Thursday 8 January 2015

Last Night on Earth: Starfleet Survivor Nyota Uhura

Third in my Star Trek-themed survivors from the Last Night on Earth board game is Nyota Uhura, the Communications Officer aboard the starship USS Enterprise. To represent Uhura I used Sally the High School Sweetheart, the board game piece which I felt had a similar hairstyle to the one worn by Nichelle Nichols who played the said character in Star Trek: The Original Series

Starfleet survivor and Communications Officer of the USS Enterprise, Nyota Uhura
Uhura naturally had a darker skin tone
Clothes colour scheme was an interplay between purple, green and yellowish brown

Painting Uhura allowed me to practice blending and layering a dark skin tone. Based on the photo reference I used (see below), her skin approximated a light chocolate hue. In the end, I was pretty happy with how close I came to accurately replicating Uhura's skin tone. Vallejo Model Color acrylic paints were used to paint the skin while Reaper Master Series (RMS) paints were used for the clothes (jacket, blouse and skirt) except for the boots which were painted using Citadel paints.   

Nichelle Nichols portrayed the character of Uhura in Star Trek: The Original Series
Side views of Nyota Uhura, the Starfleet survivor

Colour scheme for Uhura's clothes were predominantly purple (jacket), green (skirt) and ochre (boots) with neutral off-white on her blouse and jacket buttons. At times, I still struggle with chalkiness issues when using lighter hues from the RMS acrylic paint line. In this case, more work is needed on my painting technique because I had previously eliminated hard water as a possible cause. Well, sort of anyway as I had tried using distilled water to reduce chalkiness without much success.  

Bright red on the axe was actually painted in the shade of Uhura's original uniform
Back view of Starfleet survivor, Nyota Uhura
To complement her dark skin tone, I used a purple-green-ochre color scheme

Meanwhile, the weapons - specifically the axe - allowed me to add a bright colour into the mix. Red kinda works well with the rest of the colors and is definitely preferable to plain metallic grey.

Shots taken by a DSLR with macro lens can be misleading hence a scale comparison above

Next up for the Starfleet Survivors is a Star Trek character that always speaks in an accent. Actually, there are two - one Scottish and the other Russian - so it will either be Scotty or Chekov as the fourth survivor. Imagining these board game pieces as Star Trek characters is making painting them so much fun. And that's why we are in the hobby after all - to have fun. Otherwise, what's the point? 

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22 comments:

  1. Nicely done and great use of colour on the clothes to compliment the skin tones - great job.

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    1. Thank you very much Michael, you can be sure that your awesome color combinations are part of what inspires me to find the best mix of hues.

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  2. great choice and great painting job, this project is wonderful!
    bye

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    1. Thanks luca, it certainly has been and still is a fun project.

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  3. Lovely lady! Wow, the skin tone is gorgeous, I always find lots of problems trying these colours look natural. Hats off!

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    1. You are so kind Suber. Thank you. I was very happy with how the skin tone turned out only for me to mess up the eyes a bit. For once, I can blame the sculpt as the eyes were not even with small bumps that made painting irises very hard. The imperfections were too small to catch during prep work so that's why we paint 'dedicated' miniatures as opposed to just using any small plastic figure.

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  4. If you can get your hands on some vallejo model color ivory it's great for eliminating chalkiness when trying to lighten other colors :)

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    1. Thanks Zab! That's great advice. I remember you mentioning it to me once before and it completely slipped my mind in later projects. Many thanks for reminding me. :) I am well and truly sick of chalky hues. -_-

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  5. That's a beautiful paintjob dude! Looking forward to seeing the other fleet survivors.
    Hope your still enjoying H.O.T.D. dude.

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    1. HOTD looks promising so far, fan service can be inappropriate at times but nonetheless I love the zombie bits as they are extremely well animated.

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  6. Very well done! You've made a fantastic job on the skin tones.

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  7. That is fantastic brush work well done good sir!

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    1. Many thanks Simon ... that reminds me, my nylon brushes are all way past their shelf life and I am having trouble finding new ones at a small enough size. Sigh.

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  8. Great paint job ! Beautiful skin tone & great miniature. I love the color combo ...
    Greetings

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    1. I love the color combo too Mario, it evokes happy feelings in me. :)

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  9. Very nice! Everytime I see your stuff I am tempted to paint my own LNOE stuff! Really cool.

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    1. Do it ... heck paint them as hive workers vs heretical zealots but paint them ... now! :) They are a decent size to they still retain some details that make them worth painting.

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  10. Love her pose...and your paint job!

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  11. I'm every day most in love with this project! As usual your choise of colours surprise me and as usual I like it very much! :D

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