Painting Minifigures is CRAZY

Last year, I got into the Cosmere books by Brandon Sanderson. This coincided with his kickstarter for the Stormlight Archive Minifigures for the upcoming SLA tabletop game coming out (I think) this year (2024). I had never played any tabletop game, be it Warhammer or D&D or what have you, but I wanted those figures so I backed the Kickstarter.

Almost an entire year goes by, and I finally got them in the mail! I had only read Way of Kings when I ordered, but I really wanted the figure of “Wit” that came with the Words of Radiance tier, so I backed at that tier to get both.

Key for scale

I knew that these were going to be unpainted when I ordered them, and knew that I needed to prepare to attempt painting them on my own. So like any normal person, I searched online for “how to paint mini figures”, and found an entire WORLD of people who have painted the most magnificent little figurines for Warhammer and D&D. I have spent hours just watching people paint and restore old figures. It is such a cool talent to have, and I really enjoyed watching them.

With this knowledge, I ordered some paint from Amazon (by a company called Army Painter, which Reddit informs me is good) and decided to practice on the extra “Default Shardbearer” figurine that I got from the Kickstarter. I felt more comfortable practicing on this one because he doesn’t have a specific look that I needed to match to be book accurate, which relieved a lot of stress for a first-time painter like myself. Here’s what he looked like before:

I forgot to take a before picture, so here’s the box picture of what he looked like before painting.

It was way harder than I thought it would be at first, but eventually I got him mostly done. I used a layer of Metallic Steel paint to give his armor and sword that shiny glisten that metal has. After letting that dry, I did a thin layer of a dark green all over the armor, and let it dry for an hour or so. Finally, I used a Swamp Green Wash to add that contrast, and you know what, I think he turned out pretty good for a first attempt at painting. He was a good candidate for this sort of painting because he is all the same color (Shardplate in the books is all one solid piece of magic armor that molds to the user, and it is described as being all one color. The wearers don’t wear chainmail or anything special on underneath).

I had a lot of fun with this, and even though it isn’t perfect, I will get better and better with each figure. I am excited to continue on this project, and hope to be able to post what they all look like when I finish them!