Onemanworkshop

Even the slowest days are tracking well above last years. I see this easily going over 6 mil. I can't wait until the last couple days when everything gets crazy again.

Love the white rats... I will steal this idea!

Yep, I finished them, and a bunch more. I had to dis-assemble my photo booth, and am working to get it set back up. I'll be creating a topic in the Show off area here in the Reaper forums. Sorry about hijacking the thread! Back on topic. One thing I do now when thinning my paints is using Windex to thin the paints instead of straight water or other thinning agent. I picked up on this from air brush users who swear by Windex thinning. I find it does work well. It seems to break the surface tension of the paint, and let me tell you craft paint has some surface tension! I now use Windex to thin and create washes, it really does make everything flow much better. One warning about the paints, is that it will take some trial and error to find good color shade matches, as well as good covering colors, yellows are the worst. I find this to be true with most paints I have tried though, there are always some colors that refuse to cover well.

I have sometimes used a technique where I paint the area a grey color, non metallic, just grey. Then dry brush the metallic over that. I've gotten some good results doing that. In your case you can just use a dark grey, then dry brush with a darker steel color rather than silver. Also ,you can just paint it silver and use a black wash to darken it.

I knew I'd get questions about the figures. These are all cheap plastic figures, partly why I'm excited to get my BONES! Moar warbands! Anyway, here if the figure reference for all above, some might not be so cheap anymore, it pays to do lots of web searching. - The 2 frog like creatures on the left are D&D miniatures Nothics. - The open mouthed bloated things are Soul Grubs from the Dreamblade game. - The two white faces smokey things are Dreamstuff entities, also from the Dreamblade game. - The two running screeming guys are Screambent Lunatics, also from the Dreamblade game. - The two winged demons are Shadow Demons from D&D miniatures. - The large beast on the right is a Displacer beast lord from D&D miniatures. - The large smoke thing with faces in back is a Caller in Darkness, from D&D miniatures. - The horned lady on the right is Ejhin de Vanth from Rackham miniatures. - And finally the other floating female summoner is a Heroscape figure, Runa, with a cloak from the bits box. Just keep on topic, the paint you use is not important, practice with what you can afford or like, and you will get better with it. Nice paint is great, but not necessary.

I use nothing but craft paint, except for metallics now. For some reason the craft metallics just don't go on small figures very well. I just paint for fun, and try to come up with wild and unique color schemes, and don't worry to much of technical perfection. I also use the cheapest hobby paint brushes I can find, usually Royal brand, only a buck or two each on sale at HobbyLobby. The key to this is just have fun, paint cleanly, learn your shade and highlight colors, so web searches for the figures you have to see how others have colored their miniatures. Here is a photo of my craft paint box. I sort colors by color and hue. This way I have sort of pre-made shades and highlights for any color. Here is a picture of the figures I was working on.

I swear by Testers Dullcoat, never had a problem. Sorry to hear the gloss coating didn't work. Sometimes these lessons are tough.

Don't panic. It can be saved. The trick is to gloss varnish it, this will make the frosted varnish clear again. You may need to wait ,or get some brush on varnish.

A simple wash can also be made with Windex window cleaner. Just use it instead of water, it really does work. Airbrush users have been using this method to thin paints for years. The Windex works as a flow improver and does not leave any paint brush markers. The blue in the cleaner does not effect the final colors, and the alcohol in it aids drying time. All the flow improvers I used ended up slowing drying time. -James

They are going to have their hands full doing PVC plastics. It releases a gas that contains dioxins (although companies are working on an organic PVC) and will need to be vented well, but if Reaper already to high lead content casting, this should be no problem. The material also wears out molds faster than other plastic resin types. So this is why multiple molds are made, due to short use life with this material. Doing the molding in house will be good though. If they can work through the technical stuff, they can really crank out the figures then! The next step would to bring mold making in house, but that is a whole new set of challenges, it would be awesome for them. I wonder if they use zinc molds? Good luck on your entry into the plastics market. I think you have chosen right with the less expensive PVC figures over the hard plastic multi-part kit route. The one piece models are much friendlier for non gamers. -James

I use fender washers exclusively, and will never turn back. The washers add a bit of heft to the figures, making them feel less like plastic figures, and keeps them from getting tipped easily. Just cover the bottom of the figure base with thick super glue, and instant set spray, and you are done. I tend to go over it all with gravel to blend the figure base to the round washer base. All this should work for what your doing as well.

An art gallery would be nice, for concept drawings and fan art of the various Reaper games and figure ranges.

I'll be building a ton of 'Song of Blade warbands with the Bones figures. These figures and those rules were made for each other in dark heaven. Once I get a clear mind after this awesome kickstart, I'll be doing up some playing card size stat cards for each figure in the range. By next March I should have all of them done, ready for release! -James - always edits for spelling :(

Looks like I'm going to GENCON with $10 in my pocket...

I would love if they did the unit box sets in BONES. I do agree that there needs to be at minimum 4 different poses per troop type to avoid the cookie cutter army look. If you can get 4 different poses with unique command figures then the unit will look cohesive without looking repetitive. Using the bones material would make it really easy to do some minor weapon swaps and repositioning of arms and such. This would be a boon for wargamers! and I think the larger the sets ,the cheaper per figure price can be offered making them more than competitive with Mantic, or better yet affordable enough to buy both!

I'm really excited for the Kickstarter campaign. I'll be doing my part to spread the word around. I've already been hitting BoardGameGeek with links to the Kick Start page. Looks like your going to hit the initial funding goal in one day! Congrats! I really look forward to the stretch goals! I plan to use my figures for Song of Blades gaming...

Got me for $60! If you add more Bones miniatures for extra, I'll pick those up as well.

Ahh, yes. Regular primer for me is the cheap automotive primer. I use it on all the prepainted figures, and works like a charm. On these, the paint was tacky for several days, but did dry out eventually. I did a second coat (not that they need it) with primer that says it's for use with plastics, and it worked better, no long term tackiness. All The sprays are just Rustoleum brand spray paint. I do plan to pick up some Gesso, and prime with that. I must say too, that the ghost looks awesome in black...

Just finished the first batch of bones. I did prime them, and learned that normal primer does not react well to the material, you need something formulated for plastic. Anyway, the figures paint up well and look no different from the metal figures. Can't wait to pick up more!

Congrats on the new model range. I have thought that this is something other pre-paint producers should have done a long time ago. I think there is a real pent up demand for affordable figures that look great in the cheaper PVC or resin plastic materials. I look forward to seeing this range expanded with oldies and the new sculpts you plan. This range would also be a great avenue to have inexperienced and new sculptors get their designs made, a great entry level product for sculptors and customers alike. Building upon this idea. I really like what Wizards has done with their existing D&D pre paints line. Reusing the sculpts in the new D&D boardgames. Of particular note is using different colors for different races and creatures, giving some basic difference between the figures besides different sculpts. You could easily expand on this concept by releasing race sets in a large set of the same color. I can see picking up a bag of figures that contain goblins, orcs and trolls of the same colored plastic, same for other thematic races like undead, beast-men, dwarves, elves. All in header carded bags of 10-20 figures for $15-20 bucks. This way you can pick up an entire encounters worth of figures at a time. And for those who don't paint, the figures are colored differently for easy identification on the table. I do realize your business is built around painting miniatures, but I also see some growth in supplying figures in bulk as playing pieces that can be sold in board game specialty shops, no painting needed, just break open the bag and play. Just some thoughts on new figure range. Again, I will be picking up a lot of these for my own games and can now do a lot of differently themed warbands and still eat. :)

In a quest to speed up my painting so I can actually get a games worth done in a reasonable time; I thought I'd give the Army Painter dip method a try. Now, I am very skeptical of this because I have seen some really bad stuff done with this method, but now I think it's due more to lack of proper color choice and doing a clean paint job to begin with. Having checked out the Army painter website did not make me feel very encouraged either. I wanted my miniatures to look like they were done with more than 3 block colors and dipped. The figures while decent, did not have any style to them. I wanted to see if I could be a bit creative with my colors and patterns on the figures, but get the speed of shading with the dip. Like all my crazy ideas, you'd think I'd start with a crappy cheap figure... Oh no! I had to test this out on a $40 REAPER Jabberwock! I don't know what I was thinking, other than I really did not want to paint, shade, highlight and detail such a large figure. The figure has great deep detail I though would really show the dip well, if it worked. I prepped the figure as I normally would, primed grey, and set out to paint it in solid colors with no blending, shading or highlight, just straight on color. This does not mean I didn't try to add some flare with the mottled skin and the different colors, but I did not go all out on any fancy paint techniques, just the straight color on the model. And just a quick note that this was all painted with cheap craft paint as well, though any paint brand will work for this. After all was painted, I went about applying the dip with the "splash on" method, which is just painting it on. I let it set for the recommended minute or two, and used a brush to soak up the drips that accumulate int he deep crevasses and undersides of the model. Once all the dip was even and no longer settling I let it dry overnight. The next morning all of the colors had been deepened a shade or two, and the deep crevasses were nicely shade, and it picked up the detail very well, but it was very GLOSSY! I decided to use an oil bases, lacquer bases dull cote for plastic car kits. I gave it a couple coats of this, and I was STUNNED! at how nice it looked! STUNNED! The only thing I did after dull coat, is finish of the base, and do up the eyes and teeth. What you see here is about 3 hours of total paint and finishing time from beginning to end. I must say that now I am a fan of this method for painting quickly. I will even take it a step further, and start spray coating with the main color from now on, especially hoards of figures, like my forthcoming zombie hoard. I will still add special color combinations and interesting color use to show dirty, worn, rusted, scratched, bloody, rotten, and other color effects, but now I can just paint that stuff on, and the dip will blend it all together. Oh, and first post! I hope to have many more!