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!:-)
