Speed tips.

[bakalla]

Hi everyone,

I\'m looking for some advice here. I\'ll start by giving you a short description of how I generally paint a miniature, to give you an idea what I could be doing differently.

I start by cleaning and assembling the miniature. Then prime it white. Then I put on all the base colours, reds, blue, yellows etc. I then shade all those areas, either with black or with darkened shades of each respective colour. I generally paint metal areas with GW metals, which looks fine I think. I shade metals with thinned down black. I never use any inks, just thinned down colours with water and flow improver when shading.

I then go on to highlighting and generally do this by layering 2-5 layers, or by blending about the same amount of layers. I finish by doing details like eyes, fingernails, doing the base and anything else I\'ve forgotten.

For a normal 28mm figure, this takes about 6-8 hours per miniature. Even when I\'m striving for \'gaming level\' miniatures, I can\'t do them in under 4 hours or something like that.

I\'m currently doing a commission, of about 20 figures and the client wants me to do \'gaming level\' minis, and he\'s paying accordingly. I\'m not really complaining, as I am really only doing it for fun, because I love to paint. But it would be nice to learn a less time consuming technique that is more fitting for \'gaming\' miniatures, especially when I\'ve been given many similar minis to paint.

Grateful for any tips,
Hakan

 

[Greymane]

Firstly are they all wildly differnt mini\'s or is it an army type deal?
if the former then to speed things up use a production type system eg all the flesh, all the metal etc. but although I\'ve not done anything like this for some time I used to then choose a small colour pallette for clothes and change them around trying not to make it look too obvious that there are only four actual colours eg mini 1 red pants blue cloak yellow hat,mini two blue pants red hat green cloak etc with four colours you can really speed up the process. Spend 10 minutes noting it all down and then paint all the same colour in one go .
if its an army they should all be in the same colours so just do as many as you feel comfortable with all the flesh etc..

 

[frenchkid]

well, number one thing would be to paint the 20 minis at the same time or maybe ten by ten if you don\'t have the patience for the whole 20. Next I would say do area per area. And for gaming standard I would say that 2 highlight layers might be anought. Good luck

 

[ZaPhOd]

Haken, I was stuck with a huge lot of 45 Talisman figures to paint, which had it\'s ups and downs. I got to around one hour a figure, but what I did was to take say 4 at a time, and do similar colors on different parts of each... also, Cut way down on the layers of highlights and such, or else try wet blending some of the highlights for speed.
If they are gaming quality, and that is what he is paying for, you do not need ot even paint the fingernails IMO. I understand there is always a certain level of pride involved (my 9.0 firemage was a $15 commission) but then you a lot to do!

The best thign about jobs like this, is that you can experiment with a lot of different things, from color combos to crazy new techniques!

 

[supervike]

first of all...

I\'d clean and spray paint all 20 at the same time..

Then, I\'d break them into groups of 5, doing each of the five relatively identical.

Working 5 at a time, paint all the pants the same color, then do the hats, etc etc.

With the next set of 5, make some slight variations, so on and so forth...

Over a four night period, I think you could get 20 finished models, with at least 4 variations to give some variety.

Lastly, I\'d base them and varnish them all at the same time.



Each of the other groups

 

[Cerridwyn1st]

Standard tabletop? Basecoat, ink, drybrush highlights. Paint & ink your metals and touch up some details. Seal them and you are done. This type of painting assumes you\'re getting about $3 per fig.

I wouldn\'t bother trying to layer as you usually do for those numbers.

1) it will drive you nuts
2) your client will be pissed. He\'ll be waiting forever for his minis, and he isn\'t going to pay for all your extra work.

You said you were doing about 20 figs, and weren\'t sure of a way to do them faster. You need to consider speed, what the client wants, is willing to pay for and will wait to get.

If you\'re not sure if your client will accept a paint job like I\'ve discribed, do ONE this way and show it to him. If he approves, then do the rest all together in a production line.

 

[t_haye2]

this is thw way I batch paint:

I always use a black spray undercoat, thatway the basecoat, when layered on as if it was a highlight, provides shading.

paint all the areas of the same colour at once, on all the models. boring? yes, but this saves on mixing time and it\'s a good way to get into some sort of rythm.

Only paint a max of 3 highlights on each area. One basecoat/highlight, second highlight and edging. If using the feathering technique, this gives adequate results.

give yourself deadlines, like, \'this hour i want all the skin done\'. This will help build a timeschedule, and you will then know how long the models will take, and can you can change your painting quality accordingly.

NEVER spend more time on a model than the customer is paying you for, unless it\'s a mate/ good customer

 

[bakalla]

Originally posted by ZaPhOd
The best thign about jobs like this, is that you can experiment with a lot of different things, from color combos to crazy new techniques!

Yes.. you could say that again. I\'m getting about $10 for this one and I spent like 6 hours on it.. I did do some very extensive experimenting though as you can see if you take a look here:

http://www.coolminiornot.com/55548

It was a lot of fun to paint because of the crazy colours! lol

Thanks to all for the advice, I should have known that this was the place to go for professional tips about this kind of painting! :flip:

The minis are widely mixed though, I\'ll put some pictures of them up as they\'re finished which will probably take me a while.. but I\'ll definitely try using some inks and try to do less layers of highlights etc.

 

[No Such Agency]

And for gaming standard I would say that 2 highlight layers might be anought.

Amen to that, or even be more drastic. Paint the areas lighter than your basecoat would normally be (not quite the top highlight colour perhaps) then shade with 1 wash (it is important to get the wash consistency right) and maybe do some quick highlights with the top highlight colour. This approach is *scalable*, especially if you have spare paint pots to make large amounts of wash at once.

Here are some Fiannas that were \"stain painted\", with a couple of washes each. And somebody else had Tyranids base-coated and then shaded with wood stain, can\'t find them though. All you\'re trying to make are 5\'s, after all...

 

[DragonPaint]

You can try a different approach and basecoat the miniatures white and then use an heavvy wash with the appropriate ink color on the area you want to paint (ie: flesh wash on the face).
While the ink is still wet use another brush loaded with a lighter color to highlight the raised areas (ie: elf flesh)
The lighter color will \"pick up\" the darker ink and with a copule of passes you have a decent blending.
Obviously you have to clean frequently the brushes and need some pratice to have the best results.
Repeat all the steps for the different parts of the miniature and use the drybrush for the metal areas... at the end you have only to pick up the details.

Paolo

 

[No Such Agency]

...and use the drybrush for the metal areas...

NONONoNononononono. No. You\'ll get little metallic sparkles all over EVERYTHING. Trust me on this, one of my main problems as a novice painter was glittery-mini syndrome.

 

[bakalla]

NONONoNononononono. No. You\'ll get little metallic sparkles all over EVERYTHING. Trust me on this, one of my main problems as a novice painter was glittery-mini syndrome.

I agree.. metals are hard to do when drybrushing, and metals are hard to work with when doing a quick job, i think. Gold metal colours and bronze metal colours are even worse because they rarely cover very well.

So here\'s a question, which do you prefer on a gaming miniature:

* Quick and a bit sloppy NMM?
* Quick metals just shaded with blacks?

Quick NMM could be done by just base layering with grey and washing with black and try to do some kind of quick blending to get the lighter areas towards the edges of the blade/armor etc

 

[No Such Agency]

I think quick metallics shaded with black (brown for gold/brass) would look better than quick NMM. Bad NMM looks... terrible. And good NMM takes time. If I were you I\'d do metallics unless NMM is specified by the client, and then charge them extra

 

[Calavera]

What kind of unit are you doing ?
I could at least give you many tips with orcs.
But with the metals, just paint a blade fx. with boltgun metal, paint the edges with mithril silver.. then thin down some black ink(quicker than washing with Chaos Black) and create shadows and then stain with red, brown and green. That way is great for orcs. For elves fx. A basecoat of chainmail, then a highlight of Mithril Silver.. and some washing with black ink(not much) then glazing with blue ink. Works great IMO.
And overall, just avoid drybrushing at all circumstances, use overbrushing for chainmail instead of drybrushing.
For quick gold I slap on some shining gold, it might take 2 coats though. Then highlight with burnished gold followed by a thin line of mithril. Then wash with brown or chestnut or a very light glaze of purple ink.

Hope it helps..

 

[bakalla]

@Calavera: Yup, those are some great metals tips! I\'ll keep trying and try to find out which way works best for me..

The commission that i am doing ARE actually orks! A mixture of 40k orks and some snotlings. So if you\'ve got some good ork-tips up your sleeve, feel free to share!

 

[Valander]

I\'ve done batches of this many (and more) figures for commission, and the client requested a \"rank & file\" standard.

The biggest thing here is, as many have mentioned, speed. Also important to keep in mind is the level of painting expected. It\'s easy for us to continue working and working and working on things, because we\'re demanding of ourselves and want to do the best possible paint job on every single model that hits our desk. However, when doing commissions, it\'s far more important to give the customer what they expect, even if those expectations are far below our own.

There\'s a couple of ways to go about quick painting, though the key is to work on multiple models at the same time, as others have mentioned.

One way is to prime black. Then do a light spray of grey primer, leaving some black areas, and then another, lighter spray of white. This will give you a starkly contrasted \"black and white\" model. If you use thinner paints, you might be able to get away with applying only a single layer for each color; the shading and highlight is achieved by the undercoat. (Note, this is a crude form of underpainting--see articles by myself and Elouchard on the subject.) For simple, rank & file, tabletop standard, this is probably ok.

Another method I\'ve used with better results from the one above, though a little more time, is to prime white. Then, start with the *lightest* colors (i.e., your eventuall highlight), and do all of those. Thin down your midtone with a good amount of Future/flow extender, and wash over most of the areas, leaving only the highest spots untouched. Do this again with your shadow colors, trying to hit only the recesses for the most part. The important thing here is that the washes are mixed with a flow improver--forget that, and you\'ll get \"tide marks,\" rather than a semi-soft gradiation of color.

Speed painting definitely is a technique in and of itself, and like all other techniques, takes some practice to master (not that I have...but, I have cranked out 30 \"tabletop\" standard ork warriors in about 10 hours total).

 

[Cerridwyn1st]

Thanks for the tips, V

Thanks for the tips on speed painting, especially the multi-layer priming. Interesting idea; I\'ll have to give it a try. I have done white underpainting on a black primed mini for a similar effect.

You are right about the expectations of the client; what they usually want is speed. You can do a nice paint job, but if the client has to wait too long to get it, he or she will not be pleased.