Hello everybody and welcome to another PMP end of month review. Well what is this? This is where we sit down and we look at the models posted into the end of month review event in the PMP painters motivating painters, which is our Facebook group dedicated to helping you take your next step on your hobby journey. If you want to join us, you can look down below and you'll find a link to join that group. You must answer all of the questions to have that to be approved. So answer them all, got to agree to all the terms and all that. That way we know you're not a robot. But at any rate we'd love to have you. Whether you're just starting on your journey or you're a long time master, that's okay. We all work together to help us take our next steps. So this is the first review of the new format. 2021 brings us the new format in PMP review. Each month has a theme and we encourage folks to submit. If they have a figure they've painted during this month that fits that theme. Our first month's theme is Monstress, which is 54 millimeter, 75 millimeter or large scale monsters. So it has to be something big, a centerpiece or a larger scale. That's going to give you, it's a very different project than just working on say a human or an ogre or something like that. So if you submitted something and it didn't fit the theme, I removed it, but that's okay. You can look in every event and there's a full list of what's coming up in the months to come. So don't feel bad that we're going to go through all different types of projects. So there'll always be a chance for you to submit for review. So with this month it's Monstress. Like I said, you can check the event. They have the listing in them of month by month what's coming. So look there and you can time your projects accordingly or just post it when the time comes. With that, let's get straight into the review. So let's go ahead and get into the first one, which is from John, who painted this wonderful cat soldier. And John, here's where we're going to start. He basically says he's looking for feedback on this. What could he have done better? Here's where we're going to lay down some sort of lessons about larger scale. When you move up the scale into 54 or 75 millimeter, you still have to push contrast. The bigger you get, the less you have to focus on it. But the more you have to build in the correct types of contrast, the more things like occlusion shadows and general environmental lighting come into play. The more things like textures become visible and need to be seen because you're getting closer to a big scale where those things would actually be visible. So it's still about contrast. It just becomes about contrast of light through things like not just normal value shading, but also through things like environmental lighting and environmental light pollution through texturing and through hue. So you're going to hear me say that kind of thing a lot. So looking at this, that's exactly John where I see we've got all of our opportunities.  And the challenges we have is that things like the cloth and stuff like that is just kind of boring. The cloth is basically flat green, the red underneath him is just kind of flat red. The gold is just kind of flat gold. We need to increase the contrast here, both of value and hue. So like shiny reflective gold should have some reflections of the green in it and stuff like that. There should be shadows. There should be lights. We still need to be pushing the contrast, taking control of that true metallic metal in a non-metallic metal form. You're doing a pretty good job of capturing the texture in the cat, but then the clothing and other stuff in here just not pushed to the same level. The gold especially jumps out of me as being quite flat. So that's kind of the sort of things that catch me the most of the gold and then his clothing. I really like the belt texture you did. So clearly I can see you do have the skill for it and same with the fur itself as a matter of fact, even though that was probably more sculpted texture, but nonetheless on the belt you did a fantastic job of bringing out all this texture. We need to see the same sort of thing on the clothing, so whether that be through stippling, whether that be through higher contrast, something like that. We need to see more visual interest. It's a very flat area right now. But you did a good job. Let's take a look at the little kitty cat. Same with the cloak, by the way. I think you did a good job of capturing his face. It's very cute. All right, next up. Chris Lawson, 3D printed, about 75mm scale. Done mostly with contrast paint, flushes, airbrushed for base, and then some light glazing done over problem spots. Sure, so the first thing I noticed is the base is very boring. Always, you know, when you've got a bigger scale, again we're scaling up. Bases should be interesting. Rocks should have colors and lots of stuff going on that isn't just gray rock. It's very actually rare in the world to find just a gray rock. But where I see the opportunity here mostly for improvement is in the skin. The skin itself is quite flat. It lacks a lot of the tonal variation we'd want to see. Somewhat of contrast, you've got a little contrast in there. I would expect to see more. When I hold my hand like this under a light, look at how strong those shadows are. Look at my face right now. Look at this versus this versus this right here versus here here. These are significant tonal variations, not to mention the pink, the bright light reflecting here, the pink in my cheeks, the variance in my hands and my knuckles. We need to see both variants of hue and we need to see variants of value. The skin is a huge area here and it just needs a lot more visual interest, a lot more tones put into it. Especially on these big miniatures, you've really got to push it with the skin because it's this really big area of interest and the bigger the figure gets, the more we recognize when skin looks flat or false or doesn't grab us. That's actually the number one thing that jumps out at me. I like the leather work. I think that looks nice. I think you've got some good application here, but that's what I would instruct you on. When you scale up, you have to do more, bring more life into it. All right, Tassos, talking about contrast has been his nemesis. Yeah, this is an interesting piece. I've seen this go around a little bit.  So yeah, I think you nailed the contrast level on his fur. I think that looks like satin reflective fur. I actually quite like it. Wouldn't change much of anything like how it's brighter up toward the tops. I might push the face just a little more, but I like in general what's going on there in some of your lower areas or darker. So that works for me. Mouth is also great. Love that tongue. The work you do on the tongue is great. Really fantastic contrast there, both variants of hue and value. I think the blade is probably my biggest area of improvement. It's interesting, but kind of boring, and it doesn't have the shadows I would expect on the flat. Like you're kind of, this is sort of pointed straight up, which means we're going to get a specular highlight at the eye of the viewer. Like a flat piece of metal that's pointed at you, you're going to see a specular highlight right here. That's where your eye is meeting it, where the light hits reflects, and that part that's going into your eye is what you see as the highlight. Same thing here I'd expect on the flat of the blade, since it's this surface turn toward them. There should be a light line and then some heavier shadow, something like that in there. So that's why I'd say you got the most opportunity for some kind of improvement there. That's the part that rings the most hollow to me, I guess is what I would say. But overall, I mean, fantastic work on the Wolfman himself. I really, really dig it. Okay, next up, Kale with his Lord of Change. Definitely a monstrous, definitely fits. The specific question is, what do you think of the base and what would you have done differently color-wise? Sure. Yeah, so he said he wanted a kind of naturalistic base, have this monster clash with it. I think that's fine. I'd see any problem with that. Color-wise, I don't think there's anything I changed, like compositionally, I think you're fine. Book looks great, nice text. The individual colors you've chosen here work really well. It's very eye-catching, it's striking, nothing's overwhelming, it's all in balance, you got a nice pink triangle. Yeah, it's fine. I don't really see any color composition issues. This guy's always problematic because he's got this tabard and there's just nothing else to match it to. It's got a piece of cloth on him. It's really annoying to try to get a good color on this. You went for this really bright crimson, but you also put it up here in his mouth, so I'm okay with it. It's also you also heavily shattered it, so I think that's good. The biggest thing I notice is that when you've got a big figure, so this is the first one we get where we're not just scaling up, but we're in monsters. When we get up into large monsters, the trick is you've got to put in the work for that detail. The detail here, it's easy to just airbrush the thing and not go into the little details. When this is good, it's going to bust you. So specifically, I look at things like his muscle structure here. We need some more contrast, some more definition in that. Same with things around his face in here. The wings especially jump out at me. I don't see any occlusion shadows under the feather layers, no dark spots, no nothing like that. The vein in the middle of the feathers is not picked out in any strong way. The feathers themselves, we don't have enough of the individual fletching picked out. You know, these are really big feathers.  These big feathers on the bottom. We'd see the individual, you know, strands of the feather, right? So you want to make sure when you've got a real big figure, it's going to take time if you want to push it up to that level. Okay? So that would be my advice to you. Don't skimp on the details because we can do a lot with faster tools. We've still got to go in and, you know, we start on our big volumes, then we work our way down, work our way down, work our way down, smaller and smaller details bringing that life into the figure. Okay, next up, Mikkel with carrying fate.  Yeah, sure. So it's always tough to do a fig like this in sort of all dark colors and make them actually stand out. I actually think you did a pretty nice job here. I get what you're going for. I like the orange reflection on the cloak or robe, whatever he happens to be wearing, whatever it is. I think the feathers look good, the backside here. Again, I'd say the same thing a little bit to what I said before. It feels like maybe we hit it with a dry brush or something and then kind of glazed over. Going in and picking out especially some of these high ridges of the ends of these feathers on the tip, getting those like this guy's really deep texture on the strands on the feather, getting some of those picked out with just like tiny hints every so often of a light. So we've got like feathers are quite reflective, especially a raven's feathers, right? Which is like, I'm thinking what this guy is, he's like a giant raven or something. So black feathers tend to be highly satin and reflective, so they should be treated like hair highlights where you've got this kind of specular highlight going around the top. The blade itself is kind of boring, so I'd focus on bringing in a little more NMM type of concepts and light control into it, really focusing in on creating your shadows, creating your light points. That's an area that I see is being kind of weak here. As far as the dark goes, I think the green is good. I think the orange reflection is nice. And I think that you've done a nice job of catching some light on the face. Again, make sure on the lower areas, it's not just all dark. His hair, his head isn't just one big volume. There's many volumes on there. He has these lower cheek pieces. He has this stuff. These would be catching little bits of light and need to also come up in highlights. It's not just one big cylinder, right? There's littler globes and cylinders in there, so you want to make sure you're bringing out each of those miniature, each of those smaller volumes as well. Okay, next up, first 75 millimeter figure, trying to create a coherent scene. Sure, we're going to start on this piece, actually. I think this is very fun.  I think that looks really nice. That sells to me. One of my biggest problems is you didn't shade the other side down enough. So if this light is truly casting this much light, then the other side needs to be darker. So like when I look at him here in your black and white, look at how bright these values are still over here, right? They're not that much different. So going back, you know, we're still hitting very high highlights over here on this side of his face, and they're not blue toned or softer. Like ostensibly, there'd be a blue moonlight to go against the warm, you know, very close orange light. And that's fine, but we didn't push these into the blue tone at all. And they should also be broader, softer highlights as opposed to this one, which would be very tight and orange. I think the OSL is quite successful. Like when I look at this, this is the most successful viewing angle to me, because I think you did a great job of capturing the light reflection here in his chain and in the skin he's wearing and the cloak and the sort of his hair. I actually really like all of this. This angle, I think is great. You did a wonderful job capturing the OSL. The trick is we struck a light without creating a shadow, right? So these other sides of the miniature here should still be dark, like way down here. This should be way in dark under this foliage. And the shadows on the side of his face should be much, much, much, much deeper, right? To reflect that this is like a weak environmental light versus a very close targeted OSL that's, you know, a foot off of his shoulder. So that's what I'd say. But cool stuff overall. I like it. All right, next up Dave with a 75 millimeter penny wise. Yeah, this is fun. So a couple quick thoughts. Again, when we're getting up to this level, we want to focus a lot on texture. So smaller strands and things like the hair, I think is something that jumped out of me. I like that you made the skin in the blue tone. This was a great choice to separate it from the white outfit. I actually think that's very smart. So I like that the problem is the white doesn't is the white used for the dress should not be shaded by black, right? Like that it makes it look like a that's a very weird, strong, sudden contrast. You're going like white, black right next to it. That's too much on this. Like I'm not saying we couldn't have had a very soft deep gray or even near black in some of the shadows, if it made sense, like if it was away from the light, if it was really tucked under or hidden, but to have things jump from like white to black to white to black, it just it doesn't sell. That's the issue. If we had used maybe a soft violet shadow coming down into that, I would believe it a lot more, right? If we had like a desaturated violet gray, then I would, you know, I'd be like, okay, yeah, that's now we've got a good separation between the skin and her dress. So that's the part that's challenging to me. I do love the striping on the leggings. I think that sells. You did a great job there. So really fun. Yeah, very, very fun piece. Balloons look great by the way too. I really like what you do with the balloons. Okay, Alex. This is from 54 millimeter Zola from Call to Paint. Very cool model. Any advice on working reflected colors into the NMM? Yes, you do need to work it in. That's absolutely true. So yeah, let's talk about that. I think you did a nice job with the steel, but you're right. We've got some opportunities for improvement of reflection here. And the answer is once you've set the direction of your light, which in your case seems to be coming, you know, basically from above, right? Then you've just got to think, well, what are the angles and what's going to bounce off of where? And you don't need to be, it's not like it's some, I think people think of this like a math problem. It's not a math problem. Light moves around, people move around, arms move around, secondary lights are in the environment. It's not about some exact precise science for the most part. What it's about is creating the air of believability, right? Where when someone sees a color, they go, that's why it's there. Your brain is really good at understanding subconsciously when the light is correct and when it's not, because you literally have all the hours of your entire life of training to do it. You're not even realizing you're doing it. It's just, it's just your daily experience in the world that you see things like reflections of the world in a shiny car, right? So the trick is, okay, we've got this arm, let's just, I'm just going to zoom in on this arm because it's the perfect place to sort of sell this story. Okay, what's down here on the ground? Well, you've told me the ground is brown, all right? So why are my secondary lights still white blue? They should be brown, right? This should be a brown light because it's going to hit the ground, turn brown, bounce up, be a warm reflected light. So that's number one. Now let's talk about up here. Maybe this is the direct light highlight, specular highlight coming straight toward my eye. Good, agree with that? Where's my red shade on the arm? The thing right beside that should be red because that's the red outfit right here and it's a reflective surface turned directly toward that, right? You know, if this were made of pure metal and I put it like this isn't, it's just, you know, it's a matte black thing, but if I put it right here, it should be reflecting white, right? If I put it next to something else, it would be reflecting pink, yeah? Same story there. So that's what I think, just think about like what is this piece of non-metallic that I'm doing next to? And the secondary colors, the reflected environmental colors, aren't going to be the highlight because our eyes see the light directly. That high highlight, that's just white light. That's what's hitting our eyes. Next to that in your sort of twos and threes is where you get the reflected light, right? That's where it's going to turn that color because it's not a direct light reflection, but very cool. So hope that helps, Alex. All right, so Traverse, this isn't really a monster, but I wanted to take a moment. I didn't delete this post because I feel bad because I read it and I was like, oh, well that's a shame. But here's what I want to say, Traverse. Like, this isn't in line for me to give feedback for this because it's not a monster, but I saw you entered your first painting competition and you said you ended up getting forth and feeling dejected and frustrated. Don't. Don't feel bad and talk to the judges, whoever judged, and get feedback from them. I've entered a lot of painting competitions. I lose a lot more than I win, okay? Every time. That's just the nature of the thing. Look at any opportunity to compete as a chance to get feedback, learn where you fell down, and stand back up again. It can be tough. It can be really hard. And I know that. Believe me, I've been there feeling dejected, feeling really bad, okay? I feel your pain. As I said, I have lost a lot more than I've won, okay? And I still do to this day. But you can't let that break you down. You've got to put that into a fire that gets lit into you to figure out, what do I need to improve? Take that, do some deliberate practice, and move on. For example, I saw right away in this piece, contrast needs to go way up, right? More color of the control of light, more tonal variation, those kinds of things. Stuff I've talked about in previous months. So, talk to the judges, though. That's the most important thing I could tell you. I didn't judge this, they did. They had stuff they thought. Understand what their feedback is. Email them, go meet them in person, whatever you need to do, okay? Because their feedback is going to help put you on the right path. So, there you go, Travers. All right, Matthew, I just painted this myself recently. So, is there anything in particular like to see you do on the next? Currently working on brush control, oil and acrylic techniques, improving contrast. Yeah, sure. So, you're just starting out, looks like we got a lot of work to do. The paint is very roughly applied. So, I think you need to focus on some smoothness, like, because it looks like you're trying to make her look like her, like she's alive, I assume, and not a statue. I'm trying to figure out what's, let me see if you said specifically in here. Yeah, so, the statue, oh, it was supposed to be a statue. Okay, I see what you're going for. So, this is meant to be like, like bird poop? I guess. Yeah, it doesn't feel like it's a statue. Like, the problem is here, we're not selling that effect. So, if it's a statue, like, you can have a painted statue, Romans and Egyptians painted all their statues.  So, that's fine. You need to show me some of that, like chipping and stuff like that to show me its paint covering something. And the problem is, when you have a very human figure, if you paint it very human-like, but then also there's this other stuff on it, like, I assume this is what you're going for? Like, I'll be honest, Matthew, I'm not sure what you're aiming at with it. That's the problem. It doesn't, it doesn't sell. And it's hard for me to even diagnose why. Like, it felt like the armor you were trying to make it look like pretty realistic sister armor with a high reflection, like almost a sky-earth horizon line. And then the wings, they just look splotchy. So, I don't know what you were aiming at exactly. If you're looking for a statue, then paint it, chip it, weather it, and make it look like something that sits outdoors constantly. Right? If you're going for a person, then paint it like a person. So, that's what I'm not sure on. Maybe you can reply when this video goes up, Matthew, and tell me exactly what. It's hard for me to give feedback. But yeah, I don't like the splotches. They don't sell whatever they were. It just makes it look like the paint didn't apply even. All right, Tygo.  How does one paint a Caucasian face in the cold? So, I have, you follow the pale skin video I did. A Caucasian face in the cold gets very pink. It gets pale with blue tones at the low, and then around areas where blood would gather, cheeks, nose, eyebrows, things where the, your capillaries are inflating to try to pump blood up to the surface to prevent hypothermia. Those turn very pink because they're flush with a lot of blood underneath. Now, as to the various browns, I think we need to push farther and also use texture to separate. So, like, yes, we have some different brown colors, and that's fine. But at the same time, we need to also be pushing things like the texturing and really having these elements separated.  The proper term would be an occlusion shadow. It doesn't matter. You get the idea. The separation of elements in between things, like this is a piece of leather that's different from this, that's different from these, which is hanging over this, and these straps, like all these things need hard dark lines of some kind, or purple, dark green, plus black, whatever, there's lots of different colors you can use to really separate these elements. And then on top of that, with these various things, we need, like, the texturing to show what's what. Okay? So, there you go. Hope that helps. If you watch my pale skin video, you'll see what I'm, you'll get a good read on cold skin. First ever contest submission, feedback on how to improve. Sure. So, it's a nice piece. The, let's focus in on this one. So, a lot of things I've mentioned so far, with a big monster like this, we need to really hone in on all the detail. The gold doesn't really sell. It's pretty flat. Again, we need to pop that up. More highlights, more shadows, more use of things like non-metallic techniques. The magic spell in his hand is quite boring. It should be a point of interest. It's just basically magenta. It looks like it's made out of the same material as his robes. So, I need a lot more of, like, a magical effect there, which means ultra high contrast, popping that up and having white energy in a skull or something like that to show it's there. The feathers, again, are pretty boring. There's nothing going on that's really separating the ends from the tops. A lot more contrast than the feathers highlighting the strands. The center line there, which has a name that I will never remember, even though people have told me in the comments before, and I probably won't remember if you tell me again, but I didn't rate that. And then more volumetric highlighting on things like the robes. Like, this shadow is the same at here, at here, this point, as it is at this point. That is not correct. Like, light has to have some cut. You've told me there's a light coming from above based on how you highlighted this knee. So, this area should be very deep colored and almost, you know, in a deep shadow, whereas all of this should be much lighter, much brighter, right? So, it needs to respect the volumes of the lights in total. So, there you go, Thomas. All right, Grigas. The brown skin has been, so this is a big gray render. Trouble diversifying tones. Is the maw too shiny? Are the contrasts pushed enough? Short answer? No. Nope. Nope. Nope. So, I saw your questions, but I'm going to help you out here. We're not even in the ballpark.   You know, like, you've got the same picture I do. Okay? It's not even close. Like, we've got, I'm not trying to be mean. I just really want to like, you have got, we've got to push this way up. This is skin that's going to be, you know, somewhat satin. And gray renders have really, like, you know, if you want this brown skin, it's still going to have like highlights where it's in the light, deep shadows, other tones worked in, purples, blues, something like that, orange, browns, like things that make it visually interesting. We need to pop all those up. And then we need to pay like, as a whole volume, the total volume of the thing, like up here should be lighter than down here, you know, and so on and so forth. But then I also need to start focusing in on those micro volumes, each one of these muscle textures, each one of these things needs some kind of highlight. He has a lot of great texture in his skin. We're not bringing any of that out, right? All of that should have lots of highlights and light colors and things like that. We need some kind of variation of hue showing me muscle structure and volumetric highlighting and what's going on in things like the side of his face and down under here and is what passes for his neck and like into the belly and things like that. Contrast is the number one thing at every level here. This is too low on value and too low on hue by a wide margin. Now, you would ask some questions about the mouth. Mouth looks great. I got no problem with mouth. I think it works. To me, a clear red and your glue, that is a triumph. That's absolutely fantastic. Love the stickiness, love the stippling of it on the teeth. Yeah, I have no notes. Looks great. It's just we got to go way farther on that skin, my man. There you go. Hope that helps. Okay. Nick, insight on TMM and color composition. Sure. Silver is always going to be tough to show the contrast with. Yeah, overall looks good. I think it's fine. I think you need to push some of the silver highlighting a little more, more shading it down, more work with inks and stuff like that to take control of the light. Travarion actually had a great video where he did that with this exact model through a bunch of washes and stuff. Take a look at that kind of thing. I really think what you did on the blades like the tail and his spear tip looks wonderful. The problem is this is much more visually interesting and is non-metallic than the silver body which is theoretically metallic. So that's a challenge. You've made this more visually interesting and more bright and more seemingly in control of the light than the actual thing that's made of metal. So again, more working in and think of it just like as you would any other muscle structure. He is a muscular dude, so or whatever he is, CTAN, and he needs to have just in the same way we would highlight the muscle structure on a humanoid figure. We need to take washes and colors and get control of that light reflection there, make sure the highlights are popping where we normally paint skin highlights and so on and so forth. Around the muscle structure here toward the bottom of the center, up at the top of the volume of the arm of the bicep and then we have shading down here to create that volume lighting there. I hope that helps. It's really just a lot of subtle glazing with inks or shades or something like that. All right, Enrique, the AOS O'Groid Mermidon, a feedback on the non-metallic metal and the other textures. Sure. So I looked at this guy earlier. I think he did a great job with him. I love the skin. It feels like you looked at Trovarian's recipe for skin there a little bit, drew some inspiration from him, which I love. That's a great job. The texturing on the leather is great. I also love, did you do a green belt because of the video that we posted? I really feel like you watched Trovarian and I when I made a joke about doing a green belt and now you did some green leather. If that's what it is, that's a very egocentric point of view of mine. So if you have no idea what I'm talking about and you're like, Vince, you're out of your mind, no, I just did it because I thought green was a cool color that contrasted the orange, you made the right choice. It looks good. I just thought it would be really funny if you did happen to listen to that and happen to post a green belt because of that discussion I had with Trovarian. Texture on the skin looks great. Texture on the leather looks fantastic. Like the wood texture behind. Yeah. I mean, I think for the most part this sells the blue on his backside, which there we go. That was the shot of it. That could be a little smoother. It's not quite as interesting. The free hand on the shield is kind of, it's fine. It's not as visually interesting. It's just kind of this pattern. That would be a great pattern if you were then going to lay something else in the center of it. Like if it then had an icon over the top of it, I'd be like, yes, a triumph. Great. It just as it is right now, it feels a bit like we're, it's just kind of this thing that I don't know why it's like that. Like it's not telling me anything. It's not communicating any visual information. The areas where I think we need to improve a little are in the hair and the horns. Those are the two areas I notice.  Again, more picking out of the individual strands, more movement of the light, especially towards the edge. And then with the bones, again, more highlighting on the underside of the bone is the same as the highlighting on the bottom of the bone or sorry, the top of the bone. That's a problem, right? My hand is not the same color here as it is here, right? That's very different. So in a shape like that, you know, that diamond shape, the highlight on the bottom that's reflected light is going to be much weaker than what's up top here. That's the number one thing I noticed. But very cool piece. I really dig it. I think you did a really nice job. Thank you for sharing. Oh, and the texturing on the cloth, by the way. I didn't mention it, but yes, also looks great. Very nice, very subtle, like the line work. It's well done. I have no issues with any of that. It's O'Groid month, by the way, apparently. Painting for two years, I'm really happy with how this guy turned out. Specifically, whether the skin needs anything more to highlight in the shadow, whether having a narrow band of colors worked. There's a lot of things, yeah, so asking about like the non-metallic metal under the scratches on the shield work. Sure. So let's take this individually. So I feel like we've got some, so let's start with the skin. We need to smooth out our blends. We're dropping down too hard here. I shouldn't see these kind of hard lines. It should be a smooth transition. Skin transitions need to be really, really smooth. I also see some shininess and reflectiveness. You want to matte that stuff out. It's creating like light in the shadows where we don't want it. So make sure you matte that down. As far as contrast goes, yeah, I think you're mostly fine for sort of this green orcish type skin. But what I actually think the yellow highlights find, what I would look for is a little more variation of hue, more than contrast when you come to the shadows. So skin is interesting because it generally has a lot of hue variation and not just highlights. So doing things like glazing in some soft reds into the shadow or purples into the shadow would really go a long way on this green miniature. It's what I always do with my orcs who have the same kind of green skin palette and it really just creates a lot of visual interest for very little work. So that's number one. The, yeah, I agree with you that non-metallic metal doesn't really work. It needs to be smoother and it needs a lot more actual number two and three. Like there's not enough mid-tone in here selling me that this is gold. There's not enough yellow ochre into it. It's much too flat and it's very, very rough. If you're going to do a line like this around the edge, like this, this line highlight here just does not work.  Like you did this whole shield, then you do the line and you were like, yeah, that's good enough. It's not. We got to come back in with this other color and we got to thin that line back down by pushing paint down into it. Now, do the scratches work? No, they're too thick and they're not dark enough. So like that's the, I see we've got a big challenge here and it's manipulating our paint. So it feels like you're using pretty thick paint. We need to get that paint thinner. We need something like ink and flow improver mixed in there. Go watch my how to paint sharp thin lines video. I think that's going to work for you because that's also the same problem with the freehand. The tree is too thick. And so like if we had thinner branches and things going off there, if that design had more of an elegance to it as opposed to these like little fat, you know, sticks, it would sell more, right? And just as another note, the light line goes underneath the cut. So cut light line. It's on the bottom, not the top. So there you go. But overall, I mean, I like what you're doing here. It sounds like you were you're still early in your hobby journey and I think you're coming along well. Really, yeah, work on getting some of those, you know, mats together, mat those colors out and work on your smooth blending. And I think you'll be moving in the right direction. All right. Next up, Sergei. Yep, the dung beetle knight. Oh, yes, scarab shell in the wings. Yeah, I think this guy looks really nice. Let's let's talk about the shell first. But this is a great transition sort of using this green to purple, very Meg Maples kind of color scheme here, which I like. I think the shoulders and stuff works pretty well. I think you basically got the right amount of contrast in there. You could bring a little bit more in your five, like it feels like some of the shadows could be a little deeper in the very deep spots of the purple, where it's really hidden away. Excuse me, I'm so sorry. But for the most part, I think that works fine. The this texturing and stuff underneath his his fur needs to be pulled out a little more that it could get a little brighter. The wings look wonderful. I really love these. I when I flipped around earlier and I saw these, I was very impressed with your use of color on them. Like you're doing a great job of really represent of actually painting in what a lot of people use stuff like color shift paints for. And I think it's absolutely fantastic. I really love this color combination. I think the wings are great. I even love the texture in there, make some feel spot on like that's a great use of texture, where the brush strokes are telling me a story. So I really enjoy that. I also really enjoy the low red highlight on the sword scabbard. I thought that was really a nice touch. The fur and these little sticks coming out, whatever they are, I think the area is where we need to maybe pop up a little more, bring out the texture, match some stuff down, those kinds of things. All right, next up Christian, second 75 millimeter model. Okay, tried to implement your advice on volumetric highlighting from the last submission, use of texture and improvements to be made to the face and the hair. Sure. So let's let's talk about what I like. Let me get in here close because I think this is nice. I think the texturing on the cloak, the leather, the jeans, that's all working for me. Okay. I really, really like it. I think you did a great, great job on that. The leather needs to be up here in the hands needs to probably be a little more well separated, like there's some places that aren't quite, it feels like the wraps, these lines need to be a little more separated. We need a little more spots or something like that to kind of separate these two elements. It's just very hard visually to read what's going on with the gloves because we've got the texture. We haven't created the light in enough of a way. Now the hair up here looks great. I really like it. I like the highlighting did. I love the coloration. The face as well. There's a little bit more we need to do in getting the top eyelid called out.  Like it's all these successions of light, dark, light, dark, dark, and that's what makes eyes look real. And you're kind of missing a little bit of the top light. I know it's not completely modeled there as much. You've got to kind of freehand it in, right? You got to kind of make the top eyelid and have that little bit of light catching above and have a little more of a shadow fall down because she's clearly sitting under a light just directionally hitting her like this. So there should be a little more of a shadow here up under here coming into a in and then out to a light that's reflecting. So I like the deep purple sort of environmental lighting that works for me. I'm not sure what it is in the environment that's creating it because you didn't do it anywhere else, but I'm not sure I care that much. I just think it's a nice effect. I think it'd be cool if we had a little bit more of it in the rest of the world like in the Cape or down here on the rocks. And the environment itself feels very different than her because a lot of this stuff isn't painted. She has all this wonderful texture and acrylic paint and action. And then the rest of this stuff is just a lot of it's just kind of there. And she feels like she's in this stronger. Here's why you don't put unpainted things on your base because they're just going to act like they're going to act in the normal light. You've done such a great job creating a wonderful light composition up here on her cloak, her tabard or jerkin or whatever, and her face and her hair. And then I come down here to the earth and I'm like, these two things are not existing in the same light source. This foliage is not in the same light as her. Right? So like there should be a big shadow on this side of the rock. This stuff should be mostly dark, right? There should be a little bit of light reflecting through. So you want to make sure when you're constructing a base, it's not just like, well, let me think of some environment, put some grasses down. It has to tell the same story that the figure itself is doing, especially at this scale. But overall, I think you did a great job of really bringing up the volumetric highlighting and the texture on this, especially like the pants and the cloak are really, really good. I really like it. So well done, Christian. Okay, Philip. Okay. Here's a kit bash meant to lean into the old John Blanche ad mech art convey a lot of different textures on piece. Sure. So this is clearly quite monstrous. So I'm okay with that.  It fit. Yeah, I mean, you're going for sort of the Blanche style, right? Which means a lot of like neutral tones and then reds. One of the things I would say is you still want to have some some visual interest here on like these lower elements of the walkie thing. We've got a little bit of damage. I think that works. I'd like to see maybe a little more of it, maybe a little staining or pigmenting. This is good. We could go a little farther, especially in joints and stuff like that up here on the top. Keep in mind, John Blanche's art still has a lot of like very hard lines. He's using black lines. So his elements are still really separated, right? Because he inks, he draws it, then he inks it, then he inks it in the broader sense of the word. Colors that I mean. So I think the red is good. I think overall you captured it nicely. But the red needs to be brighter. It still needs to have shadows on it. It still needs to have like the red being the only color you still have to have your volumetric highlighting on that. And it still has to have light and dark and show contrast. The red is very flat. And so and then the separation of the metal elements as I think is the other thing I noticed. It all kind of blends together. And I don't really have that line art like he had where I've got strong black lines telling me what's what. So you've got to work that into the piece and really bring shadows down and take control of that light and the metals and make sure there's lots of separation of elements there. So hope that helps, Phillip. Neat piece though. Okay. Sebastian with the mind-sealer sphinx. I appreciate it a lot of the year. Try to up the contrast and follow your advice, increase in contrast on the secondary elements and color variation on the fig with glazes on the face and fur. Sure. So my big thing I notice here is the horns and around the face. So this up here should still be higher highlighted than you know some of this over here. And yet we still kind of have the same colors. Face is nice. It's drawing more attention. I think the fur looks really good here. He looks this is like a ragged tired mind-stealer sphinx. And I like that. I think that's fun. When I look here at the black and white, I quite enjoy it. It really shows the fur texture well. I think you did a great job with that. I really, really enjoy what you did because I know a lot of this is actually just smooth. So this is all texture you painted in. And it's really working for me. I like the coloration. I like the shadows. Your like somewhat secondary lights here I think are good. The biggest challenge on this is that compositionally it's kind of boring. I don't mean that in a negative way. I just mean like it's it's a very limited palette, which is nothing wrong with it. It's just it's hard to ever have a huge amount of visual interest because there's not a ton going on color wise. So some of the integrations of things like yellow light and stuff like that are good. But I would take a few opportunities where you can to put in some spot colors here or there just to make something a little more interesting. The horns and the ears being particular examples right where we're in this part of his face. We could add a little more red tones and soft you know magentes and stuff like that kind of glazed in and things like that that would have added a little more even color up here in the face. And that would have really drawn a lot of attention in right. So but overall great work. The texturing is fantastic. The lighting is nice and controlled. Very volumetric. So I think you did a wonderful job. All right. Rowan who's asking about this very cool Beholder Mini. I love this dude. Like look at him drooling everywhere. Beholders are cool. And he's asking about you know basically volumetric highlights on large surfaces. Yeah. So I mean when you're dealing with a monster like this again it's got it. We got to think what it is. OK. So the lights coming from above the top of each tentacle should be roughly bright falling to a shadow like that's the simplest way to look at it. Right. Again just think of my hand. My hand was one of his like OK my there you go. That's one of his tentacles. Light here. Shadow here. Right. I mean it's even if you go with something like that. Warm or light up top. Cold or blue shadow underneath. Right. Like these shadows on me you're very cold. So that's the kind of thing you want to be focusing in on. Right. Just think of each space. Set a light direction from like above. This is really one of those things is really easy to do with an air brush if you have it because you can just you know from above and you're like yeah well job is good and got some basic color down. But that's where I think we have the most opportunity for improvement here is getting that that exactly that volumetric highlighting right now on the tentacles is pretty weak. So you know if we push that up we'll create a lot more visual interest. Same with you want to bring it toward the front of his face here here up here that way there's a lot of action right here. Same with the eyeball you know putting this area around here being quite quite bright white would do a lot to sell it. So I'm going to hope that helps. All right Duarte specifically we're looking for help with the OSL. Yeah I mean I think the OSL mostly sells it needs to get a little bit the problem is we don't have the transition shadow. You have two light sources one coming from up here one coming from down here. You've basically captured the light of the blue but it doesn't fade out any there's no actual shadow. When you have a secondary light source that's reflecting from here to here right it's going to go your nor your native environmental light source down into a shadow and then back up into the light source. This midline here how do I move my arm this way. There we go it's very hard as I'm looking at reverse this midline here is your deepest shadow okay meaning to translate this to the fig this needs to be a lot more soft subtle and darker right um up here needs to be darker this should be a much deeper shadow in here in here in here that kind of stuff right because that's the transition up into the light from that when you've got a light from below it's going to go light fade darkest back up in lighter lighter brightest okay so um as the blue itself it's fine you may want to soften it just a little but I think for the most part that works all right robin uh first 75 millimeter fig uh oh it's from archvillain cool that's cool I like archvillain stuff I just started looking at it I just found this that that uh that dude recently it seems like he's doing some really cool stuff uh okay so first of all robin for the future concise don't write me a novel man I don't need to know everything just these are the things I want to know okay all right uh all right so you know saying it doesn't look like sheep will uh was going to try to make a band of light like you do on human hair uh and so tmm also feels flat to me tried to make it again some green contrast any feedback on the composition yeah sure okay yes the true metallic metal is too flat we need to great we need like let's go to this one yeah because this is the viewer and see this it's way too flat we when you do true metal on a big scale like you can that's why a lot of people paint non-metallic on higher scales because you must take control of the light and so if you're going to do true metallics then you have to still use those non-metallic sensibilities right it still has to have deep shadows high highlights you got to take control of everything and we're just not doing that here at all right all this gold looks super flat and it's just not going to ring true on a big scale where we would expect to see stuff like this where it's really alive with lots of different colors now as to the fur honestly i don't think there's anything wrong with the fur i think it's the you did a good job with it i like your highlights your jelly moving in some nice colors yes they're in a bunch of different directions you know but yeah i think the fur mostly works you've got nice picking out of the texture there i don't really have a problem with it the purple robe is pretty boring and again no texture no life no detail it doesn't like it feels like we didn't get into the details here like his hands have no tonal variation of contrast or hue same with his other hand here his these hooves would have texture and life and stuff like that the robe would have a lot more color variation i should see some kind of texture i should see separation of these elements it just feels like it was airbrushed and then we did nothing else with it right so my advice is when you go to a bigger scale you've got to focus in we've got to do all the detail right i've said it a couple times so uh i probably won't hang on that too much all right and and as to how to texture the robe you know slashes hashes just visual interest right make it a pattern some kind of texture like cloth i have videos on doing textured cloth so you know i'd go check some of those out all right tj uh completed great unclean one uh trying to get his smooth transitions from one to five uh so yeah let's talk about this first of all we need we need a photo that's not overexposed but i'm going to focus in on this one because it'll tell me this is a story okay so we've got some variation of value and for the most part it's smooth but we've got to get variation of hue especially on a model like this he can't just be green okay and i know you got some purple wounds but this skin is rotten it should have reds and purples and browns and all these other tones mixed in and picked out throughout it right the the little details like so again when we look at the horns the horns have no transition no life the gold bell is basically just a bell right i don't have near enough like oxidation variation non-metallic control of the light when i look at the hood same thing right like we've got a little bit of texturing on the side but where's my shadows uh so same with the purple itself we need a lot more contrast of both value and hue across the piece okay so that's my best advice go look up like i'm not expecting to paint like this but go look up richard graze great unclean one and you'll see what i'm talking about as far as like the working in of colors and the variation of it it's a it's a masterclass on this model and really will will give you a lot of of inspiration to to feed off of okay yone uh 100 oil paint and the non-metallic is improving but still has a long way to go a long time trying to have a color the base to be and not really happy with the result yeah sure how do i decide to color the base uh generally just it's exactly what you said whatever's gonna suit the mood of the piece and i agree like it doesn't really work with this guy because it doesn't feel like this guy should be walking on just like dirty dusty earth his feet are also a little too dirty i like dirty feet but not that much uh like it's good to get pigment up on feet but you don't want to turn completely brown like he's gotten mud on the top now as to the non-metallic uh like the skin's good like the texture i think the red is a nice highlight honestly this guy feels like he should be walking on something a little less saturated as far as the color of the base goes of the ground goes if it was like more of a gray tone or something like that you know something that's going to either work with it or set the mini off in some way it's always a tough call but the answer is i try to make sure it's integrated into the overall color scheme but less it's like what's the color scheme in the mini and then subtract out saturation is kind of a way i often think about it you can subtract out saturation through the addition of grays browns black or white you know pushing into neutral tones the weapon here sells the most for me i quite like the weapon i think you did a really nice job i like the reflected light off the ground being in this yellow brown tone that i enjoy that's really good i think you did a nice job there the gold isn't quite selling because i don't have enough low tone i need more strong reflective shadows in there i don't have enough four and five so i think that's probably my biggest feedback for you uh i hope that helps okay gabriel uh with a big dinosaur uh and you know how do you texture big dinosaurs uh all right so let's talk about big dinosaurs and big bumpy models like this so first of all i would direct you toward a book called color and light by james gurney who is the guy who did dynaetopia um he has a lot of reference art using dinosaurs and the answer with texture and stuff like that is it needs to be a lot of your pictures are kind of out of focus here so i play with your depth of field but the answer is you've got to have light up here that sort of falls into the same color shadow and then we need to also pick it out in the individual this model is not great for that i mean admittedly it's kind of we'll use this picture it the texture doesn't seem very well defined i don't think you did a terrible job of it overall let me just say that i think that the skin rough it looks nice the biggest issue i have is that we don't have enough contrast of value up on the top of the dinosaur top of it like the very top ridges here the top of his muscle structure um i actually like the red part you did underneath i think that actually sells me a lot more um because that feels like it's got the right amount of contrast the green still feels too flat needs to push farther his face kind of feels in the right space the face feels like you went up high enough but the body itself doesn't so uh you know think of it again you want to start on the total volume make sure that's got the light and then you work down um check out color and light it's one of the best investments you can make on light theory and he actually has a whole section about light and how it works on textured surfaces like dinosaur skin because he's using his own dinosaur painting artwork as a reference so he that's a masterclass far beyond what i could ever do all right next up casper uh okay so um if you had one more hour what should you improve sure well the fur that would actually be my pick um the the fur here is pretty flat and boring and like it's not respecting the lighting this unless this is meant to be like the fur is changing color in which case fine but the fur doesn't have any lighting here like volumetric highlighting would be the thing i would focus in on um the skull glow doesn't really sell for me like i get what you're going for but it doesn't really sell like the model is just extremely busy and hard to read right like because there's so much going on so many different angles and textures so we need to really get control of this through the lighting this area falls away it's not the most noticeable thing on the miniature it's like maybe this or these bones or you know something but like it's hard to read so you have to construct your light that's why we do volumetric highlighting to lead the eye so like if the top of this fur was all highlighted where we would see the light drawn if the face is brought up at the top of the skull at the top of the beard the teeth if we brought the bones down in texture or something and had lines pointing down to his face right if we that kind of stuff is what we need to do but uh so i would focus more on things like from a strategic point of view of making sure the light is actually focused where you want to be where the visual interest is here in the center of the model right and then secondly i would focus on how your light is in control like there's not there's a lot of like scratches and hatches this metal but there's no light control on it like this is no brighter than down here right same light here as here so there's not like volumetric highlighting would be my number one thing i'd give you give you feedback on so there you go all right matt uh so uh feedback as to the bust yeah so busts are basically you got to do everything until you're insane and then do twice as much right your biggest thing that pops out of me here is that the skin doesn't have enough contrast of value right um you've got some nice hues i like some of the red tones in there i think that's cool um good use of color on the skin but it doesn't pop up near high enough nor respect kind of what we would expect to see the cheeks should be higher the nose should be higher the eyebrows up here should be higher um a little more work of like control of the way you're using hues and the way they're working in there is probably also in order the hair is also kind of not what we would want to see because it's not reflecting any specular highlights like on on a scale like this you've really got to pay attention to that so like where the hair is going to reflect for example up here this would actually be the highlight where it starts to pop out and then into some shadow and then here down at the bottom as well the mustache should be you know kind of brighter up here and then falling into shadow and then maybe some strands down here it's kind of an unusual hair thing with it popping out of the top like fire um but that kind of stuff is what i would say like with the hair up there there should be like a light line somewhere along the middle that's a that's a specular highlight same with the fur in the back again this is very visually boring and there's not anything going on here nothing's drawn my attention this should have like much more separation of fur and the clumps and where the light is falling you know the clumps drawn out individually having light lines across them just like a panting you know pro v hair dye thing that kind of thing so basically it comes down to more contrast more control the light especially with a value at the scale but it's nice i think the blue is well your color composition is good i like the bonework and i think that's that solid you definitely got a good eye for using colors and i think that came out well we just need to keep pushing it all right eugen uh necromancer uh so skin and the atmosphere or color choice sure so we can be pretty straightforward of both of those we'll we'll go to this one so the skin is too flat uh i understand you're going for a dead necromancer skin i'm good with that uh i have no issue with that but i need it to be more um more tones in there more soft subtle weak pinks purples blue tones and then higher highlights going up into white and white gray there's just not enough contrast of value in there we need to really make sure that that's looking alive and interesting i like some of the pink and like the nose the ears and the cheeks i think that's good um but we need to keep pushing that up uh overall environmentally like you would you know one of the things you said was the the atmosphere and color choice atmosphere there's not really much to say you didn't create much of a particular atmosphere of lighting or anything like it's not if we would have had like a direct moonlight with a blue white light that's also showing on the skulls like we have a lot of different light sources here seemingly because the skin looks very cold and has cold highlights as does the robe and the the or the two robes i guess yet the skulls all have warm highlights and the wood has warm highlights so like a good universal highlight color of a singular cold pale blue light you know would have done that instead what i suspect happened is you went oh wood wood is brown here are my colors for brown wood here is my skull skulls are like this here are my colors for skulls right and that's you're not creating an atmosphere when you do that you've got to have you've got to integrate those colors of the environment of the atmosphere into all of the different elements so that's what i would say hope that helps all right uh lol if i want to spend another two to three hours what would you do sure so well first of all we gotta i would work on the eyes the horns those kinds of things this kind of an inverted color scheme is always tough let me just say that and this model looks a little soft so it's gonna be hard i don't i don't know that i would spend two or three hours on it it probably wouldn't i probably wouldn't paint it but um i would focus on these things one on details like the face and the eyes you know what you've got to do is you got to create more interest up here so you've got this highlight yellow it shouldn't just be like yellow stuck in there it's still needs to have orange but you can have a yellow white in there but do that all over the face make it look like the face is the hottest area right so have little bits of like white yellow very small amounts going out to orange and then into your your brighter colors to draw visual interest there the horns right now are just flat black texturing contrast something to make them visually interesting and then uh same with the like the base the base itself is just black it's just a color the blue is also standalone like there's nothing that matches that blue it's fun that you integrated a little bit of the blue in here but you know there's not like there's nothing to match this it's just a very like striking color you can't use a full saturated color like that when it's the only example of that thing on the model it needs to be spread around in some way or just like it's subtracted like i just i wouldn't have made that a blue sword or if i was going to be blue it would be super desaturated and mostly like uh white gray would just or or even white yellow with just little hints of blue somewhere and even then i'd use a very weak blue so there you go hope that helps all right mic uh with a big bust so the biggest thing i know is here for not bust i'm sorry big uh repaint of an actual figure yeah sure cool texturing like the color don't have enough volumetric highlights i can break this down really simple you did a great job paying attention to the little pieces but overall he has no volumetric highlighting the bottom of his pecs the bottom of his torso the bottom of his uh here where his legs are that kind of stuff on his arm shapes we don't have the lighting the shading that is going to be the overall lighting of the atmosphere he's in you know if you think about looking at the thing in a comic book there's always going to be they'll use like you know the traditional hash lines or something like that or computer generated shadows that are just like cut in there right now it'll be very comic booky but we don't have those shadows present he's just all universally like here the light that's striking the top of his head and the top of here is basically the same as what's up here and here we've got a little bit higher ones in a few places but not near enough so we got to push that total volume contrast up to really take control that light but i really like what you do with the micro stuff like on a small scale the individual rocks are good you could honestly fix this with like 10 minutes in an airbrush uh to be completely honest of just working in some some environmental universal shadows and and have a great day because you did all the hard work already and did well okay uh jasper uh i feel like too much negative space in the bottom of the base uh any suggestions for tweaking the composition how can i level up my basing any feedback for the dragon would be appreciated sure um yep it probably is uh my number one advice would be shrink the base um use only the space you need to use so like he has this little cut off tail and move this up to here like this base should be this big it shouldn't be this big right shrink it in like don't use the amount of space you need um as to the realistic base like again you have a lot of unpainted stuff on here when you do grasses and things like that they've got to get painted all the same we've got to take control of it we've got to have lighting we've got to have shadow we've got to have contrast we've got to have areas where the light's hitting it where there are shadows being cast that kind of stuff more variation in the types of grasses we're seeing in the natural stuff like you're you're your brain did a thing your brain did a human because these these little flower tuffs you put they're not random there's like a very strong pattern you put on here right like right they need to be different and much more random and organic because that's what's going to make it feel like nature uh the dragon i like it except i don't like the purple it's too saturated it's too strong it needs to be weakened down and or shaded um you know it should be like something that's not it's the only existence of that purple it looks really out of place and really draws my eye um the bones also at the same time like i've said before it needs more texture if you're gonna do a hacked off thing with like blood there should be blood there there should be actual blood so you know like some kind of drippy blood that just looks kind of like a cut salami um which we don't want to go for so there you go all right poncho um yeah so with this guy i looked at this earlier number one thing i noticed again it's all contrast the base is fairly boring i understand you want wasteland that's cool you can still add stuff in there a little rotten tufts some skulls use the basing space when you have a model like this on a huge base we got to use it the contrast on things like the red of this guy's skin the gold the skin of the mutants underneath all fairly flat the fire doesn't feel visually interesting enough it doesn't go hot enough at the low point doesn't come dark enough where it's getting colder we need more integration of things like whole red and stuff like that so those are the big things that jumped out at me hope that helps poncho all right next up ace uh snapping turtle painted entirely in oils trying to be more vibrant uh so this looks really nice when i look at this guy earlier i really like the green i think it's eye catching i love how you have it focused mainly up here at the top of the mini where you're wanting to draw my eye with just a little bit down at the bottom to bring it into harmony uh the tabard here his little cloth feels kind of boring great place a great chance for some more texturing mud speckling stuff like that that's the number one thing that jumped out at me on that uh on the skin we need to smooth out some of these transitions like i really love your integration of the red in between the green and his skin here we need a little more smoothness of that coming out like softening that red transition out i think would really work and sell for me and then finally his eyes are just kind of these flat black globes i understand that's turtle eyes probably are um but you still need to actually make a specular highlight in there that shows where the light's reflecting so he doesn't look kind of just dead um those are the big ones that jumped out at me overall cool print and uh yeah cool model all right daniel uh what's the this is an interesting way to phrase this that daniel asked what's the worst part of the model so he can tackle his weakness uh and why is that this trigon looks so boring to me um sure uh because it's mostly browns i mean it's that simple of an answer brown is a naturally boring color when's the last time you looked at a field of mud and thought what beauty doth my eye perceive right i mean browns are boring colors it's pretty much that simple now uh like your eyes just don't find that visually interesting now that means that i'm not sure i agree with you but you could push the texture farther and integrate other colors into the into the brown to bring that up um i like the texture on the shell you could just could go farther even more push more more thin hashy lines i think is the right answer there uh on the skin i think that's good although we need more shadows like if you're going to do the thing with the turquoise this this sort of blue green color great just push it even farther pop up our highlights more integrate some purple into the shadows and then we've got a lot more color and visual interest going but on the whole i think this is a nice model i think you did a decent job just keep pushing that texturing and keep pushing that contrast oh worst part that's the way you phrased it uh yeah the worst part's probably the blue green it's the most visually interesting but it's the like color wise but it's got the least contrast it needs to come way up higher into the highlights and have way more in the shadow sorry there you go to to fit the way you ask the question daniel okay florian uh tried to push the contrast for the zenithal source of light so and then he said what's the last thing he said here uh i know i need to give the wings more love to make the details pop well good yes do that you knew that um i don't really feel the zenithal light source here florian i'm gonna be honest like there's no zenithal light source because this yellow is basically the same as this yellow right and like there's just not enough variation here of what's going on um we also don't have enough separation of elements like again these things need to be there's no shadow in between the fingers between the thumb and the finger between the hand and this between the hand and this between the hand and then or the bracer in this part right like these things all need to be strongly separated if you want to have that kind of lighting then there has to be shadows light cast shadows and we're just not separating our elements here as well her face is more or less flat yellow wake we need a lot more contrast of value here to sell me on the zenithal light the underside of her her breasts and her torso and her face need to be coming down into more shadow right same with her arm uh and with her leg like it we just don't have that level of contrast and i would say a lot of this we need to get in there and get some of that detail going with all these micro volumes right we got lots of micro volumes need to start picking those out make sure that each of those have their own attention paid to them their own lighting like every bump on her leg needs to have its own light to dark minimal transition going all the way down so there you go all right stew first bust uh wanted to use it for deliver practice great yep no problem uh wanted to experiment different textures subtle directional lighting and a more limited palette yeah so this is great man i think you did a really nice job you can keep pushing yourself my answer would be just keep doing more of it the non metallic gold needs a little more work it doesn't go up high enough into highlights here and here um texture wise i think the the rusty sort of crusty uh shoulder pad is really nice you want to get your lines really nice and small when you're working on this same with the non metallic steel on the bell buckle it doesn't come up high enough doesn't reflect enough light and you want to make sure we've got you know like edges picked out and stuff like that um the hair needs more attention here at the braids like i like what you did up here this is great we're we're panting pro v all the way down here i need about the same treatment when we don't quite have the same attention and let light levels down here um your texturing overall looks really good with the green orc skin that we need to work in more hues we've got a little bit of reds i like what's around the eye i'd also love to see some around the nose and in these kind of structures under here in the chest like at the muscles you know those kinds of things also picked out uh but i think overall i really like the skin you did a really nice job you're really paying like you're loving the face and that's why i'm that's what i'm here for stew you killed it with the face it's great stuff lots of attention paid to the details lots of like interesting use of shadow and color i'd love a little bit more red in the cheeks like how you worked it in subtly push that a little farther like make some of the shadow a little stronger red but this is really nice your eyes by the way are really really strong this right here is great it feels like you spent a lot tell me if i'm wrong like you spent a ton of time up here and then in this you were like yeah you spent some time but this was a lot of your time which by the way is not the wrong thing like the face is what everybody looks at the face here is fantastic it's a triumph this doesn't feel like it's done to the same level as the face so there you go that's what i'll say about cool bust all right alex feedback on the bestilladon individual elements i'm not sure it all works together i'm not sure the shell or the crystal the right color well what's the right color i don't know what's right or wrong stuff i noticed much like the things i've said so far not enough volumetric highlighting not enough contrast not paying enough attention to the overall light and how it's respecting the surface again i'll talk about my arm picture my arm is this dinosaur this is much brighter than this i understand he has a different color underneath like he has a lighter color that's fine it still needs to have shadows and be a shadowed color of that as it falls away from the light this white here on his leg is the same as down here this white here is the same as down here right that's what doesn't ring true with the gem the big gem it's boring i would go look at my how to paint gems video like i have a cool or i have a cool video what a what a full myself i have a video it's probably not that cool probably actually quite bad but anyways i have a video on painting gems uh i also have a video on painting warpstone go watch both of those those allege in the right direction on gems and how to get that light in there um the gold as well doesn't have enough contrast we're not taking enough control of the light so more use of integration of you know shadows and highlights into the gold taking control of those bright reflections and stuff like that that's what jumps out of me so hope that helps alex all right joe uh with the big great unclean one uh much the things i said earlier we're going to also apply here joe like i like the use of color but we need a lot more contrast of value and of hue this guy has all sorts of micro textures we need to be working in other colors reds and purples and uh and stuff like that into the skin itself and we need to push that contrast of value way up way way up um this guy's way too flat he you know like this green is basically the same as this green is famous here same as here same as here like he's very very very flat i need a lot more attention paid to the the highlights and shadows of the volumetric highlighting of the total model uh as well as to then working in variation of hue into the individual elements of it so there you go hope that helps okay steve uh so steve much of what i've said before it's going to apply here as well compositionally i would say away from this kind of like overwhelming yellow it just doesn't really sell very well if you're going to do it it has to have a lot of other tones worked into it it's very flat it's very just sun yellow and it's very bright that's a that's a hard color on the eyes and so if you're going to do that you have to work in rust tones and brown tones you have to come up into highlights but your number one thing steve i would encourage you to work on is just contrast green is very flat yellow is very flat bones are very flat like everything's flat we've got to push that contrast up okay so i like the green armor the the execution on it but again contrast contrast contrast and again i would also work on matting out your stuff that isn't metals um you know paint the non-metals first apply some like ultra matte varnish or something like that and then because this red is like very reflective i would also avoid using colors like this like don't use full saturated red and have this be the only red compositionally that's a no no you red is a very eye catching color i know he has some wings but those are in shadow and very hidden right and you can barely see that other red so when i'm looking at him like this where's my straight on photo again there we go i'm basically just my eye is drawn here not here if you desaturated all these reds universally into more brown or black tone you know integrating those in it would be a lot less offensive and i'd be okay with it so there you go steve all right steven banks uh try to get good contrast and smooth blends on the skin at the same time putting in some texture and dotting approach would appreciate feedback on this and any other things yeah i think you did a nice job of integrating the overall colors i think you did avoid the island effect what he means by that is just like having a circle of shadow light light lighter and you know every muscle being like that that's not what you want um the guys up top feel like they need more contrast the big boy looks good i like the use of the various reds and stuff in the shadows i think that's well the individual figures on the top though like the skin the purple of him the skin of of i don't remember all the brothers glott i don't remember their individual names but that's where it feels like we've got some opportunity to build that up same with the bones on the top picking out some individual lines pushing that contrast as it comes near his skin with just a little bit of higher highlights and really continuing to push that up would help i think the skin of big glott looks good i think we just didn't push the contrast on the other brothers enough like there's not enough life in the green armor in the skin in the purple robes stuff like that so with a big figure it means you got a big investment of time if you want to take it up to that level so hope that helps all right uh first post here's thanks so much for all your videos first ever 75 scale mini and 20th mini overall okay uh appreciate feedback on the skin tones contrast and muscle definition yeah so you're doing really well for your 20th mini um things that i think really work like the leather texturing i think that's great like the the steel like the non-metallic work down here your hashes and scratches scratches and stuff sam lens would would be proud of you let's go over to this picture here like the purple integration we can keep pushing on the skin especially on his torso actually i think the torso is the major area where i'm not feeling enough of the contrast i think he did much better on the arms still need to soften the transition into four and five a little bit the hair feels a little flat because you just did this like rainbow pattern i would honestly love this guy if he didn't have this hair um or if the hair had life in it and it just doesn't right now like this guy has all sorts of wonderful contrast in life and then the hair just looks like it's a piece of plastic glued to his head because i don't have the contrast of the hair coming down into shadow having high highlights on it the individual strands being picked out that kind of stuff so that's kind of what i would have you work on um i think you're great with leathers like this is for your 20th model to work on your leathers and your texturing is phenomenal you obviously have a great mastery of that i really love what you do with the metal um really like what you're doing there you've minimized you want you add old metal so you minimize the highlight volumes great um i would have stretched this one a tiny bit more down up uh or sorry i would have inverted this one and flipped it a little bit more here so it kind of is more this shape but that's a minimal thing um and then like i said on the skin i just need to see it pushed up a little bit more on things like the face to make that more visually interesting uh that's where it feels like we didn't pop enough and then the chest more of the more of the low tone transition into into three four five is what i'm missing there so there we go that brings us to the end of the month uh at any rate i hope everybody enjoyed that thank you very much everybody who submitted to this new format uh next month is unit uh february is unit of troops march is armor or vehicles april is single figure uh in traditional uh 32 mil scale or or large again sorry traditional 32 mil scale may is diorama and then june is whole armies uh so we're gonna have some fun stuff in the months upcoming and i'm very much looking forward to it thank you to everybody who submitted i hope all this feedback was helpful uh as always uh if you've got any questions you can feel free to drop into the comments uh if you want to join us link is down below thank you so much everybody submitted it's great bravery thank you to everybody throughout the month who stays positive who answers questions this is supposed to be a hobby focused community focusing on positivity and helping people take their next steps live up to those virtues every time you interact in this community because that's what makes us all stronger together when we're all reaching on a hand to drag to pull somebody forward to take their next step just as somebody in the past reach out their hand to you so with that i'll say thank you very much everyone we'll see you next time


Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we are going to discuss the Rafale deal in which Anil Ambani is playing a major part because he has been made the partner who will take over from Rafale, the manufacturing locally of the aircraft from Dassault, the manufacturing in the aircraft. And therefore, the 50% supposedly what is called the offset is going to be done by his company. Now, the interesting part is Modi government had come to power based on the issue of 2G and 2G corruption. And Parujya who is with me in this show today remembers that 2G scam was not just about Mr. Raja and what was being done in order to give license to favoured parties, but there were certain favoured parties. And Anil Ambani's reliance was one of them who got through swan telecom the license. So, will you tell us a little more about Anil Ambani and his involvement in swan telecom and in that sense the beneficiary of the 2G scam was really his company. Pramit is very interesting that you are trying to draw a link between developments that took place quite a few years apart from each other. Now, there were many, many corporate conglomerates that were the alleged beneficiaries of the manner in which the then union communications minister, Andhya Muthur Raja followed his what is now evident deeply flawed, extremely corrupt system of first come, first served while allocating second generation electromagnetic spectrum. And one of the major beneficiaries, I mean the license as you know subsequently got cancelled by the Supreme Court, one of the major beneficiaries was the ADAG, the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani group headed by the younger sibling of the two Ambani siblings Anil Ambani and it all pertained to a company called swan telecom. Now, swan telecom was a very, very unusual corporate entity and if one goes by the charge sheet that was filed by the central bureau of investigation, it was held in a very, very convoluted, complicated manner through various firms in different parts of the world in tax havens and so on and so forth. But there was a very, very interesting side to it. It seemed you know there were so many companies and they started running out of names for the company and so swan was just one company. There were many, many names from that menagerie. It's almost as if they went to a zoo and there was a company called Zebra, another called Tiger, another called Parrot, another called Giraffe, another called Cheetah and so on and so forth. But the short point is Anil Ambani kept denying that he had anything whatsoever to do with swan telecom. The fact is he did not deny that his companies were involved with swan. He said I was not a party to the wrong doing. My people were, they are being charge sheet, they could be involved but I don't remember anything. Absolutely. So he did not say my companies are not involved. No he never said that in fact there were three senior executives of his who actually had to spend time behind bars. But both he Anil Ambani as well as his wife Tina, they said you know we sign on so many documents on so many papers of so many companies, hundreds and hundreds of them. We can't remember all of them. And the amount involved which they completely forgot or did not register was just a small amount, it was 1000 crores, roughly about 1000 crores. That small change for people of big conglomerates by Indian standards. The second part of it that's an interesting part is that the names on the swan telecom was registered under somebody's signature and that was Mr. Hari Nayar who is the one who has been charge sheeted and his email address was given as the reliance official email. I mean his email is the reliance IDG. That's correct. So CBI has charge sheeted him and two of his other colleagues who were clearly who against paper trail was available. And all along Anil Ambani kept saying that look you know I meet all the telecom ministers it's not just Mr. Raja I met Mr. Pramod Mahajan I met Mr. Kapil Sibal but the point is what they said and this is interesting is that what this the defense strongly denied was really the main allegation of the CBI and that was what prompted the CBI to call the Ambani as witnesses on the witness box was that this company the swan telecom was actually like a shell company. A shell company which was not eligible for the spectrum and the license that they got. Essentially that was the sum and substance of the CBI allegation. And the reason that reliance did not quote on their own of their own bad because they already had a license and therefore if they had got a second license that it was a violation of the license therefore they were not eligible they're not eligible. So they in fact were the maximum they could have held was up to 10 percent and officially they held about 9.9 percent or something and the rest was all held in the name of these animals from the zoo or the birds from the zoo as you have talked about. And you know it's very interesting the apiary and the menagerie or whatever what one of the interesting I mean for me as a journalist I came across I realized how do you obfuscate you know there's something called ownership and there's something called control and and heavy tomes have been written given the complexities of the company laws but typically what happens and this is something I found very easily one set of definitions is that you exercise managerial control only if you have majority shares in a particular company that means you have to have 51 percent. Now what happens is some of these deals are sliced and diced and unstructured in such a complex manner as to deliberately obfuscate the real owners often called the beneficial owners and how is it done? Say you have three corporate entities A, B and C or you can call them swan and parrot and cheetah or whatever. A holds 50 percent of B, B holds 50 percent of C and C holds 50 percent of A. Nobody's holding 51 percent these companies are ostensibly associated with one another yet nobody controls it. I mean these are some of the the legal slate of hand that is appropriate. But it's an interesting issue also that in this case particularly the swan telecom case reliance indirectly held I think they put in not held they put in 90 percent of the money and they did it as using share capital and preferential shares therefore they did not appear in the books as if they are the owners of the shares but leaving the shenanigans out the second part of it which I think again needs to be focused on that swan telecom got before it had received the licenses it had received loans from state bank of India and Punjab national bank even before it had received licenses and once it received licenses it got up to I think 3000 crores from the Indian public sector banks including Punjab national bank and state bank to the tune of 3000 crores only on the basis of the paper as we now know that paper was Kurt Simistra Raja but if it was Kurt Simistra Raja the beneficiary is clearly Mr. Ambani or his company and then and in fact if if he is the beneficiary the loser are the people of this country because they are the people who are ostensibly the shareholders of these nationalized banks and the owners of the spectrum. Secondly after the licenses received 44 percent of it is sold to Italy's at Emirates company and they pay a huge premium so before the company starts operation they have based on the fact they've got a license they've already got a huge premium whatever money they have got what they had actually spent they've already got much more than that now with all of that benefit from Mr. Raja benefit from the finance ministry virtue of the loans they have taken without essentially any asset being mortgaged just basis on the paper license same person today becomes a beneficiary of Mr. Modi is the largest that he becomes a preferred partner for the Rafale deal when in the sun aeronautics has already experienced abilities manufacturing setup and it can be expanded for the manufacture of Rafale as well while Anil Ambani's group has absolutely no manufacturing experience how do you explain it except crony capitalism absolutely you know Praveer whereas I have I can pretend to know a little bit about the whole so-called 2g spectrum scam case as one of its petitioners as one of the petitioners and but you know I'm not an expert really on defense deals but the little I've been able to understand and read and this is all in the public domain I mean they've been literally hundreds of articles that have appeared in all kinds of newspapers and magazines and websites they all kind of point towards one specific aspect you know this is not capitalism this is crony capitalism what how do you say it here you have a public sector undertaking HAL Hindustan aeronautics limited I'm not an expert so let me say as a layperson the way I see it it was supposed to be a major beneficiary of this agreement if you like with the French manufacturer and this was supposed to be a mutually beneficial deal because the French company was itself in a bad shape and no other Air Force from any other country were willing to buy its aircraft and it was only supplying its aircraft to its own Air Force so here was a very very crazy and inverted logic that was deployed to say here is India still ostensibly a developing country a third world country and here is a so-called advanced country in in Europe member of the Security Council with veto parts and here we are ostensibly trying to bail out a fighter jet manufacturer which is in in in dire straits and then the whole story gets an even more stranger and I would say pernicious twist when out of the blue a private player comes up and he's nowhere in the picture and suddenly in record time these companies are set up and before you know it once again Mr. Anil Ambani and his corporate entities seem to be all ready to laugh all the way to the bank and back so it's an interesting issue that here is the shall we say the preferred beneficiary of the 2g scam in which of course you detect as you know the Ruyas SRs you I think part of the loop that's correct though a unit a group with telly nor of Norway you know all these deals have been called unstuck completely they got all unstuck the foreign companies of course were left holding the bank as well as the banks both of them have taken very heavy hits on that but the promoters who actually benefited from both sides selling the shares as well as the licenses they as you said laughed all the way to the bank I mean there were some exceptions Mr. Sanjay Chandra who is heading the unit a group he ended up behind but which had nothing to do of course with the telecom scam it had something to do with their real estate deals it's also interesting that you know the Sanjay Mr. Chandra went to jail Mr. Anil Ambani did not his associates went to jail it does appear that it could be the government was more soft all Mr. Ambani than they were in Mr. Chandra for the telecom scam or it is that they Mr. Chandra's were much more open about what they're doing and Mr. Ambani his memory helped him by not being able to remember any of the transactions this company had done but leaving all of that out the point is that here is our companies who are deep deeply embedded shall we say or in bed with Mr. Raja on the 2G scam who now are center stage on the controversial Rafale deal but one second one second why are you surprised probate you know these individuals you named here Anil Ambani this would be true for many of the big industrialists the big capitalists of India and I dare say in many parts of the world they are for them in that sense apolitical Mr. Anil Ambani at one point of time was very close to the Samajwadi party the point is industrialists more than perhaps most others certainly know as to use a old somewhat archaic British phrase know which side their bread is buttered all they know who is in power and who is an authority and know exactly how to play that game that's how we'd like to end this part today that essentially what we're looking at are what appears to be the actors of the stage but who is directing the show for whose benefit that seems to be something which is not being registered or if it is it's not being talked about so the play might have been the actors in the play might be Mr. Raja might be the telecom secretary at that time Manmohan Singh's government and so on but the real people who are benefiting from it much more than Mr. Raja or the coterie around him but really those who made a killing out of these deals and they seem to be doing the same with Rafale deal today so essentially the play might have appeared to have changed but the actors at least behind the scenes continue to be the same thank you very much for the touch will be in conversation on these and other matters this is all the time we have a news click today keep watching news click visit our YouTube site or Facebook page and do get in touch with us if you have anything that you want us to do


Creative writing activity for the ESL classroom, letters to the future. Even though the letters students will write in this activity are addressed to the future, that doesn't mean the language in them has to be limited to future tenses. A few different themes for letters to the future include Obligations and rules, have students write letters to their future children, explaining their family's rules. It's important to take care of yourself, so you must sleep well. Also I don't like to study, so you don't have to study. Memories, students write letters to their future selves, describing something that happened recently that they hope to remember in the future. Do you remember the school festival? I ran in the relay race. I helped our team win. A day in your life, write a letter to people thousands of years in the future, describing what daily life is like in your present. I wake up at 7 o'clock. I cook breakfast. I usually eat. Thanks so much for watching. We are ITTT, the leading provider for TEFL and TSOL training courses. If you like this video, please subscribe by clicking that button down here and click on any of the videos here on the left for more interesting teaching tips for getting certified to teach English abroad and online.