|
TheDiceMustRoll posted:What do you do with a "ruined" model? I got Rattachak's Doom Coven and I was able to paint the warp lightning Cannon and the warplock Bombardier just fine. But I assembled the stormfiends completely before i started to paint and I'm just finding that having to navigate through all the cables is making this task literally impossible. I don't want to go to the nightmare of cutting all the cables off and then we're trying to reglue them all back on again because they just barely work as they stand anyway. I almost feel like just putting them on a shelf somewhere or throwing them in the trash even. They really do deeply deeply frustrate me and I'm not sure what to do next. I really, really hate non-push fit models, seriously. Honestly, a lot of the time you can get away with the philosphy that if you can't reach it, it'll look ok if you don't paint it. Often just stabbing a bit of wash towards the general direction of the unreachable parts, to give them a hint of shadows, will work decently. If the hard to reach parts are left dark and kind of featureless, but you bring out the details of the other parts with bold colours and highlights and such, I doubt you'd notice them too much unless you prime your models stark white. IF you use a white primer, try to stab som more muted colours in there and some wash, just to darken the area a bit.
|
#
¿
Jun 24, 2021 13:43
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 15, 2024 17:00 |
|
|
Silhouette posted:I'mma let you finish, but the correct base rim color is early 2000s citadel graveyard earth or reaper msp earth brown I’m painting old school greenskins and fighting the urge to paint goblin green base rims. Pray for me, brothers
|
|
#
¿
Jun 25, 2021 07:12
|
|
|
jesus WEP posted:are there any advantages to metal over modern plastic or resin? Mainly from a production side, but also some on the hobby side. Metal is waaaaay better than resin for not getting hosed up casts. Even good casters tend to get lot of bubbles now and then in resin kits. I've never seen any brand that consistently sell me resin without bubbles, and then you don't know how many casts were thrown out on the way by QA. I remember putting together a M10 resin tank. Suddenly the entire barrel just fell apart, revealing that there was a big bubble in the middle. Impossible to fix, had to replace with a metal barrel. I've done resin casting myself, and it can be a complete nightmare when it acts up. Metal is a lot cheaper to make molds for than plastic, and you get far more spins out of each mold than a mold for resin casting. Basically you need to know that you'll push many thousands of boxes before it's even worth looking at plastic, while resin casting is much more labour intensive. Metal minis still has a decent sweet spot from a production point of view. On the painting side: Metal is a lot more sturdy than resin. Metal bends when resin cracks. Doing any conversions or similar with resin is almost impossible, while it's tough but not impossible with metal. When resin breaks it tends to break in horrible ways that are harder to fix than to fix broken metal minis. Bad paints jobs is much easier to strip from metal or plastic minis. I've recently bought a bunch of mixed work lots of minis, and the ones in resins are horrible to strip. The ones in plastic are tough, but not impossible. The metal ones? Just put them in methylated spirit for a while, and they're like new. Personally, I think metal sculpts are often nicer to paint than plastic or resin. It might be a personal bias from growing up with metal minis, but paint just sticks to it in a different way that I like.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 3, 2021 21:40
|
|
|
Tuxedo Catfish posted:I looked up nail art tutorials when I couldn't find a good miniature-centric guide to painting gradients with a sponge. I can't speak to the reverse but there is absolutely a wealth of information out there that is extremely useful to nerd poo poo. Nail art tools are often very similar to hobby tools but cheaper. Sponges, files etc are really useful. There's also tools for making dots on nails (looks like tiny ball-bearings with handles) that can be used for sculpting certain shapes. Miniatures paint shakers are exactly the same as nail paint shakers from the same factory with a different sticker on, and more expensive. The list goes on. Brushes tends to be more expensive for make-up though in my experience.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 7, 2021 08:52
|
|
|
Fritzler posted:Wanted to start painting some D&D minis. I understand how to make a wet palette in tupperware, but what I'm not sure about - do you still need to add water to thin down the paints? Or does the water in the in the palette functionally do that? You should still add a bit of water, but you need less so. Often it's kind of enough to rinse the brush, dry off most of the water on a bit of paper and have it slightly wet when picking up paint from the palette. How much water depends on brand of paint and what you're painting, so the unfortunate answer is that it's something you'll learn by experience. You don't want it to be too runny. The wet palette will most of all help the paint to not start to dry. If you have a dry palette you'll need to add water to all of the paint constantly to keep it from drying up.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 13, 2021 18:26
|
|
|
Beffer posted:The guy on the left isn’t yelly. He's lovely about the noise the other jerks are making. “Can’t we just cleanse the Xeno scourge quietly for once. By the Emperor” It's the typical insecure guy in the choir, faintly mouthing along as the rest are belting out at max volume. Like the Mr. Bean in church sketch.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 14, 2021 10:28
|
|
|
TheDiceMustRoll posted:Hey ya'll. So I bought some grass paper for my blood bowl pitch but good loving god, the grass flakes off a lot. It's making a mess, what's the best way to stop this? Gorilla Glue spray? You could always try mixing PVA glue and water and they spray it over the grass with a cheap spray bottle for watering plants. I tend to spray my terrain with varnish, and it helps a bit with keeping static grass and such in place.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 15, 2021 10:08
|
|
|
Here’s a quick research question if it’s ok? I’m so used to integrated bases (ie ”piedestals”), being mostly a historical painter/gamer. I rarely see slottabases these days. But now I’m about to cast some fantasy style minis, and slottabases used to rule the roost in fantasy. Is it still so? Would it be worth the extra hassle to make slottsbase tabs, or is it fine to just do integrated bases? The main thing that could make me reconsider, I think, is that it’s easier with tabs if you’re doing custom resin bases, as you can just snip them off.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 5, 2021 09:53
|
|
|
I tend to go to some of my Vallejo sandy browns for a first layer if I'm doing yellow. As others have said, pure yellow directly on most primers is haram.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 9, 2021 12:17
|
|
|
E: oops don't listen to me, UV resin seems much worse than polyurethane resin.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 9, 2021 19:00
|
|
|
MasterBuilder posted:I'm going to preface this with read your MSDS for the resin you are using, wear gloves, safety glasses and don't huff uncured resin but most resins aren't that bad compared to household cleaners. The big thing that gives it Health 2 warning is if you ingest it and if you need to learn about not eating unknown things. Again treat resin (and all chemicals) with a healthy amount of respect, cover exposed skin and most importantly protect your eyes. Because nothing sucks worse that trying to fumble your way to the bathroom when you are in pain and can't see. Yeah polyurethane resin is what I have experience with. In liquid form it tends to give your hands rashes when you work with it a lot, even when wearing gloves. That's pretty much it. The really no-no part is sanding the cured product without a mask and inhaling that dust, which is very bad in the long run.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 9, 2021 21:39
|
|
|
Admiral Joeslop posted:Reaper has a lot of decent and cheap minis. Be careful of their Bones line; they're lower quality but even cheaper and require some extra prep work. I got to see the Frostgrave plastic kits in the flesh for the first time recently, and I was surprised by how fun they look to build and paint. And they're pretty cheap. But for random minis to just do paint practice on, honestly, ask your local gaming community. I've donated a bunch of minis for clubmates' kids to practice on and so on, you're bound to end up with more minis than you'll have the time to paint. Second option is second hand, there are lots of minis that are almost worthless on the second hand market that you can scoop up in droves.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 9, 2021 21:56
|
|
|
moths posted:This was the conventional wisdom until a few years ago, but you can get a cheap (under $120) generic airbrush and compressor off Amazon, Harbor Freight, or Michael's with a black Friday coupon. For me the big deal with airbrushing is not the cost, but the extra work. Living in an apartment with my wife, I can't airbrush at home. It's just not doable, even with a so called "quiet" compressor. I can do it at my club when it's not game night, but I have yet had an experience where I don't spend hours in total cleaning before and after the actual airbrushing. Airbrushing is cool and fun, but it's also very frustrating at times, and requires far more time cleaning and prepping than brush painting. My point is that if you just watch youtube videos or hear from experienced painters, that frustrating part where you disassemble and clean and assemble and disassemble and clean and assemble and disassemble and clean and assemble and STILL ONLY GET BUBBLES IN THE PAINT CUP and disassemble and clean and assemble and disassemble and clean tends to, well, not be highlighted as much. That said I still go to the airbrush when I'm painting large numbers of tanks or other vehicles. I just know I'll be cursing the entire time.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 10, 2021 08:49
|
|
|
punishedkissinger posted:Still working on the base but you all gave some great advice. really pushing my limits here thanks! That's a huge improvement, great work. 
|
|
#
¿
Aug 12, 2021 10:30
|
|
|
Eediot Jedi posted:
I got clickbaited into a Majorkill video by a title. I managed maybe 10 seconds after the intro before I had to switch it off. It was like listening to the loudest, most in-your-face, chauvinist unsecure nerd in your game store in the early 2000’s. Yikes.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 20, 2021 06:52
|
|
|
Cat Face Joe posted:I regularly see people talking about priming Infinity stuff with black gesso and im like how I've used black gesso as a back-up when I really need to prime something and it's raining/windy/snowy etc outside, which is like half the year since I'm in Scandinavia and I live in an apartment with no suitable indoor space for spray priming. I've since replaced it with Vallejo Surface primer as my back-up. But gesso works, it's just not perfect in any way. If you can use an airbrush or spray can instead, it's better. Gesso was very popular like, fifteen years ago, when the options of good brush-on primers were fewer. I've found white primer in spray cans tends to be awful just in general, for some weird reason the only one I've found that's consistently good is GW's. lilljonas fucked around with this message at 08:54 on Aug 23, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Aug 23, 2021 08:51
|
|
|
PoptartsNinja posted:Tiny robot crosspost. Nice tiny robots! Crossposting from the historicals thread. I've been sculpting all Summer so I've hardly managed to paint anything. Felt good to finish these 20 minis so that I can take them off my painting table finally. Ok so usually I stay away from anything after WW2, but a bunch of clubmates are preparing a homebrew system for very small scale modern skirmish, which they'll play set in Syria around 2015-17ish. Since the main rules writer is not a big fan of painting, he asked me to paint up a set of I Can't Belive It's Not Russians from Empress miniatures. These are clearly not Russians, and you'd be especially safe to say that they are not the 431st Naval Reconnaissance Point or similar special forces that clearly were not operating inside Syria around that time. What a silly thing that would have been. I did a completely lazy job on the camo by mainly just reusing the main colours I used for the Splittermüster on my Fallshirmjägers, as I thought it looked pretty close to the pictures I could find.  The whole force preparing to mess with ISIS, Kurds, Turks or whatever force happens to be allied against them this week. First up are the grunts with the diverse sets of automatic rifles:    Some MGs and anti-vehicle weapons:   I mixed up some camo schemes to reflect that the not-Russians had a mix of uniform equipment and personally supplied stuff in Syria. Especially things like weapons and magazines were all over the place.    
|
|
#
¿
Aug 29, 2021 20:02
|
|
|
Wrr posted:I feel like I've asked this before but what would be a good camera to buy for taking photos of my minis? My cellphone camera does NOT like the LED lighting I have and it has black bands all across the picture. If the LED lighting is the problem, you might be better off just trying to screen it first. I.e get at least two lamps, so that you don't have lighting from just one angle, and put something between the lamps and the minis to diffuse the light. Basically anything that diffuses the light works, my first DIY lighting box was just a cardboard box where I cut out big windows in the sides and taped cut out squares of shower curtain to it. Honestly, if you have access to a phone camera that is like, less than five years old, you'll probably get more results by working on the lighting than getting a new camera.¨ E: I bought a descent DSLR camera, partly for taking mini photos, but ended up using my iphone 8 for all my mini photos because it's just more convenient and I can easily adjust the photos and upload them from the phone. Instead I got a descent foldable lighting box. Fidgeting around with the photo box and different backgrounds made much bigger difference than fidgeting with the cameras. lilljonas fucked around with this message at 10:33 on Aug 31, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Aug 31, 2021 10:27
|
|
|
The Moon Monster posted:Sharp brush, get the right paint consistency, going back and correcting mistakes (even really good freehanders do this a lot), practice. Yeah, it helps watching some youtube tutorials. I also started out thinking that I had to get everything perfect with the paint I'm using for the details. Turns out, a much easier way to get crisp lines is to go back and forth with the background paint, covering up mistakes and uneven lines, until you have some nice sharp edges and lines. Like on those stars on the robe, that's super hard to get clean star points with a brush on the first go. But if you were to go back with the purple, it'd be so much easier to draw some lines along the sides to make the points actually pointy and sharp.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 7, 2021 08:49
|
|
|
punishedkissinger posted:thank you all for the terrific advice. going to try and edge in those crosses today and really clean them up. What kind of theme of female figures? I've found that Reaper has a bunch of pretty good, non-cheesecakey female figures (and some really bad ones). There are also a bunch of good ones made for Frostgrave. lilljonas fucked around with this message at 15:16 on Sep 7, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Sep 7, 2021 15:12
|
|
|
Eej posted:I feel like it's a hard sell because anyone who knows his name probably already has a set of paints. "My painting sucks, it must be because of my paints, let me try using these paints that Pro Painter X use, maybe I'll improve" - thought by more than one miniature painter at some point in time, I guess
|
|
#
¿
Sep 8, 2021 11:20
|
|
|
Beffer posted:I watched a Squidmar video recently on his top tips to improve your painting. One of them was to paint fewer minis. I think that painting single minis and army paintings are to a certain degree two different skillsets, though there is of course some overlap. If you want to get good at painting armies, you need to practice painting armies. If you want to learn how to paint huge armies and try to do that by painting individual minis, you'll never get good at painting armies. For me, the biggest step to learning to paint armies was to switch to napoleonics. Suddenly I was painting hundreds of minis per year, because I had to paint hundreds of minis per year. I was painting 30 mini batches. I was painting 60 man batches. I would never have learned how to do that if I had stuck with painting individual minis - instead I'd be busy learning glazes, wet blending, OSL effects and other "display mini painting" skills that would have made me a much better painter for individual minis, but left me just as bad as before at painting armies. If you are slow at painting, focusing more in individual minis will not make you that much faster. That said, when I started I struggled with 8 man batches. But that's a part of getting good at painting large armies quickly, it's pushing that limit further and further until you can at least paint 30-40 minis at once when you have to. lilljonas fucked around with this message at 08:46 on Sep 13, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Sep 13, 2021 08:43
|
|
|
punishedkissinger posted:Chickened out on the eyes and made them boring. Still working on my highlighting and transitions too. I love that turtle mount and now I want my own.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 15, 2021 12:24
|
|
|
Crossposting from the kickstarter thread, not really painting but minis related. I've reached a few milestones before I can launch a mini kickstarter of my own, so I'm posting on adrenaline fumes here. Apologies in advance. :P Anyway, I've got my company (Far-flung Figures) registered properly at the tax office so I can no do business like a big boy! After that I rounded up the final ducks, making it an even 23 ducks. These will now be sent off to the industrial dwarf kin of the Ruhr area, where a proper casting company will look at which ones are ok to be cast. Then they'll make a few master copies for me and send them back for inspection, and also for painting up before launching the kickstarter. Here's the whole gang forming up for a good-bye party:  I almost feel sad to send them away, but I'm also super stoked to see them hopefully come back in metal form. I've also been busy putting together a good spreadsheet for various costs, so that it'll be easy to calculate the break-even point once I have all the proper costs sorted out. Right now, it's looking at a break-even point of about 600 euro, which I feel pretty confident with.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 21, 2021 20:15
|
|
|
jesus WEP posted:make your pins short enough that the model is touching or almost touching the cork, should make the whole thing less top-heavy it'll also help to keep the mini from moving when you're painting. I glue most of my minis to short, broad roofing nails. They have tons of contact area to attach too, and when you hold them the mini is close to your hand. When I'm not painting them I can put them in a row in a wooden stick with drilled holes in it. Also works as a stand when spray priming. 
|
|
#
¿
Sep 22, 2021 13:59
|
|
|
Electric Hobo posted:More adventures in oil. I really need to read up on my color theory with this stuff. Everything has different transparencies , but at least it's in a standardized system, so everything reacts with other colors, and the undercoat, in fun ways. That's one dope skellington!
|
|
#
¿
Sep 28, 2021 15:05
|
|
|
Zodack posted:On the TTC paints kickstarter note, as someone who would like to get into miniature painting would it be worth backing the full line pledge just to have a bevy of options instead of occasionally going to my hobby store and going "ah shoot I also needed <color>"? All of my painting so far has been gunpla and scale model kits with an airbrush and so nearly all of my paints are pre-thinned and not useful for miniature painting. Seems like it could be a good idea to drop ~$200 on a full line kind of like a gym membership to force me into learning, but also to have every option available when I do go to paint. I'd say it's a bad idea to buy an entire range for two reasons: 1) You most likely won't use more than a third of such a set. Most painter ends up liking a specific palette of colours or you're painting a specific armour scheme etc. 2) Most likely you'll find paints from different brands that you like more. For example, I mainly prefer Vallejo. But I think their light greys and whites are bad. I like Army Painter's washes but I don't like most of their paints, and so on and so on.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 30, 2021 17:02
|
|
|
I swear by Vallejo Beige Red as foundation for caucasian or most east asian skin tones. Wash with GW’s flesh wash or similar. Then I mix beige red with a lighter skin tone.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 4, 2021 18:46
|
|
|
Verisimilidude posted:
Your Esher gang looks great!
|
|
#
¿
Oct 9, 2021 08:38
|
|
|
AndyElusive posted:I just unsubscribed to lol yeah that's one of the channels where I keep getting drawn in by the video titles and then just get put off by his bad takes. I think he was making sense with enough regularity that he didn't qualify for my no-go list, but yeah... I feel like it's gotten worse lately.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 20, 2021 10:31
|
|
|
What's this? A box of minis from Germany?  A box of master copies of lilljonas duck adventurers?  A box of a lot of master copies of lilljonas duck adventurers?  A box of a horde of master copies of lilljonas duck adventurers?!  Super stoked to see these, Hagen Miniautres did a great job in making the molds. Out of 21 sculpts, only one could not be recast due to the pose. Now I need to clean these up and paint them ASAP, and then it's off to try to flog them. :P
|
|
#
¿
Oct 22, 2021 13:10
|
|
|
punishedkissinger posted:same. very strong King of Dragon Pass vibes from those duck people. I definitely want some! KoDP and the Swedish RPG Drakar & Demoner (which is based on Basic Role-playing, which is based on Runequest so...) were my main influences for these, so it's not a coincidence.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 22, 2021 14:29
|
|
|
e: dp
|
|
#
¿
Oct 22, 2021 14:29
|
|
|
Spent the weekend painting up some of the master copies of the ducks. They turned out to be pretty painter friendly, since they are small and I didn't sculpt GW levels of details everywhere. I'm being especially careful not to make it look like there are details where it isn't through just the paint job, to make it as honest as possible for potential customers. I dislike when it turns out that a surface was actually just flat, but hidden behind free-hand shenanigans. Much of the time was spent in disbelief, googling just how many types of duck there are. Expect things to get... weird as I progress.  A wizard and a tiny, tiny apprentice  A bill duck and an angry thug  Two thieves  A goose in shining armour and a handgonne mallard I'll need to experiment a bit more with the lighting before I finish with these, this turned out way too harsh. But 8 down, 14 to go!
|
|
#
¿
Oct 24, 2021 21:29
|
|
|
Psycho Society posted:Getting together some paints and general knowledge before I start on this miniatures thing. What's the best varnish to use on metals? If I only get one varnish for now, should I go for satin or matte? I'm planning on using regular non-contrast paints and a couple vallejo metal colors. Any gloss varnish should do it for protection. But it will be gloss, so you’ll want a matt varnish to paint over thst to take away the glossy sheen. But matt varnish alone gives much less protection.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 12, 2021 07:58
|
|
|
Winklebottom posted:I made a book nook. There’s technically a mini in it pfff.... pfff... "pattedyr".... pfff (super nice book cranny!  )
|
|
#
¿
Nov 20, 2021 23:43
|
|
|
I realized what WW2 painting has done to me when I was going to bring my browns to the club for a basing session.... and realized that I had put half my paints in that box. WW2 truly is 50 shades of brown.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 2, 2021 15:45
|
|
|
Funzo posted:Got a process question for you amazing artists. For painting a camouflage cloak, do you paint the camo pattern before or after you do the shadows and highlights? I'm thinking of putting the camo pattern on, then do the shading and highlights, since light reflections would obscure the pattern on the cloak. Any thoughts? For my Fallschirmjägers I painted the "base" colour of the camo (grey/beige) and washed it brown, then re-applied the colour including highlights. Then I applied the secondary colour (green) on top of it, and higlighted it. Then I applied the tertiary colour (brown) andh ighlighted it. It's a bit of extra work but it helps making the colours tie into each other. 
|
|
#
¿
Dec 29, 2021 20:40
|
|
|
BaronVanAwesome posted:What's the most models anyone here has batch painted at once? I got ~1800 points of Bretonnians and wonder if I could do like 27 Knights of the Realm at once Brets sounds like the least batch-paint friendly thing, but if you stay with 3-4 main colours as a maximum you can probably at least get a whole bunch to the detailing stage at once. As for cavalry, I'd rarely paint more than 20 cavalry in 28mm at the same time, and often do it in batches of 14-16. If I had 27 knights I'd probably break it down into at least two batches just for my sanity. If you're not used to batch painting, maybe 3-4 batches. It's really something you get used to, the better option is IMHO to start with smaller batches and then ramp them up rather than trying a huge batch the first time and then run into a brick wall. As for biggest batch, I've painted around 60-70 minis in single batches, mostly DAK, skeletons and napoleonic french in greatcoats. Basically minis that are mostly a few different shades of brown with some details on. More detailed uniforms I'll paint at most 40 at the same time, and even then it can be a slog. lilljonas fucked around with this message at 21:40 on Jan 22, 2022 |
|
#
¿
Jan 22, 2022 21:36
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 15, 2024 17:00 |
|
|
Gnoll posted:Thanks for the encouragement guys. I think this hobby got its teeth into me already. Becoming a good miniatures painter is easy, because of this one eternal truth: any paint job, even a bad one, is better than grey plastic. So the journey is not so much to become a good painter, but to improve in areas where you want to improve. By saving the mini from the grey plastic horror, you're already a good painter.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 23, 2022 23:04
|
|