Tuesday 29 September 2015

Elsa, the cat burglar, the painting plan

I am an attack minded individual. It just seems to be the way I am wired. In 40k I play Orks and just love their fast moving approach to battle. Move quickly into position and plant a well placed choppa or two. You get used to the mind set.

In Zombicide I also like the fast moving characters. Wanda is a particular favourite, what with her being on roller skates and getting to move two squares instead of one.

I discussed the four new characters in Toxic City Mall on a previous post with the result that Elsa, the cat burglar has become a likely favourite for me. I like the free door opening action and later she gains Slippery and enhanced movement making her a potential game winner. Should suit my style of play. As a result she will be first to enter the painting arena.


All the models I have painted so far have had a basic paint job, good enough to get them onto the playing table. At tournaments this used to be defined as having 'at least colours on the model'. I have done a bit better than that and have applied washes and highlights but it is still fairly basic. Works well on the gaming table though.


With Elsa I plan to spend some more time and get some of the detail painted. I want to get some good detail on the face so eyes and lips etc. This will be tough as the model is so small but lets see. I am conscious that I need to get it right first time or I will lose the definition on the models face. Very light layers of paint is the plan.

I want to make a much better job of the skin and get some highlights on the raised surfaces.

The mad auburn hair will be a challenge. It should offset the black very nicely and frame the face perfectly. More reason to get the face right.

Finally I want to paint the catsuit black and achieve highlights. I am a great user of the 'wash' technique and this is much less effective on black. I contemplated 'copping out' and going for a blue cat suit but decided against that line of action. I think that using an extreme highlight might work better to give the effect of light bouncing from the black latex. The plan is to go for black with grey layered highlights. Then wash with a very watered down black for a shine. Follow this with a near white highlight.

Lets see how things pan out ;-)


5 comments:

  1. If you paint her suit black then apply a mid grey highlight then a light grey highlight. It will look awful at first but if you then give it a couple of black washes it knocks everything right back to being subtle.

    You can then add white hairline highlights to key areas at the end.

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  2. I paint my blacks the opposite way, I paint my model dark grey with medium grey highlights then build up layers of black washes.

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    Replies
    1. How smart is that? I really like the sound of that!

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