Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal - part II

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

Understood!


Re the Glorious Empire...

Yes, I think it did, in spots like The Dungeon in Lake Geneva and The Little Tin Soldier Shoppe and Uncle Hugo's SF Bookstore here in the Twin Cites. Back before the Internet, little indie stores had no competition, and if you wanted to get something you had to go to the very rare conventions or the local store. Mail order was very difficult, as it was very hard to even find the addresses of most publishers, and most of them didn't want to deal with mail order - too much overhead, and sales to distributors brought in more money more reliably. (Convention sales were the icing on the cake.) Model railroad and hobby stores used to exist that worked in the same way, too.

These days, used books are more or less worthless, and what few retail stores that still exist will touch them. Miniatures have very, very little resale value even when painted and based; 'used' raw metal has no value at all in today's retail environment. Stores must stock the 'big name brands' to get any sales, the days of being able to potter around in the back corners and look for lost treasure are long gone. Lines that have no support from the publisher / manufacturer have a shelf life measured in nanoseconds, and get dumped in the 75% off bins. (I will admit that I get a lot of great figures, that way.)

Once the Internet arrived, and became easy to use, all this went away - no money = no money. The small publishers / manufacturers have turned to the Internet to sell their stuff, because it's the only way to reach a large enough audience to survive. We are in the age of the 'boutique' website.

So, yes, I've been there, and I do kind of miss those times.

A couple talented college kids did a video for my store:

https://www.facebook.com/NeutralGrou...2091560253896/

Anyhow, they did a great job and it's not their fault that I look and sound so old. It's been month by month since I started five years ago and I still haven't quit my day job. My sales are more mainstream than I'd like and I've gotten gun shy of metal figures and my own favorites. How long it can carry on in a city of 80000 with 5 gaming stores is anyone's guess. Oh well, it keeps life interesting

I suggested Vivaldi or Wagner for the music and Morgan Freeman for my voice, but they had to use what the College had in its library.

Okay, the basics are clippers, an x-acto knife, brushes, and paints. For plastics, a set of flush cutting clippers will save you a world of pain. For brushes I use cheap nylon brushes, I do most of my painting with a number six but you'll also want a 3 and a 000. One mistake beginners make is using too small of a brush. They come to a point for a reason. Some folks love a sable brush. I do if I'm drawing in brush and ink but miniatures painting is hard on brushes and I'm not a fan of trashing $30 brushes.

Paints come in various qualities. Most miniatures painting paints are really good: smooth, and highly pigmented. If you're a beginner that doesn't matter so much but if you want really good results you need really good paints. Craft store and dollar store paints will do for learning. I mostly use Army Painter but Games Workshop and Privateer really do make better paints, more expensive but better. Many people love Vallejo but personally it's too thin and a bit glossier than I'd like.

White Dwarf magazine still does okay painting tutorials. The basic approach is clean up the mould lines and flash, paint on a base coat, pick out the details, shade and highlight.

Good modern plastic and metal figures don't have many mould-lines, but second tier companies and resin figures often do. The X-Acto blade with a curved top is handy for this as it can be pushed along like a chisel. Plastic figures are often in more parts and need assembled. Model cement is great for plastics and terrible for everything else. Many people prefer a brush on liquid cement as tube control is a learned skill. Super glue gel is good for most other things. Metal kits often have larger gaps which are best joined with two-part epoxy.

You can spray on your base coat and Army Painter has a great line of spray primers. If you're not painting sports cars or space marines, you'll want a white, grey, brown, or black base coat. White is best if you're using cheaper paints as they won't be opaque enough to cover a dark base coat.

You can paint on a base coat. For more complex models brushing it on gives better coverage. I use acrylic primer with a bit of Future floor wax to thin it down. Don't try this at home. Primer matters more on metal figures than plastics. Soft plastics like toy soldiers should be base coated with Krylon for Plastic spray paint. Reaper Bones and many board game figures are Vinyl and should absolutely not be painted with Krylon For Plastic as it reacts badly. Plastics and resin figures often need washed with warm soapy water and allowed to dry before base coating.

Most painters use acrylic paints, these have little to no odor and thin out with water. Artists acrylics work but require more skill in thinning and getting the right consistency. Enamels like Testors model paints don't need a primer on metal but require spirits to thin them and stink enough that your wife will send you out to the shed. Really top notch painters use oil paints which stink less than enamels and are thinned with linseed oil but will still get you kicked to the shed. Don't bother with oil paints they take forever to dry. If you're doing non-metallic metallic and light sources and worrying about really consistent blends that'll hold up under a magnifying glass and painting one or two figures over the course of a year, oils are fantastic but if you're painting stuff that people will play with and touch, don't bother.

You want to mostly use flat paints not glossy ones. They just look better and show detail more clearly. If you're using cheap paint it'll be a bit glossy. Army Painter (whee look at me schill) has good dull coat you can use to tone down the gloss. Start painting with the skin and work up to the large areas and then the details. You actually want to overlap your layers as nothing looks worse than a white patch between details and its easier to pick out raised details. Shading and highlighting can really improve a figure as can lettering, patterns, tattoos and other painted detail but those are a bit advanced for this thread. You can do a simple wash slopped all over the figure with really thinned out burnt umber paint that will sink into the recesses and give a simple dip effect without the glossiness of varnish or floor wax dips.

Let me echo everything David said about painting figures.

I would also recommend, if you can, get some cheap figures, or used figures, or something that doesn't cost you much, and a couple of craft store brushes and five or six colors of craft store cheap acrylic paint.

Then sit down and slobber some paint on some figures.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice.

It's like when I started learning to weather model railroad cars. At every flea market there are "junkers" for a buck... missing wheels, or the roof walk is missing, or the doors are gone, or they're just generally bunged up.

Who cares. I bought half a dozen dollar junk cars, and some earth colored and rust colored cheap paint, and started assassinating cars. The first ones looked pretty awful, but who cares? After enough practice, I now do weathering that draws compliments.

Practice, practice, practice.

I also recommend that people read "Time Traveler's Guide to the 14th Century" for its discussion on medieval justice. The whole "trial by jury" means something VERY different in other societies, and "evidence" does not mean what you think it means.