Hobby Errata

It’s been slow going painting of late but I finally got another project done. I’m always a sucker for anthropomorphic animals (though I’ve managed to resist Burrows & Badgers somehow) so, feeling a bit low of late, I figured these would be a good mood lifter–both because of content and because, at only 23 total minis for the game, it was a project I could tick off and have an accomplishment.

And now they’re done and I’ll just have to hope that the game is well written. Something to look forward to over the holiday season perhaps.

I chuckle now when I think of how much I used to hate painting white and how frustrated I was at how long it took. It’s not that it’s any quicker for me now, more that I now take just as long painting most every other color. ?

I was out of commission for a few months with a broken wrist and then I struggled to find momentum to get rolling on much. I’ve had these (from Plaid Hat’s “Aftermath” sitting out and just barely started now for about 4 months.

Finally got stuck in and found my groove. I must say it finally feels good to be back. I had forgotten how fun it is  to see these little bits of plastic come to life.

I spent another afternoon with these and in the end I’m just not happy with the result. Don’t get me wrong—it’s not the fault of the paints. They do their job. I just am not satisfied with the look. I think I’ll be better off just working on speed painting/cutting out some steps when I’m just trying to get color on a bunch of minis. That said, I also need to remember that this is hobby and the point for me isn’t to be productive but to have fun.

In truth, I have plenty of games to play that either are already fully painted up or that don’t have any minis. So why the rush? Of course, I’m also A) culling/consolidating my board game collection (because I have more games than I can ever really play) and B) shifting away from mini heavy board games to pure miniature games (Infinity, Relic Blade, etc.) so my frustration with not getting games to the table because they’re not painted is bound to decrease. (It finally sunk in over the weekend that a really effective way to check things off my “to paint” list is to sell them on/give them away).

So if anyone wants a full set of very slightly used Scale75 Instant Color paints and is willing to pay postage from the US, send me a message and I’ll get them in the mail to you. They do a perfectly fine job of getting things table ready. That’s just not my primary goal anymore.

Edit: I realize double posting pics across projects is probably bad form. In this instance it seems warranted, however.

I got the full set of Scale75 Instant Colors during their KS in hopes that it would be a way to get some things colored up and to the table quickly. I had neither used them nor seen much about them online so I finally broke out some minis I’m not using for much of anything (their from Massive Darkness which is at best a mediocre game but I do like having them should I do something like Rangers of Shadowdeep or Frostgrave) to give them a try.

Overall verdict: I think that with a bit of work they’ll serve their role quite well.
Detailed verdict: I started with these guys zénithal primed. Boy was I disappointed with the initial results. The colors I was using did just about zero to affect the mini. I stewed for an hour and pondered tossing the whole lot. I looked at what few online reviews there were and found much the same reaction.
I went back to the box and pulled out the primer that came in it and figured it would be worth giving them the best chance possible. I reprimed them and took another shot and…it was a world of difference. An hour later I had these two about where they’re at now and decided I had jumped to the wrong conclusion. I’ll definitely be keeping them and using them for some projects and the weight of fair to middling plastic that isn’t of a high enough quality to warrant my usual laborious paint process but that I don’t really want to play grey now weighs far less heavily on my shoulders.
Some tips/notes:

• These work very differently from my normal paints where I normally highlight up rather than adding shadows to decor in rare instances. These work rather more like watercolors where you work from light to dark. The first layer is going to be rather unsatisfying (and don’t just add more layers of the same color as that really won’t do much). Rather, that’s the base that you than darken down/shade in.
• These both have rather more skin than is probably ideal for these paints. Skin is difficult to do well even with significant time and energy and, considering that, the skin in these is actually fairly decent.
• The results are going to look fundamentally different—a bit washed out, a bit palet, a bit more pastel, a bit more watercolor. I can learn to appreciate that and treat it as an alternate method/medium.
• Let each coat dry before moving to the next. These should go on pretty thick so a hair dryer can be handy to speed up the process.

Some early recipes (though more needs to be done):

Skin: base Human Flesh SIN-15, shadows/second coat Phoenix Feather SIN-14

Leather: base Ogre Brown SIN-38, shadows/second coat Rage Brown SIN-36

Stone: 30-70 mix of Shadow Black SIN-00 and Spectral Wolf Skin SIN-47

I’ve had these 3D printed tokens for Pandemic for a dog’s age. Finally got around to painting them up and, while entirely unnecessary, I do like what they add to the game.

Just got this from a friend and figured I’d quick paint up the minis. They’re not very good quality (bendy plastic, mold lines all over) but the sculpts are decent so I tried not to spend too long on them. Also wanted to make it easy to distinguish which belong to which player.
For anyone who hasn’t tried Santorini it’s a really good, quick playing abstract. Highly recommended.

I decided to put these here (rather than create a full project for them) for two reasons:

1. They are of only mediocre quality in both mini and sculpt (though completely satisfactory for the role they play in the game)
2. I took this as an opportunity to try and match my painting time to the quality (of both sculpt and mini) and thereby did them in an afternoon rather than my usual day/mini.

It was a fun exercise in setting a goal and accomplishing it. I obviously kept the detail work and color scheme variation to a minimum, which was really just fine given the paucity of detail in some areas on these. I probably spent the most time on the bride of Frankentstein’s monster’s dress. White still takes me a considerable length of time when there are large sweeping bits of it but I now find it rather more zen than frustrating. Thin repeated coats with brighter and brighter grays and then ivory and finally white (though I didn’t go full white here).

[BTW Horrified is a really great light coop]