Without trying to sound creepy, I could listen to you talk about cyberpunk, or anything really for hours ! Thanks for another great source of inspiration!
@@52Miniatures Incredibly so! You have this sort of perfect way of sounding both confident in your statement but reflective as well. Like it is a constant stream of thought but also has a cohesive conclusion in mind as it goes!
Even within Cyberpunk there are so many directions to go. There's the sort of dirty neon of Akira and Ghost in the Shell that you favored here. I consider Blade Runner and Shadowrun to be more of a sort of wet neon. There's also the more 80s Outrun style you feel in Atomic Blonde, Hotline Miami, or old Lamborghini advertisements. Then I feel like Johnny Mnemonic, Neuromancer, and Strange Days carry a sort of cigarette stained metal feeling.
Cigarette stained sure is right. I think the thing with genres is that... well... we just like to put things in genres for some reason. I don’t really know why. We could just say “here is a story about a future”
Me, two hours into a project: I still have no idea what colours I'm painting. 52 Minis: I'm going to watch all these movies and read all these books before I decide what colours I'm going to use. Fabulous work!
Fear not: That's the art school way. Artists often let materials speak to them. That's what separate a mini painter and an artist: a mini painter wants a formula to make your models look good and dogmatically follows that while someone more artistically inclined (That doesn't make a mini painter minded person any worse, let's make it clear) may stop at some point and look at the mini and think what the mini is asking for. I really paint very few minis but when I do it's not a one way process but a back and forth, a conversation between a shape, a set of colors and me. And anything else but that is others' shenanigans. Inspiration, tutorials, theories... in the end the best way is your OWN way 🙃
I'm Australian but lived in Stockholm (Kungsholmen) during the 90s for 3 years so I absolutely love any exterior shots that make it into your vids. And back then I remember these quaint lil shops with a treasure trove of secondhand pop culture goodness, this shop reminded me of a awesome lil comic/book shop around Slussen. And I love this tale of inspiration, research and the application of it.
Thanks Matt! Some of those shops are still about but they are not as many. Sort of like record stores... going from smelling of stale cigarette smoke they now smell of high price tags..
"Stripping paint is a messy business and can ultimately stain your floor, much like a Cyberpunk crime scene". Alex, I could listen to a an audio only podcast of your work with as much enthusiasm as I watch your videos. Brilliant commentary, as usual. Two thumbs up.. one for your script and the other for your cinematography. I am also pleased with "the overall Cyberpunk vibe".
Thank you humbly Mark! I am enjoying making these type videos, regardless of the time they take. The stains on the floor in the other hand... well I’m glad I’ve got a less delicate floor in the new studio :)
I like your description of the "bar in Chicago". Living in Chicago...I can tell you that I've visited that bar many a time 'back in the day'. Brings back great memories. Thank you.
Alex: OMG! I'll never paint ten miniatures at once again! Me: I only have nine horde armies. I wonder if I should get another one? Great video as always :)
Been enjoying your content lately. I brushed into your stuff a few years ago when I was doing more D&D minis but lately I hadn’t been watching much in this vein. Your dry sense of humor is just perfect. Commensurate to the extra effort of using your non standard painting style on smaller than usual minis in a harder than it sounds quantity I figured I’d take the extra effort of making a comment. Thank you so much!
The ASMR beat-poet cadence of your voiceover, the videographic style, and the demonstration of such excellent talent, make this video excellently soothing and engaging.
These look absolutely incredible. I love the idea of the master color giving them a common theme without requiring the same colors one each miniature. I think I’ll try the same thing with the next adventuring party I paint up.
The sequence at @1:00 ... the lighting!! Genius. So evocative of any movie scene set in a cyberpunk/dystopian work ... shadow with glimpses of light streaming in. You style my good man, is nothing short of *chefs kiss*
Probably a very minor thing to notice given the sheer volume of information you went through in the video; but the effect of adjusting the focus on the group shot of the gang at the end was fantastic. It did a great job of highlighting each of the models while still keeping them all in context as a group
Normally, i don't watch your videos all the way through, because i'm convinced you are in love with the art of speaking, the subtle art of dramatic pauses, and your own voice. However, this was good, and the research you put in, was well worth the effort.
Another brilliant video. That violet filter you see in Ghost In The Shell was also what I imagined went into "The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel." Not just static, which is bright and chaotic, but sort of heavy and leaden pressing down on everyone like a weight.
I showed a good friend your chanell and just in time a notification pops up. In my browser I was the first to like the video which gave me a nice feeling. :) High quality storytelling and footage as always, thank you very much!
I really enjoyed this video, thank you for your insights on how to bring Cyberpunk to the tabletop and the pros/cons of Mother Colour in a palette. It was a great watch!
Great analysis of the cyberpunk esthetic. And a nice demonstration of how to use inspiration to not just copy, but to dig deeper and create an experiment for yourself that will teach you so much more than just copying!
Fate has shown me this video, which is great. Recently I have been buying and painting many different miniatures and miniature buildings to run a Cyberpunk DnD, and this has given me a good bit of insight. I've got the Escher gang and a load of other minis, so thank you for some inspiration on how I might go about painting some of them!
It's a hard vibe to get right, but you hit it hard. Neuromancer is my personal favorite, but your pool of inspiration is rich and deep. Sky the color of a television tuned to static.
I love how colourful things can get with the Cyberpunk style. Especially with the orange, that turned out really well as awalys Alex ^^ And oh boy... Han solo, I doubt I'll look at him the same next time I watch Star Wars with friends... thanks xd Also Ghost in the Shell, classic, a true man of culture I see!
I am subscribed to Rhystic Studies even though I have never played magic the gathering, nor do I plan too, but his videos are just so beautifully put together that it becomes an art form. This channel the second channel that gave me that feeling, but I do paint minis, so you have an unfair advantage :P.
I considered cyberpunk-ish Eshers. But my sister convinced me to glam rock girls. With leopard print, outlandish hairstyles and makeup. They are still my favourite. Even if it took a month to paint. :)
I think the mother colour works best with either a primary colour or with a very light highlight colour e.g. mixing a bone colour into your paints to create the highlight can look very different to if you use white. I think with secondary colours the pigments sometimes interact in unexpected ways.
I love how you draw inspo from more traditional means such as books and films vs what most of us do, the internet. It really champions the origins of our nerdy love. Kudos, man!
Thank Louie! Books I think is the biggest difference, I mean it could be audiobooks. But inspirational material that gets filtered through ones own thoughts and not visually hammered in straight away :)
I love your story.... I mean I started watching your channel because of the painting but it became so much more. Thank you for making it sooo interesting!
Amazing minis! and It was awesome to look at cyberpunk from the eyes of a new to the genre. For stripping I leave them in brake fluid and use a dental water flosser to remove the paint from even the toughest places, maybe it's useful in the future!
So cool! Cyberpunk is my personal nerd wheelhouse more than fantasy or space-based scifi, so I’m so happy to see it explored on your show. I also have a set of the Necromunda Eschers in my (pile of shame) collection, and I’d love to find other gang kits with that street fashion-meets-combat energy for kitbashing options. To talk about cyberpunk media specifically, the genre has changed a lot since the 80s, since what we rebel against in corporate society has also changed since the 80s. I strongly recommend Autonomous by Annalee Newitz as a book, Psycho Pass as an anime and The Red Strings Club as a game for modern works that reflect some of the current-day discussion points of the genre.
Thanks for the tip, I will most certainly check it out. As you say, most of my inspiration is "dated" pieces in a way. Something I really like. Almost like transporting the 80's into the future and adding some neon on the way. It would be intresting to read something written later.
Given that cyberpunk is one of my favorite genres i loved this episode. Your analysis is very, very much on point, and you have given me lot to think about for modeling and painting my own Cyberpunk gang for Stargrave/5 Parsecs/Infinity/etc. Will have to watch this video again, maybe even more than once, to digest it better. One thing i wanna say is that the ape is very much not out of place, given that one thing that does happen in cyberpunk with certain frequency is genetic experimentation or manipulation and/or uplifted animals (animals given human-like intellect), you recall the dolphin in Johnny Mnemonic for example? And there's more. So yeah, send that ape with your gang with zero regrets :D
Well thank you J, I'm glad to hear it. And your probably right, maybe the ape fits. I'm very glad I got to paint it, because... well.. it's an ape.. :)
A fantastic video! Ghost in the Shell is my favourite movie of all time, I love it! I really enjoyed your story of being inspired by it and other things to paint your gang. Really brilliant. Well done and thank you.
Your kit bashes turned out great! I especially like the use of Necron bits, I'm definitely going to try the same with my Eschers. The ape is totally legit cyberpunk: the result of a megacorp's genetic engineering program, or maybe an escapee from a brain augmentation experiment. All suitably grim cyberpunk back stories. 😎
they look great. For future reference though while members of a gang may not dress the same, they do tend to wear the colors of their gangs or carry items that have the color or symbol of the gang on them,
3:30 I recommend letting the mini's soak for a while (you can leave them in as long as you want) with the lit closed. That way the IPA doesn't evaporate as much since you need to scrub less. An old toothbrush also works wonders. Either that or a ultra sonic cleaner, but that is more of a luxury item as in that it's not essential. EDIT: also IPA can be used multiple times. Eventually it get saturated with paint. If you will leave it to settle, the paint will sink to the bottom and you can reuse the IPA by pouring it (or using a syringe if you want to be need) in a new pot. This way you don't waste much which is nice for your wallet and the environment.
I’ll be more patient next time! 😂 It did work out rather nice in the end. I agree, a sonic cleaner is a bit of a luxury item... if I striped a lot it would probably be worth it but just the mini now and again... I’d rather just scrub.
Cyberpunk and Scifi are my world... love the video. I made some cyberpunk miniatures last month, and loved, but I need more neon light in the next one ;)
Great video, great looking miniatures. I really enjoy all the research, thought and introspection involved in your painting projects and it makes for very interesting videos! SOme of the best painting content on RU-vid!
Those figures turned out so cool! I always enjoy hearing your thoughts on genre and aesthetic (with the bonus of more book recommendations). Hope the new space is still treating you well.
The Mother Color is something I wish to try...it has slowly gained some traction in my own painting development. This was quite helpful to illustrate the advantages to going forward. Thanks for that And of course, Cheers!
First of all, welcome back! Hope you had fun on your vacation. Secondly, what a great idea with the mother colour. I don't think I'd be able to pull it off just yet, but it worked so well in your case. Although, as a big cyberpunk genre fan the only thing I was wating to see were some brightly chromatic implants screaming at me with a combination of 80s kitsch and loud rock and roll energy. Still, very cool looking group that will definetly stand out on the table. Bravo!
Thanks :) The vacation was over way to fast and then work and the more to the new place has been dictating my life. Finally getting this video out was a great thing. I hope things will just move on a little more smoothly now :)
@@52Miniatures vacation is always too short. I had two months off and it just disappeared. I managed to paint 4 models in that time... so yeah, I'd say you're doing great!
Amazing work. Your viewpoint continues to inspire. One of these days I'll be able to apply inspiration from other sources other than whats been provided in the *insert game here* cannon. Thanks for the continued content.
Thak you for sharing your experience with this. You gave me a lot of great ideas. I am gong to have to pick up some violet and make some cyberpunk minis.
Excellent video - and wha an effort across ten minis! Another thing you could try (I might...) is edge-lighting (noth just highlighting) with neon - it seems very cyberpunk to have clothing with bright, built-in neon along edges as a fashion statement, like the runing lights on souped-up cars.
Another great video. I particularly enjoyed that shot of the whole band where you slowly panned the focus back through the party highlighting different groups of the troops as the focus shifted. I think cyberpunk is sort of one of those “you know it when you see it” genres. It feels very samey samey when you picture it in your mind’s eye, but when you actually look at visual examples it’s quite amorphous as far as genre aesthetics go. For example Star Wars is decidedly not cyberpunk, but the visual of a Jedi Knight (see: space samurai) pursuing a bounty Hunter through the industrial and neon lit underground of Couriscant, their equally neon lightsaber ablaze feels far more aesthetically cyberpunk than the decidedly cyberpunk Matrix’s mid nineties New York night shots.
Yeah, we (humans) are funny with the need for putting labels on stuff. We could just say "this is a story about a future".. instead there is space opera, cyberpunk, post apocalyptic... all these genres to make us feel more in control.
I love the knowledge being poured into my brain with all of this. I will never get the image of "Han Solo slapping a drugged out prostitute" out of my mind! LOL
William Gibson and Ghost in the shell, sir, let me shake your hand for such a good taste on the matter. Same place i would look for inspiration for a project like this
Thanks for this, I have been struggling with colour schemes for my printed cyberpunk minis, really interesting concept using a "mother" colour to tie disparate colour schemes together! I also have an image of magenta and blue tone fluorescents as a dominant influence in Cyberpunk theme, rightly or wrongly.
I really like the idea of mother colour ,atleast maybe just for use with skintone within a unit? I've been on the verge of buying some necromunda mini's for this exact kind of cyperpunk indulgence for a while now but Im really gonna have to try and reign in just painting everything like a damn neon red light district But the whole light in clothes idea is something that could really be played around with I think. Way above my pay grade but neon strips in shirts, collars or even on the side of pants could look incredible. Neko Galaxy minatures do some incredible cyperpunk themed busts if you wanna try your hand at something larger
I think a lot of the Necromunda stuff is great. A little more brave and not super stream lined. With the "mother colour", I think experimenting with different "additives" to skin tones is great. Just settle on the one " basic skin" and then add other colours to tint for warm, cold or whatever.
Was nice to see some works by Mel Odom at the beginning. I got the opportunity to take a novel writing class from him at the University of Oklahoma. Cool guy, learned a lot.
Another excellent and USEFUL video. Good to see some cyberpunk sci-fi, which is not well covered by my favourite RU-vidrs. Consider Infinity miniatures, they are really well designed.
One of the best cyberpunk series I read recently was Transmetropolitan. If you get a chance read it, also if you track it down Max Headroom very old 80's series, a lot of the western style of cyber punk was defined in Max Headroom and a 80's films, like robocop, Cherry 2000. It is all 80's excess so MTv and advertising from that era to is also a good visual reference. Plus Billy Idol's "Cyberpunk" album to get you into the head space of being Cyberpunk choom.
You made a very interesting use of the Necromunda minis. I used some to create a basis of Chaos cultists, instead of the more "boring" Chaos worshippers, for example present in the Blackstone Fortress. As they're devoted to Slaanesh (accompanying the Noise Marine), I gave them the same kind of colour scheme, in contrary to you. I'm still glad of my result, but comparing your creations and my ideas is very enjoyable!
Describing cyberpunk style as a lack of harmony is appropriate. Cyberpunk, to me at least, has always been a bit of a societal portmanteau, taking bits of disparate parts of various societies and smooshing them together with no attempts to hide or soften the edges and no care to try to match any of the differing attributes. As if someone cut and pasted pictures from all over the world, trimming to keep the most interesting bits, then gluing them together and overlapping the results until the individual images become lost in the cacophony of noise. There is no attempt at blending or grouping of the images. Each finds it's place in the noise, either lurking in shadow or lit in harsh tones. Each thing in the image has a purpose, and though you may be hard pressed to identify why it should be there, you immediately notice it's absence if removed.
Agreed! I like that it often is a very “un-apologetic” genre too. Often not explained as to why things are the way they are, it’s just facts. And one sort of has to learn / interpret along the way. May I say, it an intelligent genre?
