Finished - Primaris Psyker

Finally finished the Primaris Psyker and I am not thrilled with the end results. 

My last post showed him with base colors and wash. The next step (because washing is never the last step) was to touch up the colors that got overpowered by the wash. The mini was left looking like a muddy brown mess but that is just the base that I work up from. The picture in the left section reflects me touching up the base colors as well as a reworking of all the gold areas a bit. 

After the retouching, all that needed to be done was details and highlights. That's easy to say but detail work takes as much time as the rest.

Normally, my skills and equipment are the limiting factors to how a mini turns out. As much grief as we as hobbyist give GW for their minis, they produce finely detailed minis of consistent quality. You don't fully appreciate that until you have an inferior product. 

When I first got my shipment of Chinese recasts, I was impressed by one of them being metal. I thought for a moment that it might be a legit GW mini resold. It was not until after I started painting it that the massive recast errors became evident.

For starters there was lots of flashing all around the mold line. I am used to a little bit of flash on GW minis but this was the worst that I have ever seen. 

There were also big chunks of the mini that were miscast. It seems to be in the acute crevices like the left side of the face and behind the right elbow. The patch behind on the the back behind the right elbow was so poorly cast that I didn't even know how to paint it. I just left it all metal. 

Very little of the area on the trim of the cloak where the lining meets the outside was intact. Even after trimming the flashing, there was still loss of detail. 

Now, I got this mini for less than 50% of retail but if I had to go back and do things over again, I would pay more for a better cast. While this mini will work well for table top quality, I am embarrassed to put it in the case or foam with other minis.