Bad Juju minis..

[Chrispy]

First off, as you may or may not know, juju is the african word for \"luck\" or something that gives off \"vibes\" that affect you directly.. Obviously, bad juju almost seems like a curse...

Anyways, I\'ve tried about three times now to paint my group of Fiannas and for some reason they always come out looking weird.. As you can tell by my later works, I have no problems with blending/color schemes and all that, they just refuse to look good!

Rather than ask for help on them (planning conversions, chopping them up will give me a bit of satisfaction ) I was wondering if anybody else ran into a mini that just gave them nothing but trouble... or maybe I\'m just crazy...

But that\'s beside the point..

 

[shris]

no paint\'ems

I\'ve got a troll that refuses to be painted. I\'ve done him up three times, and three times I\'ve had to scrub him off and start over. He\'s currently awaiting his fourth attempt.

His problem is the lack of good handhold. He\'s not based (he came with a pegged foot and a base with no holes) and his weapon is a big piece of bone, so there\'s really no good place to hang on while painting. So I end up rubbing the paint off almost before it\'s on. Metal peeking through the paint job is no good.

Of course, it may be a problem with my priming as well. I\'m still figuring out how thick to put the primer on.

I\'m in the middle of a Queen Shanon of something or other right now, and I swear her eyeballs squirm out from under my brush. She may turn out to be another one that won\'t be painted. I dunno. I spent hours on her today and somehow those eyeballs are just escaping me.

I dunno, I\'m not giving up yet, but phew those two are a pain in the butt.

No, you\'re not crazy.

 

[Flashman14]

That \"primer-not-sticking problem\" I have always creeps up in my stuff . . . And I don\'t think it\'s the quantity of primer per se but rather that the figure may be oily before it\'s primed. I\'m told I should wash my figures in detergent prior to priming.
Also I keep a jat of the Polly S brush-on primer for touch ups. Also letting the primer dry overnight at minimum seemed to have helped me.

Helpful? no?

 

[SaxonAngel]

If your not washing your figures before priming then you\'re just asking for trouble. When anything is cast in a mold whether its plastic or metal there is a certain amount of \"oily\" release compound that helps the mini slip out of its mold. And the best primer paint in the world won\'t help you if its greasy.

Just take dish soap and warm water (not hot!) and wash and rinse the figures off. Throw them on a towel and let it air dry overnight or something.

If you have real problems try a product called TSP. It\'s available at most hardware/paint stores and is used for cleaning dirt/grease off of surfaces to be painted (read the directions please!).

Even if you have started to paint a mini and set it aside for a few weeks just give it a quick wash before starting on it again to get off any grease, dirt and dust that have accumulated from handling and atmosphere.

Oh yeah... And always wash your hands (like mom said!) before painting a mini. As your skin produces natural oils as well.

Peace and good luck! B)

 

[Chrispy]

I\'ve had eye problems as well, but the rest of the mini was okay.. Problem then was after a few tries I was obscuring the details and I didn\'t want to strip the whole thing!! Worked out in the end finally.. I once had a problem with paint coming off, but now I put the base onto an old pill bottle with some double sided tape, so now I can hold it or the bottle will raise it up so I can paint a bit better withou being on a totally flat surface.

Not even going to try the Fiannas until I get some real work done.. at least they\'re not the new austin power fiannas..

Ugly those...

 

[halon]

I do know what you mean, going back to the original topic, I have an old Ral Partha figure of this girl standing by this little dragon whose face just defied painting. I had to fix her face at least 10 times. And I\'ve been updating some of my old paintjobs and once again I had to redo her face 2 times. So now I\'ve got it to a decent quality and someone gives me another one to paint for them.

 

[Warpfangs]

binder clips

His problem is the lack of good handhold. He\'s not based (he came with a pegged foot and a base with no holes) and his weapon is a big piece of bone, so there\'s really no good place to hang on while painting. So I end up rubbing the paint off almost before it\'s on. Metal peeking through the paint job is no good.

Get a big binder clip and clamp it onto the pegs. You can then squeeze the clips handles and pull them right off the clip, creating a nice solid temporary basing that can even be gripped with a powerful magnet. I do this all the time for my slotta-based minis- first i put on a tiny clip, then a bigger clip on the tiny one!

Here\'s a pic of what I mean. They come in sizes from 1/2\" to 3\" wide.

 

[shris]

binder clip

Warpfangs, the binder clip is a really brilliantly simple idea for those slotta-ended minis. Wow. That is way cool and I will definitely remember that!

For the troll, I took someone else\'s idea of gluing him temporarily to a film container. I poked a hole in the bottom to fit his peg into (since the one peg he has is round it\'s kinda useless, but it fits neatly in the hole I made) and glued him with something that is hopefully strong enough to hold yet come off simply later on. Right now he\'s drying.

I also glued a couple of others to empty film canisters while Shanon rests in the pine-scented cleanser. Gonna scrub her off and give her eyeballs another go. About 10 layers of paint have obliterated her eye details entirely.

Tried another tack with a Tyden mini. Going at that set of eyeballs first so I don\'t have so much time invested if I have to scrub her off. So far so good. I\'m checking out some other renditions of the same mini to see what other folks have done.

Dealing with the eyeball problem and the wearing-off the paint problem has reminded me of an old saying that is unfortunately very true. I read it in a sci-fi novel probably 15 years ago.

\"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.\"

I think the secret with these unpaintable minis is going to be trying something different with them. I am pretty sure gluing a base on my troll is going to solve that problem, and the eyeballs are working out better on my Tyden with the different approach there.

Perhaps Chrispy\'s Fiannas need something different than what\'s been successful for him with other minis in the past. They are remarkably different looking from every other sculpt out there; is it unreasonable to think the painting technique should be different, too?

 

[Errex]

Yep, those things are useful...

... but since I\'m pinning most of my minis lately, I prefer to sink the pins on a cork stopper I got from a chocolate jar (Kisses, anyone?).

So far, the only mini I had to strip down mid paintjob has been my Jain Zar. The hair just wouldn\'t come out right the first couple of times.

Another one that I found difficulty finishing was the old TSR 25th Anniversary Ogre. It needed a lot of work just to put together, and then, there were some nigh-unreachable spots.
:flame:

Uh, BTW, I was refering to Hershey\'s Kisses, not that other kind of kisses. (unless you happen to be female and interested )

 

[Sand Rat]

Paint - Hell

Hell, I have bad Juju with minis that dont want to come together. I\'ve got a Stone Rhino for Battletech that one of the arms will not stay on - I\'ve tried everything short of welding the thing.

 

[Chrispy]

I said juju and not luck because I like saying juju... JUJU!!

Anyways, another few older figs that had bad juju were:

An old Nugle sorcerer conversion. I came down with a cold while painting him.

I protracted a bad cut from an x-acto while removing the mold lines from Aarbal the Undefeated and bled on it.

....I have since stopped playing Chaos, and now use nice, organic Eldar without the spikes of doom.

 

[Sand Rat]

Just sitting here recovering from trying to glue that arm on again - damn thing wont stick to the mini, but its stuck to me twice

 

[Chrispy]

Yeah, I beleive some of my orcs still have an area of glue that looks like my fingertips... Wash that stuff off, it\'s pretty posionous... I\'m talking Cyanide.

 

[Sand Rat]

Already Did

Got it cleaned up then tried one more time and proceeded to break off both guns on the arms below the elbows. However, that did allow me to file everything down and using brass tube reconnect the SOB\'s with a stronger join. Frigging thing is now waiting to be primed, painted, photo\'d and posted. Whoop!!lol

 

[Lurch]

Wash that stuff off, it\'s pretty posionous... I\'m talking Cyanide.

So my tried and true method of removing dried superglue from my fingertips using my teeth isn\'t a good way to do it?

 

[Jericho]

I\'ve never really had any cursed models that refused to be painted well, but I certainly have had a few that refuse to be photographed properly. There\'s just something about the color balance on my Salamanders that totally mucks up the camera when any reds are around... the brightness, contrast, and color balance are so far gone that the pics look awful once they\'re close to normal.

 

[Dragonsreach]

Bad Juju mini\'s

I think every one has had at least one bad experience with a mini.
Mine are Sevrina and Sevora =][= scale mini\'s. just cannot get them to look any thing other than painted by a retarded colour blind Orang-Utan with broken fingers using a 32 inch wide paintbrush.
(Hey, who said I was talking about myself...)

Currently working on a conversion which seems to be heading into the Bad Juju category. Damn head won\'t stay on the locating pin, might have to resort to the green stuff method of fixing in place.....yuuuuch.

 

[lonewolf]

Bad JUJU is some of my damn tyranids.
these little b******s refuse to sick together i cleaned then tried gluing (no luck) tried pinning and only the pin held it in not the glue. tried changing glue (3 times) and they still refuse to stick properly (a slight breeze causes the head of my zoanthrope to fall off) great for if they die in battle Very bad for the paintjob when it continues to fall right off the table!!!

 

[Chrispy]

Speaking of cursed =][= minis, my Deathwatch marine (#6518) was pretty evil to me, even though it was my first time at that scale.. But think mine looks more like a two toed schizophenic sloth painted it rather than a retarded colour blind Orang-Utan with broken fingers using a 32 inch wide paintbrush..

 

[SaxonAngel]

Bad BAD MINI!

I guess I do too. My Orc Warlord (see posting #12983 ) conversion has two loose arms! The one with a squig got broken off twice when it was dropped and the other with an axe wobbles and no amount of putty or glue can encourage it to stay still.

:flame: