Super fun stuff. Today on Super Fun Stuff, I show you how I paint comic book style minis. Growing up I was a huge comic book fan. My favorite comic book was X-Men, and I always love the art style. Comic book artists like Jack Kirby and Dave Cockroam really inspired me to pursue art, so I learned to love drawing and painting. Once I got to minis, it kind of combined the multitude of things I liked. Painting, miniature action figures, and games. It was an easy transition to get into that hobby, which I'm still into this day. I've made huge progress in the past few years with painting minis, but I've always get to the point where I feel unmotivated and never fully happy with the outcome. So I thought, why not try a new style with painting these guys? But what style should I pick? Honestly, you don't see too many different styles of minis. Most look very similar, except one, comic book slash sells shaded. I discovered a cool YouTube channel by EpicDuckStudios, where this artist showed you how to paint his version of Column Book. He uses a good variety of colors and a crisp black lining. It's really well done, you should go check it out, and it really pushed me to try it out. So I figured, why not try my own? The first many I did was a small jean seller from SpaceHol, and it turned out just okay. I think my problem was two bright colors and two thick of black lines. Not my best work and definitely not the result I wanted, so I decided to learn from my mistakes and try again. This time I picked an old work war boss I had sitting around, and it turned out amazing. I had better coloring, smaller inking, and overall a better job. I took my time more and I didn't give up. After that I wanted to paint more and more, trying new things in the style. I paid some jean seller cult guys, some tier nids, some space marines, and more work. Every mile that I painted, I was happy and proud of. Posting pics on ImagerNreaded, I got mostly good feedback. These folks really liked the style and I kept being asked if there was a tutorial. I can only explain so much in a comment so I figured to make a video of the process. So let's walk through the five basic steps of pinnacle of mini. First, you want to pick out your mini and apply primer. Number two, you want to lay down your base colors. Number three, you want to put down your washes. Four, highlights. And five, the black inking. If this seems like it falls the same basic mini painting steps, you're right. However, we will do a few things differently. So let's dive in. First step, pick a mini and slap some primer on it. Seems easy, right? Well, if this is your first one, I recommend a mini that has larger surface area, and less details. Don't pick an appeal with guardsmen as the first one. It's too small and unless you got the process down, you won't look that great. I recommend a larger orr, terminator, tier nid warrior, etc. When you pick out a mini, paint on the primer. I like to valethe white primer because it's really thin, but it's up to you. Step two, apply your base colors. This is again a very straightforward step. Make sure you fully paint every area leaving no primer visible. Stay away from two dark colors. You want more solid bright colors. Instead of black, go dark gray. Instead of dark blue, go a shade lighter. It's ultimately up to you, but things will look better with stronger vibrant colors. Step three, apply your washes. So in this step, you can be really creative. One of my biggest pet peeves I see online all the time is the over abuse of no-noil or black washes. Your miles will look so much better if you use different washes for different colors. Black washes do have their purpose, but not on everything. Here's the different washes I use for different base colors. Each wash can create a different look for a different color. For this process, every wash I use, I apply as a glaze. This gives you a wide variety of color tones and cool effects. Take for example, jeans doodles. Their skin is usually purple. A really cool skin effect is a paint their skin a pale white and apply purple glaze. This will give a light purple look with cool color transitions. So when I do a glaze, I get more color depth and a more full color. It seems or done yet to put a red wash on a red paint, but it makes a big difference. So stay away from just black washes and try different color washes. Step 4 highlights. Your miles should look pretty good by now, but probably a little dark. Now it's time for highlights. For almost all highlights, you will apply a series of lighter color shades. I do no less than three highlights on every color. This is very important. Most of the time you want to approach white. With a few exceptions based on how you want them to look. And what makes a comic book type many different is most highlights are less blended. Most of the time you want them to make them thin and blend in as much as possible, very transitional. But for comic books, this isn't really what you want. So majority of the highlights you will want more blocked colors. Meaning you pick a shade lighter, load up your brush, and paint a very specific blocked out section. Not trying to blend in in every little bit. At first you may be thinking this is easier and less time consuming, but now you will need to be more selective and decide ahead of time what sections you want lighter. Also you don't always have to make the basic highlighting shades of the same color. For example, the dark red I used on this work, I highlighted with a red, orange, and yellow. It gives an almost rust look. Extra tip for silver, a pure white looks amazing as a highlight. Highlighting will make all the worlds different between a good model and a great model. Step 5. Inking. This is the last step in the most fun. I used a black ink by Vallejo and the goal is to go and outline every detail in the model. You want a super smooth thin line. I recommend using a thin liner brush, one that has a longer tip on it so it can flex and give smooth lines. A short tip brush will show your mistakes in less error correction. Start at one end of the model and work your way through the entire piece. You want to make sure you hit all the areas. The real fun part is adding the little ticks and scratches and marks all over them. You have to be real decisive where you want things at this point. With scratches, I usually do them in pairs. Larger surface areas I'll do a hash mark. For very shaded areas, you can black them out or do several marks in a row. You also want to ink large edges, giving it a nice outline. This also depends on the type of model. If you have a pristine new guy like a space brain who hasn't seen battle, you wouldn't have a bunch of ticks all over his body. But if you have an orc that had piecemealed armor everywhere, you would see more marks and stuff on them. It's up to you and your creativity to make the model look like you want with this step. But the inking is the most fun and best part by far. Just look at the model without the inking and with the inking. It's a staggering difference in looks. The model already looked good from before, but now he looks surreal. And those are the five steps to paint a comic book mini. Overall it's a pretty easy process, but it'll take some time to get it down. It mostly comes down to color placement and in the inking. Your creativity will show in the minis you paint. I was thinking about making more of these type of videos and actually let you watch me paint guys from start to finish. Maybe even possibly do some live streams. But I'd also like to make some basing tutorials. Let me know if you would be interested. Well thanks for watching and keep up the mini painting.