Next up is Professor X, leader of the X-Men. It took a long time before he was added to the game, but much to my delight, he has the same weird floating yellow hover-chair as the old cartoon. The model is provided with a weirdly big “whoosh” effect to hold up the chair, which I replaced with a small and discreet brass pin.
I changed up the yellows I was using compared to most of my other X-Men models. I wanted the shadow tones of the chair to go into a vibrant yellow-orange, rather than the mustard yellow tones I’m using elsewhere. I ended up picking up some paints from the new Army Painter Fanatic line – I was rather impressed with the 6 paint extended color families that they divide things up into. It made it pretty easy to get some colors that would look good together – this is based off of the lightest three paints in their “orange” series.
Actually painting this large of yellow areas was a bit annoying, as these colors never have good coverage. I powered through, but there were definitely some points where I was regretting some of my decisions. If I had been more organized, I would have done all of the light/shadow pre-shading using these paints rather than black and white.
The models come with some random pieces of litter that you can decorate the bases with, one of which is a big cup. I immediately knew that I wanted to have X sipping a latte during the battle, so I attached it to the chair arm. I was originally going to be satisfied with just painting the cup white with a green circle, but my spouse egged me on and I added some white dots to give the implication of a tiny Starbucks logo.
I’m really happy with how this guy turned out! It’s nice to have an idea in your head and then execute on it very successfully.
