Review: Miniature Mentor - Todd Swanson Masterclass

[mahon]

Decided to pick up my first Miniature Mentor tutorial yesterday as the tutorial looks at a figure painter and figure I really admire - Todd Swanson's Plague Lord Festus, the 2008 LA Slayer Sword winner.

The promise of 5 + hours worth of high quality video tutorial and an extensive pdf. file covering the Festus figure from start to finish was too much for me to resist. £16 and 2 hours of downloading later I had five 1 hour video files, a 15-20 min interview video, 64 page Festus Walkthrough pdf. and an excel colour conversion chart - pretty good value for money! (...)

Click to see full-sized image

more: https://cmdante.blogspot.com/2010/03/rev ... anson.html

[Pandadosmares]

I have most of the videos and this one i am getting it also, and until now, except the 1st sculpinting video (that is cr@p) they are all great with awsome quality and detail.

[Pandadosmares]

Last night i downloaded the video from miniature mentor, and i must say its great.
Theres a pdf with the tutorial of the original step by step and a excel file with the colors used (reaper) and the correspondence from Citadel, its really usefull.

As for the 5 part video plus another one with the interview, Todd Swanson explains with great detail every trick used with the paint job.
I watched the video showing how he painted the weapon and i was really amazed with some things he did and how simple they are (i am already planning on using some of them).
The video showing the freehand and the battle damage/rust is just great very detailed and once again it really uses some simple technics that for some of us sometimes are neglected or forgotten.
The quality of the image is, as always great and filmed very close so you can see every detail, and even the highlight done to the black stripes in the weapon you can see how good it looks.

For me this one is a must, and im really loving this tutorial.

[Neolis]

have all the mini mentor series and found all but one exception worth the money. Few things I would change but worth it.

[Pandadosmares]

Im missing the demon and the sculpting dreadnought, the basic sculpting is the that you can forget its not worth the money, all the others are great.

[Nameless]

the basic sculpting is the that you can forget its not worth the money

why?

[atacam]

As I said on Facebook.
Wouldn't touch this company with a barge pole. Bad experience with them, crap customer service.

To be brief. I was one of the first to subscribe, at an agreed price. They then changed the contract(illegal I think) and tried to put the price up as they realised it was gonna be more expensive(or they wanted more profit) I cancelled and they asked me how to remedy it. I said give it to me at the price agreed. They then refused to talk to me after that and kept my initial subscription payment. So I recommend people to steer clear.

[Pandadosmares]

the basic sculpting is the that you can forget its not worth the money

why?

Well basically its everything but sculpting, they show you how to do a blade and a shield from plasti card and both are really bad, and in the add they put photos of a warrior and a lady talk about misleading advertising .
wend i saw the video i was really mad, but as i said all the others are great, the new sculpt videos are really good.

[Pandadosmares]

It seems Miniature mentor is preparing a big and great release of videos so if you didnt received their newsletters here are the news.

- Speed Painting with Thomas David

- Painting for Ambient Light (Making Miniatures look good on the Gaming Table)

- Anatomy and Proportion (We disect the Human Body using interactive 3D software and simultaneously sculpt the "ideal proportioned" male. In the process we break all the rules and challenge long held myths in miniature sculpting. With Aragorn Marks.)

- Green Stuff Sculpting with Richard Sweet

And some More to Come
We have many more things on the Horizon for 2010. Including our own line of highly detailed collectable miniatures that will also become sculpting and painting tutorials. Also, Miniature Mentor will be releasing a series of highly detailed ANATOMICAL REFERENCES masterfully sculpted by the best sculptors in the world (available May 2010).

Here is another look at what we`ve got coming - sorry for the tiny pics but these projects are in various stages of production. But Below you will see.

Sculpting Monsters with Aragorn Marks - Aragorn Marks sculpts his most dynamic and frightening miniature to date.

Sculpting with JAG - The world's best miniature sculptor gives up the secrets he used to create this awesome line of "Sicko Hillbillies".

And Finally... The Complete Guide to Miniature Basing. Details to follow - but it's going to be HUGE!!!

[flagoon]

Niiice... I really consider to buy a subscription. Too bad some people are complaining, that it's not worth the paying 8$ per month, because you have to wait for new movies quite long.