Saturday, March 09, 2013

Judicator

Last night I did something that pained me, but was necessary: I called it quits on the Judicator and sealed it. It pains me because I really prefer to spend a proper amount of time on a model before finishing it and moving on. The Judicator however had turned into something more like dread than joy. It also didn't help that I've been proxying my Vessel of Judgement for it multiple times and I really wanted to be able to put it on the table instead. So last night I finally decided to call it quits, seal it, and move on. Oh, and my photo setup continues to be too small for huge based model. Need to work on that. Time to do the reflection...

What went well:
* Calling it quits when I did. I could have easily left this model on the shelf longer and kept fiddling with it. But then the feeling of drudgery and incompleteness would have just continued to hang over me. Finishing it now was definitely the right call.
* Painting in pieces. It was simply too big to paint as one big part. Plus this model nicely breaks up into discrete pieces to paint unlike most Hordes models.
* Using the airbrush was a huge time saver, and particularly good practice as well. I got a lot of practice with it and it really has improved my confidence and desire to keep using the airbrush. I can honestly say I am much less afraid of using the airbrush on even much smaller models now.

What could have been better:
* Obviously spending far more time would have been great. There was far more I could have done. Particularly...
* More battle damage. As it stands right now, it looks like it's been assaulted by dwarves with dirty towels rather than repeatedly blasted with explosives all over.
* Better attention to zenithal highlighting, and this is a side effect of painting in pieces.
* More cleaning up of mistakes. This is something I could have easily spent many hours on. However my friend Lance pointed out that the size and scale of a colossal makes the mistakes seem less obvious. This definitely folds back into the whole calling it quits vs spending more time.

I'm honestly very happy to be done with this model, and am happy with the results. It could definitely have been far better, but I've counted this as a huge (dare I say colossal) learning experience. It will also be quite gratifying to have this model on the table as well.

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