Sunday, January 22, 2012

Gladiator Skin

Alright...first club project for this year. Gladiators. Over a year ago, I got the idea in my head to run a small gladiator campaign at the club. Every guy in the campaign is the head of a ludi gladiatori (gladiator school), and starts with a set amount of money (20,000 denarii). There's a slave auction...guys bid for fighting stock. There's an initial fight to see who's fit to undergo training. There's equipment, betting, and plenty of visits to the arena. You get the idea.

Anyway, that idea slowly went to sleep until I started watching the Spartacus series on DVD. Bad television aside, the gladiator campaign sprang back, front and center on the hobby table.

The first 12 gladiators...


I based on 1" hexes since Hotzmats has an appropriately sized gladiator ring mat. That's on order...but knowing Hotz it will arrive in it's own sweet time. Never mind. That time will be put to use painting and getting the campaign game components put together.

So, I started with skin. Most gladiators in the 1st century were slaves brought to the schools from all parts of the Roman Empire. A good opportunity to try a lot of different skin shades. I have several different skin series from Foundry and Reaper, so I thought I'd try a few.

Here are the North African and Olive Skin sets. North Africa, good. Olive skin...yuck. Way, way too green. The guy looks like he should be a zombie. Reaper...what were you thinking?


Next, we have the African skin and normal flesh series from Foundry. I've never painted dark skin before...the Foundry African skin series is really nice.


Finally, we have the Bronzed and Tanned Skin series from Reaper. Again, Tanned Skin looks a little off...not a warm enough color. However, the Bronzed Skin is pretty nice to my eye.


I think the rest of the figure painting will go pretty quick, so I'll have these 12 guys completed and posted next week.

'Til next time.

8 comments:

  1. Some beautiful skintones!! The African skin looks very good!

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  2. The olive fellow looks like he has jaundice! Kudos to you on running a campaign at the club!

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  3. other than the general agreement with Bob, the skintones look pretty nice... I like how the series have ready mixed tones for you.

    Now, tell the truth though, were the models painted with paint straight from pots or was there a degree of mixing layers in between too??

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  4. Oink,

    Not just mixing between layers, but as always, I use flow improver to make the layers as translucent as possible.

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  5. Nice models, the olive set must be for non-human skin.

    You didn't like the Spartacus series? It's funny, seems to have a polarizing effect on people if you look at the reviews on IMDB or rotten tomatoes.

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  6. Can't wait to see this at the club.

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  7. WOW that North African skin does indeed look nice. I may need to invest in some Foundry paints. I take it they were ordered direct from Foundry Kevin?

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  8. Terry,

    Indeed they were. Foundry releases its paint line in small sets. They've now retired their WWII paints, but recently released their civil war paints. Nice colors, and better coverage than Reaper.

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