"Arreat Crater Level II" W.I.P.

By Solmar | Dienstag, 17. Juni 2014

Hey there ladies and gentlemen, dear painters!

Today i will bring you the my current Project "Arreat Crater Level II" wich is in the making. Here you will find a step by step that explains the idea, the building and painting of the base and of course of the miniature itsself. Excuse the bad quality of the pictures, they are just smartphone pics.

So as i am a huge fan of Blizzard games i also love Diablo III :) And (while actively playing a pet-zoo-doctor by the way) i love the barbarian. So i wanted to have one in my cabinet. And Scale 75 offers the perfect model of the Diablo 3 Barb.. uhm, i mean "Brock the Wanderer". ;-)

So let´s hop right into the Base:

I like the appearance of the arreat crater in the game. So much cool shapes and colors. A pure devlish atmosphere. So i wanted this as the combat zone of my barb. So i made a quick scetch of my idea:


So i startet to build the standing ground. A small rivulet of lava was about to wind through his legs. Don´t worry. Our guy is pretty tough! He will survive the heat :)


Next i made the core of the spines out of wire:

Around this i wrapped aluminium foil:


And next came two steps: strengthen the structure with milliput and stamp the crap out of the surface with different stones and woods. I also added "glime" made with UHU Glue and Water (Drop some UHU Glue onto water and you will get a thin membrane that you can handle onto your stuff).


And now, as i am finally the owner of an airbrush, i sprayed the main colors and first lava colors on it:

And after some refining my Dayglow pigments from Forged Monkey arrived and i intesified the Lava effect:

There will be much more work on this, but for now let take a closer look onto:

The Barbarian!

I started with basecoating with a dark, a medium and a Light Basecoat colors from below, front and above just to have a better basecoat and first impression, where light and shadow might fall:


Next i started with the Face. No fancy techniques here, just painting highlights and shadows. Though i had the light situation rather wrong and had do bring much more work into it. But the first step is this:


Then i increased the contrast, reworked light and shadow under the eyes and gave more color to the face. This was the result:
Then i sketched the skintones for the upper body and built up the first volumes:

Then i further increased contrast and overall light situation. So much fun :)

If you are interested in what skintones i use, this was my palette at the beginnig of each skin session. :)

The skin came to a near finish. This was the result before i moved on to other parts:

Next was the shoulder pad. As you might have recognized, i always paint a very clean NMM style. I did this for the past 4 years now and i definetly want to try a more realistic approach on metals. As i still don´t like TMM i just thought, well go for a more realistic NMM style that might look something like TMM.

So that was the result on the shoulder armor and i am really satisfied with the result:


I also made the Belt the same metal. The cloth got some color and heavy texture to look like a thic cloth.

The technique (a wild range from stippling, glazing, wet, dry, glaze again and building up contrasts with small dots and irregular edge highlights) can also be applied to golds. Here on the sword. I also painted some runes into the leather.

Next part was the Leg armor wich got the same treatment with to different metal tones. :)

And this is the result as of today:



I hope you like him so far. Now i have to to his weaponry and then Getting the whole picture done with lighting, atmosphere, grungy effects, blood and so on. :)

Stay tuned. :)

3 Responses to "Arreat Crater Level II" W.I.P.

  1. Zab says:
    17. Juni 2014 um 21:07

    I think the limited palette on the metal, leather and cloth is really nice and makes the skin pop. Lovely so far keep it up!

  2. canny says:
    17. Juni 2014 um 23:12

    Ha Zab! we are see each other all over the place!
    Superb work, skin tones are great, love the transitions of the skin and the base is fantastic I remember your other D3 figure from PnP. I cant wait to get Sharg from S75 so I can paint him, Hope I can do him justice as your work on Brock is awesome.

  3. Taiga says:
    25. Juni 2014 um 02:54

    Wow...the details of the face...I'm not sure if I should give up because I will never be as good as you; or keep trying...
    I'm gonna go paint something while pondering that.

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