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Captain Ameritrash
United States
Statesboro
Georgia
I am not Emperor Palpatine. In other news, You Are BANISHED!!!
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Recently, I decided that I wanted to paint a bunch of plastic minis. The problem with this is that I am not a mini painter. I understand some of the techniques that skilled painters use, but I am not a skilled painter myself. I am also currently unemployed, and can't justify spending big bucks on a million tiny jars of specialty paint.
I debated this with myself pretty extensively before coming to my decision, because I didn't want to ruin my games. "Trash, you don’t know what you’re doing", I told myself. "You’ll destroy the collectable/resale/trade value!" "They’re gonna look like crap!" On the other hand, my nine-year-old son is starting to really get into gaming, and he likes painted minis.
I finally decided that: a) not knowing what I’m doing has never slowed me down before; b) although I do enjoy collecting games, I am not a Game Collector, I’m a game player; and c) we would get more enjoyment from playing a badly painted copy of Hero Quest or Dragon Strike than we would from playing one with raw plastic minis, even if the paint job did look like crap. Therefore, those games would get more table time than they would otherwise. So I threw caution to the wind, gathered up my meager supplies, and started slapping paint onto plastic.
This is the part where all the experienced painters out there should stop reading, or risk a Sanity Check. You Have Been Warned.
To get started, instead of buying "real" plastic primer for miniatures, I basecoated all the figures with flat black Krylon Fusion, because I had some already. That’s right, regular old Fusion from the Walmart. $3.75 for a big can, except that mine was left over from another project, so: Free. Noooooooo!!!!! Sacrilege!!!*
Next, instead of taking out a home equity loan and buying real miniatures paints in the itty bitty jars from my FLGS, I used regular cheap acrylic craft paints from Hobby Lobby, because I already had some. You know, the kind that come in 2 oz plastic bottles for $0.99? Those ones. AHHHHH!!!! THE HORROR!!!!*
Finally, when I was done, I gave everything a good hosing down with some store brand, not-for-plastic flat spray polyurethane, because I already had some. Make it stop... make it stop...*
And you know what? They look fine. Not professional by any stretch of the imagination, not even close, but fine. Sure, they’re a little bit blotchy in places, and the metallics aren’t as bright as they should be, and the detailing is a little haphazard, and the color palette is sort of limited. But even taking all of that into account, they’re still way, way better than the raw plastic, if I do say so myself.
Last night my son and I played his first Dragon Strike scenario, and the first thing he said as I opened the box to set up the board was "Dad, these figures look AWESOME!" I can think of no higher praise.
*Reactions of hypothetical experienced miniatures painters have been simulated, and may not represent any actual reaction by any actual person. But I bet they do.
EDIT: Added a couple of pictures.
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I am not Emperor Palpatine. In other news, You Are BANISHED!!!
The nice thing about Krylon is that if you are looking for a priming coat other than black you've got choices. Finding a good base color that matches your proposed scheme can go miles towards making painting easier.
