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Miniature painting

Started by Beorning, August 12, 2015, 05:32:42 AM

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Dhi

Hey eBadger, how did you put together your eZerkova unit? Did you pin, did you assemble before or after painting? Mine arrived in 15 teensy pieces and though I understand the advantages, I always groan when I receive pieces like this.

Especially Una the Falconer. Glue bird feet to bird ankles, are you kidding me? I will never be able to put that together.

eBadger

Yeah, I'm never thrilled to get a bunch of tiny bits of metal.  Plastic isn't so bad, as it glues easier.  I'm looking forward to seeing them switch over to the new plastic, although there're still all the issues of Chinese manufacturing...blech. 

I use the greenstuff method (a light sheen of glue, a tiny dab of greenstuff - well, PP's version, but whatevers - and a light sheen of glue on the other piece).  It seemed to work well.  While there are a ton of bits, the mold quality was very good - better than most PP stuff - and they fit nicely, most into formed grooves with lots of surface area.  I believe I pinned the upper hand on each guard's axe, and Zerkova's arm absolutely needs serious pinning.  I don't think anything else is really required unless durability is really an issue. 

I assemble pretty much everything before painting.  My skill is humble anyways, and I firmly ascribe to the notion that if you can't get a paintbrush in there, nobody cares/that's what ink is for.   ;)

I look forward to seeing them!  I haven't done much of anything lately - more invested in writing.  And my next step is to magnetize a bunch of Everblight heavies, which is going to be a pain. 

Dhi

I'm not familiar with the greenstuff method. You're using a cyanoacrylate glue like Zap and solid greenstuff and letting them dry together?

eBadger

Yeah, any sort of super glue should work; I currently use loctite gel for most things but in the past I used generic stuff from my old workplace.  The notion is to use a tiny amount of epoxy to fill in all the gaps and also provide a sticky bond to keep bits in place while the glue sets, preventing any movement.  It definitely forms much better bonds than just using glue and I use it for just about everything, just for simplicity.  It's not as good as pinning, though. 

Basically just do what I described: get both parts barely wet with glue, then place a very tiny amount of epoxy between them and glue as normal.  There shouldn't be enough epoxy to squeeze out around the edges (I use a razor blade to trim off slivers). 

Dhi

So far in 2016 I've painted fifteen miniatures. eZerkova has been about six months coming, and is now fifth on my list. In the interim I'm painting some Hell Dorado and Malifaux pieces from 2012 that've been residing on the shelf of shame in a sorry half-finished state.

To put eZerkova together, I used a glue technique from Marike Reimer: put a little dot of superglue on the tab side, and into the slot side, sprinkle a generous amount of baking soda. It cures pretty much instantly into a hard glass.

This has taken a lot of the nightmare out of gluing metals, but even so, I'm done with metals. Crisp high detail resin has always been my painting chocolate, and now that it's becoming more widespread and the hobby is opening up to crowdsourced indie projects, I no longer have to choose models I like or material I like. There are manufacturers who'll give me both.

If only they didn't charge $15-25 a piece...

Beorning

I don't understand why glueing metals is considered hard. Larger models, maybe, but small minis glue easily, at least for me...

Anyway, I haven't painted anything for a few months now. I just... don't have the time...  :-\

Dhi

I'm glad you can do it without difficulty, someone's got to keep Reaper in business. I can't tolerate it anymore.

Chemically speaking no glue is good for use on metal because the metal doesn't react to it. The superglue cures around the shape of the metal. Even the best superglue bond on a metal miniature is not going to support much weight and will pop right off if dropped. Resin, on the other hand, is bonded permanently. It chemically melts together.

Thorne

It's a pain in the neck, for sure. I've found that roughing the surface up a little helps a lot. But when you're working with something that's so small you need tweezers just to hang on to it ... *grumble*

I've got at least one of those right now. It's not Reaper, though. It's .. ahm. Privateer Press. She's in a million pieces, metal, and I can't face the glue right now. When I get around to it, I'll have a very fancy half-dragon sorceress to paint. ^^;

And I did cave and buy a bunch of Warhammer war-wolves. Which appear to be resin. But.. wolves! No GM ever has enough, especially dire wolves... they'll be pretty easy to paint, at least. And only about three pieces per wolf. So, not too big a deal to glue, either.
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eBadger

Well, pictures when you finish! 

And Privateer seems pretty firm about shifting production to plastics and resins in the future.  Although I expect there'll always be a mix. 

Dhi

Zerkova herself is finished and based, now I'm working on her bodyguards. I'm happy with how she turned out!

I'm glad Privateer wants to do plastic, though the plastic they use needs some work. The detail on the plastic battleboxes was not good, and things like the snap together assembly left them feeling cheap and inferior.

Projects like Wrath of Kings and Toughest Girls in the Galaxy use higher quality plastics that take amazing thin detail you could never achieve with white metal, and they built those capabilities from essentially nothing with Kickstarter funds. Kingdom Death is also trying out plastics and honestly side by side I can't tell the difference between their plastics and resin. These are all crowdfunded, upstart companies. I think Privateer Press, as the #2 company, needs to strive for at least that level of quality.

Dhi

I'm down a light, so until I invest in a new setup my photos are all casting shadows.  :-(



Except for this one.


Dhi

I received some Chinese recasts of Kingdom Death minis in the post today. Conflicted about it, but you can't buy these anywhere anymore, and the recasts are flawless and cheap.


Dhi

Recasting is when you make your own rubber mold of a mini and cast counterfeit copies. It's one of those garage bootleg operations that isn't normally profitable, but then you get a company likes Games Workshop with insane markup, or Kingdom Death who refuse to make more of minis people are willing to pay top dollar for...

Far eyes

Yah Games Workshop is weird, i worked for a small table top games hoby store here and they basically stopped working with them because they had idiotic bundles and would only want to sell these "nobody will buy half this shit" Bundles. With like maybe 30-40% of things the store owner would actually want. Plus keep in mind for local prices here even like forking out 30-50$ for a game book you will use over and over again is quiet an investment for a lot of people.
 
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TotesRider

I used to. But I never played the WH40K game because it looked Complex as fuck (and this is from a dude whose mildly decentish at Virtua Fighter). But I have been learning how to do custom paint on my Bionicle MOCs


greenknight

With Team Yankee coming out, I've got a few platoons to paint up. And, of course, these came out about 30 years too late for T:2K, but whatever, I got some extras to use for that, too.
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HairyHeretic

Quote from: Dhi on May 04, 2016, 07:14:25 PM
Is anyone else working on anything?

Slowly working on my Night Lords. We have an escalating campaign in my FLGS, which increases game size every couple of months. I need to get some more painted up for that.
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Dhi

What do you guys do for bases? I struggle with base ideas.

greenknight

I just paint for tabletop play, so static grass is about as detailed as I get. That said, now that I'm moving into FoW 15mm stuff, squads are basically mini-dioramas so I picked up some of Battlefront's textured squad bases. I'll see what I end up doing with them.
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HairyHeretic

I'm pretty much the same. Most of my bases will be some variant of green or brown, with static grass. I've used sand as well, for a desert-ish looking one.

A local Space Wolf player has gone with the snow look on his, which fits the army, if not always the table :)

You might get some inspiration here though

http://shop.microartstudio.com/battle-bases-c-3.html
Hairys Likes, Dislikes, Games n Stuff

Cattle die, kinsmen die
You too one day shall die
I know a thing that will never die
Fair fame of one who has earned it.

Dhi

Micro Art bases are super cool. I picked up some of their jungle and badlands bases at one point, but that's kind of expensive. Unfortunately I cannot do the same kind of stuff myself, I've always been bad at sculpting.

This morning I started working on a couple of base ideas.

One is going to be tangled jungle roots. I have these monsters lying around from Reaper that I'm honestly never going to use:
http://www.reapermini.com/OnlineStore/tentacle/sku-down/03532
So the one on the right is the core of the base. Some of the vines are draped over a 54mm mask, so it looks like statuary reclaimed by aggressive plants. The gaps are filled in with Vallejo sandy paste, a texture paint that's finer than hobby sand.

The other one is going to be a fairy ring. I mangled another helpless mini, chopped off the mushroom cap from one of these guys.
http://www.reapermini.com/OnlineStore/mushroom/latest/77345
It's going to serve as the stand. Around the perimeter I'm cutting the heads off of some escutcheon pins to serve as tiny little toadstools. I'd like to make the earth a little uneven, and make the soil look like mycelium. I remember hearing about a technique for making CA glue bubble up into an organic mess by mixing it with water, so I'm trying that out on some practice surfaces. Maybe laying down some bristles from an old brush as mycelium threads would work better, I don't know.

greenknight

Something I've considered in the past is using clear acrylic bases. I stopped when I realized priming would kill the clear.

Escutcheon pin = straight pin?
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Dhi

Not exactly, it's a small decorative brass nail.

What would a clear base be for?

The only Citadel product I have right now is Liquid Green Stuff, really just a dyed Tamiya putty that's useless for filling gaps. I opened it for the second time ever to brush a grainy texture onto some of those too-smooth toadstools. Guess what, the entire pot is dried out. Only Citadel does this.