Paleolithic People: LPL Round 6 Results

I knew it was too good to last.
I had 5 solid wins in the  Lead Painter's League painting challenge, but got spanked in the 6th.

On the bright side, the person who beat me in round 6 is the current leader of the pack, so if you can't be king, there is pride in being beaten by the king.

I got a lot of nice feedback in the thread, with many saying it was the closest match of the round, very hard to chose, etc. Too bad it wasn't reflected in the votes, where I got about 1/5 ;) But if 2/3 of the people thought it was very close but even if mine fell short by just a bit, that adds up ;) Isn't that how Vegas does things?  As long as they have 51% chance, that's good enough to win big & send people home without their mortgage ;)

My cavemen's mini opponents were really good and an amazing terrain scene, he has a well deserved win.

For mine, I'm actually quite happy with the minis in my entry.  What I need to improve most is the scenic composition of the photo.  The terrain I have is alright, but it lacks the full high budget movie environment that many of the entrants can pull off. I know that would help.  Well, maybe something to do for next year.

My entry was a party of Paleolithic People, a.k.a: Cavemen.

I went for a slightly different approach to these than what I usually do.
Probably my favorite fantasy artist is Frank Frazetta. I just love his work.
When I was growing up, and was into D&D probably the most famous & popular fantasy artist was Boris Vallejo.  He's extremely talented, don't get me wrong.  But he has an 'airbrushed perfection' to his art where Frazetta has a bit more of an atmospheric impression feeling to his work, and I just prefer Frazetta.

I feel the same about 'beauty'... I'm not attracted to the 'model' look of a lot of make up, glamour, or the photo-touched perfection that advertisers use: makes women look like mannequins to me, and mannequins are creepy! Reminds me of that Twilight Zone episode.. anyway, there is more realism and feeling in an image that isn't 'perfect' which I think Frazetta captures, and I tried to bring some of that style into these minis.

 

I tried to capture the feel of his art in the way I painted these minis, going for a bit more contrast in the skin than I normally do, a bit less smooth and more 'sketchy', to experiment. I usually try to go for a smoother transition for skin tones, with less contrast, since I try to steer well clear of a technique that is very common for flesh in historical minis, a tradition that marks out muscles and shades in thick dark lines- I suppose it helps it look ok across the table when there are 500 or more minis packed together, but it reminds me of the 'beef cut lines' diagrams of cows for butchers... talk about creepy.  I didn't go to that style extreme here, I was shooting for a Frazetta-level of sketch & impression. I'll play with it more and see what I come up with, but so far I'm enjoying it.

I have 2 more sets of Paleolithic Humans, Homo Sapien sapien, to be precise: us. 

and 2 or 3 Neanderthal sets, all aiming for about 6-8 minis.  And some sets of non-human primates too.

I've been writing some 'Paleolithic Pulp' skirmish rules, collecting ideas on and off for awhile, so this was the first faction team for that project.  I have some ideas that I think will be pretty fun, so we'll see where it goes. 

For this week's Lead Painter's League I have painted a guarded caravan in ambush from World of Twilight. 

One of my top favorite miniatures companies.  

I'm up against a talented forum favorite with a nice set of minis: nicely painted and a favored genre in the forum. Wish me luck! ;)  You can see the match-up here. 

Enjoy this great fun nonsense :)