Customer Reviews (view all) Average Rating 5

Chris McCombs	Rated: 5
Great product at an unbeatable price
Seems I can't resist some things, especially when they're reasonably priced. I hadn't been on Cool Mini Or Not (or COMON for short) in a few months and I went back last month to take a poke around and see what was new and generally just do some browsing on the site. I like to go there to get inspired, learn new techniques, and for conversion ideas. Sorry, seems I'm off on a tangent already…back to the review. First off there was one slight turn off - Its an adobe acrobat e-book. I'm more of a deadtree book fan, though I have to admit that being able to zoom on stuff in the e-book is handy. First attraction - 400 page guide for $9.95 (USD) - Hey, affordable and large. Here's what the add states on COMON: 400 pages of full-color, step by step articles Covering everything from basics to advanced techniques like "Non-Metallic Metals" and "Object Source Lighting", this MASSIVE volume has contributions from award winning artists from all over the world! Chapters include: 1. The basics 2. Advanced techniques 3. Bases 4. Miniatures Step by Step (each step illustrated with detailed photos) 5. Sculpting 6. Terrain building 7. Tools 8. Photography and imaging Many of the authors have pioneered the techniques they are describing, and you'll surely find something new within these pages. IF you ever wanted to paint, convert or sculpt like a Golden Demon winner......let them show you how! Starting out, there's a nice table of contents (though no index, but not really needed IMHO as the TOC is well laid out. The introduction is about half a page and has a handy link to COMON and the forums therein. Chapter 1 - The basics - Which really is as advertised - basic, for me at least and most likely anyone who's been painting miniatures for at least five years. It covers differences between paints, inks, glazes, basic tools (work area, lighting, hobby knives, and the like). Then the chapter goes into basic miniature preparation and then moves into basic painting, shading, highlighting, drybrushing, painting metal (as in metal weapons), flesh and eyes, basic basing, applying decals, pinning (which I learned a new way to line up holes for pinning), and lastly basic conversions (which usually are the best looking IMHO). Chapter 2 - Advanced techniques - don't get scared here, think intermediate up to advanced techniques. The chapter covers basic and slightly advanced color theory, painting faces (a good article I thought), painting faces to show expressions ( a great article IMHO) that has a nice chart at the end depending on how dark you want your face, three step and nine step rust, Non-metallic metal (or NMM for short) - which I liked as it explained it so that even I could understand it, painting plate armor (a good article that got me thinking a bit about how I usually paint some of my plate armored minis), sky-earth NMM, feathering (a type of dry blending) - a good article and something I'd like to try in the future as I'm only partially successful at wet-blending, painting gemstones (calling all Eldar players), painting more complex gems (essentially non-normal gemstone made items), chipped armor and glowing eyes (the example uses a GW space marine helmet, but the technique could be applied to many miniatures), painting blood, creating blood splatters, unshaved beards, blending earthtones and creating a mud effect (not for the faint of heart as there are 13 stages), painting tyranid carapace (or the lined bone effect I like to call it), painting wood grain on smooth surfaces (handy article, but not sure how much I'll use it), painting lighting effects (or Object Source Lighting) - the basics of painting lighting effects that I wish would have had more examples, which is strange as there are a ton of examples of almost everything they do in the book, Object source lighting expanded - a really, really advanced article on light effects and light sourcing, I'd have liked to have an intermediate article in between the two lighting articles, Whew~! We're up to 115 pages so far~! Chapter two has a ton of good use able stuff and a lot of good examples and to me is almost worth the price of the book alone (and I've paid more for books with less in them). On to chapter 3. CHAPTER 3 - Bases - Basic to advanced techniques (such as lava, a small bridge, show bases, melted snow base (which I didn't like actually as I don't think the effect was very good and there are much better snow articles on COMON and I'm surprised they chose this one, industrial bases, magnetic bases, crystal bases (probably my favorite among the base articles as it was new to me), urban bases (I thought this article was interesting, though I thought of an easier way to do it), movement trays CHAPTER 4 - Miniatures step by step. Shows several miniatures painted to varying degree levels of skill - on purpose. Tabletop quality high elves, Goblins, Warrior of Minas Tirith, Last Alliance elf warrior, (all the previous are GW minis), Kelt Fiana, GW Aragorn, a bright GW (I think) Chaos Warrior, Mech Pilot (of unknown origin, at least to me), flying hive tyrant (with a great base), and lastly a grey wolf space marine. CHAPTER 5 - Sculpting - I, personally, am a little overawed by folks that can sculpt. I can do easy things, but that's about the limit, so far, of my ability. The chapter has a few examples of making entire miniatures from scratch using green stuff. The handiest thing in this chapter for me was the two page tips section at the end of it. CHAPTER 6 - Terrain and decorations - as the chapter splash page states - making things from trees to buildings to entire gaming tables. Covers - the idiots guide to trees, quality trees for less (which I liked), making plastic banners ( a good article and I've seen similar ones before), simple slate, making wood grain, making barbed wire (a good article as well), mud huts, and lastly a bloodbowl pitch (yeah, Bloodbowl~!!!). CHAPTER 7 - Tools and miscellaneous - as stated. Covers brush care and types of brushes, quick and simple wet palate, a portable version of a wet palette, cheap figure holders (assuming your miniatures are mainly slotta base minis), and lastly a scale comparison. CHAPTER 8 - Photography and imaging - resolution explained (not really sure why they included this as it doesn't seem all that handy or that there's a large audience for it, but hey, what do I know?), miniature photography (a good article, though there are similar ones out there on the net), photography tips, (photography) Jargon Buster (an article that I found handy since I don't speak the jargon), post picture processing (an article that I found interesting and it also has a link to a seemingly handy picture editing program. One day I'll down load the program so that I can make multi-view single page pictures.). And that's it~! All in all well worth my $9.98. The one thing I should mention is that I think most of these articles can be found in the COMON forums and other places on COMON. So I guess if you already have them or would rather save your ten bucks then you could search for them. I'd rather save what little sanity I have and pay the small amount.

Jimmy Bergelin	Rated: 5
Really a great book.

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