Love for Infinity

Sometimes the world surprises me with beautiful stories, like this one.

I usually don't have a lot of time for commissions. But this one just had to be done. Here's the story:

'M' is a friend of my friend 'Mk'. M's boyfriend is a huge nerd and a big fan of Infinity miniatures. I met them both at a birthday party of Mk, exactly one year ago. I was really surprised to see that 'J', M's boyfriend, knew about my painting since I didn't know him at all. You don't normally meet people that know about you outside nerd circles. That was a huge surprise and a very nice encounter.

A few weeks ago, 'Mk' (my original friend) sent me a message.

• Mk: "Hey Rafa! 'M' just asked me for your phone, she wants to commission something from you, something for her boyfriend 'J'".
• I thought to myself... "does she know the actual cost of this kind of commissions? Normally only nerds understand... But ok, let's see!"

So I gave her my number, and then she texted me.

• M: "I want you to paint some miniatures for my boyfriend. Something really, really especial."
• Volomir: "Wow, you are THE GIRLFRIEND. I wish I had a girlfriend that did something like that for me. So what is it you want?"
• M: "I want you to paint 3 Infinity miniatures, because 'J', my boyfriend, is a huge fan. I don't really know anything about miniatures, but he loves them."
• Volomir: "3 miniatures? That's a lot!"
• M: "Oh, you don't understand... it's a REALLY especial gift."
• Volomir: "Ok, so what is it exactly?"
• M: "Well... basically this is a gift with which I am going to PROPOSE to 'J'."
• Volomir: "Ok. You are going to... WHAT!?"
• M: "Yes."
• Volomir: "With 3 Inf... WHAT!?"
• M: "Yes. :)"
• Volomir: -POKERFACE-
• M: "I am going to take 'J' for dinner, and then, when the dessert comes, it will come with the three miniatures. 'J' will pick them, and each of the three miniatures will have a single word written on them: ¿QUIERES CASARTE CONMIGO? ("Will you marry me" in Spanish).
• Volomir: -PROLONGUED POKERFACE-
• Volomir: -TRANSCENDENTAL THINKING PAUSE-
• Volomir: "OH MY ***!!!!! (substitute the *** for a long set of words which are not suitable for the general public, but you can imagine). YOU ARE BY FAR THE BEST GIRLFRIEND A NERD GUY COULD EVER HAVE. If a girl did that to me I would have NO OPTION but to say YES instantly, regardless of anything else!!!!!!!!"
• M: -PROUD TEAR ROLLING DOWN HER CHEEK-

And so it began, the painting of the three minis of engagement.

One mini to surprise him...

One mini to charm him...

One mini to propose to him and for eternity bind him.

And this is what the minis reveal when cast into the fire (or if you look underneath them):

"WILL YOU MARRY ME?"

The greatest adventure of their lifetime was just about to begin. As planned, 'M' took 'J' to the restaurant, gave the minis to the cook, and spoke to the waiter to complete the plot. Later, dessert came, with the minis all around a nice cake. 'J' could not believe his eyes. "Those are Infinity minis I see! WTF?". 'M' was about to cry while 'J' picked up the first one. "Look at the base!!!" she said. 'J' started to understand when he revealed the first word. When he lifted the second miniature and read the next word, 'J' took 'M's hand, looked at her in the eyes and said: "YES".

Note from the author -> After that beautiful ending I thought: "I didn't need to paint that third one! XD"

There is so much passion here that even a fire extinguisher will not be enough...

'J' went back home and put the sacred three minis of engagement in his cabinet. "This is so ORIGINAL 'M', you are THE BEST GIRLFRIEND IN THE WORLD" he said to her.

Some time later, 'J' had his annual meeting with nerds from his Infinity fans club. After seeing the minis, one of the nerds said: "'J', I hope you said YES to your girlfriend, if not I will do it for you!". Another one said "now the bar is too high for the rest of our girlfriends".

All that is left to say is CONGRATULATIONS TO THE HAPPY COUPLE!!!

¡VIVA LOS NOVIOS!

And of course show a few pics of the Three Minis of Engagement. A triad I have titled "Love for Infinity". ;)

To all of you, I wish:

May the love be with you. ALWAYS.

Achilles, Champion of the AI Step by Step

Infinity miniatures are so well sculpted and are so small (properly scaled to measure less than 3 cm in height, the true 28mm) that you can create amazing pieces of miniature art in relatively little time. Achilles is one of those miniatures. The concept is incredible, the quality of the sculpt is top notch, and the possibilities endless. That's why I decided to paint this little beauty.

The sculpture is wonderful and very true to the concept art.

But obviously, since it's a commercial miniature, there are some details that have to be sacrificed in order to be able to cast and mass produce them. If you see the image, you can see how a couple of hair locks weaving in the air make a huge difference. Also, as you can see, the character is heavily tilted to one side, which might seem better to insinuate movement, but compositionally is weird, and this can be fixed by just positioning the miniature in a base that would be diagonal to the ground. This absolutely tiny conversion is extremely important to me. Makes the miniature different to all others and makes it way more dynamic.

Even so, in this first approach, the lock of hair on the right is too widely open. I'll strecht it closer to the face for a better result.

Perfect, simple, easy, essential! Time to paint.

The amount of tiny details is overwhelming, there will be a lot of outlining required to enhance all those borders and recesses. I choose to prime the miniature black, something I don't do very frequently, but in this case will help me work faster because the black will already be in the recesses and I will just concentrate on painting the surfaces. Way easier in my opinion.

The colour scheme is in reality the same (or very similar) to the one in the concept art, but just inverting the colours and changing the white areas slightly so that the colour is closer to grey-blue instead.

The key on this miniature is to enhance the technological look, simulating very shiny and reflective surfaces. This is done by painting all the reflections of the light sources over the suit. There will be a lot of them, as I will create light sources on some of the suit recesses, such as the plates in the chest, below the knees, on the armbands or on the sword.

The purple plates will not be so reflective, so they are painted following the scheme of zenithal lighting, as usual. I leave the highly reflective glass-like appearance to the grey-blue surfaces. Also, I start insinuating the light from the chest, in blue-white.

Before going forward with more light effects, I want to have all the colours in place, as of now the light effect on the chest is too subtle, probably because everything is very blue and cold, there's not much contrast.

Adding the brown-yellow hair adds some depth to the scheme. There's great contrast between the head and the rest because of temperature. I need to be careful not to make the hair too warm or I will have an ambience problem.

The right side of the leg is a beautiful area for a nice gradient from light blue to dark. Really nice in my opinion.

The back side is not as complicated as the front part. Good since this won't be a very important view.

The light effect from the chest is good but still not entirely convincing.

I keep on working, now on the raised arm.

There are not that many colours to put in the miniature now. Let's move on to the sword where I will do a simple NMM effect using Scale75 new NMM colour set.

As I have been working throughout the whole mini, I go from dark to light. I begin with a basecoat of Abyssal Blue or Abyssal Blue mixed with Anthracite Grey, whatever you prefer. The Scale75 set has many possibilities.

The important thing is to situate the light spots properly, and once they are fixed, work around accordingly. I start to raise the lights with Graphite.

I raise the lights gradually with lighter tones. I keep raising the light with Nacar.

Then outline the borders to separate volumes, using Nacar and White.

And finally create some lightspots with pure white.

These are all the photos I have from the WIP. Sad, because there are still quite a few things to work on. The main thing is increasing contrast all over pushing the colours further to the limits in each case, and then work more on the glow effects, were finally I decided to change the blue to something different to get more contrast, a very yellow green in this case. The rest of the work to complete the miniature was the face, a very simple but careful work of raising the skin tone gradually to the light starting from a very dark one (since the prime colour is black) and finally the base, which are you can see is diagonal to the ground axis, to compensate that tilt that I talked about in the beginning.

Using light yellows and light blues for all the light effects was a very good decision in the end.

Achilles, Champion of the AI

Achilles is probably the most representative miniature of Aleph in Infinity. This creature is an artificial representation of what Achilles the Greek hero would look like in the future, transformed into a soul-less android, a weapon of mass destruction in human size. I fell in love with all the Aleph miniatures ever since they were released and I wanted to give Infinity an opportunity. So here you have my first Infinity miniature ever: Achilles.

It was an absolute pleasure to paint. The quality of the sculpture is amazing, and everything is ultra detailed and tiny (it's a 30mm miniature!). Outlining is crutial in this kind of miniatures, so I decided to prime black and save time, even though the miniature ends up much darker than what I usually paint. Anyhow, I think the dark atmosphere goes well with the colour scheme I chose, similar to the concept art in terms of ambience and palette, but using the colours differently. Also, it has a minor conversion in the hair to make it look more like the original concept art. This will not be the only Infinity miniature I paint, for sure. Probably some more Aleph will follow, who knows, maybe even build a band for myself!

Achilles traveled to the Spring Angel 2013 and won Gold in Sci-Fi Single.

Comments welcome as always!

Behind the scenes: Step by step article

Link to Putty&Paint: http://www.puttyandpaint.com/projects/2791

Link to coolminiornot: http://www.coolminiornot.com/340827