Painting Posthuman Saga

I backed Posthuman Saga on Kickstarter after talking to a gaming buddy about it. I knew relatively little about the game, but I had never painted any post-apocalyptic minis before. I think I must have been one of the first North American backers to get my copy, and over the past few days, I've been painting the characters from the core set. Turns out, painting post-apoc figures isn't that much different from medieval fantasy characters—more glasses, fewer fireballs, and about the same amount of backpacks.

I started out by working on the bases. I used the technique I talked about in my post about the Thunderstone Quest miniatures, where I laid down superglue, sprinkled in a little coarse, medium, and fine grit, and then set the glue with baking powder. Here's a process shot of how they looked before priming. (The Deluxe Edition mutant doll figure is shown here too, but I haven't painted it yet; that will be part of the next batch.)

I followed this with zenithal priming from the airbrush, although I'll quickly mention that I've been having some trouble with my airbrush. It's not clear to me if I need to replace some particular part or if this cheap brush just needs to be replaced and upgraded. I'll think about that a little harder on my birthday, perhaps.

I believe I drybrushed the bases with Beige Brown, although it may have been Flat Earth. The two colors are very similar. Increasing amounts of Ivory were added to get decent highlights.

Here are the figures in the order I painted them.

I started with the Guard. I had been away from all miniature painting for months until Christmas, when my family and I did our one-night painting of the miniatures from Clank Legacy. My family and I have also been working on something of a secret project that I look forward to writing about later, but suffice it to say for now that it involves short painting sessions as well. Working on the Guard reminded me how pleasant it is to sit in my office in the evening, listen to a podcast or some tunes, and make a plastic thing a bit prettier.

I started in on this figure by doing thin layers over the zenithal priming, something of a speedy approach as I used on the mobs in Journeys in Middle Earth. Really, I was thinking that I would get these characters done pretty quickly so I could get the game to the table. As I set into my chair and made progress on my Watch Later list on YouTube, I decided I would take a little more time on them. This was an in-progress decision, and it turned out having an interesting implication: the pants are done in a thin layer over the zenithal priming, whereas the rest of the miniature is painted in my more conventional style, mixing two-brush blending and layering as needed. It gives him a subtle kind of contrast that the other miniatures don't have.

I will also quickly mention that up until not long ago, his sneakers were bright white and red. I couldn't decide if I wanted to do any light weathering on these figures or not. I decided to do a little around the feet before varnishing them, and he definitely looks better this way than when he had out-of-the-box kicks.

The glasses were fun to paint. I borrowed from Ghool's Quick Tip about how to paint glasses, and I think the results are pretty good.

This is the Cage Fighter. I think she's the most visually impressive of the lot. The sculpt is good, and I think I did a good job pulling out the contrast.

All of these figures have prominent card art, which you can see on the Kickstarter campaign page. The art for this character has her in checkered pants, but I didn't want to take that deep a dive. I picked the most prominent orange color and used that. I thought about going in and adding more weathering to all the metal spiky bits, but I decided to keep them pretty clean.

Here is the Scout. His pants caused me some grief because they're so incredibly wrinkled, like they just don't fit. I suppose one must scavenge what one can. On my first pass, I painted it a solid color and then used a wash, but this got it too dark. I repainted in a more appropriate tone, but not completely opaque, and then painted in the shadows. After one more glaze of orange, I got it where I wanted it.

From the front, I think he looks pretty darned good. The back of this guy is another story. There's just nothing happening there. His jacket is almost completely smooth, and the bag over his shoulder is wholly uninteresting. I could have painted in some more details here, but again, I was feeling a tension between beauty and time. I decided it's good enough for now. If this guy turns out to be a favorite figure in a favorite game, maybe I'll address it again, but for now, he's table-ready.

This is the Scavenger. He's a really interesting character, and I love the combination of dark skin, pale clothes, dreadlocks, and overflowing backpack: he has a lot of texture. I still struggle to paint dark skinned miniatures from lack of practice. There can be so much rich tonal variation, but the highlights can still go all the way up. I need to be careful not to exaggerate or make it look cartoony. I think I did an OK job here, and fortunately, there's a lot of other focus areas to take away from just the flesh colors.

I saw another painter's rendition of this figure where he gave him different colored shoes. There's ambiguity in the card art, which has a sort of graphic novel style. I decided to echo the colors from the rest of his outfit back down into his feet, and I think this helps tie some of the pieces together. For example, the purple backpack color is repeated on his socks, which I think gives some balance. Like the Scout's pants, I like the idea that this tough-looking apocalypse survivor doesn't care what you think about his purple backpack: it's big, it fits, and it works for carrying odds and ends.

Painting glass bottles is always tricky, since you cannot paint clear. I decided to make it look like he's carrying along a half-empty Bombay Sapphire. The blue comes out of nowhere in the composition, but it makes me laugh.

Finally, here is the Scientist. Her skin is more of a milk chocolate tone, but very little of it is showing in the sculpt. The art has her peering through the glasses, but again, you can't paint clear. Originally, I did the glasses in black transitioning to magenta at the bottom, but there was an unclear edge at the top of the glasses then: not much contrast. The more I looked at her, the more I thought about what the future used to look like: magenta and cyan. Like the blue on the Scavenger, she gets an out-of-left-field shock of cyan on her glasses. It draws attention to her face and makes her look like a synthwave album, both of which are good.

After a first pass at the jacket, I ended up doing a black glaze over the whole thing to tone down highlights gone too far. The glaze medium left her jacket looking shiny, but I couldn't shake the idea that the highlights were still not right. I'm glad I revisited them, even though it was kind of tricky to paint: once she was matte varnished, it confirmed that the extra highlights on the upturned parts of the jacket were needed. It would have been too much black otherwise.

Here they are, all together. It was a fun set to paint, and I think they will look good on the table; I look forward to trying the game this weekend. I'll mention here (so I can look it up later) that the bases were ringed in Americana Dark Chocolate, which is a nice color but took three coats to get anything like good coverage. Usually I just slop on some black craft paint and am done with it. I thought about gluing on some burnt grass flock, but the more I looked at them, I decided I liked the spartan wasteland as it was.

Thanks for reading!