A planet where apes evolved from men?

I got all the player character miniatures painted in time for our first game session. I also finished 3 additional primitive humans, and one extra astro-naut (just in case whoever plays that character wants to gender-swap).

Originally I had planned on using the Dallimore approach — the artwork in the rule book is in a loose, brush strokey style that I quite like, and I wanted to emulate that on the models. But I was in a rush to get them done in time, so I opted for a basic Speedpaint approach instead, using white drybrushing over a light grey primer as a base coat. I definitely learned a few things.

1. Don’t paint when you’re in a hurry

I don’t play in tournaments so it’s rare that I’m on a deadline to finish anything. I really don’t like being in a rush (I gave myself 3 months to finish my entries for the UKGE painting contest last year). I think you end up making more mistakes and having to say “good enough” because you don’t have time to fix them. That’s not to say that you should spend forever noodling at your models, but this is supposed to be a relaxing hobby, and I like being able to finish every model to my own satisfaction.

2. If you must paint when you’re in a hurry, don’t use Speedpaints

Yes, Speedpaints (and to a lesser extent, washes) are a huge time saver in a lot of ways, but at the same time, they can often be…unpredictable. When working on these, I had a lot of issues with the paint pooling in big blobs — normally I would be moving the speedpaint around a bit as it settles to avoid this, but with 10 figures to get done in a short amount of time, I wasn’t as attentive as usual. I freely admit that this was user error on my part and not really a failing of the product.

3. Don’t second-guess yourself

I ended up spending about 3 extra hours going over each model to “fix” the spots where the speedpaint hadn’t done what I wanted it to, and the result was something more like what I originally had in mind for these. So I guess it’s a win? Anyway, I’m happy enough with the final result but I will definitely approach the rest of the models a little differently.