Why?

It looks cool.

But honestly we’ve gotten feedback from players over the months suggesting that it’s hard to differentiate our named characters from the AI mobs that congregate on the board. They blend in too much with the crowd. This can have some bad repercussions in game, especially for new players. Even I have fallen victim to thinking a CyMS near my deployment zone was a friendly and forgot to deal with it (this has happened more often than I should admit).

We are also at a point where we need more sets of everything to play test with, which means I’ll be painting up 12 more CyMS whether I like it or not. With the feedback we’ve received in mind we had the idea to do “Sin City” style black & white for the next batch. My original thought was very lazy: zenithal prime the models. That’s it. And that’s how I started, but I should have known I couldn’t just stop there, it’s not in my nature. Instead I poured out some black, neutral gray, and white paint onto my palette and started playing around.

After 30 minutes or so, this is where I ended up. I liked what I saw.

Value Sketch, I Guess

I have ended up backing into value sketching without really knowing I was doing it. This is something my friend and fellow painter has been experimenting with recently, otherwise I wouldn’t even know I was doing it (thanks, Ben). Painting in this way is really helping me think about contrast. For a couple years I have known I need to be pushing my contrast - especially highlights - much harder than I do but I can’t always see it in the moment. I am very excited about any trick that can really make that sink in.

This has also been a great opportunity for me to practice some of the techniques I learned in my “Painting Black” class as GenCon. As a final touch I decided to add a little color in the eyes as a good focal point and a few “infected” areas as well.

Forgive the quick and dirty paint job. What do you think of our B&W CyMS? Did I push the contrast enough? (I know I didn’t…)