The 1/4 scale kit is from Pestilence Labs and comes in five 3-D printed parts that are flawless.
The hardest part was getting decent sample images of the Count. If you have seen the movie, you know many parts of it are visually dark. I found 2 images I liked, but still had to lighten them. If nothing else it clearly shows that his decrepit uniform wasn't just "plain."
Lets get started. Being his skin is a pale, dead color, I started with a base of purple. I don't know if the coat color was an artifact of the lightening, but I thought it looked good enough and went with the darkest blue I could find. After I painted the blue, I found a pic of the costume on display and the coat is nothing like I was thinking. The dark tone of the film hides all the details. But the embroidery and extras on his coat were clear and I painted them a bronze color. Once dry, I dirtied it up. The hat looks dark, so that was an easy part.
The skin looked to me as if it was colors of gray, But I wanted to add a little saturation to it. So in the end I mixed V's White Gray with a little bit of Pale Flesh. I thought it gave me that sickly pallor. His hand was done in a similar manner.
I also noticed that the fur collar was just one color, so I started dark and then added highlights to the tufts. The painted was based in black, and then highlighted in a dark gray and dark brown. The jewel was done in the style of miniatures ( not all that happy with the result). Then the feathers were done in a very dark red with some lighter red just to draw out the detail.
The base was next and I saw in a critique video that the reviewer was knocking bases that attracted more attention that the supposed focus - the figure. So the base was painted with V's Black Gray, and then I added that bronze (to unite the figure with the base) to the adornments and skulls. Dots of Turquoise gave it the verdigris, and then I dirtied it all up.
I left the eyes for the end the way his head is slightly tilted down, it told me that he was looking thru his brow. I painted them like I always do with a base of black, and then the 1/2 circles of brown, and corners of that same White Gray. To add to the creep factor I added a dark yellow to the part of the iris that would be lit. Then that was dry A used a Citadel red wash to get them bloody. A few coats of V's Metallic Varnish gave me the gloss and I was done. Thanks for looking.
