Hello everyone. Michael here aka Professor Fluff, with some pictures of the first mini i’ve tried to paint in many many many years.*
I no longer use maps or minis when playing role playing games. I have, however, started playing more and more board games that utilize miniatures in them including Conan by Monolith and Imperial Assault by Fantasy Flight Games. But the reason I wanted to start trying my hand at painting mini’s is really because of a new game that I should be getting very soon – Batman: Gotham City Chronicals was a KS exclusive game (also by Monolith) that I backed over a year ago and have been anxiously awaiting ever since.
Based on the same game mechanics as Conan, this game is all about Batman and his various allies and enemies. I am super excited to get this game in my hands (as of this posting should be within a month) and start playing, but I think it will look so much better if I can have the mini’s painted. The problem is this game has over 198 miniatures which even at a super low cost of paying someone $5.00 to paint each one (and good luck finding someone willing to do so) i’m looking at close to $1,000.00 to get the mini’s painted which is more than x3 what the game itself cost. So, if a job’s worth doing cheaply then it’s worth doing by someone who has no idea what they’re doing – and that’s me!
I decided to start painting my Conan game figures as a way to get the basics down. Not that I don’t want those to also look good, but i’m a little less concerned about them than I will be about the Batman ones.
So I found a few youtube videos on the basics of mini painting** and ordered some supplies***
Below are some pictures of my first attempt at painting any of the minis from that game.
So these are images of one of the Hyenas from the game. I chose to start with the Hyena as I thought they would be the easiest and have less very fine detail I would need to do. Of course there would be fine detail I *COULD* do but figured this would be a solid choice to start. The only thing i’d done to them so far was wash them with warm soapy water and a toothbrush.
So, next step was to add a coat of primer. In the videos I watched there were two techniques shown. First was to paint on the primer and the second was to spray it on from a can (basically spray paint primer). I had thought the paint on version would be better for me as I was really concerned i’d do a bad job with the spray can and get thick or uneven coats.
Here is the paint on version
I used the Vallejo Surface primer. As you can see, not the best job in the world. I knew I wasn’t going to be very good at this to start, but even for me this coat seems pretty rough. So while I decided to stick with this for my first mini paint job I did try and use a spray version for my 2nd attempt.
I was actually much happier with the spray version. I’m not sure if maybe the paint on version wasn’t mixed/shook well or if I was supposed to thin it out (I didn’t as it was really thin to begin with) but unless I find out I had done something wrong I plan to stick with the spray on version. This color is wolf grey by Army Painter.
So next up was my base coat. I had purchased the War-games Hobby Starter Set by The Army Painter which comes with 10 base colors a gun metal and a wash so my color section was limited and I didn’t want to start trying to mix colors just yet so I used the leather brown color for my base coat. And I did two coats.
I sort messed up here and didn’t take pictures after I had added my second color. I used matte black to paint the hair ridge, the tail and then added a few spots along the body and legs.
I mean, not bad, right? Is this going to win any awards? no. but will these look great at playing distance view on the table? I think so! I hope that as I continue I’ll get better (I sorta have to, don’t I?) but if all of them look as good as this one I’ll be pretty happy. I do think when I move to humanoid figures wearing armor and holding weapons i’ll need to be more precise but we’ll see.
Here are all four of the game’s Hyena models painting using the same techniques except that the other three had the primer sprayed on.
*As a fun comparison I have one of those minis I painted back when I was about 12 years old. And to be honest, it looks better than I had expected.
** VIDEOS
here are the videos I watched before starting to try my own hand:
***SUPPLIES
These are the supplies I purchased to get started. If you use any of these links (or those above) to purchase these supplies our site will get a small % of your purchase price. We also have an Amazon link on the main page you can click and then shop for anything on Amazon to help support our show.
