Primer (SNR-402)

The only comment I have at this point is these guys are short! Initially I thought they were going to be bigger than the Preiser figures that I had already painted, definitely not the case. The Preiser figure scales out to about 6' tall with his hat on. The Modelu figures scales out to about 5'6" with his hat on. I don't necessarily have a problem with that people do come in different heights. I'm just curious if all the Modelu figures will scale out to be this short.

First steps complete. Drilled, wired and mounted to the painting stick

Little short, maybe 5'6 compared to the Preiser figure who is pushing 6'. Nothing wrong with it, but all five of them are this short.

And after the primer. Hard to tell, the grey of the resin is pretty close to the Stynylrez grey primer

Acquisition - Modelu - HO and O Scale

Since I batched painted that group of HO figures I have been sort of looking for something of a higher quality. The Preiser figures are fine for background figures but the planned layout is not very deep and there will be a definite need for some better quality figures in the foreground areas. I have done a little research on the various model railroad forums looking for what other folks think are better. Two keep coming up Miniprints and Modelu. I have been looking at both online and while I will buy something from Miniprints at some point I'm not impressed with the offerings I see online at this point.

I have, obviously, spent a lot of time on the Modelu site as well. Both of these are 3D print companies. Miniprints seems to follow the more traditional "sculpted" method while Modelu is doing 3D scanning of people in the appropriate "costumes".  I decided to pull the trigger on the Modelu figures first as I'm really curious about how good the scanning is. The photos online certainly look impressive.

For this first foray I selected the Railroad & Lineside pack 9029-087 and -048 Transitional Era Crew Bundle. One pack in HO and one pack in O just to see how much of a difference there might be scaling the files up and down between different scales.

The figures arrived yesterday (they were out of stock, basically just needed to be printed) from the UK and I must say at first glance I'm pretty impressed. I think I'm going to work on these as soon as the church is finished. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

HO Scale 9029-087 Transitional Era Crew Bundle. 5 railroad crew figures basically fresh off the printer.

Here is a better look as they come out of the package

I went ahead and cut them apart to make them easier to clean up

Here is the HO group after a rough clean up. Mostly the bottom of the feet and removing the supports

HO Scale 9029-48 Transitional Era Crew Bundle. The same 5 crew figures

Here they are after the same rough prep

A close up from the front

and from the back.

I received a 15% discount for my first order from Modelu which made the two packs come to 44.52 (in pounds) which works out to be about $55 so each individual mini was about $5.50 after shipping. That's pretty good for the O Scale and I was thinking a bit outrageous for the HO Scale (although the HO pack was 15 pounds and the O Scale pack was 25 pounds), again though that's just quickie math. Using this average these are still cheaper than Miniprints HO scale figures. But to be fair I do need to order from them to get a good feel for the product. Right now its a big thumbs up for the Modelu.