With the delivery of the last Hellboy Kickstarter I vowed to get the miniatures painting as soon as possible so once I finished the last miniature I was working on I got to priming them straight away.
As per the last batch of Hellboy miniatures I zenithal primed them with spray cans as I would be painting them with Army Painter Speedpaints. This would be my first time using them and was a bit of a trial by fire. I really like how you don't get any (or very little) coffee staining over large flat areas and the contrast between the darker and lighter areas is more pronounced however they do tend to run more than Contrast paints and can end up in areas you don't want them to be if they find a channel to run through (creases in fabric/skin etc.).
The second issue I ran into was when I applied the matte varnish. I was aware that if you apply a paint or water (especially water) on top of a Speedpaint it will reactivate the paint and in the case of water will basically wash the paint off. However what I didn't realise is that this would also happen when I applied the spray matte varnish. Luckily it only happened on a couple of miniatures and I was able to salvage the paint jobs. The issue was when the varnish built up just a little too much, allowing the Speedpaint to flow again, so I started spraying the finest mist of varnish on the miniatures initially before applying a second 'normal' layer on once that had fully dried.
Now that I've gotten used to the quirks of the paint I'd quite happily continue on using them on further projects (I'm looking at you Batman) along with the Contrast paints as they compliment each other very well.
One thing I did want to point out about the miniatures is how improved the casts are. The initial miniatures were fine and I had no complaints with them but this new wave are a little more firm and hold a lot more detail, which really helps the style of painting I use on them.
This wave also included some of my favourite Hellboy/BPRD characters (Ted Howards being number one) so I really enjoyed getting to paint them up. I also took the opportunity to build and paint up the resin Giant Robot Hellboy which I've had sitting patiently in a box as a while.
With the paint jobs I tried to emulate the colours from the comics as much as possible while transferring them on to a 3D object. Naturally I had to take some liberties with the colour choices, especially when a character is shown with just one colour, but they should still fit the feel of the souce material.
Next up we have a vast array of evil minions and characters from the end of days along with the ever creepy Crooked Man, who's miniature manages to be nearly as disturbing as the artwork.
And if you've made it this far we have at last, but certainly not least, Nimue the Dragon. This wee beasty only just fit in my photo space and was a bit of a challenge to paint with Speedpaints due to the large areas, I had to make sure I didn't put too much paint down and let the zenithal prime do a lot of the heavy shade work.
She turned out quite well and was a fitting final miniature for this project.
