So, I mentioned before, I went on a buying splurge and purchased several sets of miniatures for my RPG needs. They include a set of elves, dwarves, orcs, knights, adventurers, and several ancient armies, such as Mycaeneans, Hittites, Romans and Celts.
My plan is to use the armies to represent the armies of the nations in my campaigns, and to use the rest as NPCs. I intend to paint some of the elves as Drow elves, and I may paint some of the dwarves as Duegar (sp?)
But for the armies at least I expect to use a standard color scheme so they are instantly recognizable when the NPCs encounter patrols or are involved in battles. So that means painting their armor, shields and probably weapons. I probably need to also paint their faces and hands, but I don't intend to paint them to any level of detail. I am planning on using basic colors (red, green, blue, yellow, etc).
Once I have them painted I thought about dunking them into a bucket with a very dilute black paint and letting them dry to let some shadow settle in crevices and folds. Then I thought I'd use a gray dry brush to do some basic highlights.
Nothing fancy. Just the basics.
What do you think about this approach? Is there an easier way I can do this?
Um... for example, since I am going to be gluing them to a larger, more substantial base, should I glue the bases on first before painting?
Should I bother with priming them?
Do I care about hair, beards, etc?
Priming? Absolutely. In fact, this sounds like a job for hardware store spray primer and the dip method.
Minwax Polyshades Tudor Satin is the way to go, and it's readily available at ACE Hardware (though I've not seen that color at either Home Depot or Lowe's).
Yeah... that's the perfect thing! So, if I prime the minis with a skin-toned primer, then pick a couple colors for amor and clothing, then do the dip method, presto!
Yeah, that's the ticket!
I will definitely give that a try.
Um... I guess I have to go buy some skin colored primer and some Minwax.
I'll let you know how it turns out.
Personally, I'd avoid a skin colored primer. Frist, I'm doubtful an actual primer that;s skin colored. Primer is different from paint. Paint has a smooth finish - primer has a rougher finish. It's designed to giver the surface a bit of tooth, which is a surface that can be gripped.
Secondly, the color of your primer will effect the colors you put over it. Black primer will give the paints a darker look, while white primer giver the paint a much lighter, brighter look. Presonally, I prefer neurtal primers like gray and brown.
As for painting, I'd do batch painting. Take a group of 15-20 simular figures. After the prinmer dries (12-24 hours) you then paint them from the lowest level to the top. First is usually skin color, then clothing (shirt and pants first, then things like vests, hats, boots,etc.) Finally paint weapons and equipment.
At each stage, work all the figures at the same time - do 20 fleshes, then 20 pants, 20 shirts, 20 quivers, 20 bows, etc. This way, by the time you finish the flesh on figure 20, figure 1 is dry and can have his pants done.
This is a very easy (although boring) way to paint armies of miniaturers. It gives you a decent, table-top paint job, where all of the figures look good at a distance of 2-3 feet. They won't win any Golden Demons, but they will give you servacible paint jobs in a minimum amount of time.
Yeah, since I posted that last message I've done a lot of googling and watched some "speed painting" videos, and everyone says use black or white primer. Most say black. I have gray, and I don't think I'm going to buy more for this, I've already spent too much on this experiment. :)
So here's my current plan.
Prime them all gray (some of the minis are gray plastic, some are green, some are brown).
Paint the skin areas, en masse (although I'm going to have at least four different skin colors, but each will work for about 100 minis)
Paint the clothing one color for the armies, and maybe two colors for the adventurers and dwarves.
Paint the armor one color.
Paint the weapons and perhaps shields. In some cases the weapons and shields are on separate sprues, so I am probably going to paint them separately and then attach them. I'm a bit worried that the painting might make the connections difficult to do, but I'm gonna worry about that when I get to it.
Then I'm going to do the dip method on them and spray paint them with dull kote.
I'm going to try to get this all done this weekend for 450 or so minis.
I will let you know how successful I am. My daughter has offered to help.
|
Personally, I'd avoid a skin colored primer. Frist, I'm doubtful an actual primer that;s skin colored. Primer is different from paint. Paint has a smooth finish - primer has a rougher finish. It's designed to giver the surface a bit of tooth, which is a surface that can be gripped.
Army Painter has a skin colored primer, I bought some but habn't used it yet. It looks like its best for using the dip method, as the shine of the dip makes up for the rougher finish. They have some youtube videos using it..
So, is the "Minwax Polyshades Tudor Satin" a dark stain or a light stain? Is it more like Walnut or more like Oak?
Yes, glue them to the bases first. If anything, it (1) gives you a handle for when you dip it, and (2) the dip that runs off the mini will pool on the base instead of wherever you stuck the mini to drip.
My laziest suggestion: get different primer colors, according to what the color scheme of the army is.
Frex, if elves are green and black, use black primer or green primer. If dwarves are blue and bronze, use blue primer or bronze primer.
That saves you one color you'd have to paint on the mini. Depending on the minis, that may mean you only have to paint one other color, plus the flesh tone. Heck, as these aren't representing individual characters, and you're doing them in bulk, you may be able to get away with:
color1 primer + color2 drybrush + dab of fleshtone + dip
IMO it doesn't really matter if you're using actual primer or if you're just using spraypaint. You're not trying to win any awards, you just want the minis done, and regular spraypaint works fine for this level of detail (it's not like the players are going to stare at the minis from 2" away, they'll be at arm's length on the tabletop).
For my article on the dip method, I used Minwax Polyshades Antique Walnut Satin. It worked pretty well.
You could also use a darker varnish, particularly if one of the component colors of your color scheme were red or brown, but you'd have to start with a much lighter base color, as you can see with my cherrywood varnish-dipped attercop.
LOL, I guess I will have to take the pecan varnish I bought at Home Depot back then... oh well. I have about 2/3 of the minis removed from the plastic and cleaned up. Right now I plan on not separating the shields and weapons because they are so small and light that I think they would get blown away with the spray paint. So I will paint them on the sprues and brush the varnish on them and then cut them free after everything is dry. I might do some touch up on them after connecting them to the figures, but probably not. The fact that they are on separaye sprues gives me a chance to use a different color for them which will hopefully enhance the illusion that I spent more time on them.
My goal is to get all 400 or so of them done this weekend. Wish me luck.
Good luck!
Post some pictures when your finished. I'd like to see how your experiment turns out.
I'll try. I don't have any on-line photo accounts so I'm not sure I can.
I've completed the spray paint phase and have just completed the skin painting on about 2/5 of them. And I've been at it for hours...
I think the next steps will be much faster, but the skin phase is excruciating...
I'll try. I don't have any on-line photo accounts so I'm not sure I can.
Imageshack doesn't require account registration, but if you don't register you have no means to take the pictures you post down later.
If you want to post photos online, I suggest Imgur.com - Fast and easy, and it doesn't require that you register an account.
I've got some serious peeves with imageshack - Clunky, slow and counter-intuitive.
I will figure out a way to post some photos. I admit to some trepidation indoing so because I suck at this. My goal in buying all these minis was to flesh out my collection in areas that are critical to my campaigns. I'm not planning to enter any of the results in any contest. For the most part I am only using four colors at most on any of these minis, so they are going to be very basic and plain looking. Plus I am not bothering to correct every stray brush stroke, and believe me, there are a lot of stray brush strokes, not to mention the times I've dropped an entire mini into my paint, and did my best to wipe the mess off.
I have completed the undead set, except for the final dunking. I am waiting for my wooden bases to arrive so I can glue them to the bases before I dip them. I have done the basic painting on three armies, but I have one final color to paint on them, and I have done the first two colors on the remaining sets of 40 or so each. At the rate I am going, I expect to be done by this Friday. But that is only if the weapons and shields on separate sprues still snap into place after all the painting I've done. If not I may have to individually glue each item into place.
For whatever it's worth, I am so far OK with the results. But again, I don't have huge expectations for them, after all I only spent less than a quarter per mini on them. This is mini collecting on the cheap, fast and dirty.
But I will post pics. Perhaps they will serve to demonstrate to others how much better their own efforts are, and that will boost their self esteem. I suppose that's worth something.
You could just paint them all brownish-grey and state that your figures are indeed dun. >_>
Heh, nice.
I assembled the Roman Legionnaires last night, and realized their feet are bare with sandals. Somehow I had thought they had boots. So now I have to decide if I am going to repaint their feet. I suppose I probably will. Sigh.
They came out pretty nice, for my purposes at least. Attaching the shields, daggers and pikes was not easy and in some cases it messed up the paint on the hands. So I suppose I have two reasons now to remix some flesh paint and touch them up.
I also completed the final color on the Assyrian and Mycenaean armies. But each of those armies also has shields and weapons to attach, I am hoping they work out easier than the Roman army. The assembling took a lot longer than I expected, so my Friday goal is looking pretty iffy right now.
Photos to come upon completion.
I will figure out a way to post some photos. I admit to some trepidation indoing so because I suck at this. My goal in buying all these minis was to flesh out my collection in areas that are critical to my campaigns.
I don't think you have to worry about anyone being critical here at Paizo. It's one of the most helpful and friendly RPG boars that I'm on. If folks ask for critcisim or help, then people will make comments and suggestions, but otherwise the folks around here are encouraging and accepting. Personally, I just want to see other peoples work so I can get ideas for my own.
Well, I have certainly received excellent advice here so far.
I will try to take a few photos of the work as it progresses. This has turned into a major project. But I am now starting to see the results of the effort, and I am mostly quite pleased with the end result.
I will just remind people that the effort has been to paint quite literally hundreds of minis. If I can actually get done by Friday, I will have invested roughly 35 hours into the effort, which comes out to roughly five minutes and fifteen seconds per mini.
Starting to get excited about the end results...
Well, I did my first test dunking on five of the 400 minis. They are still drying, but I think they came out pretty neat. I dunked a bunch of my home-made minis, and some came out better, and some didn't. The dunking really points out every little error in sculpting, and unfortunately I seem to have a lot of sculpting errors. So if I want to use this trick on my own minis, I better learn to sculpt better. Still, my Roman Legionnaire looks pretty amazing, considering I spent maybe five minutes total painting it. I will post pics.
OK, I uploaded images of my first dunk tests and will attempt to link them here:
If this works you can see that I had a couple areas where the varnish pooled unacceptably, most obviously on the sword arm of the red-skirted soldier and on the eyes of the Legionnaire. I did try to fling off the excess varnish, but it clearly didn't work. Any advice?
Seeing how you have 400+ dudes to do this with, my advice is: Be happy with these results and move on. Looks good enough to me :)
Seeing how you have 400+ dudes to do this with, my advice is: Be happy with these results and move on. Looks good enough to me :)
Hear, hear.
Or, if you are really concerned with this, take a look at the mini 5 mins after you dip it, and use an old brush to sop up or move the varnish out of those problem areas.
Seeing how you have 400+ dudes to do this with, my advice is: Be happy with these results and move on. Looks good enough to me :)Hear, hear.
Or, if you are really concerned with this, take a look at the mini 5 mins after you dip it, and use an old brush to sop up or move the varnish out of those problem areas.
Heh. Yeah, point taken. However, I am picky, even when I'm doing something I lack any real skill at. So I think I will take your advice and use an old brush to remove gloppy areas like that. As many as I can anyway. I'm mostly pleased with the results of the test, but that sword arm really bugs me. I could claim the Legionnaire has eye-black on to see in the sun, but that arm? It looks like he's been stealing honey from Pooh bear.
Excellent results - especially on the skeletons and the legionaire with the shield. I'm quite impressed.
As for dealing with the excess dip, Sean has already given excellent advise. the only thing I can add is to do a test dip using one of each figure to find out where the dip will pool. Then, when you dip them in mass, you know what areas you'll need to pay additional attention to.
As for the dip pooling in the eye holes of the minis, in my mind, that's not a real problem. You can either leave the pool and call it good as far as the eyes go, or you can use a small brush (0 or 00) and use a little off white paint to make a smalller dot as the eyeball. Unless it's a figure that I want to do an extra special job on (like a PC model) I usually don't paint more than a white dot on a darker flesh background for the eyes.
BTW - where did you get the skeleton figures from. I really like pose and could use a few for my collection. You can never have enough skeletons in your collection. They work as both monsters and decoration on the walls of a room.
Thanks for posting the figures. That took confidence.
Thank you Halidan, I appreciate the kind words. I did put extra effort into the Legionnaires and Skeletons, in fact, and it's nice to see that it is noticeable. I did some dry-brushing on the Legionnaires before dipping them, and on the skeletons I worked very hard on a "bone" color instead of just painting them white. I also did a very small bit of dry-brushing on the skeletons too.
The others are pretty much straight painted and dipped.
I am really making progress now. I've got more than half of them all painted and am working my way through the remaining minis one set at a time. I probably have about 200 left to paint, but most of those already have two colors on them and should go pretty quick on the final colors. I will post more pics.
Heh, it didn't take confidence to post them, it mostly took a thick skin and the fact that I know I don't know how to paint. This is all hack work from a rank beginner, and I am surprised myself at how well they are turning out. I will say that dipping does a lot to cover up a multitude of errors, particularly at the edge where two colors come together and don't quite follow the edges. The dip sort of darkens and blurs that so that it is not noticeable that the colors aren't quite perfect.
Very much thanks to Sean and the rest for such great advice.
Heh, I can't do maths in my head. I have quite a bit less than 200 left to go. I should take a chunk out of those tonight.
I got these on eBay from a guy who sells them in Taiwan. However, these minis are available lots of places, he just had the best price I found. They are "Caesar Miniatures" and they sell for about $8 per set of 35 - 40+. I think the sculpting is very high quality and the plastic is soft, but seems sturdy.
The problem with these minis is that they are 24mm, and I mean 24mm. They are almost exactly one inch from the bottom of the base to the top of the head. Compared to today's miniatures, they appear the size of gnomes or dwarves. Except the dwarves, which appear the size of goblins.
They are sized for the original D&D scale, but modern miniatures are much larger. Frankly if I had realized how small they are, I don't think I would have bought so many. I measured them against some of my D&D plastic minis today and the D&D plastic ones are roughly 36mm on average for their medium heroic minis. One of their minis was 39mm tall, which at 1" = 5' means that's an 8' tall creature. I put them on a 1/8" base with a 1.5" foam pad under them, and they are now roughly 29mm on average. Meaning they stare into the D&D minis chest.
Not sure if that matters to you. It sorta bugs me, and it was the first thing out of the mouth of one of my players when he saw them.
I mix tall 25s with 28s and even 32s. It's all representational, anyway... your PC's miniature is in the same clothes and pose at level 8 that it was at level 1, and nobody thinks that's silly, so....
Also, hand-waving it as "forced perspective" tricks like from the LOTR movie also helps.
A quick "make a Fort save" is a good distraction, too.
In my previous post I said I had a 1.5" foam pad, I meant 1.5 millimeter foam pad under each mini as part of the base.
I have several original 1980 vintage D&D minis and these Caesar minis are pretty much the same size. I still use them and they seem to work fine, so I plan to use these too. I just don't know if I will buy any more, and I had originally planned to.
I think I am now going to focus on building "faction sets" that match my world's makeup, which means I need to build up sets of demons, dragons, goblins, halflings, devils, lizard folk, yuan-ti...
Oh heck, I need sets of just about everything. But I need some more than others...
OK, I think I would have made my goal of finishing these tonight, except that my daughter got a poem published in her college literature magazine and they had a public reading tonight so we drove two hours to and from, and spent three hours there. And I still ended up with all but the orcs finished, and the orcs have two colors done. So I'm gonna stick with my 35 hours estimate on these. Tomorrow I should have them done around lunchtime, I hope. If I get up early enough. Saturday you know...
I just finished the dwarves. I spent too much time on their beards, but hey, they are dwarves, beards are important to them. I did two with blue beards... I'm thinking of having them be part of a clan of blue-bearded dwarves.... This mini painting has actually helped to spark my imagination for several ideas for my campaign.
I think the dwarves came out pretty good. I'm going to decide when I wake up tomorrow if I'm going to dry-brush them. I can't help but think I'll decide to at least dry-brush the beards. I mean come on, they are dwarf beards. I painted the in colors ranging from yellow to black, with several shades of brown and even some bright red ones (these are barbarian dwarves who dye their beards red to intimidate their enemies... or so I figure).
Getting very near the end of this project. I will post more photos when I am done. Hopefully that's tomorrow, but I really have no idea yet how long it's going to take to dunk 400 minis... Hopefully I can do one every 10 seconds or so, for six per minute, and get them all done in a little over an hour. We'll see.
Painting and assembling is all done. Time to start the dunking assembly line. Wish me luck!
Wow, really? It took me five hours to dip them all?
Wow.
But they are done. (There was a lunch and a few breaks in there... but still.... five hours? Geez) Just gotta get the bases ready while they dry, then glue them together, then spray them with clear matte finish to take the gloss off.
In the end I had 365 miniatures, not 400. Still, I guess that could be a rounding error.... This is the first time I actually counted them all.
All done. Painted, glued to bases and sprayed with matte clear finish.
They came out pretty nice. Much nicer than I expected when I started on this little adventure. It's too late to take and post photos, so I'll do that tomorrow night. I'll have quite a few photos I think, I want to one of the entire group of miniatures, one of each (of the 10) sets and then I want to pick out some specific individual ones to show some detail.
Really came out much better than a rank amateur like me had any business hoping for. I really do appreciate all the help and suggestions. I am sure it would have been more work and would have had a lesser result without the helpful comments here.
Well, I had fully intended to post some photos tonight, but a flat tire, a dead camera battery, a pile of unsorted minis and some packing to go out of town have conspired against me and I am going to have to do it when I get back this weekend. Sorry all, I truly had planned to get them uploaded tonight.