How Not To Paint: Descent Naga

I’ve spent a lot of time this week working on how to make D&D (3.5) simpler for me to run. Firstly I bought Herolab (for £2) and spent an hour or so dropping all the heroes into that. Took me a lot longer to get the swashbuckler in there because I had to build her up from scratch, but I think it’s working now.

But the major thing I’ve been working on is a DM tool. I had a look at D20pro, DunDjinni and Fantasy Grounds, but I didn’t really like any of them. So in the end I set about using flash to design my own tool. The idea is to have a flash map, which when you click on a room opens that room in the main window. Then each object and monster in the room can be hovered over so that vital stats are displayed. For example a door might have the hardness, hps and break DC’s listed, a chest might display its contents including trap info.

Unfortunately the map I’m designing is for the Sunless Citadel campaign and so is completely copyright protected, which means I can’t put it up for download to show you guys how useful this tool is, but I may do some generic stuff in the future…

Anyway, on with the show. This week we’re doing Nagas. After undercoating with Black Primer I painted the eyes Astronomican Grey, the teeeth with Tausept Ochre, Mechrite Red for the tongue and the body with Hormaguant Purple.Next I added white to the eyes, a mix of white and burgundy to the tongue, pale flesh for the teeth and then painted the whole body with a thick layer of Royal Purple.  Like so. (10 points to the first person who can name the show I’m watching. Minus points for anyone who names the episode.) Next I added White to the Royal Purple and painted all the texture on the body. Yes, that really does take as long as you might think, a whole hour in fact. I wasn’t following the details of the model exactly with this stage, I’m just trying to give the impression of texture to the paint work.  The next stage was to drag a thin coat of Royal Purple over the whole thing. The paint is very thin so works well for this. I just dipped my brush in the pot and dragged it over the body, making sure the paint wasn’t allowed to pool in large amounts. The result you’re left with is certainly a reasonably stopping place for this model, however I wasn’t done with the self flagellation yet!  The next stage was a lot faster. I added a line of Blue Grey approximately two thirds of the size of the original ridge to all the top sides of the body. I aimed to put the blue grey between the purple lines, but I was working quickly and not overly neatly. Now with Astronomican Grey I added a line approximately a third of the size of the original. This time I was aiming to get each line between the blue grey lines. I also used this stage to add a bit of detail to the face, especially the eyes, lips, nose and ears. Both sets of highlights took about half an hour and were applied quickly rather than scientifically. Next I added Cygnar Blue to all the spikes. I also added some details to the face in White, these will be painted red later. So, I added Burgundy to the white areas to make them red. I then set about highlighting the spikes and yes, that took ages too! Each spike was given three or four lines of Blue Grey as a highlight. I could have then done a second highlight and wash, but that seemed a bit much for a boardgame piece.

The final stage is wash the whole model with Leviathan Purple. Let it dry and then wash it all again. Lastly I picked out any details that may have gotten lost such as the eyes and teeth and then did base. I went with Gale Force 9 earth, rocks and clump foliage. The grey rocks are Javis. The edge of the base was painted with Pale Flesh. For those who want to put in the time and effort, this would be a great model for adding custom elements to the base. For example an egg clutch would look great. I could have added more depth to the model by doing another couple of layers of Blue Grey and Astronomican Grey ridges, but I feel this is enough, considering there are three of these bad boys in the box.

The very last thing is to spray the model with some Purity Seal to stop the basing flaking off and making a mess of the box.

So, that’s Nagas. Join me next week for more monstery goodness.