Mini Regrets

[neonlights]

Hi all, just wondering if any of you out there have any completed minis which are either awesome sculpts or convertions but looking back with hindsight, are just paint-job let downs?

I\'ve several of these from way back, and I don\'t know what to do with them. I don\'t really want to strip them and re-do them, because A, it\'s kind of like tampering with history, and B, it\'s not going to be fun or easy! While I can\'t bear to change them, I also can\'t bear to look at them!

One of these is an original Marauder mini of an Empire champion on a pegasus from way back in the early 1990\'s. It\'s an amazing sculpt, and well, I\'m just surprised it\'s still holding up, considering nothing is pinned together! This was one I tackled when I still didn\'t know enough, and it just seems a total waste. I should really post a picture to give you an idea, but it would kill whatever low rating i already have and oh the shame!

 

[MarkusTay]

This is exactly the reason i don\'t paint minis I really like or one\'s that I have converted... I don\'t want to ruin them. lol

 

[No Such Agency]

I might have regrets about my Alien Queen... except I don\'t! I have no desire to repaint her, even though I likely would do a much better job now than I could have 14 years ago! She was a joy to paint then and I wouldn\'t strip her down and redo her for anything.

I could probably do a bomber job on this guy if I redid him, but I won\'t. Painting him was part of my development as a painter, and erasing that would be unfortunate. And for how I painted back then, he ain\'t bad!

You\'re right about \"tampering with history\", in my opinion. It\'s important to remember who we were as well as aspire to greater things. This is part of what infuriates me about George Lucas\' recent \"remastering\" of his old Star Wars movies... to make them more like his NEW ones.

 

[Primeval]

I have a miniature that I have no idea who made, and have never been able to find anyone else who knows either, that is obviously meant to be Darkwolf from the animated swords-and-sorcery movie \"Fire and Ice\". It was purchased many years ago from a bin of loose miniatures and I have never seen another one, and sometimes wish I had waited to paint it until my skills were at a higher level, but it represents my first attempts at layering and blending so I find myself unable to redo it.

 

[RedDawn]

I am so glad to hear you all talk about your first minis in this way. I\'m just starting and cringing at my paint jobs, but knowing unless I paint them, and keep at it, I won\'t get any better. I do have some great ideas about a couple of minis, but I\'m not going to do them until I can do the job so the finished minis look like what I picture in my mind.

After being out in the forums for a while it\'s easy to forget that everyone starts out as a beginner.

 

[tidoco2222]

I have never repainted any of my minis that I have actually finished and it makes a very good catalogue to look and see how much I have improved as a painter over the years.
This is something I would recommend to anyone no matter how tempting it is to go back and redo earlier works, we improve all the time and to be able to look back and see how we have improved is a great motivator.

 

[Naukhel]

I\'ve no regrets about some of my start-overs, myself. There aren\'t many of them. In the case of my first-mini-ever-owned, I recently stripped him down, because his original paint job was done with testor\'s enamels, and was mostly chipping off, and he\'d been, at some point, re-primered (badly).
So he\'ll be getting a fresh, clean looking, hopefully not-too-gloopy paint job when I can actually manage to sit myself down and paint again.

I\'ve also restarted my Gauth about 9 times, now.

 

[JakeSh]

I\'m also glad others feel this way about minis. I sometimes strip figs that are 1/2 done, but never a finished mini. I too feel that when I finish a mini it is part of my development as a painter, and it should just stay as it is. I really should do some re-basing though, but at least I have an excuse not to. I\'m just leaving them as they originally are. Hehe.

 

[Klute]

Onwards and upwards,thats the way to go.

I have a few I would love to touch up a bit but I would have to be really desparate to fully strip one.
Anyway Ive too much new stuff to do.

 

[Sturmhalo]

You\'ll be hard pushed to find any of my early stuff knocking around these days coz I tend to strip things rather a lot. Some pieces have been stripped and repainted several times. I\'ve got the old GW Eternal Champion boxed set still and recently prepped Jerry Cornelius for painting... I originally painted him with enamels back in 88, he was painted over with acrylics a few years later, then stripped and repainted, then stripped again and now awaits his 4th paintjob.

In fact you wouldn\'t know I painted anything prior to 2001 these days!

 

[Modderrhu]

I regret every single paintjob that does not improve on the metal. Okay, so I regret every single paint job, bar one. And like Mark, I don\'t like painting my conversions. They\'re unique, I can\'t get another of them, and a shoddy paintjob just has the potential to ruin my conversion.

I\'ve yet to strip a fully painted mini, but given time, those that I wasn\'t proud of at the time of completion are definite brakefluid food.

 

[ipaintminis]

NEVER!

and let me tell you, at first, they were doozies!


there is one mini, its a oooold school harpie that i painted with no shading, barbie yellow hair and no nipples or any kind of detail! i wanted to repaint it for crappyminiornot, but i cant bring myself to strip it...its history...(buuut we have another copy of the same mini, so i\'m in luck )

 

[vincegamer]

None.

I repainted some stuff years ago, and now those repaints are pisspoor.

If you keep repainting it will never end because you should keep getting better.
The other thing to remember is there are much better sculpts available now than there used to be, and there will be even better ones in the future.

Of course, I want to see some of my oldies redone, so I bought duplicates on ebay.

 

[Ebonbuddha]

I say strip them and repaint them. I have several minis I am repainting because they were totally trashed when I moved to Canada. I\'m painting them the same colours and everything. The only reason history would matter is because you are doing a webpage or sharing the images another way. You can easily remeber what it looks like.

 

[supervike]

Originally posted by vincegamer
If you keep repainting it will never end because you should keep getting better.

Why do you want it to \'end\'?

I have tons of mini regrets. And a ton of mini buyers remorse.

I strip a lot of them. It doesn\'t bother me that I am \'messing\' with history. I could photograph them, if I really wanted to keep a record.

 

[sniffles]

Looking back on some of my oldest paint jobs, I know I could do better now (not to mention I really regret having put a high-gloss varnish on them!).

But if I spent my time redoing those I wouldn\'t have any time for new stuff, and I don\'t have enough time to paint as it is. If I really want to test my skills against something I painted long ago, I\'ll buy another one of the same mini and paint it.

I hate stripping things. I have a friend who strips and repaints nearly everything she does - more than once. I can\'t imagine working that way. I\'d go insane.

 

[vincegamer]

Originally posted by supervike
Why do you want it to \'end\'?

Like Sniffles said - I want it to end because I want to paint a different mini. I\'d get awfully bored painting the same RP goblin over and over again. It\'s tough enough that they came in packs of 6 in those days...heck it\'s bad enough I\'m painting a GW army with all those identical elves...the same elf again, and again, and again, and again, and again....

 

[Ebonbuddha]

I think my only mini regret is that I sold a lot of of my old metals off back in \'98. I got this insane idea that I would get rid of them because I didn\'t need that much stuff.lol

I really miss all of that old Rogue Trader and early Citadel, Marauder, and Iron claw stuff. I sold off my first 40K army (Space Wolves), my Rogure trader Space Orks, the origional Battle tech miniatures (the robotech rip offs), and stuff that pains me to remember I \"threw\" away. I say I threw it away because I didn\'t get nearly as much as it really was worth.

Fortunately I said some of it and will get back into it when I get home to B.C.

 

[Legacy Account]

If you don\'t like it, STRIP IT!!!

Or find another one on Ebay and pay through the nose for it.

@NSA: If you fancy a blast into the past, I\'ve got several old LE Alien minis and colonial marines kicking around if you want \'em - I was given them a while back and don\'t plan on using them...

 

[neonlights]

Glad to see there are others who feel like me and also glad to hear the thoughts of the brakefluid dunkers! It\'s a quite a dilemma isn\'t it?

I guess it comes down to your character too, I\'d say my feelings in this reflect my retrospective (and somewhat perfectionist) nature. I\'m guessing the dunkers are glass half full, forward looking types!

I\'ve just gotten back into the whole mini painting scene, and like vincegamer said, there\'s just too much new cool stuff out there to go back over the oldies.
I was thinking of selling some the dissapointments on ebay and letting someone else do the dunking. ah but they\'re my babies!