A short, short break from video games

I interrupt my video-game blog posts with a short post about another hobby of mine: tabletop miniatures!

So I took a short break from video gaming – one night – because I was sick and felt uneasy looking at monitors and screens.  Instead, I broke out the paints for the first time in 2 years.  I grabbed a board game from my gaming shelf called, Super Dungeon Explore.  I picked this game up when it first came out because I was absolutely in love with the cutesy miniatures and the game concept behind it – turn-based dungeon-delve in pursuit of loot!  I have never actually played the game nor even looked through the rules, but my first impression was that the game was perhaps too simplistic.  Oh well, the main reason for picking this up was to paint it up and play with my little nephews… but that was 3 years ago when they were still little.  Now it’s just painting.

SDE Ranger and Paladin

I wanted to paint one model, as a refresher, so I started with the Paladin.  I was inspired earlier by a speed-painting video I watched earlier that day.  I don’t know why, but I associate “glorious warriors of light” with having blonde hair, so blonde it’ll be.  I decided to give him blue armor, and as I started to paint, memories of Erdrick’s armor from Dragon Warrior started to pervade my mind, so I decided to give it a yellow trim.  This was also the first time for me painting “anime eyes”, and I used the technique I watched earlier.  The most impressive part for me was that I was finished with the model in a single sitting.  I had cleaned and primed the pieces months prior, but all the painting was done that evening.  It looks good on the tabletop, but seeing the photo shows some glaring flaws, but what’s important is that I’m happy with the end product!

The following evening, I started on the Ranger.  I wanted to give her a colorful hair color, like pink or light green, but instead I asked my wife to pick a hair color (without even seeing the model).

“Light brown with gold highlights,” she chose.

I worked on the skin, face and hair before setting down the paint brushes.  I used a different scheme for the eyes, painting the colored pupil over a large black circle, after looking at the board game cover box for ideas.  The paladin was a black pupil over a colored circle.  There are numerous other techniques online for painting “anime” eyes as well.

I returned to the model about two weeks later to finish her up and put away my paints.  I completed the rest of the model in about 2 hours.  Despite not matching my original ideas and looking quite messy, I was happy with the model because it was DONE and playable.  Still, seeing the sloppily applied white paint is a constant reminder of my laziness, but it’s something I have to accept if I want to paint more models in a timely manner.  This also applies to my style of video gaming in a way, where the completionist aspect of my gaming drives me crazy while I could be enjoying the simpler aspects, like the core game itself!