Repainting the Mag Statue

[A7roboBOT]

Final Photos:

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Original Post:

I haven't picked up a brush in years, and recently I felt like painting something, so I got myself a Mag statue with the intent of repainting it. The main body of the statue is shown below. Quality is about what I expected for something mass-produced. Shading is almost completely flat, and there are visible seams where the arms are attached, but all the paint is inside the lines with very few small blemishes. That said, it actually looks great from about a meter away. My plan is to repaint this to bring out more of the detail in the sculpture and feature a more true-to-game color palette. However, I won't be filling the seams because that would require stripping the paint, which is risky on plastic parts.

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I'm using the textures provided with the Tennogen tool as a guide for my painting. I composited the diffuse texture with the tint masks to produce this image below which serves as my reference. Metallic areas came up black because they use a different shader.

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I will be using Vallejo Acrylics to paint the statue. They have a line of paints specially formulated for model and miniature work, and they don't dry out in the bottle like other brands. (I just threw out nearly 20 bottles of dried Citadel paints.) These are heavily-pigmented paints with a very fine acrylic medium that is well-suited to fine detail work. I will list the colors as I use them.

I started with a basecoat of 72.048 Sombre Grey. (I wanted to use 70.836 London Grey as a nod to our friends in London, Ontario, but availability of Vallejo's extended palette is limited due to the ongoing pandemic.) Over top, details are painted in 72.023 Electric Blue, 72.043 Beasty Brown, and 72.155 Heavy Charcoal. These colors were selected by matching the ingame Tenno palette with Vallejo's color chart. Below is the statue after this coat. Lighting and exposure are a little different compared to the previous photo, but the base color is indeed much lighter.

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I had a bit of a mishap involving gravity at one point and had to drill and pin her wrist piece back together. Whoever thought it would be a good idea to make a long, thin protrusion out of the most brittle plastic imaginable is a genius, especially considering that they were already using a softer impact-resistant plastic to make her Orthos polearm.

Next up, I'll be adding metallics and going back over the model with gray to clean up the stray brush strokes. Following that, it's ink washes, shading/highlighting, and painting the other little bits.

 

Update 1:

Did some detail work and some cleanup plus added metallics (Vallejo 72.054 Gunmetal Metal)

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Also, here's the back:

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Sometime soon, I'll get myself a new phone that can actually take decent pictures of this.

 

Update 2:

Ink wash and shadowing

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I used Citadel brand inks for the ink wash, since those didn't dry out in storage so I already had them on hand. Using a liner brush, I applied watered-down Citadel 61-75 Black Ink over all the concavities of the model to highlight the texture and enhance the appearance of depth. Next, a mix of Sombre Grey and Heavy Charcoal paint was selectively applied to the gray areas to add shadowing and cover stray ink marks. Brown areas were then shaded using Citadel 61-76 Flesh Wash ink. The visor was also darkened with Black Ink.

 

Update 3:

Shading and Highlighting

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I shaded back up to the base colors by mixing them with Vallejo 72.070 Matte Varnish to create a semi-transparent paint and layering it up, finishing with a final layer of pure paint. Mixing with the varnish instead of just heavily watering down the paint allows it to keep a more "painty" consistency instead of running everywhere. The slight difference in optical roughness can be covered up by a final coat of varnish over top when the piece is finished.

 

Update 4:

Finishing touches on Mag, painting the Orthos and Dread

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I highlighted the metallic areas with some Vallejo 72.053 Chainmail Silver to add some more shine to them. Freehand details were added to the visor, the shoulders, and the stomach. The Despair were painted with Heavy Charcoal, washed with Black Ink, painted again with Heavy Charcoal, and given freehand work in Vallejo 72.026 Jade Green and metallics in Gunmetal/Chainmail. Then I gave the whole statue, except the visor, 4 thin coats of Matte Varnish. The visor was finished with 4 coats of Vallejo 70.510 Gloss Varnish to give it a nice high-gloss sheen. Some of the leftover Gloss Varnish was used to highlight some of the blue and metallic areas to add a little extra shine. With that, Mag is done!

The Orthos was painted in Heavy Charcoal, Jade Green, and Gunmetal Metal. It was given an ink wash with Black Ink and Citadel 61-74 Dark Green Ink. Then it was highlighted in Charcoal, Jade, and Chainmail. It was finished with Matte Varnish and a little Gloss Varnish on the edge of blade to make it sparkle.

The Dread is currently WIP, following the same procedure as the Orthos and Despair.

 

Update 5:

Base Details

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I've been neglecting this for a while, but I finally got around to finishing the painting. Started with a basecoat of Heavy Charcoal, then put down Gunmetal Metal and inked the recesses with Black Ink. Metals were highlighted heavily with Chainmail Silver and finished with Matte Varnish. Rubber hoses and padding were highlighted with Heavy Charcoal lightened with 70.987 Medium Grey and finished with Gloss Varnish. Visor and lights were painted with Electric Blue.

Mock assembly showed some serious problems with this last piece. It must have warped after coming out of the mold, and it wouldn't fit the base. I had to pull the pin out, file down the tabs, and ream the holes to get the piece to fit. Everything else went together without issue. I'll post pictures of the assembled statue once I get a lightbox set up.

[A7roboBOT]

Just updated.

[A7roboBOT]

Updated again.

[A7roboBOT]

Updoots

[(PSN)GrandisSupernus]

Yo, wait, your back actually has the hole? Mine was filled in, so I couldn't actually attach the Dread to her back without getting a drill and clearing the indent into a hole myself.

[A7roboBOT]

Yeah, it has all the necessary holes in it, but they're all just a hair too shallow, so it will still require just a touch of hand drilling.

[A7roboBOT]

Updated - The main body is finished!

[A7roboBOT]

Updated.