>>22321790Actually, in person, it's not that awesome. 'Glow' effects look good in person, but 'reflections' don't. In the case of that comissar, the sword is supposed to be 'reflecting' the light from the plasma... Well, that unfortunately only looks good from the angles at which the pictures were taken. The problem with painted reflections is that they look 'wrong' in person. Reflections are not static in real life, and thus painting them in a static diorama looks incorrect when you view the model in your own hands. In picture form however, the artist is usually careful to only take pictures from the 'correct angles' so as to make the painted-reflection look 'correct'.
Glows are a different matter entirely (i.e. the casing of the plasma gun around the plasma-blue/white plasma coils), because glow effects work off the principle that the 'light source' is bathing that area in light. No matter which direction you look at it, it looks fine because the 'light glow' is bathing that area in an off-color light no matter which angle you look at it from (i.e. torch-light on a model's face).
I commend the artist for their attention to detail and for what is otherwise a phenomenal paint job. But the sword's reflection of the plasma-cells is an eye-sore if you were to view the model in person. I have seen a similar model in a paint-competition (that I had to judge, no less), where the entry was a LotR Arwin miniature where the sword in her hand reflected her face. Every angle you looked at it, except for the 'correct angle', made it look as if her sword literally had some random face painted on it.