Another set of Bones miniatures from the 2012 Kickstarter are these little, adorable kobolds. They came in a pack of 12 figures and here are the first 6 of them, painted as D&D 3.5 kobolds with woodland bases (77010).

These miniatures were a real pain to paint. I actually started painting them early November but finished them by the end of 2013. I wanted to try some new techniques on them, but they didn’t came out how I wanted them to. So I tried again. And again. By now, I’m okay with the end results. At the end, I painted them as different kinds of kobolds, complete with different basing and clothing materials. So today, I’m posting the first batch of these little guys. The pictures in this post were taken with my new photo setup (small lightbox, photo lamps and a Canon EOS 600D with an EF24-104mm object lens from work).

There are many nice paint jobs of the kobolds on the Reaper Message Boards. Aric Clark gave them an unusual, yet very interesting color scheme with blue skin and bright orange clothes. Patrik Str?m and Darkmeer decided on red skin and brown clothes. The kobold Bones seem to be very popular, as there is also a YouTube video on how to paint them with an Airbrush and a Review of the miniatures including a nice paint job by Blackwarden and also Roleplay-Geek.

Basing and Priming

The kobolds are small miniatures, so I glued them onto a 20mm base after cleaning, and removing mold lines. I did the usual sand basing routine and primed them with Vallejo Black Primer with an Airbrush. Next, I dusted the minis with white primer from a 45 degree angle.

Painting

I wanted my minis to look like D&D 3rd edition kobolds. A reference image can be found here. Since 3rd edition, kobolds were no longer goblinkind, but considered dragonkind. They don’t have ears anymore. I guess Reaper doesn’t want to infringe copyrights (same with beholders.. err, “eye beasts”), so these kobolds still have ears and don’t have the typical long snouts like in 3rd edition D&D. Nevertheless, I took five of the kobolds and gave them a red-brown basecoat and then mixed some shading and highlight colors to match the picture in the 3.5 Monster Manual. The armor of these guys should be light, so I painted it as leather with grey clothing. I converted one kobold with a spear and a sword into a kobold mage by cutting off the spear and painting the tip as a blue gem stone. All kobolds got yellow eyes and some dark and light spots on their skin, same as in the reference image.

The base was designed as a woodland type of underground. It was first painted with VMC Chocolate Brown, then washed with VGI Brown, then drybrushed with VMC Chocolate Brown, VMC Flat Earth, VMC Dark Sand and finally VMC Buff.

Finishing Touches

The gang was sealed with Army Painter Anti-Shine Varnish. The base was decorated with Woodland Scenics static grass and some grass tufts. Finally, I added some yellow shrubbery with little leaves.