Across The Spider-Verse was such a great moment from 2023. As a 90s kid, I finally got to see Miguel O'Hara, otherwise known as Spider-Man 2099 hit the screen, alongside a ton of other Spider-Verse characters that we've been exposed to recently. I've always had a love for the "extreme" side of comics from the 90s, including all of the 2099 runs, classic Cable, X-Force, and Deadpool (lots of pouches and guns for me). Recently, Atomic Mass Games put out a few Spider-Verse themed packs, including CP170 containing Silk, Spider-Ham and Spider-Man Noir and CP234 with Agent Venom, Spider-Woman, Black Cat, and classic Peter Parker.
Now, we've covered the Ham and Silk in some previous How To's, and for this one, I wanted to round out some of the other heroes. In these tutorials, I'll go over the techniques I used for 2099, Ultimate Spider-Man, and how to paint up Prowler super quickly and dynamically for the table.
Like all of my previous How To's, we'll be leveraging Army Painter Warpaint Fanatics, and I'll call out other brands when they get used.
Ultimate Spider-Man
To be honest, I forgot to take a lot of in progress shots on this one, but these models go by quickly!
USM (as I'll refer to him in this article) is Miles Morales, a character who debuted in 2011 as part of the Ultimate universe, which was an attempt at creating a new alternate universe for Marvel Comics. I'll skip the lore, but basically, he's in the modern universe, web slinging and fighting alongside our classic Peter Parker. His outfit is disparate from Peter's, opting for a red and black scheme, with piping on the top of the chest and the head.
To start on both USM and 2099, I go for a base of The Darkness and Tidal Blue to establish my base tone and shadow tones. These specific paints have a slight green to them, which will help with our highlighting steps later in the process, which will be supported by adding a little hint of AK Interactive White to the blue/green mixture. For all of the reds, which means the piping, logos, and mask area, I used a mix of Fire Vermilion with Legendary Red and Glowing Inferno to bring me up to my highlights.
For painting the piping on USM, I recommend using a smaller brush, like a size 0 or 00, and taking your time. You will most likely make a few mistakes here and there, but you can come back later with The Darkness to help cover it up. I find the opacity and richness of that particular paint helps with moments like that.
For your highlight placement, I opted to match up the box art. In that artwork, you'll see highlights on areas where the costume bunches up or musculature sticks out. This is a great guide for anything spandex. On the eyes, I used a peachy looking mix of Glowing Inferno and AK White, with final highlights being that straight White color.
Often, box art for a miniature can serve as a great guide, but if you look carefully, I made a big departure from the box art, with the energy lightning coming out of Miles. If I'm honest, this wasn't a creative decision; it was because I conveniently ignored the fact that the energy is orange/yellow in the box art. I used Pro Acryl Blue with varying levels of AK White for the areas I wanted to concentrate the eyes on.
Finishing the model, I used Gloss Varnish on the energy (to keep it shiny), and matte on Miles, to help create some visual contrast. This isn't a super professional paint job, but an easy one that will make him stand out on the table.
Spider-Man 2099
The cape on Spider-Man 2099 is a fantastic part of the model.
So starting with my basic recipe for the dark costume and reds, I had a cheat code. Luckily, 2099 doesn't have a ton of piping to pay attention to, and his eye area is dark, which is a huge difference in the Marvel Crisis Protocol models. This gave me the opportunity to really go all out on the webs and the base.
The webs both used Neptune Glow, a greenish blue, then amped up with a hit of Plasma Coil, which acts more like an ink, sinking into recesses, with White mixed into the Neptune for all of my highlights. For the cape, I hit the shadow areas with Voodoo Shade, which brings a bit of a dusty green to the model; I wanted to represent the worn look of 2099's cape.
The base was a ton of fun. Starting with a base of Plate Mail, I accented the shiny areas with Mithral, and for the darker areas of the model, I used Heavy Metal and the Voodoo Shade again to help create contrast. The wires sticking out at the top of the model received Bright Gold to help represent some broken wires and cables. Tree Ancient + White helped set the ground around the metal base, and then the Alchemax sign got a mix of Neptune Glow followed by a layer of Plasma Coil, and a layer of Lens Flare Glow. Some slight touches with a brightened Neptune Glow, and the sign was done.
Prowler
With simple shapes and highlight pigmented paint, you can make Prowler pop!
I'll be honest, the inclusion of this model stumped me. Not a spider, and in his last movie, he was basically a villain (and Miles' uncle!), but what I really loved seeing was his massive cape. And with such a dynamic pose, I wanted to go big with saturation.
For the cape, we'll start with a mixture of Pro Acryl Blue and Purple. This will give us a dark rich starting point, which then we'll use Pro Acryl Magenta to build up the mid tones, with a mix of Warm Yellow to give us some highlights.
Yes, you read that correctly. Yellow is an excellent way to boost the highlight of Magenta without desaturating the paint, which is what white does to Magenta (and also gives you Pink, which we don't want). But don't worry, we have a trick to boost the highlights even further.
For the greens of the costume, I started with Army Painter Greenskin, which is a great medium tone green that can work very well with other colors. In an attempt not to use The Darkness on everything, I used Deep Ocean Blue mixed with the green in order to give me my shadow tones, which I applied in all of the creases and under the muscles of our burglar turned hero.
Now, highlight time. The Magenta/Warm Yellow mixture was placed on fingertips, glow ridges, ridges in the cape, and on the face. A mix of Greenskin and Warm Yellow helped make all of my highlights on the costume, focused on the parts that stuck out the most, like the musculature, knees, forearms, ribs...and then, I used Lethal Shadow's Fluorescent paints, in particular Yellow and Pink in order to give an over the top saturation to both the greens and the magenta. What I like about their Fluors is the fact that they're thick and easy to mix into existing paint. Everything dries very matte and brilliant.
A hit of White on the eye slits, and Prowler was complete. For basing on all 3 of these models, please refer to my How To's for Spider Ham and Silk, where I created a universal scheme for concrete and metal, which are prominent on MCP models.
Your final pieces! Not a whole lot of paint, but by sticking to a specific plan, you can have pretty solid pieces.
So there you go, some quick schemes for these models. If I wanted to boost these into Display territory, I would mix up some different costume schemes. Stick with the dark blues/greens for 2099, but go into Black and Whites for Miles. The web cape on 2099, I would probably paint each square to reflect a highlight, which is very time consuming, and I would use Non-Metal Metal techniques on the basing. For Prowler, the model is demanding a custom base, maybe coming off of the side of a building.
Have you painted up Ultimate Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2099, and Prowler yet? Sound off in the comments, shoot us some images on Instagram, and stick with GamingTrend for more tutorials and news!
