This was super interesting! It would be nice to see the before and after side by side, or with your edits "on" and "off", maybe for the next time you do this! :)
Please paint Be'Lakor, that'd be such an interesting take. I’d also like to see you do something with Sam Lenz. My two favorite painters: both phenomenal, but completely different styles.
Thirdeded! I am generally not interested in "how to paint x-miniature"-style videos, but it would be really interesting to see how you make a mostly dark grey model look interesting!
I'm not sure if it was intentional that the colors you chose to add/emphasize on be'lakor happened to be the colors of the four chaos gods (green, red, magenta, blue) but it was a nice touch that really added to the story of the model on top of everything you mentioned.
I think this video really helps show the difference between an ‘Eavy Metal’ paint job and a ‘golden demon entry’ level paint job. The Eavy Metal painters at the end of the day are often constrained by limitations such as specific recipe requirements or certain colour combinations of compositions being mandatory (such as Ossiarch Bonereapers having to have different coloured bone as they get higher in rank). They’re also limited on the level of blending they can do as the whole range has to appear as if it was painted by one person for ‘market accessibility’ reasons. This though shows how to push those colour schemes even further.
I enjoy watching the "why" decisions and color choices are made - obviously the vast majority of people won't have the expert level of brush control required to reach that pro level but just learning how and why color choices and compositions are made can make such a huge improvement - keep up the vids this was great
Honestly in all my years of painting I've found most people can get really great results when the have access to the theorys etc, even when they aren't necessarily mechanically skilled
The box art Kroak is clearly painted by a skilled painter , but the colour scheme is so boring for such a cool model. You should look at the one painted by Kolectiv SG - he made it way brighter
Yeah kroak really needs contrast. For mine I am pondering playing with that. Like dark dead kroak and then make like an osl effect coming off him and his stuff that then darkens as you move away from it. Though that might sound better in my head. Either way either he needs to be dark with everything else bright or he is bright and everything else is dark.
I was not familiar with this model. So when it first appeared on this video I thought the little blue guy was the character and that the character was a statue or alter (mind you this is from a flat image). But once he shifted the color my eyes were able to translate the image much better.
This happens to me through most of the video, with highlights. Catachans aside, which are flat out terrible, most the time he starts talking about the volume and I think "wait, that is well highlighted". Two seconds later, I'm like "ok, never mind". I wish he had used the Dogmata, tho. I feel it is the uglier Eavy Metal painted model in a long time.
The job you did with Kroak was really mind blowing for me. It showed how important the choice of colour is to a composition. I have just begun my journey as a miniature painter and most of the time I am looking for techniques to learn to improve. But this showed me that before technique, understanding how colours interact and tell the story of the composition is essential.
I was aware of your channel for quite some time, but couldn't quite put together what made it special when recommending it to friends. Then I found out you were a teacher as a career, and it clicked. You are able to do tremendous things with a brush, but your ability to explain why it works is rare.
An inspired teaching episode, really conveyed a lot of your thinking, which will now creep into my own. The Be'lakor colour revision helped my understanding most of all. Great vid
Genius! I never thought to digitally "edit" or paint a mini like this to test out or try a generalized scheme or something... absolutely genius. Also, Belakor looks outstanding!
Interesting to hear you talk about the 'eavy metal style as deliberately being an achievable, if unrealistic approach. I always thoughts of it as essentially it's a paint job for the brochure that looks good from any angle - and you can see it as an evolution of pictures in the original 90's painting guides. It's clear, defined and consistent for the purpose of gaming - not art.
I love the concept and execution of this video. I think a really important takeaway is: there are always ways to improve, or, if you feel you’re at the top of your game, there are still techniques that can be utilized to alter the look and feel of your models. Thank you for the walkthrough!
I think they might be trying to not make the hobbyist look bad with "too good" paint jobs on their marketing material. The hobbyists are much older on average today than what they were 20+ years ago, so the "standard" can be set much much higher by GW. Anyway, it's very nice to watch your analyses and the photoshopping that elaborates your ideas really really well. edit: the belakor part was magic :o
Wonderful exercise! Love the use of Photoshop. It allowed a lot of lessons to be shown with a lot less time and work. Makes me want to spend a little more time digitally planning my character paint jobs for Dominion. That be'lakor edit was so simple but added heaps of character!
Would love to see you do this with some lotr minis. A lot of them (and I mean the vast majority of them) get extremely underwhelming paint jobs from GW.
i really liked this style of video ! i just got be’lakor and felt a lot of images i saw of him were kind of flat, felt like you did a really good job of showing how you can make him pop a lot more
Pretty fun timing,just earlier today I learned that there are people out there who think that the boxart is fake and too good to actually be real...I don't want to know what the models painted by these guys look like.
Very cool use of paint over, I'll make sure to use this technique to plan out the painting for my future models! Also thanks for all the great content!
That really helped to solidify a few of the principles of of light that I hadn't really been able to conceptualise on minis yet. seeing it done with photoshop at faster speed was great
Amazing, really amazing, I struggled to see how you could improve these models but you did. As other comments suggest, do a before and after so we can compare those differences. Great work!
this is 3 years old but I am 100% taking inspiration for that be'lakor. I already went contrast with the base by making it lighter and lighter around edges and lava.
This is outstanding- love this video, it's super helpful for us new painters- one of the most inspiring YT videos I've seen for a while - Thank you 🙏 If I were to offer some kind feedback. 1) Please take a moment to show a before and after at end of each upgrade. 2) I lost the cursor visually a few times, maybe you can make it a little larger or a colour? Both very much personal choices but wanted to offer help. Please do more of these!
It's not tho, as he explains in the video, the artists are working within the constraints of the GW box art style. If you see figs GW painters do for competitions they work differently. So the critique is of the GW art choices for boxart photos not of the painters.
Extremely insightfull ! Thx. Loved this exercice. As said, a before/After final picture would be great. But it's already super interesting like this ! Please make others 👍🏻
I am in the United States (Austin, Texas) but I'll totally buy and send you that Belakor model to play with. It's in stock at GW. Great video, be fun for all of us to watch you play with painting it, especially after this round of color theory and exploration.
One thing that the 'Eavy Metal team takes into consideration that so many high level painters just don't seem to consider is basic design concepts. I've seen far too many painters that are amazingly skilled with a brush and paint that have incredibly smooth transitions and OSL skills, tragically butcher a mini because they don't understand basic design concepts, and what you get is an over-saturated vomit of colors to the point where you're not even sure what you're looking at. In any miniature or model design, you should understand what you're looking at instantly when you look at it. You shouldn't have to squint or study it like a Michael Bay Transformer design to understand what it is. I have seen only a very few painters understand this as well as the 'Eavy Metal team.
Thanks for the vid Love these critique style shows where you actually explain and show us what you’d change. Would like to see maybe some more colour theory focussed vids in YT or Patreon :) Thanks mate
These fixes are why I wish GW wouldn't put so much focus on large models. Large models are an entirely different ball game when it comes to composition and I think a lot of new or inexperienced painters really struggle with these projects. Oftentimes, you see them do just a simple base coat or maybe a dry brush with some washes, but it ends up losing its silhouette (as pointed out with the Be'lakor hand). Some blending and ideas about color composition really improve the readability of the model while also making it more visually interesting. Really useful and constructive video!
I think the trick with Eavy Metal schemes is they are intended to be technically excellent while still reading as singular non-complex colours so a beginner could easily follow the box art (e.g. flat green for death guard, cream and red for Tyranids..). I'd be interested to see what some of these painters paint in their free time or as training..
Seeing those subtle changes on Be'lakor and that he is built on my desk waiting a paint job I think I might have to steal these idea's if you don't mind :-) Fantastic work I love learning about how to use colours I wouldn't normally consider. I defo need to do some more playing with colours in adobe before I paint these big pieces
Dig this type of video. I hope to see more. Thanks! If possible, maybe add alternate color choice examples with color theory at the root of the exercise. Really like the video as is, just throwing ideas around.
Damn, this was a great video. Like the way you improve Belaakor paintjob, except for the glowing Chaos star. That last step was too much for my taste. Keep it up and post more of this kind of videos to learn from!
We know that GW absolutely considers this even at the sculpting stage, removing flat areas that are hard for newer people to work with and filling them with "details"
Great takes and explanations! If you're doing more Photoshop demonstrations like this, think there's anything more you can do to make them easier to follow for viewers on mobile? Perhaps draw attention to the section you're describing with the eyedropper ring first and then dive in?
I came here looking for inspiration to paint my Be'lakor....and after all the greyscale paintjobs, this looks awesome! Please paint Be'lakor and make a video while painting it :)
Great video! Got me thinking of an interesting painting challenge you could do a video on! Everyone picks good sculpts for painting competitions but was wondering how good you could make a bad/old sculpt look, for example a chaos marauder, a flamer of tzeentch or a daemon prince. Would be interesting to see if a good paint job can save a not so great sculpt
This was super interesting! It would be nice to see the before and after side by side, or with your edits "on" and "off", maybe for the next time you do this! :)
My GF told me the same thing...5 minutes after it was released 😂 It's a great idea, I don't know why I havent thought about it.
@@trovarion you can always make a new video of before and after
A before and after video of seperate midels would be peefect for the youtube "shorts" videos🤔
@@fabiz8602 why stop there when you can make a before and after of the before and after.
@@trovarion couldn’t you make a short of it? Like a UA-cam short and you could test the waters for shorts as well and see if they’re in demand
Please paint Be'Lakor, that'd be such an interesting take. I’d also like to see you do something with Sam Lenz. My two favorite painters: both phenomenal, but completely different styles.
I second this! Would be an amazing video
Thirdeded! I am generally not interested in "how to paint x-miniature"-style videos, but it would be really interesting to see how you make a mostly dark grey model look interesting!
yes be lakor please
I'm not sure if it was intentional that the colors you chose to add/emphasize on be'lakor happened to be the colors of the four chaos gods (green, red, magenta, blue) but it was a nice touch that really added to the story of the model on top of everything you mentioned.
wow, I really would love to see you paint that Belakor in real life. Adding that red glow from below just instantly took it to another level...
I think this video really helps show the difference between an ‘Eavy Metal’ paint job and a ‘golden demon entry’ level paint job. The Eavy Metal painters at the end of the day are often constrained by limitations such as specific recipe requirements or certain colour combinations of compositions being mandatory (such as Ossiarch Bonereapers having to have different coloured bone as they get higher in rank). They’re also limited on the level of blending they can do as the whole range has to appear as if it was painted by one person for ‘market accessibility’ reasons. This though shows how to push those colour schemes even further.
I enjoy watching the "why" decisions and color choices are made - obviously the vast majority of people won't have the expert level of brush control required to reach that pro level but just learning how and why color choices and compositions are made can make such a huge improvement - keep up the vids this was great
Honestly in all my years of painting I've found most people can get really great results when the have access to the theorys etc, even when they aren't necessarily mechanically skilled
One suggestion for this video: you could show a before and after side by side after ach mini. Good vid!
I'd really have liked that, too!
I was like "why is he trying to improve Kroak, he's looking great..."
[simple color shift]
"ok, nvm, now it actually draws attention to his face"
The box art Kroak is clearly painted by a skilled painter , but the colour scheme is so boring for such a cool model.
You should look at the one painted by Kolectiv SG - he made it way brighter
Yeah kroak really needs contrast. For mine I am pondering playing with that. Like dark dead kroak and then make like an osl effect coming off him and his stuff that then darkens as you move away from it. Though that might sound better in my head. Either way either he needs to be dark with everything else bright or he is bright and everything else is dark.
@@Crybaby-Media i think it looks great on the box as is, but art is subjective.
I was not familiar with this model. So when it first appeared on this video I thought the little blue guy was the character and that the character was a statue or alter (mind you this is from a flat image). But once he shifted the color my eyes were able to translate the image much better.
This happens to me through most of the video, with highlights. Catachans aside, which are flat out terrible, most the time he starts talking about the volume and I think "wait, that is well highlighted". Two seconds later, I'm like "ok, never mind".
I wish he had used the Dogmata, tho. I feel it is the uglier Eavy Metal painted model in a long time.
Multiple Trovarion videos in one week? We're getting spoiled now that you're full time 😂😄
It's mindblowing how easy is for you to spot errors and fix them, Belakor is leggendary
The job you did with Kroak was really mind blowing for me. It showed how important the choice of colour is to a composition. I have just begun my journey as a miniature painter and most of the time I am looking for techniques to learn to improve. But this showed me that before technique, understanding how colours interact and tell the story of the composition is essential.
Another great video with detailed explanation of "what" and "why"! The example with Be' Lakor really shows how good idea can be improved to top notch!
Thanks for fixing your mic dude! much appreciated this was much clearer & easier to listen to.
If I ever paint Be'lakor, which I am sure I will in a year or so more, I want to paint him exactly like this. Thanks 👍😊 Trov !!
This is champion! People can learn a lot out of this kind of videos and I really enjoyed it. Thanks for sharing your knowledge!
I was aware of your channel for quite some time, but couldn't quite put together what made it special when recommending it to friends. Then I found out you were a teacher as a career, and it clicked. You are able to do tremendous things with a brush, but your ability to explain why it works is rare.
Now I need to see you paint Be'lakor! Then your version of each legion in a pre-heresy scheme.
I will buy the model for him if we can get him to paint one.
It's great to hear the reasoning and the creativity come together when you talk about the changes. Thanks for the tips!
An inspired teaching episode, really conveyed a lot of your thinking, which will now creep into my own. The Be'lakor colour revision helped my understanding most of all. Great vid
Yes, you helped me understand that I really do need to look at the light source as where the highlight should fall. Thank you, I will give this a try.
Genius! I never thought to digitally "edit" or paint a mini like this to test out or try a generalized scheme or something... absolutely genius. Also, Belakor looks outstanding!
What a great video! This is an excellent way to practice painting and training the eye in color theory
Interesting to hear you talk about the 'eavy metal style as deliberately being an achievable, if unrealistic approach. I always thoughts of it as essentially it's a paint job for the brochure that looks good from any angle - and you can see it as an evolution of pictures in the original 90's painting guides. It's clear, defined and consistent for the purpose of gaming - not art.
You just made the eavy metal team look like amateurs, no easy feat. Your rendition of belakor is stunning
I especially like the Belakor edits, and would love to see a video on you painting it start to finish in a really evil-but-vibrant style
Really enjoyed your angle on this. Very nice concept with adding subtle colors to create variation.
I love the concept and execution of this video. I think a really important takeaway is: there are always ways to improve, or, if you feel you’re at the top of your game, there are still techniques that can be utilized to alter the look and feel of your models. Thank you for the walkthrough!
3:46 Trovarion cameos as a catachan jungle fighter
I think they might be trying to not make the hobbyist look bad with "too good" paint jobs on their marketing material. The hobbyists are much older on average today than what they were 20+ years ago, so the "standard" can be set much much higher by GW.
Anyway, it's very nice to watch your analyses and the photoshopping that elaborates your ideas really really well.
edit: the belakor part was magic :o
He mentions it. It is a delicate balance between looking good and looking possible to achieve for the customer
@@gustavotriqui oh, I must've missed it then.
That underlight you've added to belakor is just SO GOOD.
This is a brilliant format for a video. Really fascinating to watch
This is one of my favorite video ideas yet! And masterfully executed as well!
Wonderful exercise! Love the use of Photoshop. It allowed a lot of lessons to be shown with a lot less time and work. Makes me want to spend a little more time digitally planning my character paint jobs for Dominion. That be'lakor edit was so simple but added heaps of character!
Would love to see you do this with some lotr minis. A lot of them (and I mean the vast majority of them) get extremely underwhelming paint jobs from GW.
I always learn so much from these types of critique videos of yours!
Awesome work! Very useful thought processes on display. Now to go to my hobby table and apply some of them.
i really liked this style of video ! i just got be’lakor and felt a lot of images i saw of him were kind of flat, felt like you did a really good job of showing how you can make him pop a lot more
This video is fantastic. So much good information that really makes you think about the model.
Would love to see you paint Belakor to your own amazing standard!
Fabulous work all around- what a dramatic improvement in Belakor
Awesome, I don't care for the basic GW style but I really like how you elevated what was already there and relatively simply to boot.
Pretty fun timing,just earlier today I learned that there are people out there who think that the boxart is fake and too good to actually be real...I don't want to know what the models painted by these guys look like.
Wow, impressed by your read on the belakor model. Really inspiring considering I have just assembled mine and will start to paint him very soon
Very cool use of paint over, I'll make sure to use this technique to plan out the painting for my future models! Also thanks for all the great content!
Well, that was incredibly helpful! Learned a lot and am always happy to see another one of those videos. Thank you!
That really helped to solidify a few of the principles of of light that I hadn't really been able to conceptualise on minis yet. seeing it done with photoshop at faster speed was great
Amazing, really amazing, I struggled to see how you could improve these models but you did. As other comments suggest, do a before and after so we can compare those differences.
Great work!
this is 3 years old but I am 100% taking inspiration for that be'lakor. I already went contrast with the base by making it lighter and lighter around edges and lava.
This is outstanding- love this video, it's super helpful for us new painters- one of the most inspiring YT videos I've seen for a while - Thank you 🙏
If I were to offer some kind feedback. 1) Please take a moment to show a before and after at end of each upgrade. 2) I lost the cursor visually a few times, maybe you can make it a little larger or a colour?
Both very much personal choices but wanted to offer help.
Please do more of these!
Saying your "Fixing" them is such a slap in the face for the talented artists that made the originals.
It's not tho, as he explains in the video, the artists are working within the constraints of the GW box art style. If you see figs GW painters do for competitions they work differently. So the critique is of the GW art choices for boxart photos not of the painters.
I am fairly sure the catachan are older then 20 years. I'm impressed you got so much detail out of it.
After seeing your composition i really want Belakor and paint him like you composed it! Super informative, hope you do more of those ;)
Extremely insightfull ! Thx. Loved this exercice. As said, a before/After final picture would be great. But it's already super interesting like this ! Please make others 👍🏻
Love your take in Be'Lakor. Also glad I now understand why I look at some models and am like... "huh?"
this kind of video really helps more than i thought
Thanks for the hard work, this was both entertaining and educational!
You, good sir have earned a new sub!
This was really informative, would love to see more of these!
I am in the United States (Austin, Texas) but I'll totally buy and send you that Belakor model to play with. It's in stock at GW. Great video, be fun for all of us to watch you play with painting it, especially after this round of color theory and exploration.
Incredibly interesting Chris! Thanks for sharing!
One thing that the 'Eavy Metal team takes into consideration that so many high level painters just don't seem to consider is basic design concepts. I've seen far too many painters that are amazingly skilled with a brush and paint that have incredibly smooth transitions and OSL skills, tragically butcher a mini because they don't understand basic design concepts, and what you get is an over-saturated vomit of colors to the point where you're not even sure what you're looking at. In any miniature or model design, you should understand what you're looking at instantly when you look at it. You shouldn't have to squint or study it like a Michael Bay Transformer design to understand what it is. I have seen only a very few painters understand this as well as the 'Eavy Metal team.
Can we just acknowledge the absolute flex that is this dude's introduction clip.
All those golden demons make my eyes rain.
Incredible stuff. Loving your regular vids dude.
Excellent; More of this format please.
Thanks for the vid
Love these critique style shows where you actually explain and show us what you’d change.
Would like to see maybe some more colour theory focussed vids in YT or Patreon :)
Thanks mate
I love your experiments format!
great Video, really great looking Belakor at the end, so much more interesting
Really cool exercise! Might do the same with some of my paint jobs and see where they could be improved! 👍
This was a super concept of vidéo!! Super clear and interesting! Love that type of video
I love this format, more please!
Great video! Would love to see you paint some of the bigger miniatures!
Thanks very good demonstration especially on colors variation.
Awesome video, you definitely have to paint Be’lakor now.
Wow, you managed to paint Boring Belakor and the new orks so they;re not boring, well done!
These fixes are why I wish GW wouldn't put so much focus on large models. Large models are an entirely different ball game when it comes to composition and I think a lot of new or inexperienced painters really struggle with these projects. Oftentimes, you see them do just a simple base coat or maybe a dry brush with some washes, but it ends up losing its silhouette (as pointed out with the Be'lakor hand). Some blending and ideas about color composition really improve the readability of the model while also making it more visually interesting.
Really useful and constructive video!
Really enjoyed this. 100% agree with you on Mr. 50 Shades of Grey!
18:00 "Of course, we can combine the two - and of course, we can combine these two"
Little blooper.
Nice video, thanks to you now i want to buy Belakor instead of Warmaster titan.
I think the trick with Eavy Metal schemes is they are intended to be technically excellent while still reading as singular non-complex colours so a beginner could easily follow the box art (e.g. flat green for death guard, cream and red for Tyranids..). I'd be interested to see what some of these painters paint in their free time or as training..
Holy cow 🐄 sir, you did some serious work on that Belakor model.
This was very interesting. Thank you Mr. Miniatures.
Great job on Be'lakor. Seeing yours makes me want to paint one as well.
Seeing those subtle changes on Be'lakor and that he is built on my desk waiting a paint job I think I might have to steal these idea's if you don't mind :-) Fantastic work I love learning about how to use colours I wouldn't normally consider. I defo need to do some more playing with colours in adobe before I paint these big pieces
Dig this type of video. I hope to see more. Thanks! If possible, maybe add alternate color choice examples with color theory at the root of the exercise. Really like the video as is, just throwing ideas around.
i always learn so much from your videos, thank you
Fantastic to watch and very educational. Keep it up :) !
Loved your colour fixes, such a great video.
Damn, this was a great video. Like the way you improve Belaakor paintjob, except for the glowing Chaos star. That last step was too much for my taste. Keep it up and post more of this kind of videos to learn from!
Perfect video to watch before I start my csm daemon prince painting, wanted to do a dark and desaturated skin
This was really informative and interesting to see how you think when painting!! 🙏
We know that GW absolutely considers this even at the sculpting stage, removing flat areas that are hard for newer people to work with and filling them with "details"
Hey, Chris. you can turn off that annoying pixel grid when zoomed in with view>show>pixel grid.
What a great idea for a video. Learned a lot. Someone needed to do that catachan justice at some point
Awesome! Im Taking notes secretly!
Wouldn't think off that grey-ish off white green, I like it, now we wait your actual Bel'Akor model painting video :)
Great takes and explanations! If you're doing more Photoshop demonstrations like this, think there's anything more you can do to make them easier to follow for viewers on mobile? Perhaps draw attention to the section you're describing with the eyedropper ring first and then dive in?
I came here looking for inspiration to paint my Be'lakor....and after all the greyscale paintjobs, this looks awesome! Please paint Be'lakor and make a video while painting it :)
Great video! Got me thinking of an interesting painting challenge you could do a video on! Everyone picks good sculpts for painting competitions but was wondering how good you could make a bad/old sculpt look, for example a chaos marauder, a flamer of tzeentch or a daemon prince. Would be interesting to see if a good paint job can save a not so great sculpt
I love how at 3:27 you look like the mini. Great video. Love your advise.
Total Pro! Very enlightening! Thanks 👍
Great food for thought, thanks for the video !