Like Aquarius Camus, these are some of the models from my Christmas batch that I’m happiest with, and I think it shows that I had a lot of fun working on these. These designs for Charmander and Bulbasaur were adapted by Hitsuji on CGTrader from 2D art, and depict two iconic “starter” Pokemon wearing onesies styled after their more evolved forms. They’re both incredibly cute designs, especially Bulbasaur, the living embodiment of the adage “I am baby.” Resin3DInteractive did a stellar job bringing the prints to life, and the models they made were great to work with.

Calling these miniatures almost feels like a stretch because they’re each a 10cm figure with close to a 40-50mm base, and they’re hefty models in terms of the surface area and weight. But I think I struck the right balance between speed-painting and detail-painting in a way that made them look complete, but still allowed me to cross the finish line on these by Christmas. But they were for a couple of cherished, important friends of mine who’ve been incredibly supportive of me through all of this COVID foolery, and I really wanted to go a little above and beyond on their gifts this year.

These were another project where there was a lot of “sponge” work involved to cover large area and to give a fabric-like, texturing effect. I feel like it worked better here than on the other models I’ve sponged recently, especially since I think I did a better job of showing a contrast between what parts on the model were supposed to be fabric and which parts were supposed to be more flat, solid textures. Hardcoat was definitely helpful in managing this, but generally I think my approach on these reinforced to me in a big way that sponging alone does not a great miniature make.

If I had to pick favorite details, I love how the eyes turned out on this, though I think in the future I’d do more practicing or mock-ups on eyes like Bulbasaur’s, and might try and use a more satin varnish than full-on-gloss. I’m also kind of proud of myself for painting an apple that looks kind of like an apple – not sure how I managed that one, exactly!