Dark Souls boardgame commission

[Fabricator General]

Chad from The Complex has the Dark Souls boardgame, and commissioned me to paint up the minis for it. He wanted the minis to have that desaturated look from the game and for the heroes to have that look like there was an inner light shining out through the cracks.

After some experimentation, we decided to go with a simple cel-shading technique.

The base coat is Mournfang Brown, then it is zenithed with Mechanicum Gray.

 This gives earthtone shades in the crevices but the gray on the surfaces will take the punch and 'life' out of the Coelia Greenshade that is coming next.

[Fabricator General]

A generous coat of Coelia Greenshade is painted over the whole figure. It stains the gray a nice mossy green and almost vanishes in the brown leaving a dark moldy green, a bit like what you'd see on a wet mossy log in the woods.

This is super straight forward, all of the highlights and shades are provided by the brown and gray undercoats. The greenshade pulls the brown and gray together, unifying the look.

[Fabricator General]

There is one last step, the greenshade is a little bright in some places and the fig looks a little "one note" with just a green coat over it. A coat of Agrax Earthshade is painted over the whole figure just like the greenshade was done.

The Agrax tones down the green shade and ties it in with the earth tones in the creases. This really pulls the whole figure together and gives some really nices changes and shading.

[Spectre Senence]

Nice, get a bit of that work feeling when you paint all the models in a board game. They are cool minis

[Fabricator General]

This bigger boss really shows the interplay of the green and brown shades in the all of the muscle detail.

[Fabricator General]

It's really amazing how effective such a simple couple of techniques really bring out the details and make the models pop.