NextLevel Miniatures - Baleful Wizard

 

This time I was at Dangerous (Target) with my wife and daughter which means that I put my earbuds in and I'm pushing the cart. I wandered off for a bit into the office/craft supply aisle and what goodies do I find - paintmarkers! This time by Sharpie of all the brands. The call it Creative Marker. BUT... there are three different types - Bullet Tip, Fine Tip, and Brush Tip. I picked up Bullet Tip and Brush Tip. The Fine Tip wasn't in stock. 

The Brush Tip are the most like the AK Interactives and work more/less the same. The Bullet Tip is good for bigger spaces like a cloak or big spaces like a horse.

Thoughts...

• Wow! Super awesome and easy to use.
• No priming, no mess - you don't need to use a piece of plastic to catch the drips from priming.
• Limited in colors - there are only 12 - the bullet tip has another pack called Earth Tones which has an additional 12 colors.
• I don't know why, but the bullet tip pens don't need shaking, the brush tips have a shaker ball inside and need to be shaken prior to use.
• No metallics in the line.
• Half the price at less than $2 a pen (12 for $20) - the AK's are about $4+ a pen.
• I found the red to be a little bit muted and a bit toward pink in comparison to the AK.
• Paint dries very flat matte.
• Like the AK's, the paint is opaque and simply draws on top of whatever is underneath.

The mini, yes the mini... this is the Baleful Wizard from NextLevel Miniatures. A fun looking sculpt when you need a menacing wizard to go up against your player's heroes. The price - $1.99 retail price and you can find it for less at Miniature Market for $1.79.

I used a mix of the AK's along with the Sharpie's. Started out by painting the head the hands with dark skin. Then I used Sharpie grey and red for the clothes. Finally, I used AK's gold for some trim work and on the wand. For the base I wasn't initially sure how to go about it - normally I drybrush but you can't really drybrush with these markers. So I used AK's black, and then I used a stippling technique to highlight with the dark grey and finished with the light grey - it's a slightly different look but I think it did the trick without having to get out the paint bottles and brushes.

Now for the fun with A/I part - convert my paintjob into artwork using Google's Gemini...

So awesome!

Here's my ShadowDark Monster Index Card...