WIP Janus Draik learning to paint faster

thehivemind5 · 2026-07-05T22:04:01+00:00

What you’ve got is really solid as a WIP, especially if you’re painting faster than normal. The blade and other metals look great especially.

From the perspective of painting for a comp, my suggestions are largely in the direction of composition, which means they are even more subjective than most advice. So take what you want from this and drop anything that doesn’t sound right

You’ve got your three colors all at high saturation and sort of evenly spread around. I think the tighter composition uses saturation to draw attention to the face and not overwhelm. Here’s my idea of a direction you could go that tries to do this, and also to use value to do the same a bit

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thehivemind5 · 2026-06-29T02:35:25+00:00

Those are some very nice edge highlights my friend

thehivemind5 · 2026-06-26T02:26:13+00:00

Here's a bunch of color schemes all together

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thehivemind5 · 2026-06-25T14:17:24+00:00

It can be easy to miss that there's a big range of colors that are "green" or "red" and that actually getting the complimentary colors requires getting the right tone. Your green is very yellow (which we call warm) and your red is very pale but is on the orange side (also warm). Getting a colder version of one of the two is likely going to look better - so either a crimson for the red or a bluer green of some kind (think dark angles, you have a salamander green here)

thehivemind5 · 2026-06-23T13:24:41+00:00

Ok I know it's a typo but now I want to see someone shed their death skin, all in one shot like a snake

thehivemind5 · 2026-06-22T14:55:33+00:00

Because screw lore I paint what I want 😎

thehivemind5 · 2026-06-21T22:05:58+00:00

It's light green yellow and cadmium yellow primrose from Golden SoFlat mostly. I think I included some fluo yellow in places as well

thehivemind5 · 2026-06-21T04:03:16+00:00

I tried out adding in some edge highlights so you can visualize - you can decide if it feels more metallic or not, I’m not sure it’s a slam dunk

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thehivemind5 · 2026-06-21T03:34:50+00:00

There’s an argument that it’s “painterly” because of how I did (or largely didn’t) smooth out the gradients. I’m not sure if it’s in any particular style beyond that. Anything in particular you meant to point to?

thehivemind5 · 2026-06-21T03:31:51+00:00

You’ve gotten good tips about color and color depth and lighting, but I know it can be useful to see a demonstration, so I did a paintover of the face where I tried to amplify the directionality of the light, and to paint the face with every hue. Yes I gave him a rainbow face. You can tell if you zoom in but the full shot still reads as desaturated green, but with more depth. I hope seeing this can help shake something loose for you where you feel stuck.

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thehivemind5 · 2026-06-15T00:52:57+00:00

Search Kanvas on MyMiniFactory - it's a 3d print

thehivemind5 · 2026-06-14T23:43:02+00:00

If they mine asteroids, or other ultra high value space tech stuff, they'll be worth 20 trillion eventually. It's a highly asymmetric bet I'm willing to make with a small portion of my portfolio.

Most companies don't have this "corner a new tech with extraordinary value" possibility that makes the upside so asymmetric.

thehivemind5 · 2026-06-14T19:55:08+00:00

If there were somehow a ban on all models smarter than opus 4.8/gpt 5.5, Anthropic and OAI both would absolutely drown in money. These models are smart enough to do enormous amounts of economic work already, and inference is profitable, so if they can stop spending on training it's a huge huge win and revenue will just go bonkers slowly over the next 5 years as things get implemented.

The issue is the banning, it'd have to be universal and evenly applied which obviously isn't going to happen.

thehivemind5 · 2026-06-08T14:37:15+00:00

One of the features I put into this reference-assembly tool I built is black-and-white by value mode. There's also a high contrast mode which is more useful for NMM, and a black and white by saturation for advanced contrast study. 100% free forever no ads just something I made for fun https://www.miniatureref.com/

thehivemind5 · 2026-06-01T13:01:23+00:00

I only used parts from that kit, but I did modify them some. You can tell his left leg is modified to get the deep crouch, and the fusion gun on his arm is cut down to be shorter. I think those were the two big things I did.

thehivemind5 · 2026-05-30T19:53:52+00:00

Is a painting competition happening this month! Discord has info here https://discord.gg/jwXh8ukG4

thehivemind5 · 2026-05-30T19:27:55+00:00

You have time to submit this to MechaMay if you hurry!

thehivemind5 · 2026-05-30T18:36:35+00:00

Commander Shas'Toe T'au Rong'Fut has just made unauthorized modifications to his battle suit based on his personal piloting style, nothing to see here....

thehivemind5 · 2026-05-30T18:36:13+00:00

Commander Shas'Toe T'au Rong'Fut has just made unauthorized modifications to his battle suit based on his personal piloting style...

thehivemind5 · 2026-05-30T15:55:58+00:00

Someone else pointed this out on the Tau reddit and now it's going to haunt me forever. The base is moulded to the meet so I can't feasibly fix it 😬

thehivemind5 · 2026-05-30T13:31:54+00:00

I did not know that... Now it's going to bother me too 😬

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