This is a new miniature company for me - I found them on sale at Miniature Market awhile back and thought they looked pretty good - they have an old school feel - so I thought I'd pick up a few and give 'em a try. The first one I painted up is titled Callous Troll. It's a pretty good looking miniature with some nice detail but not overly so to make painting tiresome.
I did some digging - NextLevel Miniatures is a US company based in St. Louis and it looks like they formed in 2020 and ran some Kickstarters. It's a shame I didn't know of them before because there's a lot of value in those Kickstarters although the current online retail pricing really isn't bad - particularly through Miniature Market (which is also a St. Louis company so there might be a connection there).
They ran four Kickstarters and the first two were built around miniatures featuring the mega dungeon Rappan Athuk which I recently ran through as a player during a multi-year campaign. They then completed two additional Kickstarters to expand their miniature offering and it looks like they're soon going to launch a dice campaign. NextLevel Miniatures Kickstarter profile page.
As to the miniatures - they say that they are cast in a thermoplastic resin - they appear to me to be similar to Reaper Miniature's Bones Black line. The details are pretty good, the models I have appear to have enough rigidity that they won't fall over or have bendy parts yet flexible enough to take a tumble off the tabletop and not break. The casting comes in a light grey, much like the Wizkids unpainted line - and while they don't come pre-primed, they claim that their "resin naturally takes acrylic paint exceptionally well" and this first model I did airbrush without a primer. Finally, they note the miniatures are sculpted by Punga Miniatures which is a Russian company that provides 3D models for wargames. I like to give sculptor credit but it appears that like Wizkids, the sculpting is going to a "studio" vs individual credit like you see with Reaper Miniatures.
One final note, talking about feeling old school, my miniatures came from Miniature Market in plastic sandwich baggies instead of fancy blister packs to tear open. If that's what it takes to keep miniature prices down then keep sending the baggies! Most of their small/medium sized minis are a $1-$2 and this large model is currently $4.49 online.
Painting this miniature was a lot of fun and I painted him primarily as a discard of paint left in the airbrush pot and the details were done when I had paint on the wet palette leftover from other models I was painting (particularly from the Hexton Hills hex tokens). Also, as this model was painted as a paint discard the following are my best guesses...
Unless noted the paint was Vallejo Air/Game. The base is Sick Green and then highlights with Light Livery Green. I then went back and did some airbrush shading with Dark Green and then another light airbrushing of Light Livery Green. Then I moved him onto the workbench and filled in some details. Scarlet Red for finger and toe nails. I think I used Reaper's Dirty Grey as highlights on top of Black hair and then on the loincloth with a Black Wash. The axe was Reaper's Nightsky Blue with Reaper's Concrete Grey highlights. The spots I believe were done with Sun Yellow. The bits of leather here and there was Reaper's Rich Leather. The base was my standard Black with a drybrush of Neutral Grey and Fortress Grey.
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