Girls, Girls, Girls! ...erm, rather, Mimics! Neverborn

The right Beckoner is one of my favorite new Malifaux minis- one of the ones that really shows how their sculpting techniques and sculpting has progressed since the single piece, kind of flat minis that dominated their early line.

Since these ladies are going in three different factions (Neverborn, Guild via Lucius, and Ten Thunders via Jacob Lynch), it was pretty tricky to paint them.

The dark red was the strong link to the Guild. The gold dragon cane, orang-y hair and carpet trim was for Ten Thunders. The purple in the carpet, gloves, and trim(? I have no idea what the name for the edge details on fabric is called) ties them in with Neverborn, along with the creepy eyes. Finally, I used a dirty white as both a period sensibility and as something a little off in an otherwise clean look.

Speaking of old Malifaux minis, the doppelgänger is one of my favorite early Neverborn. I really like how her muscle and sinew came out, though I still have some work to do on the skin and cloth.

Either way, part of why I did these mimics, besides the follow up on their crews, is that my wife and I can't wait for Kingdom Death to come out, and I'm prepping for painting a ton of horror and skin with these minis.

A few things I've learned more recently from practice:
-there is a huge amount of red in shading skin: use a lot more red-brown than you'd expect. Cold or yellow browns won't look good
-painting skin is a lot like doing NMM: to get good volume, you need to artificially create transitions and gradients. Without them, your skin won't have good contrast.
-don't hesitate to paint pure, or nearly pure, white, in thin coats. It will really bring out the highlights and get some good volume. This goes for light fabrics, too: for instance, I pulled the punch a bit on the sheet because I thought it was looking too light, but this had it looking dull and old (I'll need to go back in and re-highlight that part...)