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This is more of a modeling question but I can't think of where else to post it. I am trying to put together some cheap siege engines from scrap. There are tons of resources online about building everything from furniture to dungeons out of foam core and dollar store beads but I can find very little about hacking together a cannon or a catapult or something like that. In particular I'm trying to build something that would go well with some Reaper bones goblins and some Reaper bones dwarves, so anything on the spectrum from finely metal worked cannons to primeval catapults is cool. So far I plan to throw some buttons down for wheels and slap a severed gnoll head on a dowel to make a cannon, and maybe cut up a bunch of foam logs and form them into a catapult, but if anyone has a guide they know of or some recommendations for materials I'd love to hear it.
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Oct 24, 2017 18:46
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Jesus. And I was proud I was painting a bones mouseling a day. That's fantastic. I have a question - I'm super bad at keeping brushes in good shape. Even following directions and cleaning them religiously and rinsing often, I find I still get all my tips to start curving after a while. Is that an issue with the types of synthetic brushes I've been buying at Michaels and I just need to upgrade, or am I the problem and I need to get my poo poo together before buying anything more expensive?
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Apr 8, 2018 03:26
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Deviant posted:thanks You give me flashbacks. I painted imperial assault using sorastro's guide and he started with storm troopers. Those little shits were the hardest god drat thing when I was starting and might be the most frustrating thing I ever painted. I think I had to strip the paint off nine of them before I could paint anything passable. White on black is a very cruel color scheme to inflict on new people. On the plus side they taught me a lot about patience and layering but my sympathy goes out to every new painter getting into legion.
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May 1, 2018 01:00
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Cheap black craft paint from Michaels, water and a drop of dish soap to help it flow. There's no real recipe - just adjust paint/water until it works for you. I mix in some dark browns and greens depending on what I'm doing. Brown washes work the same but use brown with a little black, grey, red or green. One tip though - either take notes on the ratios you end up with or make a lot and wash everything you're going to wash at the same time. Trying to re-create a wash months later when you need a few more giant rocks is really frustrating.
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May 23, 2018 06:18
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Ghetto SuperCzar posted:Painted some Descent figures (very poorly) and I had a blast doing it. Are there any other figure heavy games that aren't... war games? I've never really played a war game and I'm guessing on the premise I wouldn't love it. Bonus points if you have a recommendation that is co-op. If I could play warhammer 40k co-op with my wife that would be amazing because the figures do look awesome... Imperial assault is basically Descent 3.0: Star Wars and also has the app-driven co-op variant. There is a massive improvement in mini quality too. Everything is a bit bigger and actually sculpted with painters in mind. Just don't try to paint all the storm troopers at once because you'll hate yourself. The Descent 2.0 expansions are also great for painting. Just know the quality switchover for IA happened halfway through Descent's life cycle so early expansions (basically all but the last two box expansions) had the thin, tiny sculpts of the original games, and almost all the monster/hero packs have the cooler, larger sculpts. So the packs have awesome figures but they're noticeably larger and clash a bit with the original figures. They're a shitload more fun to paint though.
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Jun 1, 2018 15:20
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Quidthulhu posted:Summertime is painting time for me! Glad to get back into it with these two Nexu from my Imperial Assault box. Sorastro's guides makes this learning thing pretty easy!! Sorastro's guides are the reason I (and I suspect a bunch of other folks) paint at all. A bunch of mini companies owe that guy a truckload of cash. I'm glad FFG is paying him now at least. There's no reason to check him out if you know what you're doing but he's amazing for new painters. He sneaks in a lot of good techniques without making a big deal out of them and it makes everything more approachable.
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Jun 16, 2018 14:13
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Fake James posted:Very true. I'll give a try tonight. I did what the OP recommended and let my brush sit suspended in paint remover after all the lather in the world wouldn't fix it. It needed conditioning afterwards but it absolutely salvaged my WN knock-off.
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Jun 26, 2018 15:37
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Hey, I found a style of painting I'd love to do, but my suspicion is that the answer to how to do it is "go buy an airbrush." Am I right?
Ohthehugemanatee fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Nov 18, 2018 |
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Nov 18, 2018 16:19
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Booley posted:Yes, that would need an airbrush That's what I was afraid of, thanks. darnon posted:Depending on what you're actually painting on alternatively you could just set up the light/dark variation with some spray primer. Use a stencil from a piece of cardboard with some holes cut in it and adjust the separation from the model to tune the feathering. Then just go over with it a glaze of your desired color. That's a nuts enough idea that I thought I'd give it a try. It's interesting. It certainly could work - when I tried it I ended up having a hell of a time aiming anything but with the right distances and a good sized hole I managed to get an effect that looks like what I'd guess a very clumsy airbrush could produce. I'll give it a try once I have a good model for it.
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Nov 18, 2018 21:33
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CapnAndy posted:He's over-washed, I can tell. I got the Games Workshop stuff, and apparently just putting it on my brush straight from the pot is not the right thing to do because it clearly needed to be watered down. Washing him was a pain in general because he's so pointy and bumpy everywhere, the ink kept clumping up. So, yeah, over-washed (it doesn't come across perfectly but his ribcage is just shiny black instead of outlining the ribs), but I still think he looks pretty cool? What did I do wrong with the stupid wash, though, just failure to water it down? And why do they come in those stupid pots instead of a dropper bottle if I've got to take some out and mix it before using? I don't think the wash is the problem. That's a D&D mini, right? I paint them too and one of the problems with them is that they're more detailed than the material and sprayed on primer can really handle. Washes help bring out detail and that's great if you have a GW figure or some other hard plastic dude with high quality control. Throw sepia wash on a good white painted skeleton and you'll have a tabletop ready figure. Do it on a D&D mini with lumps and bumps and overly detailed collections of stuff on its hip and you end up highlighting those imperfections instead and your washes will pool in areas a better sculptor/manufacturer would never have let exist. I still paint reaper bones and D&D minis but I've learned I can't let washes carry me the way I could on a better figure. I apply very small amounts of wash to specific areas at times (e.g. dulling metalics) but for the most part I do my own shades and highlights because it's the only way to guide the eye away from the imperfections. I find the same thing is true with dry brushing. The cheaper the mini, the less you can get away with the easy techniques.
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Jan 26, 2019 06:09
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Is there a generally recommended alternative to Testors Dullcote? It's out of stock everywhere around me and prices just seem to be going up everywhere I look online. I do have an airbrush if that helps, but I've never sprayed enamel with it and kinda afraid I'll break it.
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Nov 11, 2020 15:10
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That's a beautiful psychic murder cat. I painted a few gloomhaven dudes and it takes some real work to make them look awesome. I've been getting into 15 mm recently and there have been a lot of quality ups and downs trying different ranges before I ordered some demonworld figures.   These littles bastards come up the knees of most of the things I paint and have better detail than many of them. Highly recommended to anyone looking to try out 15 mm. Ohthehugemanatee fucked around with this message at 15:04 on Nov 13, 2020 |
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Nov 13, 2020 14:42
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The Moon Monster posted:I wouldn't worry too much, a 6 year old is probably perfectly capable of producing a result a 6 year old will be pleased with, whether you use contrast or normal paints. I'd go with this. My daughter is thrilled she can finally paint faces. How are faces painted? First you cover the head in blue, then you paint the nose orange and lastly you dab two circles of bright green where you feel the eyes belong. She's proud, and it's okay that the werewolves look like they're auditioning for clown college.
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Dec 10, 2020 14:08
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I know some of you lunatics must paint tiny space ships. I picked up some full thrust ships from Ground Zero Games and the quality is frustrating. We're beyond flash territory into what I can only call crud. In some cases I'm half sculpting my own minis out of lead with an exacto knife. I can paint them and they're going to look alright, but it's going to be tedious covering up all the defects. I think it might be just the age of some of the molds. Does anyone have experience with space ship manufactures that aren't awful? Dropfleet commander is beautiful but the scale looks to be much larger than what I'd like, although maybe I could stick to their smaller ships. I know Brigade Models do space ships and they look like what I'd love but now I'm paranoid - anyone have any experience? Ravenstar Studio's Cold Navy? Is 3d printing how people do space ships these days? Ohthehugemanatee fucked around with this message at 15:31 on Dec 29, 2020 |
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Dec 29, 2020 14:46
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Sojenus posted:It sounds like most of the ships are larger than you want, but here's some of the smaller ship classes from Dropfleet if you want to get a more exact size idea on them and they're more what you're looking for. That's really helpful. It's hard to find any scale pictures for drop fleet. 6 cm is about the high end of what I'm aiming for, with a goal of clearly identifiable large/medium/small classes. So that is really close to working. Maybe I'll just make a fleet that doesn't do small ships.
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Dec 30, 2020 17:41
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AndyElusive posted:My first smoll angry man of the year painted. I bet that actually looks great in person. Edge highlighting that looks amazing to a camera three inches away is often too subtle for a dude that needs to stand out on a tabletop. And thanks to everyone for the advice on space ships. It's such a niche area and manufacturer websites are so awful that it's helpful to hear from people with experience.
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Jan 2, 2021 14:39
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^^^^ I painted a whole army of tiny space aliens once with a cool scheme I came up with only to realize on dude #25 that I was painting everyone in the XCOM color scheme. With all the elf talk, does anyone know of a good guide to painting blue skin or any suggestions? I'm thinking of the Warcraft aesthetic of high contrast light blue and deep purple, but everything I've tried to achieve the effect looks absolutely ghastly.
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Jun 8, 2021 22:57
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Spanish Manlove posted:Craftworld studio did a guest video for Squidmar and they do some fantastic skin tones with a variety of colors. That looks perfect, thanks.
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Jun 8, 2021 23:31
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PotatoManJack posted:I'm looking to get back into painting after some time off. I don't particularly care what I paint to start out as long as it's some kind of fantasy mini that I might one day use in a D&D game as the DM. I've seen quite a few bundles where you can buy a bunch of old minis that someone else has painted (poorly) for cheap, and I was wondering if I do go that route, if it's feasible to strip them back with turpentine or some other method before re-painting them. You could, but having done so a few times there are cheaper and better ways to get a bunch of minis that won't involve having to buy cleaning solutions and scrubbing away with a toothbrush. I had a moment when I was scrubbing a $2 reaper bones mini for the second time and thinking I would happily pay $2 not to be doing what I was doing. If you want a bunch of D&D minis, look up the adventure series board games. Game quality generally went up as time went by but mini quality took a nose dive. So if you were looking for minis, I'd suggest Ravenloft, Ashardalon or Drizzt, all of which regularly go on sale on Amazon for $30-40 and give a good variety of figures. Miniature Market also routinely throws the latest would be Games Workshop competitor's mini game on sale after it invariably flames out. Look for things made by CMON and you can expect okayish figures.
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Jun 11, 2021 14:37
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DrDraxium posted:Yeah I start and finish with air as a helpful goon advised a while ago. Unfortunately I was getting the same build up and problem with my black Vallejo primer. I've had two airbrushes now and needle guards come off first thing every time. There's probably some wizard out there who can perfectly spray through them, but the second paint starts to build up inside you're done and so is whatever you're trying to spray. And definitely get that Liquitex white ink. It should come duct-taped to every airbrush.
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Jun 12, 2021 13:21
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Furism posted:Very nice, thanks. It's a new technique to me and it's really entertaining. You paint up an okay looking miniature and then you absolutely butcher it with sloppy harsh highlights before hitting it with a glaze and everything suddenly looks awesome. It's the only way I've managed to trick myself into creating high contrasts.
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Jun 17, 2021 01:05
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What's the go to matte varnish these days? I can't find testors anywhere, and the bottle of Vallejo Mecha Matte I've been using as brush on goes through my airbrush with the ease of Elmer's glue so nope on that. I'll take anything acrylic I can put through an airbrush or anything out of a rattle can that won't mess up colors or turn things shiny.
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Jul 12, 2021 14:54
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Furism posted:I think Vallejo's varnishes are meant to be thinned like any paint. So I aim for the same consistency and it works just fine. I did try that. I don't know if it's an old bottle or a batch issue but it gums up within seconds. I've run into other people with similar issues, some of whom fixed it by trying a different bottle so I bet I just have an old bottle or something. I'd just rather try something else than buy a second bottle and hope things work better.
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Jul 12, 2021 15:33
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Silhouette posted:Rustoleum Dead Flat is the exact same paint as Testors Dullcote, and it's cheaper Awesome, thanks.
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Jul 12, 2021 19:09
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GreenBuckanneer posted:What are some good brushes that are also dirt cheap? Blick sells a masterstroke red sable series that are great for $6. They're W&N knockoffs basically. Here they are.
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Jul 14, 2021 14:42
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GuardianOfAsgaard posted:Painted up some more rusty Stormcast: I have seen many great paint jobs on Stormcast, but those are the first I've ever seen that actually look cool.
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Jul 19, 2021 23:19
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PotatoManJack posted:I've been mainly using Wizkids NMM and Deep Cuts minis so far since getting back into the hobby, but I'm really finding that the quality is letting me down. There's so many mold lines and little imperfections on them, that I'm starting to get frustrated as I don't always see them before starting, and then only notice them once I'm painting. WizKids is pretty much the worst thing out there, so the good news is you can only get better stuff. Reaper bones black are a step up from WizKids, and they tend to do odd adventurer types pretty well. They're my personal favorite but quality is inconsistent and you want to avoid anything in the original white bones line. Basically if it's a dark grey it's cool. White bones minis are very hit and miss unless you're buying big monsters. If you want better quality, you're going to want hard plastic. Frostgrave sells kits that let you build barbarians/wizards etc. Unfortunately they tend to sell them in kits of 20 dudes which isn't helpful if you're a D&D person and not painting regiments. Neat thing is though, there's a cottage industry of people who buy kits, split out the sprues and resell on ebay. For $10 you can get a sprue sent to you that you can build 4-5 figures from. People do this with a lot of the military lines like oathmark, wargames atlantic, fireforge and frostgrave and if you reserve a few bits from your sprues you can build a decent variety of adventurers for probably less cost than you'd spend on WizKids and have far nicer figures. Ohthehugemanatee fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Jul 20, 2021 |
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Jul 20, 2021 02:57
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punishedkissinger posted:people just using liquitex white acrylic ink? Every airbrush should come with a bottle welded to the side and every airbrush white primer anyone buys should be empty save for a short insulting note asking why you didn't buy liquitex white ink instead. That note would absolutely have been worth $7 to me.
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Jul 24, 2021 16:04
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Mr.Fuzzywig posted:I’m buying a patriot 105 on the suggestion on the forums. What kind of compressor do people recommend? Don’t paint a ton. So it doesn’t need to be the most rugged I bought this thing for $100 two years ago and it has held up wonderfully with weekly use.
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Jul 27, 2021 16:45
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Radiation Cow posted:This guy was incredibly fun to paint and I'm pretty happy with how he looks. First time I did NMM, think it looks okay? Any c&c welcome. I love the cell shaded effect. I've always wanted to switch over to it for a style but then I never quite have the courage to commit. It looks cool.
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Oct 24, 2021 17:37
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Sab669 posted:https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/reaperbones5/reaper-miniatures-bones-5-escape-from-pizza-dungeon Oh yes. Bones is legendary for giving you a whole bunch of stuff for a borderline criminal price. Their initial quality was awful but each iteration gets better and I've been really impressed with everything from Bones V. It isn't hard plastic, but it's worlds better than the D&D minis. They're also just delightfully weird. I would never buy a swarm of attack chickens, a turtle paladin or a bunch of Bigby's hands but now I have them and they're kinda awesome. They're probably coming up on the next one too and I'm sure it'll get mentioned here when it launches.
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Oct 24, 2021 22:44
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punishedkissinger posted:
That looks a lot better. It's really hard to make a bright figure with glow effects. To get glows to really pop you want the figure to be super dark to emphasize how much illumination the glow provides, and that can end up looking bizarre if the figures and terrain surrounding it aren't also painted like it's midnight on a cloudy night. I think what you have is a good balance.
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Nov 23, 2021 17:23
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That's awesome. It's cool to see where that spectre ended up. It's gonna fit really well with that setup.
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Nov 30, 2021 07:17
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Toebone posted:Figured out a color scheme for my lizard guys Those are OPR, right? How do you like the mini quality?
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Oct 6, 2022 01:26
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bird food bathtub posted:Finally getting in to air brushing because I hate rattle can primers and they constantly piss me off. I don't know how much it matters but I've got a Sparmax SP35 airbrush and I am going to be using Valejo white acrylic primer. Will this need a thinning agent, and if so what is good or what works in a pinch? Just tap water or something more specific or nothing at all? Consider using Vallejo black primer and either zenithalling with a Liquitex white ink or, if you really want just white, hitting the whole think with white ink after you prime it black. No joke. You can even just mix them together for a light grey and use that. Every Vallejo primer I've used other than their black is either clog city or needs so much thinner it struggles to function as a primer. When I switched to Liquitex white ink I was furious I'd ever bought a white or grey primer. It's that good.
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Nov 15, 2022 06:35
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White is a nightmare for that technique. You need to be extraordinarily patient about letting things dry before throwing on additional layers. It's easy for white to chalk up if you disturb a drying layer throwing down another glaze. You could use that technique on white, but I'd start with my highlight and shade downwards, praying that I never make a mistake because if I do it's going to be awful to fix. White is kinda like yellow in that if you see a cool blend, someone either air brushed it or spent two days throwing down glazes.
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Jan 26, 2023 19:10
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That's totally fine. If you throw a harsh bright line down the middle and on the top and bottom edges, no one will ever notice if the blending isn't perfect. Electric arcs or light-colored chips in the blade also do wonders for hiding imperfections. Edit: This kind of thing (the chips shouldn't all be in the same direction like this but it still looks great) 
Ohthehugemanatee fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Mar 5, 2023 |
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Mar 5, 2023 20:21
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occluded posted:Heya mini thread! As I near middle age I’ve been hearing the call of painting again - have been playing with an airbrush to do gunpla but am super inspired by all your great work and also amazing painters on tiktok I had really good luck finding sprues from larger sets on Ebay so that I could try out 5 figures from a range instead of staring down a box of 20-30. Stargrave has a bunch of sci-fi figures under the "Mercenaries," "Crew" and "Troopers" headings that have options to make humanoid aliens and humanoid robots. I can vouch for the sculpts being easy to paint and very Star Trekish. Assembly consists of slapping arms and a head on a body with some super glue, and the material is soft enough you can easily cut to adjust or make fun alterations. They end up looking far better than the studio paint jobs suggest they would. Wargames Atlantic is also decent, although the quality isn't as high. Expect softer details and more cluttered minis where the level of detail doesn't really match with what the sculptor was trying to do. Mantic makes hard plastic figures that are really inconsistent. I started with them because they were cheap but I'm a much happier painter having left them behind. The Enforcers (space marine looking dudes) in particular have lots of soft details that make them particularly hard for new/returning painters to deal with. I can make them look good but oh god do I not want to ever do so again. The dwarves were okay. I painted their fantasy rats and they were a horror show, so I wouldn't recommend their space rats. You can also get GW figures cheaply on Ebay, particularly the stuff that's old or that comes in starter boxes since people are always trying to ditch the stuff they aren't using. If you're just looking to relearn skills, painting a few push-fit marines may be a lot more pleasant than playing what-is-that-lump-supposed-to-be on a Mantic mini.
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Jul 9, 2023 21:35
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Southern Heel posted:Here are my new old style epic Marines, I just can’t decide on a colour scheme: I really like Space Wolves as a color scheme. They stand out against almost anything and the light grey armor vs black weapon makes them easy to read. What you have out there looks great to me.
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Jul 17, 2023 21:26
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Ravus Ursus posted:Strapping the paint bottle to an oscillating saw isn't stupid! This is a bad idea because despite whatever nonsense duct tape solution you've dreamed up, if the saw blade manages to catch the bottle in the wrong way, suddenly you've got a vial of torn open paint oscillating at high velocity. It's also probably yellow, because that's the kind of paint that needs to be shaken well. I uh... heard it happened to a friend. Ohthehugemanatee fucked around with this message at 04:01 on Aug 18, 2023 |
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Aug 18, 2023 03:06
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