Monster Paint Club: Cyberpunk Nomad
Follow along with this intermediate guide for painting your Cyberpunk Nomad.
Grab your tools, and come along!
Attaching Your Miniature:
Monster Fight Club plastic bases need the holes drilled out before the figure can be glued into place. You will need a few tools to help:
Due to the production process, there is a fine split-line running around the figure. This can easily be cleaned up with a sharp craft blade.
On the base, you'll need to open up two holes for the mini's feet. You can use a 3mm drill bit or the tip of a sharp hobby blade to hollow out the holes. Tip: Try lining up the mini on the flipside of the base to easily locate which fittings need to be used.
To help the process, you can make 1mm pilot hole before the 3mm drill bit.
Apply superglue around the sides of both foot pegs, and attach the mini.
Holding the Miniature while painting:
It's best to attach your miniature to a holder of some kind while you work to minimize smudging, and make the figure easy to manage. There are a few expensive miniature holders out there on the market, but a simple cork and BlueTac works too!
Vallejo Primers offer 3 colors specifically designed for plastic miniatures. Here, we've used the primer in gray. Always follow manufacturer's guidelines for best results.
All ready for painting!
Using grey primer picks out any parts that have missed being cleaned up.
Base-Coat & detailing:
This model is painted with 3 to 4 paint layers; a basecoat, mid-coat and two highlight stages.
These stages help to add depth and detail to the mini, helping small elements to pop, and clothing to look wrinkled and realistic.
Each part of the model is broken down showing the paint colors used for each layer:
Skin and coat
To paint the skin, start off with your skin tone shadow, and use black for the cybernetics.
Next, a lighter color is used everywhere but the darker wrinkles around the mouth and forehead. Metallic details are picked out on the cybernetics, and hair is given more color depth.
We use a similar strategy to paint the jacket.
Pick a dark beige for the base coat, then highlight puffier portions of the jacket in a lighter yellow. Adding stylized creases in the fabric is a great trick to emphasize the creases of the sculpt, and even create details where there are none.
Finally, finish off by adding a highlight next to each of the darker creases, and adding metallic accents to the shoulder pads.
There are lots of small details on the Nomad's jacket and gloves that require special attention.
Use a variety of different metallic paints to give variety to the many metallic elements, switching between steel or silver depending on the target.
For the front of the Nomad, use a dark green base for his shirt, before using a lighter khaki color to pick out details, using the same strategy as employed on the back of the coat.
pants and shoes
The reflective panel on the back of the pants uses more vibrant green colors than the rest of the fabrics to stand out. Don't forget the small metallic details and straps on the pants.