ESO Miniature Collection: Everything I have made since I started and the story behind each of them

zbzszzzt123

Introduction

Hello!

Since late 2021, I have been making physical ESO miniatures, and some of you might have already seen my work posted on the forums, subreddit and discord before. This post wlll be a full collection of everything I have made since I started and how I came up with, executed and experimented with each of my projects.

In September 2021, I got myself back into Warhammer after having dabbled a bit in it when I was younger, and as with everyone who has started (or restarted) the hobby, I was drawn into the whole Games Workshop paint system and my local GW store in Oxford soon became my first steps into the miniature painting world. After I posted one of my first Nurgle miniatures to my ESO guild discord, someone asked me if I have considered 3D printing as an alternative to GW's miniatures. At that point, I wasn't really quite familiar with what 3D printing was but I wanted to give it a try. I have always really liked how Flesh Abominations looked in ESO and that's how I picked my first project.


Project 1: The Flesh Abomination (Oct 2021)

Final Pictures and WIP Album: https://imgur.com/a/TYxI99J



My very first ESO miniature project was the Flesh Abomination. This was the first time that I have thought about making custom miniatures for myself and now that I look at my first works, there are so many things that looks rough. Through a good friend on Discord and a google-able method of extracting ingame files , I was able to get a model of the armoured verison of the flesh abomination ingame, and then I contracted a 3D sculptor on Fiverr to help me refine the model and add the texture details back in so that it would actually look decent once printed. I also asked the sculptor to give me three poses for this model and it is at this point that I found Bradley on Etsy, who I commisioned to 3D print this project and all of my future ones.

With Bradley, I asked him to print two of my three poses for the Flesh Abomination. My intention at that point was to paint one when it finishes and another one later so that I could see how much I would be able to improve with time (And that's exactly what I did for my 4th project). Once it was printed and sent to me, I started my painting process. At that point, I was still really new to the whole miniature painting world and my techniques were really elementary. From what I can recall, all I did was to basecoat the model with Rakarth Flesh, and then wash with Reikland Fleshshade, Druchii Violet, Athonian Camoshade and Carroburg Crimson. I finished it with a rough drybrush of Rakarth Flesh and a finer highlight of some lighter skintone colour. The metals were painted with the good old Leadbelcher washed with Nuln Oil and copious amount of Blood for the Blood God was applied.

This was my first project and even though it looks really rough now by comparison, I was still happy to have my very own Flesh Abomination when I finished.


Project 2: The Oblivion Invasion (Nov 2021 to Apr 2022)


Final Pictures and WIP Album: https://imgur.com/a/Yrpp8CU

This is probably the project I have loved the most and learned the most on and it's also the project that I have spent the most amount of time and gone through the most number of iterations on. In Nov 2021, posted her wonderful collection of TESOctober arts, which included an Oblivion Gate, and with the release of the Deadlands DLC , I had an idea that I was just obssessed with: The visage of a dremora warrior in full armour standing in front of an Oblivion Gate, like ones in Black Marsh or the City of Ash. The base came easily enough, with @ZunaRoath's Oblivion Gate model and some basing paints, I was able to make a decently convincing Oblivion Gate, which I painted using the same methods found in GW's paintnig Be'lakor video.

It was the dremora warrior that have cost me the most headaches. My initial idea was to use the Annhilarch's Chosen motif on a character and once that was printed, I started off with some really rudimentary painting techniques that yielded decent results. By drybrushing a dark metallic paint over a black base, I got a decent looking miniatures, and thinned down red paints in the crevices gave some daedric armour vibes. I initially attached a random printed banner to the back of this miniature and swapped to a GW skeleton banner later on, but neither really looked right to me as time went on.

This sat on my shelf for quite some time but I always thought that there was something wrong with it every time I looked. Eventually I decided that the Annihilarch's Chosen model was just simply too weird (if that's the right word) to form an impactful model so I decided to replace it with something else. After managing to find a set of daedric armour files on the internet, I reprinted the main character. This time, I applied the same methods of painting to this model and eventually a new version of the daedric warrior was born.

However, as my skills improved a bit with other projects, I was still unhappy with how this piece turned out. The metallic paint just didn't have the same effect as I had imagined and as I started learning more and more on controlling paint, I wanted to dip my toes into NMM (Non Metallic Metal). For those unfamiliar with miniature painting, NMM is an advanced technique that strives to imitate metallic effects with matt paints and lends itself very well to display pieces, which my projects were intended to be. After reading and watching quite a few videos on it, I decided to repaint over my old miniature and the newest version of this miniature was born. For my first attempt of NMM, I would say that the results weren't half bad.

I also fiddled over the axe quite a bit, trying many versions of the flaming axe that I have envisioned but it took many iterations for the idea to come through. I have also started to experiment with another technique called OSL (Object Sourced Lighting), which is basically just a fancy word for painting a glowing light source. You can see from the final iteration of the project that there is a small lighting effect from the flaming axe on the handle.

After going through 3 big iterations of this miniature, I finally managed to get it to a place that I liked and that's where the project stands today.

Project 3: The Vampire Lord (Aug 2022)


Final Pictures and WIP Album: https://imgur.com/a/oqVoLTW

This was quite a simple project compared to the rest of these ones on the list. I managed to find a 3d file for a Skyrim Vampire Lord on the internet and I just decided to print and paint it. Nothing too complex was done with this one, but on review, I can sort of see how I improved with the colours and lighting on miniatures on the skin of the vampire. I went back to this project a few months later as well just to tidy things up, but all in all, it was quite a simple project without too much fuss.

Project 4: Ibomez the Flesh Sculptor (Oct 2022)


Final Pictures and WIP Album: https://imgur.com/a/47v2jon

At this point, it's been a full year since I have painted my very first miniature and I wanted to give the second abomination I had another go to see how much I have improved.

Due to the relative rarity of Flesh Abomination in this game, it was quite easy to think of a diorama in which I could fully show off the miniature, and Imperial City Prison came to mind. Even though that Ibomez the Flesh Sculptor and the Flesh Abomination are two different fights in the game, I have decided to combine them into a single scene. In my mind, this is how Flesh Abomination was first raised into being my Ibomez. The bloodly pool beneath its feet is a mixture of the blood and flesh of unwilling prisoners (just like how Ibomez was raising its smaller counterparts ingame), and the platform adorned with wooden planks that Ibomez is standing on is my interpretation of what the ancient Ayleid ruins excavated by daedras beneath the Imperial City Prison should look like. The Ibomez model itself is from, again, @ZunaRoath's wonderful 2021 TESOctober collection.

As to the painting of this piece, this is where I am quite proud of how far I came in terms of progress. I have started incorporating volume sketching through zenithal highlights in this piece and you can see quite clear on the two models how I have moved away from the Games Workshop's style in contrast with my very first piece. Instead of highlighting every edge on every surface, I have started to selectively highlight only where it would make sense from a lighting's point of view. I have also started to incorporate more colours into these pieces, and started using different colours for shadows and highlights.

All in all, I was really happy with how much I have improved on this miniature compared to when I started a year ago.


Project 5: Dro-m'athra Necromancer (Oct 2022)

Final Pictures and WIP Album: https://imgur.com/a/tltji29

I finished this project roughly at the same time as my previous one, and whilst I'm not too proud of this from a technical point of view, I really liked the theme of the scene.

My initial plan was a Khajiit warrior riding on top of a Senche-Raht, where the model is from the Apex Radiant Reward from the Nightfall crates, but as my miniature arrived to me broken, missing a piece and somehow bigger than I expected, I had to come up with another plan. After remembering that Senche-Rahts are also intelligent Khajiit furstocks by themselves, I went on to make what I think Maw of Lorkhaj has been missing since the Elsweyr DLC: a Dro-m'athra Senche-Raht.

After knocking off the Khajiit that was previously riding on top of it, I binded some chains to his saddle to make it look less like one, as well as covering up some vestiges of the rider's legs. Painting him was quite easy, and it really was just a basecoat of black fur with some glowing blue stripes. I also opted for true metallic meetal this time as well because I was just a bit sick of painting NMM after many other unrelated projects, and in the end, my corrupted necromancer was born. I based him in sandy desert so that he looks like he has arisen (returned?) to Elsweyr after long banishment like one of the NE world bosses. I also attached a few death skeletons from Games Workshop with glowing eyes so that it looks like that he is raising ancient warriors from the sand.

In the end, whilst it wasn't the best miniature that I have painted in this series from a technical standpoint, I would solidly rate this one as the project that I loved the most just purely due to how much I love the Dro-m'athra lore.

Project 6: Stonekeeper (Dec 2022)

Final Pictures and WIP Album: https://imgur.com/a/dD7ERew

So this one is different from the rest.

I didn't print this one myself but rather, I saw a Morrowind Collector's Edition statue on sale for quite cheap on Ebay so I decided to buy it and see what I could do with it. When the statue came, I was really surprised by how big it was, but when I held up my previous miniatures next to it, it was actually roughly to scale compared to the guy in Halls of Fabrication. I sawed off the guys' extremeties and reattached them because the original statue didn't any joint articulations.

The pre-paint quality was obviously quite bad so I rebased him to start my own spin on it. In terms of painting this one, I didn't really enjoy it. The statue was way too big compared to my previous projects and I really didn't enjoy how it looked compared to my previous work. But still, I managed to paint it with a copious amount of metallic paint, doused it verdigri and painted some molten flame effects where it made sense. Out of the whole piece, I enjoyed the flamethrower arm quite a lot and I'm happy with how I painted the molten effects.

I don't think I would ever buy a collector's edition statue again to use as a base for my project mostly due to how big they really are and I'm not too proud of how this came out, but at least it was done.

Project 7: Kjalnar and Tzirzhalir in the Unhallowed Grave (Jan 2022)

Final Pictures and WIP Album: https://imgur.com/a/Gn9gcIo


This is my latest project and probably my favourite one in terms of composition and theme.

Unhallowed Grave is probably my favourite dungeon in ESO, after City of Ash 2 (I say this unironically, when CoA2, or vCoA first came out, it really felt epic), and that's entirely due to the final boss fight. I knew I had to do something with it. I comissioned to @ZunaRoath (again) for a model of Kjalnar, which she delivered flawlessly, and luckily for me, Mammoth Factory, a 3d mini company, has literally just released a model which could feasibly pass as a bone colossus from ESO.

Putting the two and two together was quite easy, and soon my printed miniatures arrived ready for painting. I had to print Tzirzhalir a bit smaller because otherwise you wouldn't even be able to see Kjalnar wtih how ridiculously big Tzirzhalir was in game (I'm pretty sure he's the biggest creature in ESO). Tzirzhalir himself was painted quite quickly because I really didn't want him to be anything more than a backdrop for Kjalnar. Some simple drybrushing took care of the bone colossus himself and I made sure his eyes would pop like they do ingame.

Kjalnar is where I feel like I have improved the most as a painter. I was able to paint with NMM much more confidently and control where the light would go much better. Stronger highlighs and shadows were used in this piece and I have also really enjoyed how the skin looks with dark red shadows and bright highlights that contrasted with the colder shade of the armour. Some token efforts for OSL can also be seen in Kjalnar's left hand and Tzirzhalir's eye sockets which I think really brought the whole piece togther. Compare this to where I have started, I really feel like that I have improved a lot as a painter over the last year and I can't wait to paint more in the coming year

A Look Ahead

I haven't got anything solid in the works yet but I have been floating around a few ideas, one of which consists of the new Arcanist class coming in and out of his/her abyssal gate Portal style.

I am really happy to see where my hobby has lead me to at this point, and hopefully, I will try to produce more pieces that I am proud of in the coming year.

Carlos93

zbzszzzt123 wrote: »

Introduction

Hello!

Since late 2021, I have been making physical ESO miniatures, and some of you might have already seen my work posted on the forums, subreddit and discord before. This post wlll be a full collection of everything I have made since I started and how I came up with, executed and experimented with each of my projects.

In September 2021, I got myself back into Warhammer after having dabbled a bit in it when I was younger, and as with everyone who has started (or restarted) the hobby, I was drawn into the whole Games Workshop paint system and my local GW store in Oxford soon became my first steps into the miniature painting world. After I posted one of my first Nurgle miniatures to my ESO guild discord, someone asked me if I have considered 3D printing as an alternative to GW's miniatures. At that point, I wasn't really quite familiar with what 3D printing was but I wanted to give it a try. I have always really liked how Flesh Abominations looked in ESO and that's how I picked my first project.


Project 1: The Flesh Abomination (Oct 2021)

Final Pictures and WIP Album: https://imgur.com/a/TYxI99J



My very first ESO miniature project was the Flesh Abomination. This was the first time that I have thought about making custom miniatures for myself and now that I look at my first works, there are so many things that looks rough. Through a good friend on Discord and a google-able method of extracting ingame files , I was able to get a model of the armoured verison of the flesh abomination ingame, and then I contracted a 3D sculptor on Fiverr to help me refine the model and add the texture details back in so that it would actually look decent once printed. I also asked the sculptor to give me three poses for this model and it is at this point that I found Bradley on Etsy, who I commisioned to 3D print this project and all of my future ones.

With Bradley, I asked him to print two of my three poses for the Flesh Abomination. My intention at that point was to paint one when it finishes and another one later so that I could see how much I would be able to improve with time (And that's exactly what I did for my 4th project). Once it was printed and sent to me, I started my painting process. At that point, I was still really new to the whole miniature painting world and my techniques were really elementary. From what I can recall, all I did was to basecoat the model with Rakarth Flesh, and then wash with Reikland Fleshshade, Druchii Violet, Athonian Camoshade and Carroburg Crimson. I finished it with a rough drybrush of Rakarth Flesh and a finer highlight of some lighter skintone colour. The metals were painted with the good old Leadbelcher washed with Nuln Oil and copious amount of Blood for the Blood God was applied.

This was my first project and even though it looks really rough now by comparison, I was still happy to have my very own Flesh Abomination when I finished.


Project 2: The Oblivion Invasion (Nov 2021 to Apr 2022)


Final Pictures and WIP Album: https://imgur.com/a/Yrpp8CU

This is probably the project I have loved the most and learned the most on and it's also the project that I have spent the most amount of time and gone through the most number of iterations on. In Nov 2021, posted her wonderful collection of TESOctober arts, which included an Oblivion Gate, and with the release of the Deadlands DLC , I had an idea that I was just obssessed with: The visage of a dremora warrior in full armour standing in front of an Oblivion Gate, like ones in Black Marsh or the City of Ash. The base came easily enough, with @ZunaRoath's Oblivion Gate model and some basing paints, I was able to make a decently convincing Oblivion Gate, which I painted using the same methods found in GW's paintnig Be'lakor video.

It was the dremora warrior that have cost me the most headaches. My initial idea was to use the Annhilarch's Chosen motif on a character and once that was printed, I started off with some really rudimentary painting techniques that yielded decent results. By drybrushing a dark metallic paint over a black base, I got a decent looking miniatures, and thinned down red paints in the crevices gave some daedric armour vibes. I initially attached a random printed banner to the back of this miniature and swapped to a GW skeleton banner later on, but neither really looked right to me as time went on.

This sat on my shelf for quite some time but I always thought that there was something wrong with it every time I looked. Eventually I decided that the Annihilarch's Chosen model was just simply too weird (if that's the right word) to form an impactful model so I decided to replace it with something else. After managing to find a set of daedric armour files on the internet, I reprinted the main character. This time, I applied the same methods of painting to this model and eventually a new version of the daedric warrior was born.

However, as my skills improved a bit with other projects, I was still unhappy with how this piece turned out. The metallic paint just didn't have the same effect as I had imagined and as I started learning more and more on controlling paint, I wanted to dip my toes into NMM (Non Metallic Metal). For those unfamiliar with miniature painting, NMM is an advanced technique that strives to imitate metallic effects with matt paints and lends itself very well to display pieces, which my projects were intended to be. After reading and watching quite a few videos on it, I decided to repaint over my old miniature and the newest version of this miniature was born. For my first attempt of NMM, I would say that the results weren't half bad.

I also fiddled over the axe quite a bit, trying many versions of the flaming axe that I have envisioned but it took many iterations for the idea to come through. I have also started to experiment with another technique called OSL (Object Sourced Lighting), which is basically just a fancy word for painting a glowing light source. You can see from the final iteration of the project that there is a small lighting effect from the flaming axe on the handle.

After going through 3 big iterations of this miniature, I finally managed to get it to a place that I liked and that's where the project stands today.

Project 3: The Vampire Lord (Aug 2022)


Final Pictures and WIP Album: https://imgur.com/a/oqVoLTW

This was quite a simple project compared to the rest of these ones on the list. I managed to find a 3d file for a Skyrim Vampire Lord on the internet and I just decided to print and paint it. Nothing too complex was done with this one, but on review, I can sort of see how I improved with the colours and lighting on miniatures on the skin of the vampire. I went back to this project a few months later as well just to tidy things up, but all in all, it was quite a simple project without too much fuss.

Project 4: Ibomez the Flesh Sculptor (Oct 2022)


Final Pictures and WIP Album: https://imgur.com/a/47v2jon

At this point, it's been a full year since I have painted my very first miniature and I wanted to give the second abomination I had another go to see how much I have improved.

Due to the relative rarity of Flesh Abomination in this game, it was quite easy to think of a diorama in which I could fully show off the miniature, and Imperial City Prison came to mind. Even though that Ibomez the Flesh Sculptor and the Flesh Abomination are two different fights in the game, I have decided to combine them into a single scene. In my mind, this is how Flesh Abomination was first raised into being my Ibomez. The bloodly pool beneath its feet is a mixture of the blood and flesh of unwilling prisoners (just like how Ibomez was raising its smaller counterparts ingame), and the platform adorned with wooden planks that Ibomez is standing on is my interpretation of what the ancient Ayleid ruins excavated by daedras beneath the Imperial City Prison should look like. The Ibomez model itself is from, again, @ZunaRoath's wonderful 2021 TESOctober collection.

As to the painting of this piece, this is where I am quite proud of how far I came in terms of progress. I have started incorporating volume sketching through zenithal highlights in this piece and you can see quite clear on the two models how I have moved away from the Games Workshop's style in contrast with my very first piece. Instead of highlighting every edge on every surface, I have started to selectively highlight only where it would make sense from a lighting's point of view. I have also started to incorporate more colours into these pieces, and started using different colours for shadows and highlights.

All in all, I was really happy with how much I have improved on this miniature compared to when I started a year ago.


Project 5: Dro-m'athra Necromancer (Oct 2022)

Final Pictures and WIP Album: https://imgur.com/a/tltji29

I finished this project roughly at the same time as my previous one, and whilst I'm not too proud of this from a technical point of view, I really liked the theme of the scene.

My initial plan was a Khajiit warrior riding on top of a Senche-Raht, where the model is from the Apex Radiant Reward from the Nightfall crates, but as my miniature arrived to me broken, missing a piece and somehow bigger than I expected, I had to come up with another plan. After remembering that Senche-Rahts are also intelligent Khajiit furstocks by themselves, I went on to make what I think Maw of Lorkhaj has been missing since the Elsweyr DLC: a Dro-m'athra Senche-Raht.

After knocking off the Khajiit that was previously riding on top of it, I binded some chains to his saddle to make it look less like one, as well as covering up some vestiges of the rider's legs. Painting him was quite easy, and it really was just a basecoat of black fur with some glowing blue stripes. I also opted for true metallic meetal this time as well because I was just a bit sick of painting NMM after many other unrelated projects, and in the end, my corrupted necromancer was born. I based him in sandy desert so that he looks like he has arisen (returned?) to Elsweyr after long banishment like one of the NE world bosses. I also attached a few death skeletons from Games Workshop with glowing eyes so that it looks like that he is raising ancient warriors from the sand.

In the end, whilst it wasn't the best miniature that I have painted in this series from a technical standpoint, I would solidly rate this one as the project that I loved the most just purely due to how much I love the Dro-m'athra lore.

Project 6: Stonekeeper (Dec 2022)

Final Pictures and WIP Album: https://imgur.com/a/dD7ERew

So this one is different from the rest.

I didn't print this one myself but rather, I saw a Morrowind Collector's Edition statue on sale for quite cheap on Ebay so I decided to buy it and see what I could do with it. When the statue came, I was really surprised by how big it was, but when I held up my previous miniatures next to it, it was actually roughly to scale compared to the guy in Halls of Fabrication. I sawed off the guys' extremeties and reattached them because the original statue didn't any joint articulations.

The pre-paint quality was obviously quite bad so I rebased him to start my own spin on it. In terms of painting this one, I didn't really enjoy it. The statue was way too big compared to my previous projects and I really didn't enjoy how it looked compared to my previous work. But still, I managed to paint it with a copious amount of metallic paint, doused it verdigri and painted some molten flame effects where it made sense. Out of the whole piece, I enjoyed the flamethrower arm quite a lot and I'm happy with how I painted the molten effects.

I don't think I would ever buy a collector's edition statue again to use as a base for my project mostly due to how big they really are and I'm not too proud of how this came out, but at least it was done.

Project 7: Kjalnar and Tzirzhalir in the Unhallowed Grave (Jan 2022)

Final Pictures and WIP Album: https://imgur.com/a/Gn9gcIo


This is my latest project and probably my favourite one in terms of composition and theme.

Unhallowed Grave is probably my favourite dungeon in ESO, after City of Ash 2 (I say this unironically, when CoA2, or vCoA first came out, it really felt epic), and that's entirely due to the final boss fight. I knew I had to do something with it. I comissioned to @ZunaRoath (again) for a model of Kjalnar, which she delivered flawlessly, and luckily for me, Mammoth Factory, a 3d mini company, has literally just released a model which could feasibly pass as a bone colossus from ESO.

Putting the two and two together was quite easy, and soon my printed miniatures arrived ready for painting. I had to print Tzirzhalir a bit smaller because otherwise you wouldn't even be able to see Kjalnar wtih how ridiculously big Tzirzhalir was in game (I'm pretty sure he's the biggest creature in ESO). Tzirzhalir himself was painted quite quickly because I really didn't want him to be anything more than a backdrop for Kjalnar. Some simple drybrushing took care of the bone colossus himself and I made sure his eyes would pop like they do ingame.

Kjalnar is where I feel like I have improved the most as a painter. I was able to paint with NMM much more confidently and control where the light would go much better. Stronger highlighs and shadows were used in this piece and I have also really enjoyed how the skin looks with dark red shadows and bright highlights that contrasted with the colder shade of the armour. Some token efforts for OSL can also be seen in Kjalnar's left hand and Tzirzhalir's eye sockets which I think really brought the whole piece togther. Compare this to where I have started, I really feel like that I have improved a lot as a painter over the last year and I can't wait to paint more in the coming year

A Look Ahead

I haven't got anything solid in the works yet but I have been floating around a few ideas, one of which consists of the new Arcanist class coming in and out of his/her abyssal gate Portal style.

I am really happy to see where my hobby has lead me to at this point, and hopefully, I will try to produce more pieces that I am proud of in the coming year.

I think it's a great job, those figures look incredible.

XomRhoK

Awesome!

zbzszzzt123 wrote: »

Project 3: The Vampire Lord (Aug 2022)
Final Pictures and WIP Album: https://imgur.com/a/oqVoLTW

This was quite a simple project compared to the rest of these ones on the list. I managed to find a 3d file for a Skyrim Vampire Lord on the internet and I just decided to print and paint it.

Unfortunately, the ESO developers did not find this 3D file.
I really like Vampire lord miniature. Cool effect of stretched flesh/blood.

Deter1UK

Congratulations.

Keep creating!

fizl101

@ZOS_Kevin I think you might want to take a look at these

ZunaRoath

Awesome results Very lovely miniatures. Thanks again for commissioning me!

M_Volsung

These look amazing... if you ever make a dwarven centurion and a ESO style dwarven spider, I would pay real money for those.