The Miniatures and Scale model appreciation thread

[moosegrinder]

Market domination.

[Joyrex-J9]

I'm going to try some Vallejo varnishes (spray and liquid) and some Army Painter spray.

If this doesn't work I'm going to give up on varnish I think

EDIT: Right that's £30 spent on sprays and varnishes (and a couple of brushes). This shit better be good.

[Joyrex-J9]

Look what the lovely lovely Lyon-Jacques gave me

My Army Painter varnish turned up, I suppose I should do some sort of consumer test

[Joyrex-J9]

My latest batch of Ashardalon minis

I'm nearly there now, just 3 normal monsters and the 'villains' to go (yes that includes Ashardalon!)

I'm very happy with the Dragonborn wizard, the Half-Orc is OK and the Duergars (evil blue Dwarves) came out well. The Kobolds were simply total shit, really bad sculpts, awful to paint, scabby little shits, so they got a very basic paint job. To end on a positive note, the wizard was one of the nicest things I've painted for ages

[Wiper]

Those are really lovely, Joyrex. Love the reptilian wizard in particular - it's a nice model, and you've given it a great paintjob.

[JoeK]

Love the effect you've got on the shields! Also - that Dragonborn wizrd figure...I want that. Cool figure

[LyonJacques]

I posted about the freebie figures on Dr Who Adventures Magazine before (no idea why I didn't put it is this thread.. did it exist yet?) now this weeks' edition (out today) has weeping angels:

Not too bad, although knowing my luck the magazine will have another picture of fucking James Corden Dalek/Cyberman/Sontaran combo next week apparently (all facts & pic shamelessly stolen from Frothers)

[idespair]

Thanks for the heads-up, the wife set off for work half an hour early today and is now the proud owner of 32 Weeping Angels for the grand total of a fiver. Looking at the Frothers thread it seems I missed them doing Sontarans, but I've still got about 30 Daleks hanging around. Will definitely keep an eye out for next week's issue if there are more coming.

[Wiper]

10,000th post! And I'm going to spend it posting pictures of toy soldiers. I'm the coolest

Well, I got my hands on some Infinity figures - specifically, cheap ones I don't mind practising paint schemes on. As such, these are far from the best models they've put out - indeed, most are older sculpts, and so not in proportion with the current, smaller models (observe the size difference between the old Zero and the newer Keisotsu. Imagine that Zero was stood straight!). Still, even with all that I was impressed by the quality of the models, so took 'naked' shots of a few of them, then painted up the Zero. It's also worth mentioning that for metal models there was an astonishing lack of flash - none of those stringy bits I'm so used to from the old GW miniatures. Just one or two easy to clip off spikes at random points, meaning the models were cleaned up in under a minute each. Some didn't need any cleaning at all. Very nice. All pictures link through to a Picasa album, where you can access high resolution shots.

One male Zero on the left (his right arm unattached), and one female Keisotsu on the right. The Keisotsu are grunts in the Yu Jing army (and its Japanese Sectorial sub-division). The cheapest are 9-points per model - which in a game where the average force is made up of no more than ten figures per 300 points, shows just how low-rung they are. Even so, I quite like the models - love the detailing on their trousers. The Zero, meanwhile, is a cheap stealth unit for the Nomads (and their Bakunin Jurisdictional sub-division), coming in at 18 points - again, a fair bit below the average cost per figure:

Apologies for the lighting on this one - the male Keisotsu. Same deal as above, of course:

And here an idea of scale. The Keisotsu are at standard Infinity scale, which is slightly smaller than Warhammer and 40k scales - as you can see when placing them next to a Dark Eldar Wych and a generic fantasy Orc. Makes the detailing even more impressive, no?

Following are the eight stage-by-stage 'in progress' shots of my Zero, plus an explanation of how I painted it. You know, in case you want to know how to avoid having it come out like mine

Primed with skull white spray, I decided I'd play with my least favourite colour to paint: yellow. So, some Sunburst Yellow on the Zero's arm.

Deciding that this looked okay, I applied it to the rest of the Zero's undersuit, and then added a contrasting colour. Black and yellow tend to work together, but I felt black would be too strong a contrast (and too good at obscuring detail), so went for Adeptus Battlegrey on the heavy armour. Added bonus - it's a foundation paint, so goes on nicely!

Thinking of another good contrasting colour to go against grey and yellow, the obvious choice was purple. However, lacking any fresh pots of purple, and deciding it wasn't quite angry enough a colour, I went for red instead. It was only after applying it that I realised that I'd accidentally ended up copying the Iron Man colour scheme, plus some grey

Ah well. I painted the sheath, holster and bag (only the sheath is visible from this angle, and a speck of his bag) that the Zero is holding Calthan Brown. Oh, and added Adeptus Battlegrey to the powerpack on his suit.

Then painted his disc... thing... with his two primary colours, and painted his helmet Chaos Black.

Next I painted his knife blade with codex grey, and took an out of focus photograph of him...

...and painted in his one revealed eye. Painted with Vallejo Falcon Turquoise (Hawk Turquoise would be the Citadel equivalent). The bulk of the eye plain turquoise, turquoise mixed with white for the pupil (plus a speck of pure white applied to that while the paint was still wet). Then, for the outside, turquoise watered down and mixed with black - applied as a big, thin circular coat, then cut into with black to give it an irregular shape.

Then I went to bed.

This morning, I decided I should shade the yellow. Unfortunately, part of the reason I hate working with yellow is that it's a pain to shade - mixing yellow with black results in a green mess. I could have used Golden Yellow as the base colour then highlighted with Sunburst, but as I hadn't (and didn't want to brighten it further by highlighting with Bad Moon Yellow), I decided to try washing it. Gryphone Sepia is probably the sensible choice, but lacking that I tried Ogryn Flesh instead. It actually worked alright, though looks a bit more iffy when photographed. I also screwed up awfully trying to shade the knife. Ended up with an obsidian mess, and didn't have the heart to strip it and start from the beginning.

And finally, with all that done, I added the right arm, which I'd painted separately. Same colour scheme for the arm itself, of course, but the gun was painted a mix of Adeptus Battlegrey and Regal Blue (probably around a 2:3 mix), then given a light highlight with the same mix + white (3:1, perhaps), and shaded with pure Adeptus Battlegrey. I should probably have given it stronger contrasts, but after the screw up with the knife I didn't want to risk messing up again. Oh, and I shaded the pistol with Codex grey, and shaded with a mix of Codex and Adeptus. Of all the metal objects on show, it came out the best: thanks to its limited perspective it was a lot easier for me to work out how to paint it. And that was that!

Note that the right arm isn't actually properly attached - it's just been yellow-tacked on (you can see it sloping off the body in the second shot). You can also see a seam in the figure's left leg, a flaw that I should have filed... except for the fact it's completely invisible to the human eye. I'd have never realised it was there, but for these photographs!

And that's that! Things I've learned:

• I need to get better at flat-shading metal objects. The messed up knife and under-done rifle aren't good enough.
  
• I should try not to accidentally rip off Marvel Comics colour schemes.
  
• Infinity models are really, really lovely in the flesh.
  

[Padlocked]

Brill post, looks lovely. Pluses coming when I'm not on the phone

Now...explain highlighting to me...

[Wiper]

Well, highlighting is literally what it sounds like - adding highlights to a section. Also known as the opposite of shading.

Depending on what's being painted, there are a couple of particularly simple forms of highlighting. One is drybrushing, which I didn't use here. It would have worked on the yellow sections very well, however - basically the exact opposite of washing, it involves putting a small quantity of paint on your brush, then actively clearing the brush of most paint (I tend to brush it against a sheet of kitchen towel). This leads to a small amount of nearly-dry paint being left on the tip of the brush, which you then bring across areas with a lot of raised textures - like the piping on this figure's undersuit, or chainmail, or hair - anything like that is perfect. What happens is that the paint, because it's dry, doesn't seep into the cracks, and instead is left only on the elevated sections, causing them to 'pop'. As such, it's often used after washing an area, to bring the original colour back to the fore without undoing the shading done inside the crevices.

It also absolutely destroys brushes. There are specific brushes designed for drybrushing which will last longer, but on smaller miniatures I just tend to use an older, small brush which is already damaged.

The other simple technique is called edge highlighting. This works exactly as it sounds: you paint the edges of panels in a slightly lighter tone. I could have done this on the boot, the panels on the legs and chests - anywhere that there are 'slats' which meet. By adding a slightly brighter shade of the same colour to the edges, you accentuate the places they meet. It's a simple and effective technique, and one I probably should have used. You can see a particularly fancy version of this going on with the official shots of the Zero - note the light, bluish grey used to accentuate all of the edges of the trousers, and the lighter silvery grey used on the slats of the body armour.

Then there's lighting-based highlighting - as in, highlighting areas you expect to get more light. Technically, drybrushing falls into this category (you expect more light to hit the raised edges), but more generally it means deciding where you imagine a light source to be, and then highlighting accordingly. Proper miniature painters apply this to the whole model, of course, giving it softly blended shading all the way through to model in natural shading and highlighting. I'm nowhere near that good, so I just highlight corners and edges where I think they should catch the light. I tried that with the knife, and ruined it. The pistol worked better, and is the most overt example of it, but is also very basic - it looks nice from a distance, but in the photographs you can see how crude it is. Basically, I figured that the light would be catching the corner of its butt, and the end of the safety catch. So I added a lighter shade of grey, and then a spot of white, to both areas. The rifle, meanwhile, had a much subtler example of the same idea applied, with me assuming that it would be receiving light over its top edge - you can see the slightly lighter shades of grey just done in single, untidy strokes across its handle and mechanisms.

TLDR version: I'm not very good at highlighting, so am about the worst person to ask about it

[Cocky]

Excellent post Wiper. If I ever get through painting my lotr collection I'll be all over the infinity models. Btw there is a pretty good painting guide of bran do castro using primary colours on beasts of war that you might want to check out.

[Padlocked]

Awesome again! Thank you!

[Wiper]

Oh boy, most of my Infinity orders just arrived (a 17:00 delivery from RM. Impressive!). That's five more Yu Jing figures, and six more Nomads. Plenty of painting for me to do!

I'll stick up some shots of the metal figures once I've cleaned them (and maybe filed/de-flashed them, if I'm feeling fancy), alongside my two just-about-done keisotsu from the range. The worst thing is that even once I'm done collecting models for the above forces, I love the Haqqislam figures too, and quite like some of the PanOceania forces as well. And like the idea of ALEPH and Ariadna, if not most of the execution. Which, combined with the fact that Corvus Belli put out four new models a week, means that I can see myself amassing Infinity figures for quite some time...

[Benji Dude]

The infinity stuff is a really nice range, and works really well in games of Necromunda.

[Wiper]

And as an added bonus, the system itself seems really solid (from reading the rules and seeing comments about it, at least). Win win!

Anyway, those shots. In the end, only had time to clean and clean-up the Yu Jing models (which took a fair bit longer than the previous figures, not due to more flaws, but due to more pieces - where previously the most I had to deal with was the Zero with a separate arm, this bunch were all multi-part models. As such, they aren't mounted, and I had to shoot them while they lay drying, so apologies for the iffy quality. But before them, the painted Keisotsu (with a 'friend' lurking behind them):

And then came the pieces! The simplest model first (only in two parts) - the female Hac Tao with missile launcher:

Then the lovely female Hsien with HMG (the detailing seems a bit obscured where the cloak and crotch meet, but that's just the photograph)

And the poor, quartered male Hsien (missing in both shots: six tiny pipe/antennae/things that belong to each Hsien, to attach to their shoulders)

And finally, the Aragoto (again, missing pieces - the unheld handlebars and foot pegs on the bikes):

Again, I'm really impressed by these figures. The amount of detail on them, at so small a scale, is just wonderful. Really, really nice figures. Will be a bit of a pain to put together of course, being all metal, but I can live with that!

[JoeK]

God, I really must buy some Infinity figures - they're just so bloody good. Wiper, can you buy me some please? Hmm? Pretty please?

[Wiper]

They really are! I mean, there are still some awful figures in the range, but the better examples of their older models, and pretty much all of their more recent figures, are just incredible.

You can sodding well get your own, though (at £6 to £10 a pop they aren't too bad, actually - it's not as though you have to buy a tonne of them anyway!)

And if you ever decided to actually play with them (I know many people in this thread are more interested in the figures than gaming, but still), the rules are completely free. Which is the best price of all.

[Rev]

Dalek/Cyberman/Sontaran combo next week apparently

Which were designed by my girlfriend.

[moosegrinder]

What?

You have a girlfriend?

[Rev]

What?

You have a girlfriend?

Yeah, sorry man. I didn't mean to lead you on, I just didn't have it in me to break your heart.

[JoeK]

Which were designed by my girlfriend.

Hmm? You can't leave us hanging like that. Tell us more!

[Rev]

Hmm? You can't leave us hanging like that. Tell us more!

They just...were. When they were first made she was the designer on Doctor Who Adventures which included designing the free gifts as well as the pages of the mag. And if the free gifts are miniatures, that's what she has to design. Get designed, prototypes come back from the manufacturer, changes get made, however many hundreds of thousands are created.

She's currently working on the Doctor Who CCG Monster Invasions, which I've mentioned elsewhere.

[Wiper]

Well, I've painted up the two Hsien (particularly solid heavy infantry) - waiting on some filler to help hide the joins (between their arms and torso, and between the male's torso and legs), and I haven't worked out what colour to paint their swords just yet (though I quite like the metallic white that's come about from the light spray of primer, so may work from that), and they're missing the little capsule, er, things, that live on their shoulders, but they're largely done. Aside from the bit where they are, as ever, only tacked to their bases These, alongside the two Keisotsu infantry I painted previously, are the first models I've painted using a wet palette, and exclusively watered down paint - something I'll be sticking with in future. Thanks so much to Cocky for linking me to that Three Colours Up video (combined with some criticism given elsewhere, suggesting I water my paints down more). I should probably work on shading their trenchcoats, but really want to get to work painting the Hac Tao (camouflaged, ultra-heavy infantry, giving off a real Crysis-suit-meets-Combine vibe) and my Aragoto (bikers). Anyway, I quite like the way the colour scheme came out, and whatever the case, not even I could ruin such lovely models too much:

(what looks like incredibly heavy shading in the crevices on the female Hsien looks far nicer away from a lens)

(Besides the extremely cheap Keisotsu light infantry. I do like the use of scale, with the armoured suits adding bulk to a believable level, making the HI stand out without looking absurd - though the male Hsien must be a monster of a man when stood straight)

I have to say, I really love the Infinity range of miniatures. Even if I didn't really need a reintroduction to the joys of supergluing metal figures together

[Cocky]

Courtesy of beastsofwar.com

Back by popular demand, the German Zombies are here!

A unique combination kit consisting of the ever popular Mantic Games Zombies and the excellent Warlord Bolt Action German Infantry frames, this 10-20 figure set (depending on how cleverly you configure your troops!) can be built in a multitude of different ways, making full use of all the optional extras and themed parts on the frame – there’s even a German weapon frame included to arm them in a multitude of different ways!

This set contains 3 Mantic Zombie Sprues, 2 German Infantry Sprues and 1 German Weapon Sprues, in addition to a strip of 10 Round Mantic Bases. With October free shipping on orders over £25/€35/$75 and a free £5 off your next order voucher until the 11th October, this set is only available until 11:59pm Monday 31st October – don’t miss it!

I think the set is available only from the warlord or mantic websites. Aside from being a cool idea I'm thinking the Nazi zombies could work well with incursion which is still on sale at wayland.

[LyonJacques]

Courtesy of beastsofwar.com

I think the set is available only from the warlord or mantic websites. Aside from being a cool idea I'm thinking the Nazi zombies could work well with incursion which is still on sale at wayland.

I was hoping they'd do this deal again as it's the kitbash I've decided on for my Incursion zombies - the official models are lovely but it just seems daft to spend big on them having got the base game so cheap!

That said I don't think this offer really makes sense; from reading the incursion rules (not managed to play a game yet ) spamming zombies is a valid tactic, especially if you take the character who gives you extra z's for no cost, so you might see 30+ zombies on the board in the larger games (that may prove totally uncompetitive when I actually play, but it's possible). This set gives 9 zombies and 10 nazi's - you'll probably struggle to get 20 good looking nazi zombies out of it (I can see them ending up as ten with nazi jackets and ten with nazi trousers, like there weren't enough pyjamas to go around). Given you need some bits for nazi bomb zombies and nazi werewolves too you're looking at two sets @ £30... then for six quid more at Wayland/Dark Sphere you can both separate kits (30 zombies + 25 Nazis).

Anyway enough consumer advice! As I said I fancied knocking together some cheap forces for Incursion, here's a sneak peak at my bargain basement US (power armoured) Marines:

[moosegrinder]

Finally got the link to the amazing RussiAn studio that the woman's dad buys figures from occasionally. Ignore the shitness of the site:

http://www.soldiers-neva.com/redirect.php?app=gallary&run=1&page=0〈=en

The proficiency staggers me.

[mechamonkey]

I need to get some minatures paint after not owning any for nearly 20 years, can anyone point me at some decent starter kits as I literally have nothing at all.

I'll be painting my WoR and Drizzt figures for the next several years

Here's the last 2 figures I still own which I painted in about 1990 (sorry for the lolsome names!)

[mechamonkey]

found this guide re: getting started

[Wiper]

Just a heads up re: Corvus Belli's customer service (specifically when dealing with their Infinity range).

Last week I realised that one of my figures was missing a part (specifically, this figure was missing the little 'antennae' that go on his shoulders). I'd bought the model from Maelstrom Games, but went straight to Corvus Belli as it was clearly an error from their end. They apologised profusely, and proceeded to send me the replacement part (from Spain), no hassle, for free. Oh, and they packed a little badge with the logo of the army the figure belongs to in the jiffy bag as well. So yes, colour me impressed