The Miniatures and Scale model appreciation thread

[Joyrex-J9]

found this guide re: getting started

If you don't want to go down the route of GW's inflated prices I'd recommend the Coat'd Arms paints. They are the same paint as GW used back in the 90s so you'll recognise the pots and colour names!

http://www.blackhat.co.uk/online_shop/index.php?cPath=21&osCsid=38959d93b6a0a4b27e5362b697bea736

They do a few starter sets of paints.

[LyonJacques]

If you don't want to go down the route of GW's inflated prices I'd recommend the Coat'd Arms paints. They are the same paint as GW used back in the 90s so you'll recognise the pots and colour names!

http://www.blackhat.co.uk/online_shop/index.php?cPath=21&osCsid=38959d93b6a0a4b27e5362b697bea736

They do a few starter sets of paints.

Or you can get twenty random Coat d'Arm pots for £7 in the Black Tree Design Halloween sale. Until 5th Nov. Chances are you'll have to top it up with some black/white/red etc as you tend to get a bunch of the more obscure shades, but a great way to fill out a collection. And as the J-lord says they are identical to old GW's before they changed manufacturer, even down to the pots.

[mechamonkey]

Great stuff, +1'd! Thanks guys

[mechamonkey]

Legend of Drizzt arrived today

Look at the size of Errtu compared to those Bloodbowl figs I posted earlier

[Padlocked]

Or you can get twenty random Coat d'Arm pots for £7 in the Black Tree Design Halloween sale. Until 5th Nov. Chances are you'll have to top it up with some black/white/red etc as you tend to get a bunch of the more obscure shades, but a great way to fill out a collection. And as the J-lord says they are identical to old GW's before they changed manufacturer, even down to the pots.

My 20 pots of paint arrived today. Couple of duplicates in there, but £9.50 (incl p&p) for:

Amethyst Purple

Emerald Green x2

Hideous Blue x2

Tanned Flesh

Marine Blue

Warlock Purple

Leprous Brown

Hawk Turqoise

Scorpion Green

Lupin Grey

Golden Yellow

Deadly Nightshade

Shadow Grey

Jade Green

Angel Green

Poison Purple

Dark Elf Green

Nauseous Blue

is a phenomenally cheap way to get a strong range I shades and colours whichever way I look at it. Great stuff.

[Joyrex-J9]

That offer is too good to let slip by.

I'm late to it so I might just end up with 20 different shades of pink, puce, and magenta but it's still a bargain. A good way of replacing my semi-dried up GW ones

[Padlocked]

It's crazy value, £40 with of paints. I expected there to be a catch beyond it being random - test pots or smaller pots or something. I mean, the shop even takes a 50p hit on postage as far as I can make out (excluding the cost of the little box).

But no. 20 full size pots for less than the price of 3 GW pots in the shop. I've got enough paints or aaaaaages now.

[Joyrex-J9]

My 20 pots arrived, no dupes (I don't think - half asleep opening them!) a couple of nice metallics and several different blues. Even if I only use a quarter of them it's still a bargain, seeing as £7 would get you just 3 pots of GW paint each with half the volume of paint in them!

[idespair]

I'm just about done with the Forge Fathers from Mantic Games' starter set for their new Warpath rules.

[Cocky]

That's some nice painting. I really like what mantic do but whenever I feel tempted to buy their stuff I remember that I'd never get around to painting so many.

I'm currently working through my puppets. It's a lot of fun to paint with the less drab colour schemes than I'm used to and finishing a model within 30 minutes keeps me interested.

[Treble]

Some lovely work there. If you want some quick tips on lighting for shooting them, a quick suggestion would be to get a dropcloth behind them (white or black, depending on preference. You can get a cheap bolt of cloth from a craft or sewing shop for pence) and get a light set up at a 45 degree angle to the figures. Put a cloth (a hankie will do) in front to diffuse the bulb's harshness, and rest your camera on something steady (if you don't have a tripod).

You want to be shooting any front-on shots of the figures at eye-level, not from above (unless you deliberately want shots of the tops of their heads) and make sure you set your camera to shoot after a delay (on compacts, just use the self-timer intended for taking shots you're going to be in) to eliminate any shake. Oh, and for pity's sake, never use built-in flash. It's just horrible.

You can also use natural light, but if you want sharp shots with inky-black shadows the above setup will be better, providing you get the light right - experiment with the height - and some decent diffusion

[Cocky]

Hey thanks. I really should get a better setup for photographing my miniatures. Until then here's some slightly better photos:

And here's what I have been painting today:

It's been quite a challenge since most of the miniature is flesh and metal. The former I don't have a lot experience with as the inhabitants of Middle Earth are evidently very modest. And with metal I'm usually lazy and do a simple basecoat and black wash.

[Cocky]

The wife was out for most of the day.

[Treble]

Hey, much better! You could do with dropping the angle just a little bit more (but that's being really picky!). Other than that - great. Excellent work on the models themselves of course - top notch

[Benji Dude]

Yeah very nice paint job there on Mr. Scissor-hands.

[Joyrex-J9]

Remember all that shit I had with varnish? Well I finally got round to posting the results of a test I did with 4 brands of varnish

Rather than repeat myself - you're interested have a look here

https://plus.google.com/u/0/113344665353787419655/posts/3JWxJ5cyTWo

[Wiper]

Very helpful! One note, though: you say that Testors is impossible to get in the UK. Firestorm Games sell it. Off the shelf if you live in/near Cardiff, else you'll have to buy it from their site, but either way - you can get it.

[Joyrex-J9]

Oh thanks for the info.

I think overall I'd still go for the Army Painter stuff as the can is about 4 times the size of the tiny Testors' can. Maybe if I was varnishing a display piece or something then use the Testors' stuff as it has the slight edge on matt-ness

[Wiper]

These days I only varnish metal models (and am only working on Infinity stuff - a skirmish game, so relatively few models), so I'd rather stick with quality over quantity. That said, I do have a near-full can of Army Painter anti-shine spray anyway, so if I ever have a change of heart and decide to varnish my plastics, I can fall back on it. So, er, I guess what I'm advocating is having both

[JoeK]

Not exactly a mini, but a small announcement about my site...

ahem...

From the web-site

I can't wait until 2012...can you tell?

[Benji Dude]

Sweet, was beginging to think the worst!

[JoeK]

Sweet, was beginging to think the worst!

Nah, just various unhappy circumstances preventing things from going forwards really!

Bloody sculptors...grr.

Bloody work going into administration and me losing my job...grr.

Roll on 2012.

[Padlocked]

LOve hou

[LaParka]

So next year I plan to paint most of what i've got. Currently on the 'to do' list are:

500 point Tau Battleforce box

35 points (ish) Skorne (Hordes)

35 points Cygnar (warmachine)

Female wood elf blood bowl team

I'm going to post the exact same thing this time next year aren't I?

[JoeK]

Well, I thought I'd start my 'one figure painted a month' very efficiently, and managed to get this one finished today. It serves a few purposes really - one, to get my arse into gear, but also this is one of my new releases for the start of the year too.

Well, I say 'new', but in reality this and 5 other figures form part of the 'zO' range of figures, which were originally released in metal in around 2005 by Steve Buddle (but now remastered in resin). Earlier on last year, Steve got poached by GW, and he started handing out the rights to his figures to various folk. The zO range was always the one I wanted to pick up because it's full of fantastic ideas and variations on the old Oz story, but considerably warped . Alas, I missed out on it at the time (although I do have something coming out this year which was originally commission by Steve, but now mine ...if it ever gets finished!), but fate finally gave me something to smile about when the person who did buy the range contacted me about it. And I took 'em off his hands.

They're really cool little figures - simpler in many ways to the other ones I've made, but they are bloody lovely fun to paint. So, without further ado, here's the lead protagonist, aptly called 'Dot'.

By the way, the yellow thing in her hand is 'Toto', the last Yellow Brick in the land. It's slowly making a certain amount of sense to me now, but there's quite a bit to sort out still .

Hope you like her - if you do like her enough to want one before I get things properly set up on the store, PM me about it. It won't really be until late January before the range is officially announced, but I have a few casts at the moment.

Cheers folks

[JoeK]

Thought I'd bung up a (slightly) better pic of her...

[Benji Dude]

Looks a lot better in the newer pics. The face isn't a forgotton picasso painting! lol

[LyonJacques]

£35 - £25 on a Mantic Christmas Bag - a messenger bag filled with a random bundle of plastic mantic figures - plus a tenner on sundry gubbins. Aside from art materials that's it for me until April, honest.

This turned up today in fact (ordered on tues) and a quick tally of my lucky dip gives me:

40 Elves

40 Skeletons

20 Dwarves

13 Orcs

6 Ghouls

3 Zombies

- 122 figs! It actually looks like they deliberately gave me at least one of every fantasy sprue they do (bar warmachines), which is perfect as I mainly want them for chopping about and fiddling with. I'm not a fan of all their sculpts but they certainly give value for money.

[JoeK]

These three are the zO Munchkins. Injected with a nasty serum (on the side of the models' heads you can see a little injection hole ), it kind of fucks them up somewhat. They don't eat flesh, nor do they like brains. They kind of just like to hit and chop things up. Not much of an improvement I guess, but there we go.

[Benji Dude]

lol I like those JoeK very characterful.