Wren

I don't prime Bones classic or Bones Black. My decision not to prime classic is based on testing a variety of first coat options by painting over them and stress testing the paint. My observation was that I saw either little difference or the straight paint was sturdier. Either way, saving a step is a score in my book! The pictures and methodology of my tests is available in pinned posts in the Reaper Product Lines subsection of the forum here. I haven't actually tested Black the same way, but observationally it hasn't seemed different enough to change my approach. And definitely wash them. Wash all minis, even those you plan to prime. Finger grease from packagers, mould release - there's gunk on figures. Regardless of your paint surface and priming intentions, I would say this step is more essential to a sturdy paint job than sealer at the end. I haven't tested Bones USA, but observationally my belief is that these should be primed. The material is described as and seems much closer to resin than PVC. I have painted several with no primer, and there's no issue with painting them. On one of those I was noticing some paint rub-off issues, and that's what prompted me to think about the differences between the two materials based on manufacturing and other factors.

I have spot stripped a mini once. If it's not a case of having filled in detail, I just paint over it. This was a very delicately sculpted figure and I had filled in some filigree. It was a thin belt. I used Winsor & Newton brush cleaner applied and scrubbed around a little with a small brush. If you have an old rough brush you can cut it down to very short length to get a bit more scrubbing power in a small tool. Then I brushed on and removed water from that area a few times to rinse it. Isopropyl is similar enough in consistency and effect that I'd try with that first if you have it. You might need an etcher or dental tool style pointy tool to pull paint out of deeper crevices. Having only done this once, I don't know if it can be made to work consistently, though. The belt was a slightly raised single area, so it had fairly defined edges and protruded above the other surfaces of the figure. Inset faces with hair hanging over them might be a different proposition. Edges of faces are often pretty well defined from other areas, though. I probably used brush-on primer, which is not as tough as aerosol. The paint will be easier to remove if it's fresh. Acrylic paint doesn't fully cure for 24 hours or so.

With darker colours in particular, colours can look pretty similar at out of the bottle strength. You can spot differences more easily by thinning the paint out and painting a bit on white paper, or mixing in a little white. If I compare the thinned out versions of Gothic Crimson and Necromancer Purple they're still very similar. Necromancer Purple looks to have a touch more magenta, whereas Gothic Crimson looks just a hair more red. It is possible to mix the same colour from a variety of different pigments. There are also colours you can't mix an exact match to at all without using particular pigments.

I have used them on bare Bones! The original white Bones. I've also used them on white Bones that were first given a wash with a regular Reaper wash product. I rinse the figures off in isopropyl alcohol first. If you want to dilute the Super Washes (or any other paint), use Brush-On Sealer, not water. It should also work with other brands of matte medium, unless it's a medium that has a lot of flow improver and/or drying retarder in the mix. If you have a big pile of white Bones left, Super Washes could be a great tool to use to climb that mountain. I imagine the Super Washes would adhere to the grey Bones, but because of their transparency they are much more effective over white or zenithal prime. Drybrushing a grey bones with white would also be an option kind of like a zenithal prime I think. I've meaning to test some of that stuff, but was too busy with ReaperCon prep to play around with the release versions in any way that required priming or other prep other than just painting bare Bones or what I had primed on stream. Videos 56 and 57 are episodes of Beyond the Kit where I tested and played around with the con version of the Super Washes. Video 55 I played around with a few prototypes I had been sent. The con versions are more pigmented than the prototypes and I think the colours of a few are slightly different. You can find those on the playlist here. For general use, they will behave differently if diluted with water vs Brush-On Sealer, which you can see in video 57. If diluted with Brush-On Sealer (and presumably matte medium but I haven't tested other brands yet), the colour becomes lighter but maintains the properties of tinting the raised surfaces of texture and gathering in crevices creating darker shadows. The more water you add, the more even the coverage becomes, so less of that wash property of concentrating in recesses. Those who like to use this kind of product for glazing/tinting either by brush or airbrush might prefer the results when they're thinned with water. Reaper's Wash Medium product kind of splits the difference between water and Brush-On Sealer effects.

Just wanted to remind people that this resource exists! You can get a lot of feedback on the most common issues the judges see in entries before you even get to ReaperCon! There are still a few days left to tweak your entries a little. There is also more information about how the contest itself works, with visual examples. https://birdwithabrush.com/2021/08/19/common-feedback-issues-index/ People usually wait to ask for feedback on their contest entries until after the results have been announced on Saturday evening. By that time lot of people are pretty tired after day three of classes and judging and so on. So most feedback happens Sunday, and you can miss out if you need to leave early, lines are too long, or your judges end up being tied up in classes or streaming or something else and you don't cross paths. I would like to make this suggestion: ask for feedback in advance! Go to Artist Alley, find someone sitting at their desk, and ask for feedback. Then ask another two to three artists you see there. The artists you ask may not end up judging your entries in the contest itself, but they are the pool of people that judges are drawn from. We use three person judge teams to minimize personal bias and tastes, so asking a few people from Artist Alley is similar to asking the members of your judge team. Sometimes you might want to speak with a specific judge to better understand the score they gave you, and that you can't do until after the contest. However, most of the time what we as entrants want to know is what can we do better in the future? What worked, what needed a bit more polish? Where should I focus my practice if I want to improve at X thing? All of the artists in Artist Alley are qualified to give feedback and offer advice. If you ask two to four of them for feedback, you will very likely hear the same points that your judges would mention. If you're entering multiple pieces, you don't know which was chosen for judging. So how do you know which one to show artists for advance feedback? Show them the one you most want feedback on. Show them two or four and ask them which they would judge and then for feedback on that one. We may not have time to talk to you in detail about multiple figures, but it can be helpful for us to see a selection of your work when we give feedback. One of the most common questions judges get is why did we pick this piece out of your entries to judge in a category? I answer the question in a bit more detail about halfway through this MSP Open FAQ, but here's the short version. We always choose to your advantage. If there are multiple pieces in a display, each judge suggests which they would prefer to judge and why. If there is a piece that one or more of the judges would award a higher score to, that is the one that is judged. If not, we pause and confirm that we would each give the same score to any of the pieces in the display, and then we agree on one and give it our full attention. We try to choose the one we think you'd like us to, but we're just guessing, and the choices we make surprise people all the time. Again, this is in the situation where your score would be the same regardless of which of your pieces we pick to judge! If the one we chose wasn't the one you most want feedback on after the contest, show us the one you most want feedback on! We're not limited to commenting only on the piece we chose. The reasons why we have feelings about which piece did (or didn't) get chosen are a bit more complex, and I talk about that more in the long answer version over on the other page. (And I've been there, believe me!) These are screenshots of the topics discussed in the Common Feedback Issues of my website. The topics themselves include additional before and after pictures and other visual examples.

We strongly recommend attaching all figures. If you are not able to, I recommend writing up a notice that the figures are not attached to the base and placing that beside the piece, as well as writing on the entry card itself. The contest administration desk staff should have spare index cards and pens you could use for this purpose. Viewers are not permitted to touch other people's figures. Contest staff and judges can and often do touch pieces. Judges usually pick pieces up to appreciate the work from various angles, which can include tipping back and forward slightly on the assumption that everything is attached. Pieces may also get moved around to make more space on the tables for other entrants, or moved to a side table for to be judged for manufacturer and other special awards. We do our best to look for and attend to information like a note that items are not attached to the base, but accidents do occasionally happen. Including with fully assembled figures, of course. Entering any contest is always at our own risk. Out of the dozens of contests I have entered and judged over the years there have been only a handful of accidents, almost all minor.

Hello! I contacted the executive director of the MSP Open to check with him (Michael Proctor). Since both you and your entry will be at the same year's show, he has no problem with you filling out the pre-registration form and having a friend drop off your entry/ies on Friday.

There are a lot of great colours in the Bones set, so I wouldn't overlook it. In fact, the designer of the paints has said that the Bones metallic colours are superior to the MSP line. The Bones line was created later and a different kind of metal flake base had become available that is a bit shinier. The Bones paints are mixed with the same pigments as used in the MSP line, and the other elements in the mix are similar to the rest of the Reaper line. The main difference is the Bones paints are overall slightly more opaque, and intended to have opaque coverage in 1-2 coats, so far as is possible with the limitations of pigments. Some pigments are more transparent by nature, and some more opaque by nature. Most bright red and yellow paints require multiple coats. A Bones red or yellow is likely to require fewer coats than a classic MSP. It's a little less pure as a mixing colour, but if you're buying a bunch of paints it's probably to save time and do less mixing. (That's why I have almost every paint Reaper has ever made. ;->) The Pathfinder paint line is similar to the Bones paints, with the colours having been selected by Paizo. There are a lot of colours I love in this set, though I don't recommend it as the only set of paint someone gets. It doesn't have enough dark colours to use for shading/washes. Overall the formulations of all the Reaper lines are very similar. They're all the same level of matte, they're all similar kinds of acrylic base formulations with similar additives. The base is the non-pigment part of the paint, the part that makes it acrylic paint. Some paint lines use a more acrylic base, some use a more vinyl base. They're all acrylic paints, just slight different formulae. There are advantages to both, but painters often get accustomed to or prefer one or the other. Reaper's is a more acrylic base. Additives are things like flow improver and matting agent. All Reaper paints include a little flow improver in the mix. I treat all Reaper paints as pretty much identical in my painting practice, and just choose by the colours I like. The only difference beyond that is if I'm doing a painting task where a more opaque colour is handy, I'll pick a Bones if I can. Paint that isn't so opaque and is very intense in colour usually works best for glazes, so I'll look for paints with that property for glazes.

It looks like a pretty good colour for a dark skin tone, particularly if you don't already have Ebony Flesh. It's a little bit lighter in value than Ebony Flesh, but that's easy to adjust if you need to.

Something happened last year that I found a bit odd that may be sort of related to this. So I'm going to mention it here for the benefit of anyone reading this, and then try to figure out how to get the word out more globally, as well. Last year we had several people who had one figure as an entry, and then a few other figures as display only, but this did not seem to be for the sort of reasons I outlined in the message above. My understanding is that those entrants wanted to make sure to get feedback on one particular piece, so they only entered that one. There is no need to do anything like that! You can ask your specific judges or anyone else in artist alley for feedback on a figure of your choosing. You don't even have to enter the contest at all to ask for feedback! But if you do enter, you are not limited to receiving feedback only on the piece that was judged. If there is a line of people waiting for feedback we might only have the time to comment on one piece, but you can pick that piece, it doesn't have to be the one we judged. In fact, why even wait until AFTER the contest to get feedback? Avoid the rush and come talk us us Thursday or Friday! There might be exceptions, but I would say as a general rule that unless you're placing at high silver level or higher, any given three of the artists on artist alley is likely to identify similar issues and accomplishments to what the specific judges of your figure would, and they will also be able to give you some ideas of how to improve. It can be beneficial to get feedback from two or three people since different people explain things in different ways and one might click better for you. We are often terrible judges of our own work, so it is to our advantage to enter 2-5 of our best pieces in a category and let the judges pick which one they feel best reflects your work. It might not make a difference in medal placement - but then again, it might! I feel like "Why did you pick this one to judge?" is actually the most common question we're asked in the post-contest feedback session. And I've been there! I have more than once been very surprised by which of my entries the judges pick to assess. Conversely, as a general guideline we'd prefer that people not enter 6 or more pieces in a single category, unless those pieces are wildly different* from one another or they are part of the overall composition of a more elaborate display**. The judges have hundreds of entries to look at on Friday night, and after several hours, we start to get tired and hungry and cranky. Anything that streamlines the process helps keep your judges happier, and everyone wants happy judges, right? ;-> Streamlining entries also reduces the work burden on the contest admin staff. If all or most of your 6+ entries are gaming scale humanoids painted around the same time with the same techniques, chances are good that any one of them would be assessed with the same score. Ask a couple of friends to help narrow it down a little if you're having trouble deciding which to enter. If there is some reason you want them all out as part of your display, like if all of them are part of your adventuring group, you can submit a few as entries, and include the others with for display only. Likewise, if you've painted a unit for a skirmish game where all the figures have the same basic gear and colour scheme, any one of them would likely be assessed with the same score. Enter the leader and the best squad member as entries, and put the rest out in your display as display only for viewers to enjoy the impact of them as a group. * What do I mean by wildly different from one another? Examples of types of figures that are different from one another include: gaming scale humanoid, bust, larger scale (54mm, 120mm), monster, natural animal, garage kit, a repainted Barbie doll, a puppet, a paperweight, a bas-relief sculpture. Another reason you might want to enter a larger number of figures is if you've been you're experimenting with different techniques and styles (wetblending, drybrushing, airbrushing, real metallics, NMM, etc, etc) and you want to see which the judges pick to judge. ** Sometimes entrants create an overall base that a set of figure slots into, or even 3D display system for the figures in their display. Note that you do not have to submit all of the figures in an elaborate display as entries into the main contest to set up the display. Even if you enter only a subset, your overall display will still be eligible for the best display special award.

If you read this previously I have received clarifications on some of the statements I made earlier as regards MSP Open rules and procedures. Skim through and look for bolded sections like this for the updated info. I have crossed out the statements I made that are inaccurate rather than editing them out. This could relate to a few possibilities, so I'll cover all of them. I believe that if an entrant made a note on their entry card to NOT consider them for a special award that we will respect that. I really don't see any reason why we would not, but would have to check with Michael Proctor for the final verdict. An entrant might choose to do that because they painted the piece by commission for a manufacturer and that manufacturer doesn't consider it eligible, but the person(s) doing the judging for the manufacturer might not be aware of that. Or maybe the entrant is only interested in the main placements or doesn't want awards they'll need to dust. I don't think we'd need to know the reason, just giving some examples. It is also possible to put figures in your display that are not eligible for judging or that you do not want judged. They are not entered into the contest system, and you display them with a card that says "Display Only". Those pieces essentially do not exist within the contest system (including the special awards) and no one related to the contest looks at them in an official capacity. Entrants might do this if they offer a commission painting/sculpting service to give more people a chance to see their work in person, or they have a piece they want to show off to friends but it's fragile so they don't want to carry it around with them all con. The Executive Director let me know that if there is a situation where someone would like an entry considered only for special awards and not for the main MSP medal judging, we will try to figure out how to do that. That is just one reason why Michael Proctor is such a great Executive Director! So far as I know, it is not possible to do a mix of those things to get to the scenario that thedogfather1 originally proposed. You cannot enter a piece as 'display only' from the point of view of the main MSP judging, but have it be considered as an entry for special awards. One reason for that is the Here are some technical details of how the contest works. Each entry is entered into the computer system. It receives a unique entry number. That entry includes information about the entrant's name, the entered category, the manufacturer(s), and possibly a few other things I'm forgetting. A picture is taken of the entry that is associated with that entry number and entrant. In the past we've allowed entrants to enter anonymously. Their name is in the system for reading out awards and such, but it is not printed on their entry cards nor on the judges papers. Note that a judge will recuse themselves if they feel they have such strong feelings for or against an entrant that they can't judge them impartially, or if they can't be impartial because they offered a lot of advice on the figure, or for any other reason personal to that judge. We have alternate judges standing by who step in when that happens. The information is not currently displaying on the MSP Open rules page, but entrants can still choose to make their entries anonymous. Let the entry desk person know that is what you want to do when submitting your entries. I am not finding any information about entering anonymously on the current MSP Open rules page, but I do not know if that is because we have discontinued the practice or it just needs to be added to the online rules. I will try to find out! When the main MSP categories are judged, the judges are given pages with information for us to find all the entries, and to record our assessments. So say I'm judging painters, I might get the pages for entrants with last names starting with A through L. The section for Sue ExampleEntrant will list all of the entry numbers and names for the pieces that she put into painter. We circle the one we choose to assess, and enter our assessment. We also make marks on the entry cards to show the display was judged. This allows us to do several important things: * The contest admin scans all the displays and makes sure the judges marked off one of the cards in that display. If there is no mark, they double check that there isn't an error in the system and make sure that the display does get judged. * If the judges can't find an entry on their sheets, the contest admin helps them find it. Maybe the entrant put it on the wrong category table. The contest admin can call up the photo to help make it easier to find. * If there is a wide discrepancy in the assessment scores of the three judges, the contest admin calls the team back in. We double check that everyone was looking at the same figure, and that no one made a mistakenly wrote down the wrong number. Judges are not asked to change their scores, just make sure they scored the correct figure and that they do really intend that score. (An example would be one judge gives a 1, and the other two judges award 3s, or vice versa.) * While we identify most of the figures eligible for a special award by eye, the entry information allows us to double check manufacturers and other pieces of information. A lot of sculptors work for multiple companies, so we can't just assume that a Bobby Jackson figure is a Reaper figure, it might be a Dark Sword figure. * Medal assessments and special awards are added to the relevant entry in the computer system, and this is what is used to generate the lists of winners that is read out at the award ceremony, and the gallery online at ReaperCon.com. * Entrants have a receipt for each entry. Contest admin check that you have this before allowing you to go into the display room and grab something. (You can give your receipt to a friend if you're busy at entry pickup time, we check the piece of paper, not facial recognition. ;->) So essentially, something isn't an entry unless it has an entry number in the system, and that is used is for the benefit of entrants or contest admin organization (an organized contest is also to the benefit of entrants!) To my mind, the other reason is that the overall contest IS the MSP Open. Everything else is icing layered on top of that cake. You are entering the MSP Open, which has an additional bonus Mousling contest and a bonus Bombshell contest, you're not entering just a Mousling or Bombshell contest. That is my interpretation, at any rate, but I'll try to get verification on that, as well. If thedogfather1 or anyone else has a situation where they feel it's reasonable they be allowed to enter just a bonus contest and not the main awards, they could contact the Executive Director of the MSP Open (Michael Proctor) and he'll determine whether there's find a way to work that out.

Hi thedogfather1! I am one of the primary judges at the MSP Open. I'm not entirely sure if I understand the concern behind your question. If the following doesn't answer your question, please provide a little more information and I'll try again, or let the Executive Director of the contest know he needs to pop by to answer. Is your concern along the lines of what Cygnwulf posited? Let's say a scenario like this. You enter three figures into the Painters category - a Bombshell alien, a Reaper dragon, and a Reaper mousling. Is your concern that if the judges choose to award your dragon with a bronze medal then your mousling can't get considered for the special mousling awards? If that is your concern, Cygnwulf is right, you do not need to worry about that! I'll go into the details below, but if you just want the short version, it's this: everything you enter is considered for everything that it's eligible for. We are always striving to do everything in your favour. There are essentially two contests running at the same time. The overall MSP Open is the main categories, and one miniature from your display in each is chosen for judging in the medal system. All of the other awards are judged completely separately from that system. The Sophie trophies, the Mousling trophies, and the Giant Sized Monster trophies are manufacturer awards sponsored by Reaper. Other manufacturers may choose to sponsor awards, and individuals and groups can, as well. The special awards are not judged at the same time as the medals, and may not be judged by the same people. Manufacturers and others who sponsor awards can select their own judges, and use their own judging criteria. All of the figures that are eligible for a given special award are considered for that award. It does not matter whether they were judged for a medal or not. Here's how the scenario I suggested above might play out in practice: When the judges look over your display in the Painters category, they decide that your dragon piece is the best representative of your work. They look at it more and realize that it is actually a diorama that tells a great story. They discuss whether they would award a different medal if the piece were judged under the Diorama category standards rather than the Painters category standards, and they think it's possible it would get a silver in diorama, but would only receive a bronze in Painters. They check whether you already have anything entered in Diorama, and if you do not, they transfer the piece to that category. I highly recommend that you familiarize yourself with the criteria for each of the categories and enter pieces accordingly, but it's a lot and can be confusing, so we move stuff around to people's benefit when that's an option. The judges would return to your display and consider your remaining two Painters entries. They decide of those two, the Bombshell one shows your skills to best advantage, so they judge that and award a bronze medal. That is what would happen for the MSP Open side of things. Almost none of what happens with that medal judging has any bearing on any of the special awards. The only place it might intersect is with the Sophie trophies, since those align with the main categories. Your dragon is now in Diorama, so it would now be eligible for a Diorama Sophie award instead of a Painters Sophie award. All of your entries would still be considered for any other awards for which they are eligible. It does not matter which one was judged for a medal placement. The available special awards can change from year to year as companies, individuals, and groups can sponsor additional special awards, but this would be an example of the eligibility for each of your figures: Bombshell alien: eligible for the Bombshell manufacturer awards Reaper dragon diorama: eligible for Diorama Sophie trophy, eligible for Giant Sized Monster Award Reaper mousling: eligible for Painters Sophie trophy, eligible for Mousling Award All of your entries: eligible for Best in Show (voted on by contest entrants), eligible for Theme Award (assuming they fit into that year's theme), and your overall display of your miniatures in either Painters or Diorama would be eligible for the Display Award. I hope that helps, but if it doesn't, please give me more information about your concern and I'll try again!

Thanks for the feedback so far everyone! Just to keep things on target - I'm an instructor asking on behalf of instructors submitting classes, and classes only. We want to offer what you want to take! We just can't always figure out what that is. 😆 That's definitely the case for me with the 'advanced' thing, and I guess I'm not the only instructor if we're not offering enough of it. It's the kind of thing people will have different definitions of, I'm already seeing that in the answers so far. I started this thread after reading through the class comment thread for last ReaperCon. I saw more than one comment there about a paucity of advanced classes, and I've seen similar comments in past years, so I figured it was a topic worth delving into. I can and have suggested panels to Reaper, but I can't make it happen. I definitely have no influence on how the streaming is conducted. I mention because I don't have any reason to believe that any of the Reaper people who are in charge of scheduling and streaming and whatnot will read this thread, so those topics are probably better raised as new threads or addressed to Reaper peeps directly rather than being discussed in much detail in this thread.

I have a question for class takers, especially those who’ve been painting and taking classes for a while. I regularly see comments wishing for more advanced/technical classes. My question to the people looking for those is: What are some examples of what you consider to be more advanced class topics? What makes something more technical? What exactly are the classes you want to take that you aren’t seeing offered? (Or not enough of offered.) I’ve been thinking about this for years, and I never really come up with any concrete ideas for what could be done that would accomplish anything meaningful in the 90-120 minutes of a class, particularly a hands-on one. So I thought I would go to the source and ask the people looking for the classes! I have a few followup questions and comments, but I figure best to just start here.

In all the years of Reaper LTPK kits (mine is the third generation, I started painting with the first generation!), Reaper has never made the instructions available separately. I do not know if they have any plans to reconsider that choice at this time. I certainly understand your predicament though! However, now that I have a streaming show on the Reaper Twitch channel, you can get some of the information in a different format. I painted through the mini kit I did for Krampus on the show a few weeks ago. If you go to this YouTube playlist, look for shows #27 and #28. I figure I'll do something similar with the goblins once I get my hands on the kit! (I used up all my goblins doing colour tests and stuff for it.)