Tag: 2084

“2084”—finished

August 15, 2015 / David / 0 Comments

This figure by Studio McVey is so much fun to paint, I’ve painted it twice.

Some of the pictures came out better than others. I really need to improve my photography skills. But I think you can get the idea.

I had so much fun with the graffiti. I discussed what it all means in my WIP blog post about the base, in case you missed that one. Some of it is quite obvious, but other bits are more niche references.

Painting the hoverboard was also a lot of fun. One of the things that makes Lisbeth such a neat mini to paint is all of the different surfaces that just cry out for freehand. The characters at the top read “freedom” (not that I can read Chinese).

The other thing I had fun with is different textures – weathered concrete, scuffed plastic helmet, aged sign, scratches on the edges of the board. More and more I’m trying to convey textures when I paint minis. Sometimes it comes out great, but others not so well. But that’s always how it goes!

This was one of the pieces I entered in the Gen Con mini painting competition, which is why I waited so long to post it. It placed third for technical merit in the “Rainbow Brush” contest that Marike organized in response to Indiana’s terrible anti-gay “religious freedom” bill, and won a judge’s award and a bronze in the single figure category.

From the workbench: “2084”, part 2

February 22, 2015 / David / 1 Comment

Yes, that’s a 10mm tall portrait of Edward Snowden.

2084-base-1

I imagine Lisbeth inhabiting a dystopian future with constant worldwide surveillance. I decided to cover the concrete blocks she’s flying over with graffiti protesting that situation. The front says “Snowden ‘never forget'”, “You call this democracy?” and “The NSA is watching.”

On the back you can read “Always use Tor” (with the Tor logo), “Don’t drone me bro,” and “xfmro77i3lixucja.onion,” which is an onion address for the Imperial Library of Trantor. In addition to being a reference to Asimov’s Foundation series, the Library of Trantor is an online collection of DRM-free digital books. (I really wanted to use an address for Wikileaks instead, but sadly they don’t seem to have a functional onion address right now.)

This graffiti was partially inspired by the 8.8.8.8 graffiti Turkish citizens used to evade the DNS block Turkey placed on Twitter last spring. I imagine citizens in a future Orwellian society using Tor to keep websites up and available despite state attempts to take them down, and using graffiti to tell each other how to access them.

The sign says, “No privacy by order of the National Surveillance Agency”. Originally I painted the sign as “No entry by order of the National Security Agency”, and then painted over “entry” and “Security” as if someone had graffitied over an official sign.

The portrait of Snowden was the most time-consuming part of the graffiti. I copied Laura Poitras’ well-known portrait of the whistleblower. (Used under CC-BY license.)

I think I made a pretty good likeness, although when I put them side-by-side like this, I see a few details I need to fix.

Parachute pants!

February 16, 2015 / David / 0 Comments

I’m super excited about my current project, which will be titled “2084” for reasons which shall soon become apparent. The figure is Lisbeth, by Studio McVey. This is the second time I’ve painted this figure. She’s a total kick to paint—I love the gigantic parachute pants, and there are lots of surfaces which just scream for freehand. Plus, I gave my first copy away, so I wanted a second to keep.

Starting with the prep work. My cast had a bit of an offset running between the folds in her pants, which was a bit of a pain to clean up.

I also decided to do some minor conversion work. Lisbeth comes with a backless tube-top-like-thing which I don’t much like, so I turned it into a full (if short) shirt. I also reshaped her hover-board into something a bit more snowboard and less surfboard.

I added a sign to the base, and started penciling in the graffiti I plan to paint. I smudged some of it with my thumb, but the face you see if going to be a portrait of a guy with a goatee and glasses.

The red is a lot more vibrant than it looks in these photos. I’ll try to come up with some better ones, later.

Old concrete usually has different colored stains, which I’ve tried to simulate here. It won’t be terribly visible once the graffiti is added, but will help the whole thing be a bit more realistic.

At this point you can probably guess who the portrait is, and why the title is “2084”.