Thursday, October 22, 2009

Going for a "Dip"

Well,after a lot of asking questions around and viewing results I've decided I will give army painter a go.
I have a lot of miniatures sitting on my shelves(whole armies)that will probably never see a gaming table unless I try a different method.
I want every figure I paint to look great and that's fine if you only collect a few skirmish units or 1 or 2 armies,however I collect far more miniatures then that and basically I'm just wasting a great deal of money.Every time I look at my armies covering my shelves I feel overwhelmed and stressed.
After viewing several painters I realized army painter is my answer.I'll continue to paint some of my armies in my traditional manner and some other ones I'll go with army painter in order to finish some things.
What I like about army painter is the flexibility it seems to offer.Most other methods at 25mm or larger require you to completely paint them to include highlights in order to have a good result and cutting corners won't work.Army painter allows you to just paint the base colors and apply the shade giving you a decent result that is fine for the wargaming table.However,you can add highlights and "upgrade" the miniatures for a more pleasing appearance if you wish and that's very nice if you change your mind at anytime and decide you want a more quality finish.
For myself I can see this method will speed up my painting regardless if I do a basic job or add highlights for these reasons alone:

White or gray undercoat-I normally prefer a black undercoat,but I'll use white or gray when using army painter so the colors don't get lost.The big benefit will be it's easy to apply your paint in one coat saving quite a bit of time.

Black lining-No need for this with army painter and again this will save buckets of time as I won't need to keep re painting the black lines to keep them straight or from spillage.

Eyes-No need to do this tedious process that consumes massive time as it's a waste of time if your using army painter.

Less steps-You need only paint one shade per color and this of course saves massive time and even if you highlight that is only 2 steps.

If you combine all that listed above in terms of time,then of course my painting time will be hugely reduced!(Yipeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!)

It will be nice to paint some armies with my normal method and then paint some others in the loose army painter style and actually get some things finished.
I'm looking forward to trying this out and I really hopes this works as I really want to look at my mini's and think it's possible to play them all someday!

Well,I need to order some army painter tomorrow or this weekend and get started on my Trojans(Yep,decided I'll try AP with these too) and some ECW.Fingers crossed!:-)

8 comments :

  1. Fingers crossed here as well. And if you start delivering results like SaxonDog, I'll have to repaint my WWII stuff. :)

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  2. How are your diped miniatures? I used Army Painter with my ancient german and I´m very happy with the final result, I use the Dip like an intermediate stage like the inks.

    Andrés.

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  3. I haven't used a dip yet,but I plan on it soon.I just received my first tin of army painter yesterday.
    If you add a highlight to figures it will take between 50min and an hour to paint.That's a lot less time then what I spend right now,but still too much I think.I'm looking at painting mini's from start to finish in 25 - 30 min.
    I'm not looking for a way to paint mini's really nice as I already have a couple systems that I'm comfortable with to do this.(nice for me anyways:-) )
    I'm looking for a system to get armies painted up fast and still have them look decent and that probably means no highlights added or only in a few areas.
    I'll post my results after my first experiment.

    Cheers
    Christopher

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  4. I have painted a German every 15 minutes with one highlight with the army painter. I will post one of those German and you will see the final result.

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  5. That is fast!I'm looking forward to seeing your results as Trojans are similar in that they have a lot of flesh showing.In addition,I also own a very large unpainted German barbarian army myself that I would like to see finished someday,so I hope your results work out.:-)

    Cheers
    Christopher

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  6. I have a stack of 28mm Prussians and French that have been staring at me for years and I plan on using the Army Painter method to get them finished. Look forward to seeing how yours turn out.
    Cheers
    Paul P

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  7. Are you going for the 'mid/strong' shade dip, I assume on tanned/Greek flesh you may well do? I've used the 'dark tone' on my medievals so far, ue to high amounts of armour, but it does tend to look very dark on light coloured cloths, so may pick up a pot of strong and experiment further. The time saving is impressive to make inroads into the lead piles.

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  8. Yes indeed,I'm using the strong/mid tone.
    I'm using Foundry Butter Fudge for the flesh tone as it's more Mediterranean in color.
    It's already saving me a lot of time on my Trojans and if I wasn't hand painting the shields I figure each mini would take me around 20 to 25 min.Painting the shields is adding 10 to 15min. to each figure as I'm not using army painter on the shield face.
    I'll post my results soon.:-)

    Cheers
    Christopher

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