Family Painting: Arcadia Quest

A few years ago, I bought a copy of Arcadia Quest secondhand from a friend who wasn't playing it. I didn't know much about the game, but I figured it would be a good source of minis at the time. Yeah, this was back before I had cases of unpainted stuff from Kickstarter projects, which wasn't so long ago in absolute terms. My wife, my eldest son, and I played a campaign, which ended gloriously when my son attempted a longshot to defeat the big boss, made it, and won the campaign. A couple of months ago, I brought it back out and played through a campaign with my two eldest sons, and we enjoyed it.

Fast forward to November 2019, and I was trying to think of something fun to do with the family for Christmas, to go along with some of the fun stuff I had to give them. Looking around my office, I thought of Arcadia Quest and its box of unpainted miniatures. Honestly, I'm not very keen on the chibi style. If I were to pull out a set of miniatures from the unpainted archived, I'd probably go with the wonderful monsters of Massive Darkness or Rising Sun. Stuffed Fables was enough of a serious attempt at painting round, smooth surfaces for me. Why not take the Arcadia Quest guys, then, and make it a family painting project?

Between that decision and Christmas, I had to find secret ways to get everything ready. When the family was out or otherwise occupied, I found time to prep, clean, cork-mount, and prime the figures, and then to split them into bags for each family member. For the prep, I did not bother with the occasional seams and mold lines. I was more concerned about the ridiculous chibi cleavage. For the most part, I was able to maintain my sense of being a responsible parent by giving the more exposed characters to my wife and me to paint, but the sculpts of the Sisters of Pleasure were really falling out of their dresses.

I used my Millput to fashion something a bit more presentable to a table full of young boys.

I had some concern that I should have done this work before priming, but the milliput took the paint really well. In the end, I don't think you can tell they have been modded.

Priming was a particular pain because this was in the depths of my frustration with my airbrush. The black was just not coming through properly, so I ended up turning to my old Bob Ross Black Gesso, which I don't think I used since before painting the Descent heroes. I was doing a lot of figures at once, and unfortunately, I did end up with a few unfortunate bubbles. I decided to just move forward with them despite this: we're going for quality family time, not Golden Demons. Once I got the black down, I was able to finish them all with zenithal priming, since my grey and white have worked better from the airbrush than the black.

I put each family member's name on their bag, boxed them up, and put a big label on the box that said something like "For The Crafty Family". Christmas morning, the family opened it, and they were really excited. That night was the night that some of us painted the Clank Legacy figures, but two days later, we did our first Family Painting session, and it was a blast.

In a moment, I'm going to share the photos of each family member's finished set, rather than my usual figure-by-figure photography. First, though, I want to tell you a great story about painting with my youngest son. He was four at the time, and the first figure he wanted to paint was one of his big Hammer Beastmen. He was sitting two seats over from me, so I couldn't really see what he was doing. When he held it up, it was veritably dripping with paint. I can remember my second son doing a similar thing with his first miniature, a dwarf from Reaper Bones. It's quite a testament to how much paints shrink! Before the next family painting session (which I believe was the next day), I gave him a few tips to prevent him from flooding the model. I told him I would sit next to him and help him get a better consistency with his paints. We got him a paper towel to have at his side, and I showed him how to gently dab the brush on the paper towel to soak up the excess. Below, you can see the result of his first miniature on the left and the amazing difference in quality he got with his second one, the goblin on the right.

In terms of materials, the two younger boys were using our collection of craft paints—the kind you get for a dollar or less. My wife, my two older boys, and I used the Vallejo Basic Colors set that we got them for Christmas. You see that there's a method to my madness: getting them nicer paints means that they could get more control and technique with their painting, but it also meant that I could use some reasonable paints when sitting with the family. For a few painting sessions, I brought down my neutral wash base (based on Les' recipe, but without ink) and my brown ink, but for the most part, we just used the Vallejo paints and water.

Now, let's look at the figures! I'll go in increasing age order.

These were done by my youngest son, when he was four-turning-five. I think he did a phenomenal job, given his age. He became very careful about how much paint was on his brush, always remembering to dab it off on paper towel, and this gave him a fine level of control.

The above photo are the figures done by my third son, who is seven. He was really all by himself on this one. I had given everyone a copy of the character art from the game, and I think this son did a good job of color matching with the paints he had available. You can also see him having some fun with the yellow eyes that are prominent in these villain characters.

In my original plan, I had thought that the younger boys would not have the stamina to do as many figures as the older boys, so I had actually given them one fewer orc than are shown above. Those orcs had been given to my older boys. However, as we did more family painting sessions, I realized that I had this upside-down: the younger boys certainly could have done more figures in the amount of time that the rest of us did ours, because they work so much quicker. I talked to #1 and #2 son about this, and they both graciously agreed to donate one orc each to their younger brothers, so that we could all continue to sit together and paint.

These ones shown above were painted by #2 son, who was nine-turning-ten. I think he did a nice job. I feel kind of bad that Grom (the shirtless barbarian in the front middle) had one of the worst cases of bubbles from the priming, right on his face. If my son ever wanted to repaint that figure, we'd certainly strip it down to bare plastic rather than just paint over it.

One of the reasons why this has taken so long to post is that my son started the Minotaur in the back left, then became frustrated and didn't want to finish it. At one point, he had even given it to his older brother to finish. I encouraged them to renege on this deal, trying to get my son to realize that there was more merit in finishing the job as best he could rather than giving up on it. I suspect that part of the problem is that, at his age, he can see that there is a difference between his work and his older brother's work. I remember that feeling! I'm a younger brother, and my father and my older brother are both talented artists. I know that feeling that when we work together, my stuff just doesn't look as good as theirs. I tried to help my son see that the important thing was that we were all learning and growing together. After a few weeks away, we did a final Family Painting session where he finished that Minotaur (and I finished Maryjane from Posthuman Saga, if I recall correctly).

These ones were painted by my oldest son, at age twelve-turning-thirteen. Some of these are really impressive, if you ask me. He did a bang-up job on Spike, the dwarf with the mohawk; the photo here doesn't show all the tattoos that he carefully lined in. His goblin archer on the far right shows some great tattoo/facepaint work as well. He was unhappy with Diva—the blond in pink armor—when he painted her, but he felt better about it after putting it down for a few days. Blonde hair can indeed be tricky, and tinted metallic armor was definitely something he had never tried before. The troll in the back is also noteworthy for his subtle use of contrasting colors in the recesses. I didn't notice it at first, but he shwoed me that in the recesses of the muscles, he put in a different color to get both shade and visual interest. Thanks, Sorastro's Painting!

Above are the figures painted by my lovely wife. Her patience and attention to detail helped her do really amazing work, although if you ask her about it, she will always fruitlessly compare her results to mine. I mean, if I can't paint slightly better for years of practice, then what good is years of practice? Regardless, I think her work on the robes of Zazu is particularly good, and she also mixed up some wonderful flesh tones.

Because the number of figures didn't divide evenly into the size of the family, I had given my wife one fewer figure to paint. Honestly, I thought she would mostly not care and just want to sit with the family—or take the opportunity to have some quiet solitary time. In fact, she was almost always the last one at the table, carefully working her figures and looking for places to touch them up and practice highlighting or shading.

Finally, these are my six figures. I think they turned out nicely, certainly fit for purpose. There are a few things I'll point out that I think are especially nice. I gave Maya (the sorceress holding up what my dad called a cabbage) a pale skin tone that left her looking a bit lifeless. I was happy with the transition over the smooth face, though, so I didn't want to repaint it. I applied a glaze of just red and lots of water over her cheeks in a few layers, and I like how this gave her a little more life; indeed, looking at it after a few weeks, I could have kicked it up a notch. I think I matched the tone on archvillain Lord Fang pretty well, although I still wonder why in the card art, he is wielding a fancy magic sword, but in the sculpt, he has a beat up old one. I think all of these figures would really be enhanced by some ink pin washes, but as one-session, minimal-material figures, I think they're pretty good.

That's all the Arcadia Quest figures from the base set. It was a wonderful experience to paint this with my family, and I think everyone enjoyed it. Now, when I look at miniature-heavy games, I find myself not just thinking, "Would this be fun for me to paint?" but also "Would this make a good second Family Painting project?"

Thanks for reading!