 Hello everybody and welcome to another PMP end of month review. What is this? Why this is where we get together and go through the most recent submissions in the PMP end of month events. The PMP, or Painters Motivating Painters, is our Facebook group where we focus on helping you take your next step on the hobby journey. Now, first off, some sad news. This will be the final review that I do for the PMP. The PMP goes on, but I'm not going to be doing the monthly reviews anymore. I've been doing them now for seven years. It's a lot of effort and time, and as I refocus in 2022 on some other items to help improve the channel, I just don't have the time to do these anymore. Often, they take hours and hours and hours to do just between watching everything, you know, preparing my comments and so on and so forth. So I do apologize to that. They've been a lot of fun. I thank you to everybody who submitted. Only in the PMP, if you have something you'd like feedback on, you can always feel free to tag me and I will do my best to show up and comment however I can and give advice. I always want to be there to help. So please don't in any way think that that's me stepping back from helping. My goal and the goal of this group remains as ever to be positive and to help people take whatever their next step is on their hobby journey. This will be both November and December as I got really busy at the end of the year and wasn't able to record November. So we're just going to do both the diorama and army together in two parts here. So let's get into it. If you want to join the PMP, it is a wonderful community full of awesome individuals. You can find the link to do that down below. You must answer all three security questions. So don't forget to do that, otherwise you won't get in. So with that, let's jump over here. All right. So first off is Neil Jenkins. And he had said this is his first post-beast in painting for about the last three years. And he mentioned it was for Armies on Parade and he said if he wanted the minis to stand out more, should the board have been darker? So the answer is there's a couple different options here because I would point out, look what stands out. Let's all just look at this for a moment and actually look at what stands out, this, this, and this. Now they stand out a lot. What's the key elements there? Well, we've got some white integrated in some big ways, but also your red here and here and here is much more intense than everywhere else. So although, yes, you could have had a darker board, the other option would have been to really brighten up the red on all of the Marines, really taking it to areas of super highly saturated ultra bright red. That's the other way you can get things to stand out. We had had like white blood drops on their thing instead of on their iconography or whatever instead of black and things like that. Those are other ways that also might have helped to pop individual things because it will create those bright areas around the Army. Overall, this is a really amazing Armies on Parade board. I just want to absolutely congratulate you. I mean, this thing is top notch. Like, you did a fantastic job here between all the different interesting things going on with the platforms and people moving up and moving down, integrating the sector Mechanicus or whatever it is kits into this. Like, this is an absolutely gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous board that I really think you did a magnificent job with. I love these Dillac guys integrated in sort of, you know, working in the lower areas of the ship. Everything about this is absolutely wonderful. So very well done feels like the Blood Angels, you know, rolling out, readying for war. I just think this is an absolute stellar board. If you had darkened things down with the board, the challenges, you might lose some of the great detail you have here. And I'm not sure that would have been the right move. I think if you wanted to make everything really stand out, it would have just been more maybe the troops, you know, brightening up. And I've got some videos on, you know, doing highly saturated red. But overall, this is a triumph and this is absolutely great, Neil. This is something you should be beyond proud of. I think you did. I mean, this is just beyond amazing. This blew me away when I looked at it. So honest answer. Great looking diorama slash army. Okay. Next up, Alex is trying something fun with a spare Johan and looking for tips on how to, on growing terrain and weathering buildings, sure. So this is a fun one. As you can see here, Johan is trying to capture a little, little meal for himself. Fun little diorama. One of the challenges to this is the problem that your figure, the actual figure we're supposed to be looking at is behind something. So this is, you know, from the front here is sort of our standard viewing angle. And you can't really see much of it. So as an actual diorama, it's challenging because you, you always want whatever the central figure to be as it's not the box. Like right now the box is the central figure of the diorama. And that's not really where you want things to be. So when you're thinking about this, I would have rotated this diorama and the story a little bit like he's right up against the building. I would have rotated it. So maybe he's like hidden down facing you with the building in the center and then had him like pulling the string, you know, like that where the chicken's on the other side. So we get this nice break. It's effectively the same scene. We're just reorienting it. And when we talk about dioramas, composition matters a lot. And so you can't, when you're going with this kind of a thing, it's blocked. Think of dioramas like you're making, composing a scene from a movie. Like if the actors were just to be standing behind a wall, mostly blocked and you could see like this much of their face and this much of their face. And then we were just literally looking at a pile of boxes. That would be a very unusual movie scene. You can sometimes get away with that for various RT reasons, but for the most part, that's not how you'd compositionally set up a scene, right? So I think that's the major challenge with this. It's fun. It looks very real. Like I like a lot of the stuff we've got going on with the building and those kinds of weatherings and stuff like that, no issue. But overall, overall, I think your composition is your main challenge. All right. You and pretty new to doing story bases. I feel I struggle a lot with composition, hoping to get some tips on positioning of elements to convey a flow through the scene in order to tell a better story. Kujo, is that you? Like, do you assume I don't watch your videos, Kujo? Like I've watched all the videos of you painting this thing. So this is like, hi, Kujo. This is an awesome figure, by the way. I've been watching the videos. Yeah, I mean, I think this is good. The challenge with this figure, she's standing in an unusual position. It was the thing that struck me the most watching the videos and watching this was that like the nature of her, she's in this weird Contra Posto position that makes her kind of hard to frame up. I think that and part of the challenge here is to get her looking at the zombie. It's hard to get it all in one scene, right? Because her head is so turned to the side. I think this one is like probably or something, maybe even a little rotated from that. Which I don't think you took one at exactly the angle I'm thinking. Yeah, maybe, I don't know, something in between this one and the other one, I think is probably the closest to the golden angle with this. If I think one of the challenges here is, again, I would have rotated maybe her a little bit out and him a little bit out. That way, you did have this golden angle of the split worlds. Like if she was, I don't know, a few, I don't know, half a, even half a centimeters too much, eighth of a centimeter, quarter of a centimeter out this direction. Like if her blue foot was going this way, this way more and he was rotated just slightly back a little bit, or maybe his head was a little more to the side. I think that would probably give you the perfect angle for it. Now, I mean, that's like minor stuff. Again, it's part of the challenge of just how the figures themselves are constructed here. And sort of the angles are everything's at. I think compositionally, this is a really strong piece, man. I love the work with the water and the way you've got it. So it's like foggy and just the right way to look this crimey, dirty, sort of like post apocalyptic water. It's really nice. The eye is drawn exactly where it should. I just, you know, I've watched your hair video and I think that this is probably why you wanted to do the bright blue hair because it really does, you know, set a focal point for the scene. I'm sure you know that. And so I think that that does its job really well. I also like the light post with the little shoes is actually a really nice addition because it does create a vertical line. So to draw everybody else's attention to this by hanging the shoes here off of the lamppost. He, you know, you've created this wonderful vertical action stripe down the middle of the piece when you look at it dead on. So I think that's that's really good. Overall, I think this is strong. I think compositionally, like does the sewer cell in the water and the floor and all of that? Yes, 100 percent it does. I have no issue with any of that. The tartan pattern or what not on a skirt is which, you know, you've done many a video on that are top quality. You're top notch at that kind of thing. So for the most part, I think all of that cells. I just think compositionally, maybe those small changes, those little tweaks. So hope that helps, man and keep up the great work. All right, Alan, a long time. Watch your first time post display for Yandrosta and her feather guard protectors. So this was for his armies on parade. Don't play AOS. Just paint to make pretty things for friends and family. So, you know, and he says he wants to paint very bright and so on and so forth. Looking for simple advice on how to make things pop better, how to use contrast on the base and the miniature together and how to tie figures to their bases, especially when using more super saturated bright colors. Sure. So fun little piece here. It's it is always tough to tie ultra bright like fire stuff in two bases. It's going to naturally stand out unless they're living in a lava world or something like that, in which case, then it's just fire amongst fire. You know, she is pretty central in the in the thing here. I like how you have it both sort of on the base as well as, you know, kind of the different takes on it. So that's fun. Part of my advice when you're using ultra bright colors is they are going to stand out. So what's more important is kind of the overall balance of the thing. And the challenge here with the overall balance of the piece is honestly in their hair, which sounds funny to say. The back angle is interesting with the bright ones, but it's the it's the hair more than anything. So let's let's just focus on this piece for a minute on this angle because you have the bright green, bright blue and bright pink hair, which I know I said you're I know you said like you want to use these bright poppy colors. Part of the challenge is those are so singular and they stand out so much and they're so distracting because they don't align with anything else in the entire piece is that they actually draw the attention away. There it's more eye catching than her wings because her wings are big and desaturate through different colors and so on and so forth. Like when I relax my eyes and just look at this piece, what stands out to me is wings and hair. And I don't really see the figures because the rest of them are in pretty normal colors, as it were. So if I were going to use that kind of like poppy hair, which, you know, we just came off of off of the previous piece having this bright blue. I understand you probably wanted to make them individual characters and so give them different hair colors. That's fine. I'm not going to tell you you're wrong for doing it. But one of the things I will say is that you want to desaturate that hair out in some way, like integrate purples and, you know, more bright whites into the blues or the pinks or something like that with the greens. You want to bring it down, desaturate it, add in some deeper ground green, green, browns. Hello. Things like that, because I think that'll make a big difference to help them not overwhelm the rest of the piece and be just a bunch of bright blue. Now, as integrating things like bright fire into bases, the honest answer is you just cheat. People sell tufts of orange flowers, pink flowers, blue flowers, bright colored flowers. You just grab those tufts and you, you know, that's the color of the flowers in the area and that helps to create this additional points. Remember, the key of composition in its simplest form is just the triangle. There should always be three points of color in a rough triangle shape on the miniature. That's not always the rule, but it's a good guideline to operate by. OK, so yeah, that's what I would say. Hope that helps. All right, next up, here we have Sam trying to get Bill the Pony over a bridge as Weathertop looms in the background. A lot of learning on this from sculpting the bridge to placing the scenics and doing watercolors for a story backdrop. Super fun. I like this a lot. Obviously, you know, it's you have to love everything about sort of the nature of Bill the Pony in there, who does live. By the way, he's he's OK. He gets out. He gets out. All right. Don't worry. Yeah, I mean, I think this is a fun scene. I think there's I actually quite like the sort of impressionistic watercolor background. I don't have a problem with any of that. The only thing that actually kind of stands out to me here a little is just the water. It doesn't have enough water, I guess, in it. It doesn't feel like a natural stream. I don't mind that the bridge is kind of rough and stuff like that. That's fine. It's just kind of that construction. I can I can work my way around that. The water doesn't seem to have enough water and not have the rills that I would expect expect in a flowing stream. So I would maybe look at that. And then the trees don't really feel like trees. They're like long sticks and they just have these little puffs on the end. Like trees don't just have little puffs of green at the end. They're they're full. They have leaves all around them and little sticks and twigs. So there's a couple of really good videos out there on making trees for dioramas with, you know, there's a great video on sculpting four different kinds of of trees from scratch, basically. You can also use store bought ones. That's all fine, too. But that's that's the piece that I have the most problem with. I actually like sort of your main ground in this story you're telling and Sam and Bill and things like that. There's a lot more space than this probably needs to be. A thing about dioramas is you want to make them as small as humanly possible. You could honestly cut the whole scene right here. OK, this would be the actual scene like chop the bridge in half, have the river only half, pour that, put it on a base, move weather top over here, move the breeze sign over here. And now we've got all the action in half the space. Like all of this is basically doing nothing over here. Right. So an important lesson when you're thinking about dioramas is use the absolute minimum amount of space possible to tell your story. So but there you go. Very cool piece. OK, Mike Geppert talking about running KO and he plans to try to add more Braille Asian italics and bring in more contrast overall. Sure. Fun diorama here of your army on your display board. I agree with your call on the metallics. Very nice overall piece. The only thing that jumped out of me when I looked at this one was the nature of the stone being pretty flat. The stone is just a lot of like bright gray stone. And that's kind of it. If I was you, go and watch my videos on, you know, how to make realistic weathered stone like this stone is out. It's in nature. It would not be bright gray like this. It would have all sorts of other color tones in there. That was actually the number one thing that jumped out of me. I like how you've built the scene. I like the various. I like that you've got the different levels and stuff like that. I think that's really nice. Like the integration of the different terrain pieces. I think that all works for me in cells as being like this mix of, you know, feeling like new and crater and overlord, but also maintaining the Dwarven traditions. So I like all of that. But I would like if that stone had some color, some life browns, greens, reds, purples, that kind of stuff, I would be way more excited about what's going on. So that's that's probably my one piece of advice. Overall, though, I agree with you pop up those metals a little but really, really fun piece overall. Love the conversions and stuff like that. I think you just did a great job with this and this army. So well done. OK, next up, Chris. Made this is a side project. Never did I snow or any kind of winter effects before. Love to get feedback about the overall impression and of course winter effects. So let's go forward a little bit because there's a picture. Here we go. Yes, this is the one I wanted. All right. So. My only I like the piece of the, you know, sort of the two fighting crossing swords up here on this this high point. My biggest challenge with it is actually with her. I like this guy and his color plan here like this works for me. I assume he's like an emperor's children or something like that, I think. So he works for me. I like his colors. I like how everything balances. He stands out well from the snow. Good stuff with her. And I don't know if this is like a color scheme that's in the book for the scourge or not. I don't know them well enough to know that the the kind of gold with this orange is doesn't like the composition here is green, orange, yellow and purple, which doesn't really work. And the issue is this red orange. If this was like the same gold as everything else and it was gold, green and purple, man, I would be into this hardcore. So just compositionally, we have one too many colors here and it's it's really distracting in a in a sort of way that clashes immediately and doesn't work. Now, as to the snow effect, it needs to be a little more mushy. Like we're a little too powdery, but in some places like there should be more snow and less powder. But overall, like we're especially where you've got clumps and how it's kind of you've got it down, you know, sticking to the edges and the areas and hanging on branches. I like this. This is good. It feels like your placement of it is quite natural. I like where you've chosen to put icicles and things like that. So I think it does feel like a wintry scene. If you go back and watch my realistic snow basing video, this is an old one, but it still holds up as far as what I would say. It's just a little more clumpy type snow. And I think you'd be in a better position. But overall, really nice work. OK, next up, paint up this dark crystal mini diorama as a gift for a friend. Mix of water, mix of oil paints, Camarra Citadel and scale 75 paints and inks really tried to push the contrast. They always seem to be my pitfall. All right, so. Same thing I said previously about stone would apply here as well. You know, you've got a lot of this stone that's just kind of a flat gray thing and it's not interesting or doing anything in the piece. As well, there's like one of the things with a diorama is you want to think about your viewing angle. I kind of get what you're going for of them, you know, sort of hiding behind this thing with from the skexie. But it is tough because it does mean that there's no angle where I can actually view, you know, really many of your figures at all. Everything is very sequestered, like that angle is really terrible. You know, like there's just it doesn't have great viewing angles. And that makes it hard doing this kind of like multifaceted, you know, cross camera type of thing can be challenging. Now, as to the individual figures, I quite like how you painted them. I think you did a really good job there. I think the skexie is nice. I like the color change with the like purple around the eyes, the green up there and the skin tone looks nice. The little gelflings look very good, especially like our little guy here. Nice, you know, red uses and purple tones in the face. I would just think about overall composition. I'm not sure how I would have laid this out exactly. Maybe had them just cowering together near it. And he's kind of approaching from this side and they're kind of cowering like this and he's approaching like this. That way there's you want to think what's the setup with a diorama there has to be one angle I can view it from and witness the whole story and get at least a good look at the figures at most of the figures. That's the challenge. It's not that you can't have little things that are secreted away in a diorama that can always be often or that can always be awesome. Like, you know, you can have little tiny figures or something. It's not part of the main narrative hidden off at different angles that you only see when you look at it in certain ways. No issue there. That's cool. But when you're with your main characters that are telling the story, they need to be in view. There needs to be that golden viewing angle where you get the scene down there. If you look up something like Aaron Lovejoy's No Hope, that's probably one of the best like examples I can think of of compositionally being perfectly aligned as to what's going on. So check that out. Anything by Chris Surrey, he has a really, really fantastically magical understanding of composition as well. And he tends to do a lot of diorama type pieces. So go and look at those. Look at his stone as well and how often he integrates color. Just use his hue as his stone color. And that also points in the direction there. All right. Next up, real attempted diorama. Would like to take this to comp. So just after some general feedback from James Wilson, sure. So very fun piece with the tempestors or whatever they're called. Really like pushing for, you know, lighting here using the Richard Gray paint less to paint more method, where basically they're only lit by, you know, sort of their lights and guns and stuff like that, like they're the lights on their shoulders and their guns that are casting glow light and stuff like that. This is a bold move to go like this dark and and and this set. So a few things, a little bit more light would probably bounce around here than what this is. Like you want a few other areas of light catches down on the bottom here because like be and that's light is generally a circle. Remember in the circle, you have it like as this area of bright intensity and then it just completely falls off into shadow. Whereas in point of reality, like the light would shine, bounce off his thing off of his arm. It'll hit his helmet and then some small amount is going to travel down here. Right. Because lights just bouncing off of everything all the time. OK, so even in a very dark area, that light's going to kind of bounce around with the green. I like the green in most cases, Mr. Plasma Glow here. Yeah, I'm trying to find the angle. There we go. Like the issue I have with this one is he's so much brighter here. I understand you're like that. He's standing. He's walking into some kind of cast light. Like that's what this is meant to represent. Like that is to say, there's some kind of like spotlight or something here from the like a battlefield light. That's cool. But the problem is then if that's true, then this would not be happening. OK, because then the OSL Glow would not be that strong. It would be overwhelmed by this extremely bright spotlight. Like, I mean, if this is if he's in like a spotlight from a tower or a ship or something, you know, whatever it happens to be, maybe it's his buddy behind him. Like, I'm not sure exactly which one is meant to represent. It's going to be like really, really, really intense and and overwhelm this to some degree. So, you know, like if we're saying where does this and the the soft red glow is probably the other part that challenges me because it's not casting any shadow. Like the soft red glow is just kind of there and existing, but it doesn't feel like a red glow. It's very brown red. There's no intensity change to it. It casts no shadows. So I don't know if I that the red is the part that sort of works the least for me, as it were, because there's not a lot of darkness coming off of that. Like we need those occlusion shadows in between elements to show that there is a cast light being had here. I think this angle is really nice. And if, you know, if these lights are meant to be just the lights of these two guys behind him shining on him, then having the plasma cast a very soft glow on the front, but being overwhelmed on the back, you know, here, where he's in this guy's light, which I think is what you're aiming at. Then, you know, then that's a different story. The problem is if these guys are lighting, if he's lighting up him, then this light is super bright, right? And would be casting more bounce and more, it would have a bigger sphere on him. And like these, in general, they would be creating more light in sort of the area. So think about your the size of your your your your light sources and their impact. Think about soft reflections in areas like as you pass out the the light sphere, there should still be soft highlights in areas. And then think about making sure that your cast light, like especially your red has a much stronger cast shadow. And if it's going to be a red glow, there needs to be something in the red that's actually showing it as glowing. And none of these really come bright enough to sell me on that. Like it just looks like a brown leather coat, right? And I have trouble believing this light is so red that it turns blue armor completely red without a color change. Like that's not how red on blue tends to work. Take a bright blue thing and shine a red light on it. You know, it's not going to turn completely red, right? Because there's other light in the area. So there's that there's that non red light is going to create interference and allow some of the true color to still show through. I hope that helps. It's obviously a lighting focused piece, so most of my focus was on lighting, but I hope that all helps. All right, next up. Simone, first diorama, first competition piece, still in the work in progress stage must do looking for advice and overall composition, color composition, what areas are executed technically well and what can use more attention. Sure. So fun piece overall, we're going to zoom in here a little. There we go. So the. What we need to do here is probably make sure that elements get separated in some way a little more. So some of the elements need a little more darkness between them. This, especially down in the the base, there's not a lot of shadow or direction here. I could you see you could use a little more of that. The pieces is fun. It's very dynamic. I like the angle to it. I wonder if we don't need to draw more light up into this central area of the scene, so have some brighter highlights on this thing's face. And kind of its main pieces, same with like the tops of the wings to kind of frame that area. It's better over here because the nature of like the face of the the monster feels much more like it's it's lit against the darker main. So it's kind of creating this nice circle. If you see what I mean here, block out like the tyrannid and just look at the the elf side. And you see how you've got a lot of light in this area. This draws a lot of attention. But I don't have the same thing happening over here. All right. So the the foe, the enemy doesn't have the same light attention and doesn't seem to carry equal weight in the composition. That's a challenge, right? So flipping around to another angle here, I like the wings on the back. I think those look really nice. Look like you're using kind of a sort of a kaha type style there. I think that that works rather well. No issue with that. I think that the tyrannid itself could use some refinement, some additional highlighting and coloring. When you look at like this angle right here is where you really see it. Some of the the bone stuff and things like that in the wings are kind of underwhelming. Same with the main, although I know I mentioned I like the darkness. It is a little flat, you know, you want some variation in there. And right now it doesn't feel like it has enough. Maybe that's still part of the work in progress. So there you go. Composition, I think it's a nice angle. I think everything like the direction of it. This this is a good line to add here. This is a good line to add here. You created the the movement of the piece through your placements. I think compositionally it's strong. It is very weighted color wise. Having a little more of like this white, gold, yellow hidden over here could be a move. So, you know, maybe think about that balance a little bit. But overall, it's it's very strong. I like it. OK, next up. Edwin, first attempt at building any sort of thematic display, feedback on color, composition, lighting, etc. Sure. So really nice display here. I wanted to get to the I know there's a good picture in here. Yeah, this is these kinds of work. Interesting to put the Coradron overlords in these woods of seemingly heish for being less than a year in the hobby. Man, Edwin, I think you're just doing a great job. Your metals are a little flat and do need some more love and attention and highlight stuff like that. The composition of the overall scenic base is good, although it is very, very green. I don't mean that in a bad way. Some things are just, you know, pretty bright green. But having some flowers or, you know, other kinds of coloration in there can help. As far as the stone goes, see all previous comments I've made on stone. It's pretty flat gray, you know, having other colors worked in there, even if it's just pigment or something like that could go a long way. Those were the main things that jumped out of me, but it feels very natural. It feels like a pretty lush scene. You really did lay down like a great carpet of grass and tufts. Like as far as a nature scene goes, it feels very realistic in the placement of shrubs, bushes, grasses, bushes, trees, all that. I really love the composition of all that. I think you integrated the shrine into it really nicely. That totally works for me. Yeah, so it's just those other kind of elements. But great stuff, Edwin. Man, for a year in the hobby, you're killing it, buddy. I keep going. It's great work. All right. Finally, Christian Smith's diorama entry is a converted bastion. Carthelos as a monster hunter wanderer. OK, overall atmosphere, conversion composition, balance between details and weathering, top three items to push to the next level. Sure, so cool conversion into this sort of like dark souls theme. The conversion works for me. I don't really see much in the way of issues there. Like everything's fine. I like how you turned his head so he sort of directionally looking at potentially his next hunt or something like that. The base looks really nice with the spider webbing all over it. Good integration of a lot of different pieces down here. You know, bricks and broken stone and bones and leaves and things like that. That all feels super natural. So the conversion is great. I have no issue with that. And it does look like we've integrated some more colors and stuff like that into the stone. Go farther with this really ancient weathered stone, work in more blacks, dark greens, purples, stuff like that. The guy himself, I like his his helmet. Here we go. This is one I was going back to. The steel metal feels a little flat. I understand you wanted to feel weathered, worn. This guy is, you know, a warrior. That's fine. I would then go for something like, you know, pockmark it up a little bit, have a little bit of like, not rust coloring, but a little more brown tones in there. You've got a little bit. You can push that more. Use to do some stippling to get some real nice, thick, you know, kind of mud, maybe your own boots and stuff like that. Have a few very tiny scritches, scratches, hashes and dots to show where weapons have clinked against it and, you know, repolished it basically accidentally. The only element that really jumps out to me as being kind of flat is especially like the shoulder pad and some of the other gold elements working in some kind of additional shading slash highlighting there. You could use oxidation if they're not really gold. They could have vertigris. You used vertigris in other places on here. I assume you didn't use vertigris on the gold because it's gold and gold does not actually oxidize. But that doesn't mean it can have dirt or have deeper shadows or stuff like that. It just stands out as like very hyper clean compared to the rest of the model. On that note, the cloak itself spinning around that one. There we go. The cloak is brilliant and beautiful. Like I like how bright you made it, but it's super bright amongst the rest of this. And that feels very out of place. Like this guy is a dirty, dingy monster hunter, and yet he is wearing a cloak that looks like it is worn by a king who's never stepped foot in a puddle. So that's strange, right? What it feels like we want there is that cloak to be darker, have more blacks integrated and probably have like mud and stains along the bottom where it's running up. So that's kind of the stuff that jumped out of me, Christian. I hope that all helps. Very cool piece, very cool conversion, nice narrative, using a small space to tell a big story. So great work. All right, let's with that's it. Let's go ahead and jump over to December. And we'll be back in a second. All right, so let's get into armies. So obviously when we're reviewing armies, it's a slightly different element. We are talking more about the overall impression of the army, the composition, colors, things like that, right? So we're not really looking at the individual figures as much. OK, so Greg brings a spiderfang grots, passion project for the year, super fun to do over the top basis for looking for any feedback. Yeah, super fun army. I mean, spiderfang is always a good time. Love the very judicious use of spiderwebs everywhere. Looks great. Love all the big spiders. I love the spider cragnos get in the mix there. Super gross. Love the like little egg sacks here under that with the webbing. I think you just did a fantastic job with all that. You know, color wise, the only thing that kind of stands out to me as maybe being a bit too much is let me go back here. These cragnosis horns like cragnosis horns are so all the same green and they're so bright. They kind of take attention away from all the other good work when they're all put together. I think if you had them going into sort of a green yellow, kind of like you have the goblin skin and stuff like that, like maybe if the ends went to a more soft ochre, something like that, they would it would really help sell. Now, as to a display board, which, you know, you kind of asked about, I think you just take exactly what you've got going on here, the big rocks, the webbing, the eggs, and you just take that up to the next level, my man. So like a rocky mountain, sort of deep crag, you know, come up on the sides, deep crag, webs coming down, eggs in their place for the spiders to be crawling all over. I think you've got an A plus display board there. So yeah, that's what I would say. Super cool work. All right. Next up, Costas wanted to have some crusade battles at work. Studio bought some miniatures for every participant. Main focus was to play with painted miniatures. We started a challenge with a deadline and penalties for lazy ones, not all of us exceeded. Small death watch army 25 to 50 power level, which is exactly. Hey, no, no, no, you don't need to complain to me. That's that's right where you want to be nice and simple. And so I like it. So you went heavily damaged and weathered and stuff like that. Yeah, overall, it's great. It sells the story. You know, death watch is often a pretty dark army. So I do like how you've integrated some pop colors through yellows and blues with power swords and lights and and the the hammers as well as some, you know, battle damage and stuff like that. I think those are good additions. You know, it does look very dirty and grungy. I think having some bases that tell that story as well more with with on all the miniatures, like I like how these guys have some pigment and it's coming up onto the wheels and onto the elements themselves. Very grimdark. Maybe you're just going to finish the rest of the bases. That that might be what's going on. Maybe just get all the bases done where you wanted them to be. You know, but I like the ones with the the the basing scheme where it's kind of carried up onto the miniatures. So I'd say just keep that going and that will really add a lot to it, especially if it's that soft, orange, kind of rust, oxidized pigment that you've got on some of the vehicles and such. I think that really sells for me. So and bring a little bit of that up onto the like treads in the lower areas of the tank as well. No reason you can't, right? Like give the impression it's driving through the same earth. But overall, very cool force. OK, Lylin came back to the hobby in October 2020. Finally, I've finished enough minis to call it an army. Any feedback is appreciated. Struggle a bit with the blues. Those never get as smooth as I like them. Some hints be great and what to add or change for future models. Obviously, this is slanesh. So you're right in my wheelhouse here. Absolutely beautiful. This is a color scheme that feels very close to my heart. I don't know if you were intentionally using the same color scheme I used for slanesh or not. It is just sort of one that grabs you. If you were using the if you were inspired by anything I painted, well, then thank you. If you just stumbled upon the same thing, then I like your choice. Yeah, blues are always tough, right? Because blues, when they get highlighted, they are integrating white usually. So sky blue and these kinds of colors have white integrated, which makes them very difficult to work with. So because they're going to naturally show the the lines between your layers very, very, very strongly. The key with working with blues is in glazes of the mid tone back over to bring everything back down and align it. There really isn't another way to do it unless you want to change your highlight color. So you can start with your mid tone blue and use something like a flesh tone or something like that, which will have a softer transition. It won't go as bright or stand out as much or feel as cold. But it can help a lot with making things feel more smooth and require less glazing to bring back in line. Overall, very cool army. It pops as slanesh always does. So very well done. Love the big chariots. You know, love the the demons and such back there. I think he did a really nice job with this. Yeah, overall, your color composition of, you know, as I said, the purple, pink and blue, I'm not going to have much for feedback for you on there since it's the same color scheme I tend to use. So excellent work there. Overall, fantastic. You know, if I was going to give you any advice, it would just be on things like some of the flesh on some of the flesh and the elements like that to continue pushing those highlights up a little more on some of those some of the girls here and things like that don't feel quite as bright as they could be. So integrating a little bit more highlights into them, making sure the flesh really pops out. It is a central and interesting part of them. So you want to make sure that that really sells. But overall, absolutely gorgeous army. I think he did a wonderful job. Something you should be super, super, super proud of. So well done. OK, next up, Jacob with a Stormcast Eternals from Dominion. Finishing up a box set is always good. Aiming for a high tabletop for the troops and a bit above that for heroes. Yeah, absolutely. So very fun overall here. Love the color scheme you picked of the sort of dark gray metallic and then with the bright gold to pop it off. That really works for me. So excellent job on all that. If I think you certainly met your standard of high tabletop, everything looks clean. Everything is grabbing. One note I noticed as I was looking through with the lightning effects, they're not really selling as lightning. If you're going to try something like that, then you want to go back and watch any of the videos I've done on doing sharp, thin lines or something like that because you need those to be really, really razor thin. Go back and watch the custom banner video I did recently. That has a section where I do lightning that could really help you there, that kind of stuff. But overall, I think this is a nice color scheme. It certainly gives you the opportunity in the future. If you wanted to pop it up, take it even higher. You could do so just with additional layers of highlights and shades and stuff like that to add some more add some more tonal variety to the various managers. So overall, really cool. Yeah, I like it a lot. Great stuff. Well done. OK, James, his new Ark army well underway. Yeah, look at this. Got a whole bunch of work, a whole bunch of work boys here. I'm just going to kind of scroll through and give you my general thoughts. I looked through all these earlier. The pictures are very yellow tone like sepia tone. I don't know if you apply to filter or something or if this is just the yellow light you're working under. It makes it a little harder to evaluate everything. But the thing that kind of jumped out of me was that the whole army looks really nice. It's very solidly done. The metals felt a little flat and interesting in many of the cases like they're kind of steel with a wash. I didn't really see a lot of other visual interests going on there that grabbed my attention. That was one challenge. Also, some of the orcs felt like they could have used with a little more tonal variation, especially of variation of hue, you know, having a little more pink in places like these guys. I know as you got on the knuckles here in the lips here, but some of the orcs seem to be lacking that in like their ears, their noses, things like that, they're around their knuckles. So making sure you carry that through and then maybe some deeper shading on some of them. But your Beast Snagga boys look really good. I mean, like overall, this is a great looking army. I think it is just a case of, you know, more highlights and shadows on some of the, especially the main elements, some of the big pieces like the metals and stuff like that feel like we kind of over relied on maybe weathering them out. We don't really have enough light and shadow represented there. But overall, very fun army. Something you should definitely be very proud of. I think you did a great job. All right, next up, John Smith, his ultramarines. See if he can convert every model to hone his green stuff skills. Great idea for an army project. Wanted to make them very grimdark and started experimenting, you know, sort of midway through. And so, you know, that's that's perfectly fine. One of the things he mentions, like you should use your armies to experiment, you shouldn't worry about things getting changed halfway through. Like it will always happen. You'll always learn, you'll always grow. One thing I did notice as I was looking through these and something you mentioned in the comments is that when you use streaking grime, it's really going to kill the highlights, even as you wipe it down, unless you're really, really, really aggressive with white spirits and white pretty quickly. So it is good if you're going to use streaking grime to over highlight and then allow the grime to do its work and bring things back down. You know, I noticed that as you're moving through into the volumetric highlighting, I would encourage you to keep doing that. The other thing I would encourage you to work on is some of your paint control. Some of the elements are a little dirty, a little messy, and I don't mean that in like, I don't mean like this guy, obviously, is very grimdark, so he has a lot of dirt on him. I don't mean that. I have no issue with that. I mean, just like the paint isn't applied quite as cleanly as we might hope. So there are elements where I just couldn't wear, you know, like paint jumped or wasn't in the right place or didn't have a clean separation, that kind of thing. So, you know, working on that brush control as you continue to grow, that's going to be an area of focus for you, I think. The other thing I would say is when you're working with streaking grime, make sure you're wiping a little more away. You want to watch areas like this, like with Marnius Calgar, where you have a lot of this grime left, but it isn't really looking like shadow. It's just looking like a lot of dirt. And it's kind of it makes it hard to tell the story because you have this big giant area of seemingly just weird brown dirt but no real light or shadows defined. So you want to make sure you get pretty aggressive with the with the wiping when you're using streaking grime on a big, especially a centerpiece, something like Marnius, where he's really meant to draw attention and is a central, pretty important figure. So that's the kind of stuff I noticed, but overall very cool project. And I hope that advice helps. All right, next up, Lazy, a few pictures of his Bretonian theme, Legion of Night Force, been a long time coming and still loads of details, but he's happy with it for now. Always a great theme using the undead and turning them into Bretonians. The only home for Bretonians now is as corpses, but that's all right. I like a lot of these conversions. I when I flip through this, I really love your shields. Like the work going into these shields is exemplary. That jumped out to me right away. And especially with these tower shields that the Bretonian models have, it's a huge deal. Bases, faces, banners and shields has always been one of those mantras that if you nail those four things, you really will go a long way toward having a great looking army. I see your setup in Warhammer World here as well, which is wonderful. So that's super cool. I can't wait until the world is better and I can go visit Warhammer World again. I miss seeing everybody very much. But overall, really, really nice conversion work. I like the various pieces. I like the skeletal griffin and such. I think this is a cool conversion. So the conversions work for me. The necromancers, the various pieces, all of it sells like the corpse carts and and, you know, all these various pieces, I think, work really well in my mind. So I think you did a great job as far as converting these things go goes. Yeah, just fantastic stuff. If I was going to give you any advice, it would be as I look through some of the metals didn't look quite as maybe tarnished as they should. They look very simple, you know, like when we when I look at these metal helms here or where some of the some of the gold and stuff on these guys, it looked pretty flat, fairly uninteresting. I mean, if these are dead guys and they've been in the ground for a while and they're undead, you know, weathering rust, dirt, pigment, color variations, stuff like that on the metals would be my main area of feedback. Where I think you need to to push yourself to improve a little more. So there you go. Hope that helps. Cool, cool, cool army, though. All right. I'm just going to go with Daniel, because I'm not even taking a shot at that first name. Oh, there we go. He says, please call you Dan. All right. Hey, Dan, thank you. This is not a big one, but a starter for his more at aggression force from infinity. Love to know what you'll be looking at if this is a painting competition and you're the judge. Sure, I judge a lot of painted armies. So fun stuff. Overall, if I was looking at this, I would tell you that right away, this would grab my attention. So that's good. You're using colors in a bright, bold way. You're you're you're really creating a lot of lighting and movement and tonal variation across the pieces. So that would be something that would grab my attention. What I would be looking at there. The next is stuff like here, let's go back to her. This this can't happen on a miniature like I'm going to spot that and see that there's a big gap in her arm. And that's going to penalize you because some part of appraising things is the technical side and I don't beat people up overly for this. It's not Golden Demon, but at the same time, like a gap like that, you got to feel that you got to do something about that, right? Like, because that's that's her skin is not supposed to be there. So those kinds of technical details will really stand out. The other thing that would jump out to me is some elements don't seem to have the same attention, highlighting and visual interest as everything else. The red and like the faces of these folks really sells. And I really like it. I love how you've done the highlighting. I love how it looks sort of scratchy and stuff like that. Things like the glow and the guns and some of the green armor just doesn't feel as interesting. I like the little freehand elements of the red lines you've done along there. That would certainly pop out to me as something that's strong. And some of these guys, especially like these three, I really liked their armor, but some of the other ones, it's much more flat and as we were looking through. So like, you know, with this dude in the center, it doesn't seem to have the same sort of push as these guys do. So make sure you're taking it up to the same level and really focusing on, you know, if you're going to have the base troops looking like this, I think these guys are base troops. This guy feels special and so does she. I don't know. I don't know who's special or not because I don't know this army in Infinity. It's been almost 20 years since I played Infinity. But the, but you know, make sure you're taking them all to the same level. So there's just a few pieces. I hope that helps. All right, next up, Paulie needs to know three things wrong with it so I can improve the next army project. 30 seconds, roast it, go. Always appreciate it. Super fun force here, by the way. Like, so this is a heck of a chaos army. With the blood effects, wheel them back and or vary them. So here are some things. It's just too much blood effect. Like, I get it. I get what you're going for. You want these guys to be brutal and messy and, you know, be destructive. I have no problem with that. But then look at my blood spatter video where I show you how to vary blood effects between older dried blood, newer fresh blood, stuff like that. You want to go that direction so that that way the blood is still itself visually interesting and doesn't just overwhelm the piece. That was the first thing that jumped out of me. Okay. The next thing that jumped out of me, let me go over here, was the bases themselves often get a little overwhelmed by all of the gore and stuff. And so having a few pieces in there. So the centerpieces read a little better to me because they stand out a little more. But having a few things that actually stand above the base that still give you the dimensionality of what's going on, then helps to, it's sort of a contrast. The gore to not gore acts as a contrast. You see it more on the big pieces where they stand out like this guy versus these bases. And so like having elements that are just bodies or areas that are clean or where blood didn't spatter or more clear blood spatter directions or gore that's trailing, like that kind of thing will be more impactful than just general, it's all goop, all right? So that was kind of another element that jumped out of me there. Your conversion with this guy looks fantastic. I had no problem with it. I love what you did with this dude. Like what a monstrosity, absolutely amazing. This one blew me away. I can tell you like, I can recognize a lot of the different parts you used here from the bloodthirster and the carnosaur and you know, different P of the vermin Lord horns and stuff like that. So absolutely great work on this guy. Like, wow, what a monstrosity. So overall it's a really, really cool force. I think you did a wonderful job. Those would be my few pieces. I think this is a real standout, man. What a great force. I assume this is probably for ninth age. So I mean, this is tremendous work. All right, Kale, Cole? I'm not sure. Let's say Cole, I'm probably wrong. Soul White Gravelord's army of roughly 4,000 points. Gotha Cora really speaks to him. A lot of color variety between units and the bases are basically his unifying theme, which I don't have a problem with that. What do you think about that? Does it make the force look less unified with the end result have been better? No, I think that's exactly fine. I think this is something people are often scared of, but I think it's a huge part of painting a great looking army is to have variation between things. Armies don't have like, not everybody in an army looks exactly the same. In real world armies, there are lots of different uniforms and people have, you know, look different depending on their role and their function in the overall military force. They wear different outfits. They humans look different naturally. So, you know, people wear their uniforms in different ways or, you know, especially in long campaigns. Now, if it's undead, that might even be more so because you've pulled up a bunch of random corpses from different, probably the different armies you've fought along the way. So all the more reason to go nuts. I wish people would experiment more with, you know, having variation. Oftentimes as long as you have a sort of unifying concept theme, single color element or something like basing, it will still make the army feel very coherent. And I think you explored that very well here. The Nagash looks great. The glowing red eyes are really menacing and fantastic. I think you did a truly wonderful job with the centerpiece of your army and that's where you want to focus attention is on something like big pop in Nagash here. And as I looked through this, I really liked the individual elements. A lot of your things with the undead, it felt like the metals felt very weathered. I did see a good amount of variation on everything. And so I enjoyed all of that. A lot of your colors were quite bright. Like there was always something visual, like even though these dire wolves, like the wolves themselves feel kind of flat and not as interesting, but I like that you did go the extra mile with the yellow glow around the eyes. Some of the yellow is a little too strong where you used paint and then tried to soften it with the airbrush, but you went a little too strong with the yellow paint. So that kind of jumped out at me as it doesn't really look like a glowing eye in all cases, but so we'll like soften the paint application a little much from brush and increase the airbrush just a little more. But a lot of things here looked really fun. Like I love the zombie flesh tone you used. I think it looks wonderful and rotten, great. So, you know, really, really exciting stuff. Love the integration, like pushing it into the green tone and then using the reds to pop off as blood and for their clothes makes these guys very contrasting, very poppy. I really enjoyed that. And then, you know, Chattacar, the beast here. I like the different take on him having this different skin tone. I kind of noticed that you did a little bit of work where the models felt more like, I don't know what to say, like aligned, I guess. You know, where they kind of made sense together. I don't know. They felt more, like they felt like cohesive groupings, I guess is what I'll say. And that worked for me. Like the sort of death mages and stuff like that and the people who were meant to be clean, looked cleaner than people who are meant to be dirtier, look dirtier, and so on and so forth. I mean, this is just an absolutely gorgeous force, man. I would be very proud of it. I think he did a wonderful job and I think it totally sells. So, yeah. All right, next up, Joseph, ultramarine army, about 2,800 points. And then, feedback you can give or any feedback you can give. Let's just kind of roll through things. I'm just gonna roll through it. As I was looking through this force, the number one thing that jumped out of me was, I don't mind from reasons I just talked about a minute ago, I don't mind at all the variation in some of the troops. I think that's perfectly fine. Again, armies have troops with different roles and so they dress differently, like, yep, got it. You're basing and still unified and stuff like that. They still have ultramarine logos and things like that. So, they're still part of the same army. The number one thing that jumped out of me was the blue feels kind of flat. Like the ultramarine blue doesn't look quite as exciting as it could, whether it be not having as much edge highlights on stuff or not having enough volumetric highlights or things like that. It's a very powdery, ultramarine blue, but there's not really anything to draw my attention to certain elements of the miniature to really make it feel like it's got a highlight. You have very deep shadows and then it kind of travels up to a mid-tone and then just stops. So, that was kind of a challenge for me. The desert guys, I had less of a problem with, probably because it does feel like a little bit more of the highlight was pushed in the green-yellow. And the lighting on them felt like more natural and like it sold more to me. I do like a lot of the little touches here. I enjoy the way you did lenses and things like the binoculars and stuff like that. So, those did stand out as being good work. Overall, I think it's a great army. I mean, any army that's done, I think is a good-looking army and I think you did a nice job overall here at creating both a unified force that still has some interesting variation and reasons why they look like they do. So, cool stuff. All right, next up, Konstantinos. Oh, my good friend here. He has a big giant slaves to darkness corn force. He's one of the best corn players in the world and with his giant lava bases and everything like that. This guy, corn loves the lava. So, I'm just gonna cycle through again the pics as I talk. The number one thing that jumps out of me is, you know, I like the trick of the green armor and the orange being kicked up. It does create a nice contrast, obviously. My challenge is a lot of the elements do feel very samey, like the individual details aren't picked out on the barren guard, like the brocade around the edge of the armor or whatnot. That stuff feels like it could use some more love, more attention. Details like their teeth on the horses, the bones, stuff like that. That jumped out at me as not being as sort of complete or interesting as it could be. I like a lot of what you did here. I know you worked really hard on this. I also know Konstantinos has a new child in the house. So, painting time is at a premium. So, I certainly respect that sometimes corners have to be cut because a baby is screaming or needs a feeding or something like that. So, hey, no issues there, my man. Overall looks good. I think you've definitely met the tabletop, high tabletop standard. And I think if I was gonna go back in, I would just work on some of those details, really pick out those elements and pop those up, sir. So, there you go. All right, cast demons and corn bellicor. Love the corn bellicor. He really jumped out at me. Love him in red. Man, does he look way more interesting in red. Let's cycle through these. Like, isn't that better? That just feels better. I don't know why. So, overall fun stuff, you know, smaller force, but still very worth it. Like the blood crushers, the various fleshhounds. Fleshhounds have always been some of my favorite models there. I think they're just absolutely great demons. And I think this is nice. I think that overall you've got a good, you know, sort of tabletop base here to work from. If you were gonna push it farther, what you would do is you either continue to evolve this portion of the force or add to it, would be, again, more tonal variation across things like the blue and the red popping up additional highlights, bringing in additional volumetric highlights, especially two things like the muscle structure of the big demons, but also the metallics, things like the gold, which feel very, very, very flat right now. The gold was actually my biggest takeaway from your army, like the biggest negative, because it does just feel like very flat application of a single coat of gold. There's no shading, no highlighting, no nothing like that. So that's what I would say. There you go. Cool stuff though. Great looking velikor. Okay, Jasper. Current progress with a serif on force spans the first sense of the scheme and a couple of evolutions and something much happier. Feel like the yellow on the shields, the latest one is a little lacking and quite muddled. And I was thinking of adding black, very dark pin wash, oil wash, black lining between the scales to bring out the contrast between the scales and visually separate them. It's only concerned as you wouldn't want the oil wash to stay in the top of the scales. Okay, so the, let's see here. Let's get into the appropriate ones here. There we go. So with the yellow, the key with these shields is having like with serif on shields and the yellow is having the yellow tell a story where it goes from bright at the top down to the volumetric shading at the bottom. Goobertown actually did a great video on like something about blending or unlocking his like the single best epiphany he had in miniature painting. It was something like that. It was a really good video and it used these serif on shields. Go watch that video and check it out. It'll really be informative as to kind of how to make those shields pop and be more visually interesting. Now as to the scales, you know, an oil wash is the perfect idea because it doesn't stay in the top. Now at the same time, you can work after an oil wash and you know, picking out the individual scales can go both directions. So you could do something like oil wash it, wipe, let it dry, and then do a light, a very light dry brush over the top of a sort of neutral highlight color to pick them out and get some edges on there, which is probably how I would attack it if it was me. That's gonna do sort of serve you with both purposes and that it will both deepen the recesses but then you can also pop up the highlights in a controlled way. So there you go. Hope that helps Jasper and cool stuff, keep pushing. All right, next up, Paul Bliss, his iron draws. Tried hardest to get the non-metallic effect on these models using oil paints. Does the effect sell more or less? Unfortunately, I can't figure out a good whole army shot, sure. So let's talk about oil paints and non-metallic metal. Does it work? Sort of is my answer. In some, I agree with you, in some places, yes, in many, no. And the reason there is simple. The reason is contrast. Oil paints all want to blend into each other. They will, like a single pass of oil paints does not have a lot of contrast because when you brush smooth the paints out, you get a perfect blend but everything gets drawn together because the paint wants to mix in with each other. So if you're gonna do non-metallic with oil paints and you're not using the James Wappel method, assuming you're using the thick and dab method, then you've got to, or the dab and smooth, however you wanna think of it, you've gotta have a second pass. Once you've established your initial gradation, you then come in with, say, the white alone on the blades, which would do a lot. You get that popped up and then with no other color there or other than dry, you then smooth it out, smooth it out. So you dab along the edge, then you smooth it out. And that'll let you create those ultra, ultra fine elements without, and highlights and contrast without it just blending into the wet oil paint on the other side. So there you go, Paul, I hope that helps. All right, next up, Brandon, Jukari Army, posting individual units that I've finished since the last Army submission, whatever feedback comes to mind. So I looked through these guys, they're super bright and colorful. The biggest thing that jumped out to me everywhere was sort of smoothing out some of the transitions, especially when we go dark to light. A lot of things like in here with this, with the black on this guy's armor, it jumped out to me as being pretty rough in the color transitions. Some of the things like the faces and the skin, again, adding more color and tonal variation to those to make them a little more visually interesting. I think it works at three feet in a lot of these cases, but once I got close and looked at them, I could see like the edges weren't as sharp as they could be, stuff like that. So I think your main challenge has to do mostly with refinement, Brandon. When I look at the pieces, I can tell what you do with airbrush versus what you did with brush very clearly. You don't want that to be that stark. Things like the metals that you applied are very flat, again, because they just have, they're just that color. This is a great example of it, where the gold is just, yep, there it is. And it's got nothing else going on. When you're working with the airbrush, you could do stuff with a sail where you add shadows and light to this thing, or sorry, shadows to this gold. At the same time, you'd also be then reinforcing the sail and making it more visually interesting and increasing its contrast as well. So integrate the airbrush into your workflow in such a way that it's the most beneficial to you and can do the most individual work. I like the hodgepodge nature as it were of your force. They feel like very raiders. It's clearly much a little more Mad Max. Everybody's kind of individual in what they're doing. I have no problem with that. It's really just continuing to pop and clean up those details, work with the tonal variation with your brush, and then smooth things out and refine. So there you go. All right, next up, Daniel, his fine cast Eternals. Could you please give me general feedback? Is there enough contrast? And then why is the base just red and not bright, hot, molten metal style lava? I want to make it look like almost cooled stone ash. That's fine. You should still have, like I get what you're going for. No problem there. Get a tiny little bit of actual orange in there. Like a little bit of stippled in orange, just occasional cinders, embers, little tiny firepops will absolutely do a huge thing to pop the visual interest of those bases. It does need to be overwhelming. I mean, just like it can be a couple little dots of that intense, bright, fiery orange, but then stippled into a few places around in the middle of the red, and it will make, it will sell that it's still super hot, even as it's cooling, right? So there you go. Like if it's still melting stone, there's going to be a few areas of extreme heat. Overall, they look nice. I like the shields and what you did with them. They're great to grind it down the shields and then did something really nice and visually interesting with them. The metals look interesting, almost like you, I think maybe you went the Marco style there of not just Micca with some really good color variation into the steel. I think that really sells and works for me. The various washes and stuff that work on there are nice. I would think about maybe a highlight with, I think about a highlight on the reds, a little more to bring some of that back out and then maybe on the white. So yep, those things. But overall, very cool stuff. Okay, so where are we at? Oh, sorry. Yes. All right, June, still kind of work in progress, but managed to make it presentable, sure. So overall, with this luminous force, I looked over it. I think it's a nice army. I think it's pretty clean in its application. It's very bright. I like what you do with the Fox and the different color trailing elements. I think that works for me. And so I think overall, I think he really stands out and is very visually interesting, which is good. You want centerpieces like the Windmage and the Fox and stuff like that to be really impactful. When I look at the overall piece, I noticed some challenges with things like the whites as to having them as smooth. It seems like your biggest challenge, June, is when you get into the colors that don't want to blend as easily, when you get up into your high highlight colors, I noticed that sometimes those get a little chalky. They aren't quite as smooth as they could be, whereas it seems like the darker colors you're doing fine with. The key there is, of course, glazes to bring those back together and make sure that you smooth some of that roughness. If you're experiencing some chalkiness, also work with some water paint and then feather things out as opposed to trying to thin it too much that can establish, that can really break up the paint, especially with some of the whites and those kinds of colors that are out there. So that would be my other thing. When it comes to pure white, you can do things like integrate gloss varnish into it and that'll smooth everything out and give you a more white finish. So there you go. Overall, I think you could absolutely do commissions. Your work is nice and commissions are really a question of can you get the work done more than the quality of the work you do and you do some good quality work, so it's just a question you need to ask yourself, can you do it? All right. Says he was hoping for, so next up, Daryl, hoping for a high tabletop standard but afraid of the color scheme, looks muddy and dull when they are all together next to each other, looking for army painting tips to help improve or change for the rest of the army. Sure, so they look like that mainly because it's a lot of bone and they have wash over them and it's hard to make it look anything else is my honest answer. Washes when they're left behind like this will do that. Now, one of the things I can see there's a lot of gloss down in the lower, you can see how I can see these reflections here, that's gloss. You don't want that, especially not in shadows. That does make things look more muddy, dirty, incorrect. So having, getting a good matte varnish over things before you add the metallics goes a long way toward cleaning everything up. The other thing I would say is make sure that you, when you're going back and popping up your bone, you're applying a good matte paint, especially highlights on the volumetric highlights that would be there, the top of the head, the top of this area here, that really helps everything come together. So between creating a little more volumetric highlights on the high points of the bone and really making that contrast of the bone pop out and then having the, and then having that your wash not be glossy, that's gonna go a long way toward improving the overall feel of the force as you go forward. So hope that helps Darryl. All right, next up, Matias, appreciate your videos. Oh, thank you very much. Initial start project started with a half price storm strike box, the LGS. And there we go. So overall he's pretty happy with how it came out, traded some of the paint neat effort into making bases, which is his favorite part of the hobby. And he thinks he hit a good trade off. And yeah, I agree. I think this is a very nice looking force. It's very eye catching. Night Hawn is so much fun to paint. I think you really got the yellow looks very bright, very clean, very smooth, which is good. Not always an easy thing to accomplish. So the fact that you're doing that, I like the trail to the fire. I think that sells. Again, be careful with some of these washes in here. I can see where there's pooling in some elements. You don't want that to happen because it gives this like burnt thing with a slight satin sheen. You wanna make sure you're pushing that wash around. Don't let it pool up like that because then you get those messy coffee stains and you don't want your otherwise very nice looking force to have that. So when you're working in those thinner paints, you want that paint control. And that comes through applying the correct amount of wash, moving things around and getting them smooth. So overall very, very nice Night Hawn force. I think your partner's gonna be very happy there. And something you should be proud of, man. Way to get into it. Slight side note, I know you weren't asking about it, but I was gonna tell you anyways. I really love the sort of synth wave bright green terrain. I think it looks super cool against this army and really pops it off. So just a cool choice for how to paint terrain. I think it's a lot of people just see stone and paint stone and you went with a totally different color scheme and it just impressed me and I thought it was really nice. Okay. And then Hampus to end us out. Ending on Skaven. I can think of nothing better. And he said, I know you're a big proponent of shading TMM like NMM. I like sub and found it takes me too long to get to an acceptable smooth list to feasibly do it for an army project. And then bonus question is quadruple warp fire projectors the way to go for our boy. Thankful. I think it's two and two right now is my honest answer. Two still kills most any unit that you need that will charge into him. And then he still got big punchy, punchy fists if he needs to get in the melee. So personality. Now, okay. Let's talk about shading true metallic metal. It's worth the time. I've got a video on doing it quick where I actually use a Skaven model. It relies on wet blending. It's a way to work fast. It can be messy. Part of the interesting element of shading true metallic metal, especially with a force like Skaven like NMM is that you can do it fairly fast and messy, especially with a wet blend because it's doubles as a form of like weathering and stuff in the shadows. So you can kind of get two birds with one stone. So go back and watch that shading NMM or TMM as NMM revisited video. I think it's like maybe, oh gosh, I don't even know where I did it anymore. I couldn't tell you, maybe like 165 or 200. I don't know. Too many videos for me to all keep tracking numbers in my head. The other thing you can do if you want to get real spicy is you can get out the airbrush and you take a deep shadow color, like a burnt, like a brown, take like a burnt umber, mix it with a Payne's gray, maybe like one to one or two to one umber to Payne's gray and you work from the bottom part of the model after it's painted. So like, let's take the warp fire projector for example. Flip that bad boy over and you're just slightly, lightly, this is very thin. So like two burnt umber to one Payne's gray to like six parts thinner. You maybe even a little more. You know, do some tests based on the ink you're using. And you just kind of slowly work that shadow in there. Just, yes, it will overspray some. Who cares? It ends up being a great universal shadow color that adds a lot of variation to everything around it. It feels like natural shadow both on the metal that you spray and everything else. And it's super fast and easy. When it comes to doing things like getting the highlights in there, that's just a matter of if you want to talk, you know, make that quicker. You take a decent makeup brush, you work a little bit of silver into whatever your base metal color is. You wipe most of it off and then you lightly stipple and you'll get a more beaten burnished metal feel in the highlights, but the patterning, the roughness to it will still feel natural because then as you work the rest of the paint off the bristles, you start with a lot worked off. Like you wipe it just like as though you were in a dry brush, but then you stipple on. And then as you work the paint off, you just then start working toward the edges. So start at the highest high point, you're working the most, and okay, paint is working off and there's not much paint left. Now I work to the sides, right? And that can be a way to just get it done quick. Will it look as perfect? No, but will it look good? Yes, and that is the key. So there you go. With that, that brings us to the end of the last ever PMP end of month review. Thank you to everybody who submitted. This has been a journey doing this over the past seven years. I'm thankful to everybody who contributed. As I said, we're still gonna, of course, keep this community going. The PMP is more than just me doing reviews. It's all of you who answer questions, who make recommendations, who help people take their next step. This hobby is a community. It is something we all do together and I want to see it to continue to grow together. So be nice, be kind, help your fellow painters as someone has helped you. We all make the community we want to be a part of so let's make it a great one. Thank you to everybody who's there answering questions, helping people out. I hope all of you have a wonderful 2022. I will still be around. I will still be posting. I will still be offering feedback. Tag me if you think something's cool and ask a question. I'm always happy to help. That's what I'm here for. But as always, I thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time.