Crusoe the Painter

Future ( now pledge gloss ) floor finish helped turn any paint into a flawless ink / wash 20 years ago. Then I stumbled on a reddit post about using "Pouring Medium" which is a slightly gel like medium used for acrylic pour-over style paintings. So I bought a small bottle of Liquitex "Pour Medium"/ For large volumes of paint, it acts as a leveller and flow agent, providing even shiny coats. But mixed with mini paints, it acts like a 'gel stain', staying in place, and shading the details depending on depth. It moves around easily with the brush, can be blended on the figure, and dries super thin. The liquitex Pour Medium also doesn't re-wet and release pigment once dry. So overpainting is easy. Here is a photo

I began my miniature painting journey with craft acrylics and Reaper/ Ral Partha metal minis. I met Ed at the first ReaperCon, and he was a awesome guy to talk to who loved the hobby.

Confusingly there are two links to forums. The Forums link takes you back here, the Battlenet link takes you to the Talon Games forum which is basically dead.

Probably casting temp issue. Happens sometimes.

Given the 3D model image of Lysette shown in the announcement, either the master is 3D printed, and a semilflexible mold is used, or the mold is CNC milled and PVC or other flexible plastic is injection molded. Both options support undercuts, but the second would last much longer. Ejecting the plastic while still hot would lead to the deformation seen and the fact hot water won't reset it, as it was still very warm when ejected. You'd need to get closer to the glass transition temp. Are there any signs of sprue or runner lines? Ahh, something like this I think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5KRawOXy4U Which is actually the first video I found ever showing how PVC action figures are made. See how soft they are when pulled?

Duplicolor / Krylon sandable has been my primer for years. I'll let you know how it goes. I find UNLESS I clean the bones figs in super hot and soapy water, or with windex/simple green, paints almost always tend to bead up. Mold release can migrate out of the plastics over time and onto the surface.

I just need the caps and Amazon is full of truly terrible dropper bottles.

Looks like they are SKS plastics, and polypropylene. Usually it only breaks down if exposed to sunlight. These are some old paints, so may have been a part of the bad cap bath.

I havent had much time to paint until recently. Had kids, etc. Anyways, bought a vortex mixer, and have managed to rescue most of my paints. The reaper ones are proving especially easy because they already came with paint shakers inside, no need to add ball bearings! Just one problem, while the Vallejo paints are just as old, their caps are not cracking at all. Meanwhile, I'm having a lot of the Master Series paints suffering from cracking caps, some crumbling like dirt when I twist them off. This to me suggests they are made from polypropylene, a plastic that can degrade over time. I'm gonna order replacements, but i suspect the vallejo caps are made from polyethylene, or nylon. is there a bulk discount available for caps? I'm gonna need like 100 of them. Even the 'ok' ones make crackling noises when squeezing them, which means they will fail soon too. The paints were stored indoors, in tackleboxes.

So hey, I've known you guys for years. Kinda dropped off when we had kids, but I think everyone here is pretty level headed and only a handful know me IRL. This is rambling, and long. The whole mess is this. I am obsessed with Japan. Literally obsessed. I had a wonderful two week trip with my wife there. Before that I spent a few months learning Japanese so that reading the signs, knowing kinda the gist of what people were saying, etc, was somewhat possible. My interest actually started around back when I was teen, around bonsai and arts and craft, and the influence Japanese design had on it. The language is brutal. I want to know more. The culture is fascinating. The food in general delicious. The food? Eatting it, cooking, drinking green tea and matcha saved my guts. I shed 20 lbs, kept it off, my digestion improved. My IBS improved, my sibo went away. The wife had a blast, and she's like "You know, if an American firm gave you enough money to work there, I would be for it". She's in love with the quilt books and fabric stores. A Japanese bookstores is like US bookstores in their heyday. They're stocked and wonderful. The craft stores have everything you could need. Our only concern would be navigating the possibly brutal Japanese education system, or finding a expensive foreign school for our kids. So here I am making good money as a software dev. But I'm kinda of tired, doing basically glorious rest apis to backend datastores. I tried my hand at a Japanese joint for carpentry and didn't 100% flub it up. And it was enjoyable. I helped my parents prune some trees, chop up wood, and the immediacy of the feedback was refreshing. I told them "Man, I hate mowing but I could do this all day". And when I learned of temple carpentry and saw what they did, it stirred something deep inside. Like maybe I missed my calling, but it just could be my late midlife crisis. My parents are loving, and good. But sometimes I feel I am needled more for my interests than my sister. I don't need to have jokes, no matter how good natured, made about every project I want to do. Like yes, I am weird, and odd, and I have been for 40 years, I don't need to hear it again. You all enjoy my cooking, so kinda cut me some slack when I want to build a hibachi or irori, and try my hand at some really old school robotayaki/yakitori. No one looks at you too weird if you're a fan of french cuisine and buy french wine and cheese, and maybe visited Paris. But start talking about buying your own block of dried aged smoked bonito, and a proper plane to shave it with, and they look at you funny. It's been ten months since the trip. I still have dreams about it. I think the covid isolation is making it worse. Because of the commute, and now covid, I really don't have anyone to talk to. There is a Japanese Culture center just up the road, with the local university, and a Japanese Language group. But basically, its entire focus is around their yearly anime convention. So I don't have any cooking/culture outlet there. Why not call it an anime club? Don't be misleading. The Culture center doesn't seem to have many programs beyond being festooned with a garden and supporting the Japanese language program. Oh well, they do offer language classes, and since we will be working from home for the foreseeable future, maybe I should sign up. I don't know what I am looking for. Just venting more than anything. I keep saying I don't want to feel bad for enjoying the things I like, but I still do. Why does everything need a comment? "Oh, you could go into special FX" said during the last dot bomb by my mom. "Well, I had an interest in that kind of stuff, but you didn't like me drawing monsters, or telling me what I liked wasn't true art." I know some of it she probably got from her dad about her interests, but sheesh.

Personally if I am making a wash, I use Future/Pledge floor gloss, 1 part to 4-8 parts water to dilute paint. Always works great. If you use it straight it behaves like contrast paints.

I've experimented lately with pure future/Pledge floor shine with acrylic paint, and in this manner, they look to behave exactly the same as the above photos. The only difference perhaps is glossiness.

On now if anyone cares

No more pewter skulls... End of an era...

Simple green is more than just citrate. The Ethoxylates the active ingredient. Its the same reason that brake fluid also works (non-silicone brake fluid is ethoxylate based). I've found simple green to be the safest long term soaking stripper. It will remove enamel paint, loosen super glue and epoxy, and strip acrylics. Safe for metal, plastic, and resin. Purple power is acidic and will pit metal figures. Pinesol works okay, but will eventually dissolve plastics and soften resins. It will also pit and darken metals. W&N brush cleaner is super fast against acrylic but will eventually dissolve plastics. For scrubbing I like using old electric toothbrushes. Sonicare works great and they now have cheaper battery powered models.

Resins cure by free radical polymerization. Assuming perhaps its left over part of the resin that has come to the surface you can try washing with 70% rubbing alcohol then soap and water. Another option is maybe try to drive the reaction to completion? This is a suggestion from a chemistry perspective, I have not tried it, ymmv. You could try dipping the pieces in hot water, with the hope the heat helps finish the cure. You could try a soak in hydrogen peroxide or even warm water + oxyclean. This might help tighten up the polymerization of the resin. Another option would be hot-warm water with baking soda in it. The idea here is either to cleave off the partially reacted resin molecules, or force the reaction to completion via peroxide radicals.

Exactly what future does for you. You can also add a single drop of soap or Jet Dry which will break the surface tension. Ah I need to speedpaint some figs using it...

I see these contrast paints and all I can think of is how much it looks like what you get with Future ( now Pledge ) Floor Finish (Its Acrylic) mixed with regular paint. Future keeps the pigment from separating, and works great with craft paints. 1 part future to 1-8 parts water, then use this to thin your paints. I'll have to dig out some figs. Been using this since I started painting back in 99 or so.

Really, "UCORS" can be brought back pretty trivially, for a given faction just use only CAVs from a given UCOR of said faction and thus of course faction rules apply. So you can still play a UCOR force, but its mostly a fluff thing with no rules impact.

Mmmm, more ZBrushy goodness. Now when are we finally gonna get some cyber-genetic horrors, the Psyros?

Mmmm, more ZBrush work. The latest tooling makes things like panel lines a lot easier..

Ahh, good to see Zbrush being used for hard edge modeling.

Sounds about right for CoolMiniOrNot. Their parent online shop (New Wave Games, now closed) would lose orders all the time.

At this point... I WILL BELIEVE IT WHEN I SEE IT

In the Seattle area, when I moved there in 2004, nearly all game stores I found near me had died, all the ones listed as Reaper distribs, were dead. Its started swinging back the other way again. There are finally some good stores in Seattle and other areas. Card Kingdom opened a game store in Ballard, its pretty awesome. Ray Gun Games on Cap Hill is pretty neat, but tiny, and mostly board games. Mugu Games in everett started in a tiny little shop, and now has moved to a large space next to the Everett Harbor Freight. Decent rpg seletion, and a good selection of Warmachine and Warhammer with a little reaper thrown in. Lots of terrain and tables. Not just a MtG store. Some of the old game shops in 2004 that survived from the last downturn are dire though. Musty games, few figures, etc. There is (was?) one in Green Lake that was terrible.