Paper Mario - Social

Last fall I participated in my friend's Blood Bowl league (Blood Bowl is a tabletop game whose premise is, it's just like Warhammer except instead of war they play a game approximating American Football). I got really into the game, started playing the computer version and watching Twitch streams of it. You can play as a lot of different races/factions in the game and I discovered the one I like the most is Lizardmen, which is not one of the six teams my friend has in his collection. So I decided, why not, and bought some minis with the intention of giving them a basic paint job. My friend offered me use of his painting workshop and to teach me some techniques.

I quickly became more emotionally invested in these little lizard guys than I thought I would be. While they were in transit I was refreshing the delivery tracker every day (which is how I assume expectant fathers behave). I've been nerding out with friend/paint-mentor over painting them and I have a better and better idea of how I want them to look. They're living in his house while I'm painting them because that's where the workshop is but every time I visit, even if I'm not painting, I feel an urge to check up on them.

I always thought of miniatures painting as something for other people to do. Generally hobbies involving slow, patient effort don't really appeal to me. And for all I know this might be the last set of minis I ever paint. But it's been a fun, novel experience so far and I'm glad I'm giving it a shot.

That's fun! And kind of adorable. Are you gonna do some progress pics for us?

That's pretty cool! I've always known people who do mini-painting but couldn't really see the appeal of it. It just seemed like a lot of effort. But if I was emotionally invested in what the mini represents, I think I would feel differently!

That sounds like a fun game (in the vein of the old Mutant League games?) but like you as of last summer, I'm really skeptical of my ability to stick with any hobby that requires that much fine detail work. Which is to say that your story of overcoming that skepticism and embracing such a hobby really *speaks* to me. I'm *proud* of you, man.

That's pretty awesome, and I'm glad you found something you enjoy in an unexpected way!

I feel like that's the best way to both learn something about yourself, as well as discover something new you like.

I'm anxiously waiting to see these!

The painting stalled a bit, partly because I was already going to that house one evening a week to play Blood Bowl, and I didn't feel like making the trek more often than that. I do have some photos handy of what the lizards looked like after priming, though:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-aK90Lnog_PegLC4uYGaFORMYPR6Jo85/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LJM238CDcmJiHsNVR-3Ol4n9EpLXrwlN/view?usp=sharing

Per my mentor's instruction, this stage was done via a technique that uses different colors of primer to get a shading effect. The pieces were airbrushed with black primer all around, then with gray primer at a 45 degree downwards angle from all sides, then with white primer just from the top. The resulting shading isn't supposed to come across in the finished piece, but it can act as a guide during the painting phase to make features of the model easier to see.

Very nice. Looking forward to the finished product!

That is really cool. I've never played any games or really done any projects that have needed that level of attention to detail, but even at the primer stage I think all of those look really cool.