In the Lord of the Rings fandom there’s a persistent debate whether balrogs, or Durin’s Bane specifically, have wings. The text in Fellowship is ambiguous whether what it is describing are literal wings or something else wing-like.
In the Lord of the Rings fandom there’s a persistent debate whether balrogs, or Durin’s Bane specifically, have wings. The text in Fellowship is ambiguous whether what it is describing are literal wings or something else wing-like.
Miniature painting: True metallic Vs non metallic metal.
Should you paint the metal parts of your minis in metallic paint (containing small amounts of pica and/or aluminium to give it a reflective shimmer), or is it better to use non metallic paints and paint the shimmer and reflections to give the illusion of being metallic?
Personally I prefer TMM, because it’s basically the same techniques but if you fuck it up a bit it doesn’t end up looking terrible like NMM, and while NMM looks great in photos I find TMM looks better in real life, which is where I enjoy my minis. NMM definitely requires more skill, but I don’t think the results are worth it unless you’re entering competitions.
I’ve done both. NMM is normally thought of as a skill flex, and it can be that. I’ve used NMM more realistic figures meant to look grounded, like WW2 infantry. Metallic paints can look too shiny for bare, but dull metals, and techniques like rubbing graphite are too subtle for me. I’ll paint bare metal items with a simplified NMM so they are easily visible on the table, but it’s not flashy so people rarely consciously notice.
TMM can look better than many people end up doing it by actually layering different shades of metallic and treating it like painting any other part of the mini instead of a single color + black wash.