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Welcome to the 2021 Summer Miniature Exchange! This is the thread where I'll post announcements, and you can post questions, let people know that packages have be mailed or received, or just talk, get suggestions, and show off the awesome mini that your partner sent you. If you've never done an exchange before, how it works is like this: Everyone who is interested PMs me with the questionnaire below filled out (please don't just send an old one, as the questions may have changed). I then match you with a person whom you will paint a mini for, and a second person whom you will receive a painted mini from (sometimes it's the same person). You have until the deadline to send your mini out (please try really hard to do this, though we understand if sometime life gets in the way). That's pretty much it, feel free to PM me with questions. This exchange is based on trust and is open to painters of all skill levels. Please be respectful of the fact that someone else is investing their time, money, and energy into painting a mini for you. I am simply the organizer, but I will do everything I can to make sure that everyone who paints a miniature receives one. The Rules (tl;dr version) Fill out the questionnaire below and send it to me via PM by end of day, May 30th. Painters must acknowledge their assignment message and/or post or message me that they have selected their miniature by June 20th. Painters must post a WIP of their mini by August 1st. Paint your partner a mini and mail it to them by September 30th. Full Rules Fill out the questionnaire below and send it to me via PM. Please fill out the current version of the questionnaire. Please don't just send an old one, as questions may have changed. Also send it in a new PM, do not use a previous exchange PM as I delete them after each exchange is done. Please don't contact your partner unless they have listed themselves as okay with contact. I've included it on the questionnaire, so you'll know who wants to keep it secret and who doesn't. You will need to acknowledge your assignment message and/or post or message me that you have selected a miniature by June 20th. Basically, if I do not hear anything from you once the assignments go out, you will be dropped, and your recipient will be reassigned. I really do not want to do this but there have been too many instances in the past of radio silence once assignments go out. In order to encourage people to start painting early, you will need to post a Work In Progress (WIP) image of your mini under a spoiler tag to this thread by August 1st. The mini should be at least base-coated by this time. If you don't post a WIP by this point, I may have to drop you from the exchange. Please don't make me do this. Try really hard to get your miniature out by the deadline. Let an organizer know if you are going to be late. Please post in this thread once you have received your miniature from your partner. We all love seeing what everyone did and it serves as an acknowledgement that you received it. If you are mailing internationally and plan to send more than just miniatures/paint, you must contact your recipient to get any "bonus items" approved. We don't want any trouble with customs. As an example, plant matter or powders can cause a lot of trouble. Also, only the purchase price of the figure should be listed under "value" on the customs form. No extra value should be added for your paint job, etc. the purpose of the package should be "gift". Reaper minis are the focus. If you want to paint more than one miniature, you may do so. If you wish to include other gifts for your recipient, you may do so, but please keep them small. There is no hard and fast rule but keeping the value less than the price of a single miniature is a good rule of thumb. The focus of the exchange should be a Reaper product. The organizer (SGHawkins09) can help facilitate any anonymous conversations you want to have with your partner. Have fun! Deadline The deadline to mail out miniatures for this exchange will be a little over 3 months from when assignments are sent out, on September 30th. Assignments Deadline I will try to send out the assignments by June 7th. Please let me know if you're interested by end of day, May 30th. I can't make any guarantees if you're late, but I will try to make arrangements. Exchange Assistant I am running this by myself so please can contact me if you have any questions or issues. 2021 Summer Exchange Questionnaire -Mailing Information- Name: Address: -Miniature Information: Outbound- What can you paint? What do you like painting the most? -Miniature Information: Inbound- What do you want to receive? What DON'T you want to receive? What material do you want to receive? Do you have a particular color scheme in mind? What style of basing would you prefer? Please give your partner some inspiration, especially if you have very few preferences above. -Personal Information- Will you ship internationally? Would you be willing to have multiple exchange partners? Would you like to know who is painting for you before they start painting? Would you like your partner to know who is painting for them before you start painting? Is there anybody you would prefer not to paint for? (please include why) -Special Requests- For the organizer, your painter, or your recipient: 2021 Summer Exchange Questionnaire Example: -Mailing Information- Name: Forum_person Address: 1234 my street . My town, My province or state (Postal code) or (ZIP code) My Country Notes: Remember to include your zip code and country. Please format this correctly for your county in case you have an international partner. -Miniature Information: Outbound- What can you paint? Fantasy PCs or monsters Examples: fantasy, sci-fi, monsters, PCs, women, undead, demons, etc What do you like painting the most? bugbears and orcs Notes: if possible, the organizers will try to match you up with someone who wants this thing, but if we can't we'll fall back to what you "can" paint -Miniature Information: Inbound- What do you want to receive? Fantasy enemies for my players to fight! Monsters or human(ish) are both fine. Examples: mouslings, necromancers, warriors, dual-wielders, etc What DON'T you want to receive? No nudity please. Also, I have plenty of goblins so I don't need more. Examples: gross, nudity, undead, kobolds, animals, etc What material do you want to receive? I'm fine with any material Notes: Reaper miniatures come in Bones, resin and metal Do you have a particular color scheme in mind? No preference. Notes: If you're asking for a miniature to be used in army, you can ask your partner to match the colors. What style of basing would you prefer? Plain or basic - I will use these miniatures in my PFRPG games. Examples: round or square preference? Unbased, plain base (simple black base), basic base (standard sized base with some scenic elements), or scenic base (fancy base not really suitable for gaming) Please give your partner some inspiration, especially if you have very few preferences above. I'm starting the PFRPG Adventure Path "Jade Regent" soon. Try painting non-human skin tones. My favorite color is blue. "Spring has sprung!" Notes: Consider this a non-binding word of inspiration for your partner. If they're stuck and can't figure out what to paint, maybe this will help them. No need to repeat your preferences above. You partner may ignore this question if they already have an idea from the your previously answered questions. Examples: Are there any books or movies you've enjoyed recently? Is there a challenge or technique you'd like your partner to try? How about some song lyrics or a quote from a book? -Personal Information- Will you ship internationally? Yes Notes: Be aware that postage costs will be higher than domestic postage. If you mail internationally, you will need permission from your partner to include other gift items so that we don't run afoul of customs. Most participants in these exchanges are located in the USA. Would you be willing to have multiple exchange partners? Yes, I love painting! Notes: If yes, specify if there is a limit (though it is unlikely we'll ask you to do more than 2) Would you like to know who is painting for you? No Examples: Yes, No, No Preference Notes: If you say yes, your preference will be communicated to your partner. It will be up to them to contact you. Would you like your partner to know who is painting for them? No Examples: Yes, No, No Preference Notes: You can contact them directly to work out details or ask for advice. We will attempt to match people with similar preferences, but can't guarantee this is the case. Is there anybody you would prefer not to paint for? (please include why) I painted for johndoe123 in the last miniature exchange. Notes: If you like to paint for a variety of different people, you can list those you've painted for in the past. We will do our best to pair you with someone new. Another situation is that you know certain people in real life, and would prefer to paint for someone you don't know. -Special Requests- For the organizer, your painter, or your recipient:

Welcome to the 2020 Summer Miniature Exchange! This is the thread where I'll post announcements, and you can post questions, let people know that packages have be mailed or received, or just talk, get suggestions, and show off the awesome mini that your partner sent you. If you've never done an exchange before, how it works is like this: Everyone who is interested PMs me with the questionnaire below filled out (please don't just send an old one, as the questions may have changed). I then match you with a person whom you will paint a mini for, and a second person whom you will receive a painted mini from (sometimes it's the same person). You have until the deadline to send your mini out (please try really hard to do this, though we understand if sometime life gets in the way). That's pretty much it, feel free to PM me with questions. This exchange is based on trust and is open to painters of all skill levels. Please be respectful of the fact that someone else is investing their time, money, and energy into painting a mini for you. I am simply the organizer, but I will do everything I can to make sure that everyone who paints a miniature receives one. The Rules (tl;dr version) Fill out the questionnaire below and send it to me via PM by end of day, June 12th. Painters must acknowledge their assignment message and/or post or message me that they have selected their miniature by June 30th. Painters must post a WIP of their mini by August 1st. Paint your partner a mini and mail it to them by September 30th. Full Rules Fill out the questionnaire below and send it to me via PM. Please fill out the current version of the questionnaire. Please don't just send an old one, as questions may have changed. Please don't contact your partner unless they have listed themselves as okay with contact. I've included it on the questionnaire, so you'll know who wants to keep it secret and who doesn't. You will need to acknowledge your assignment message and/or post or message me that you have selected a miniature by June 30th. Basically, if I do not hear anything from you once the assignments go out, you will be dropped, and your recipient will be reassigned. I really do not want to do this but there have been too many instances in the past of radio silence once assignments go out. In order to encourage people to start painting early, you will need to post a Work In Progress (WIP) image of your mini under a spoiler tag to this thread by August 1st. The mini should be at least base-coated by this time. If you don't post a WIP by this point, I may have to drop you from the exchange. Please don't make me do this. Try really hard to get your miniature out by the deadline. Let an organizer know if you are going to be late. Please post in this thread once you have received your miniature from your partner. We all love seeing what everyone did and it serves as an acknowledgement that you received it. If you are mailing internationally and plan to send more than just miniatures/paint, you must contact your recipient to get any "bonus items" approved. We don't want any trouble with customs. As an example, plant matter or powders can cause a lot of trouble. Also, only the purchase price of the figure should be listed under "value" on the customs form. No extra value should be added for your paint job, etc. the purpose of the package should be "gift". Reaper minis are the focus. If you want to paint more than one miniature, you may do so. If you wish to include other gifts for your recipient, you may do so, but please keep them small. There is no hard and fast rule but keeping the value less than the price of a single miniature is a good rule of thumb. The focus of the exchange should be a Reaper product. The organizer (SGHawkins09) can help facilitate any anonymous conversations you want to have with your partner. Have fun! Deadline The deadline to mail out miniatures for this exchange will be a little over 3 months from when assignments are sent out, on September 30th. Assignments Deadline I will try to send out the assignments by June 15th. Please let me know if you're interested by end of day, June 12th. I can't make any guarantees if you're late, but I will try to make arrangements. Exchange Assistant I am running this by myself so please can contact me if you have any questions or issues. 2020 Summer Exchange Questionnaire -Mailing Information- Name: Address: -Miniature Information: Outbound- What can you paint? What do you like painting the most? -Miniature Information: Inbound- What do you want to receive? What DON'T you want to receive? What material do you want to receive? Do you have a particular color scheme in mind? What style of basing would you prefer? Please give your partner some inspiration, especially if you have very few preferences above. -Personal Information- Will you ship internationally? Would you be willing to have multiple exchange partners? Would you like to know who is painting for you before they start painting? Would you like your partner to know who is painting for them before you start painting? Is there anybody you would prefer not to paint for? (please include why) -Special Requests- For the organizer, your painter, or your recipient: 2020 Summer Exchange Questionnaire Example: -Mailing Information- Name: Forum_person Address: 1234 my street . My town, My province or state (Postal code) or (ZIP code) My Country Notes: Remember to include your zip code and country. Please format this correctly for your county in case you have an international partner. -Miniature Information: Outbound- What can you paint? Fantasy PCs or monsters Examples: fantasy, sci-fi, monsters, PCs, women, undead, demons, etc What do you like painting the most? bugbears and orcs Notes: if possible, the organizers will try to match you up with someone who wants this thing, but if we can't we'll fall back to what you "can" paint -Miniature Information: Inbound- What do you want to receive? Fantasy enemies for my players to fight! Monsters or human(ish) are both fine. Examples: mouslings, necromancers, warriors, dual-wielders, etc What DON'T you want to receive? No nudity please. Also, I have plenty of goblins so I don't need more. Examples: gross, nudity, undead, kobolds, animals, etc What material do you want to receive? I'm fine with any material Notes: Reaper miniatures come in Bones, resin and metal Do you have a particular color scheme in mind? No preference. Notes: If you're asking for a miniature to be used in army, you can ask your partner to match the colors. What style of basing would you prefer? Plain or basic - I will use these miniatures in my PFRPG games. Examples: round or square preference? Unbased, plain base (simple black base), basic base (standard sized base with some scenic elements), or scenic base (fancy base not really suitable for gaming) Please give your partner some inspiration, especially if you have very few preferences above. I'm starting the PFRPG Adventure Path "Jade Regent" soon. Try painting non-human skin tones. My favorite color is blue. "Spring has sprung!" Notes: Consider this a non-binding word of inspiration for your partner. If they're stuck and can't figure out what to paint, maybe this will help them. No need to repeat your preferences above. You partner may ignore this question if they already have an idea from the your previously answered questions. Examples: Are there any books or movies you've enjoyed recently? Is there a challenge or technique you'd like your partner to try? How about some song lyrics or a quote from a book? -Personal Information- Will you ship internationally? Yes Notes: Be aware that postage costs will be higher than domestic postage. If you mail internationally, you will need permission from your partner to include other gift items so that we don't run afoul of customs. Most participants in these exchanges are located in the USA. Would you be willing to have multiple exchange partners? Yes, I love painting! Notes: If yes, specify if there is a limit (though it is unlikely we'll ask you to do more than 2) Would you like to know who is painting for you? No Examples: Yes, No, No Preference Notes: If you say yes, your preference will be communicated to your partner. It will be up to them to contact you. Would you like your partner to know who is painting for them? No Examples: Yes, No, No Preference Notes: You can contact them directly to work out details or ask for advice. We will attempt to match people with similar preferences, but can't guarantee this is the case. Is there anybody you would prefer not to paint for? (please include why) I painted for johndoe123 in the last miniature exchange. Notes: If you like to paint for a variety of different people, you can list those you've painted for in the past. We will do our best to pair you with someone new. Another situation is that you know certain people in real life, and would prefer to paint for someone you don't know. -Special Requests- For the organizer, your painter, or your recipient:

so.... I have an idea. Yes, my precious I do! Ahem. This is probably a crazy idea, but I wanted to take one of my favorite visual artist's work and apply it to my miniature hobby. First, a bit of info for those not familiar with art nouveau: Alphonse Mucha was a Czech painter with a really cool linear style. Feel free to Wikipedia him. He's fairly distinct. I happen to own a Mucha print book, which made it much easier to plot out my evil plan. The idea is to take one of his prints, create a demi-rond (like a flat only thicker and closer to a bas relief, and have it becoming more 3-D as it approaches the edges of the picture frame that surrounds it. I'll create fully 3-D elements within the frame as well. Then paint the whole thing. Hard to describe, but hopefully the WIP will get there! First, I spent a great deal of time trying to figure out which print I wanted to tackle. My main goal was something not too complicated, since I don't do a great deal of this type of sculpting. I suck at sculpting faces, and I've learned symmetry is hard. Have you ever noticed how sometimes the eyes in a given mini are different? Yeah. Mine would be even more different! So, in order to avoid the not-quite-symmetrical trap, I knew I needed either a profile or a 3/4 face, to make my stress level reasonable. After much hemming and hawing, I chose this one: See- look at all those nice lines! Such a friendly pattern to follow. Many paintings are softer, with less obvious transitions. I'd thought about using a Brom, but this should be easier, and since it's an ambitious project, I need all the help I can get! Then, I used my trusty book: I picked out a picture frame from my local hobby store, and the little cardboard backing is to the right in the above pic. It's the perfect size! Plus, it was on sale 70% off... I liked this frame because it had curly lines and looked organic, and my style is organic and I plan to do a bunch of vines and leaves per usual! So I printed out the Summer and darkened the copy to make the lines stand out more: I cut out an additional copy: ...And applied it directly to a rolled out slab of fimo. First, if anyone tries this again, a few fimo caveats. One, the stuff is firm! I bruised my poor hands kneading it. I may have to invest in a pasta machine! Two, I tried rolling it out originally on a styrene sheet and it stuck. So I had to peel it off, re-knead it (curses) and re-roll it out (used a spare rolling pin) and this time place it on a piece of parchment paper. It should be easy to sculpt on the styrene sheet to keep it flat and the parchment should peel off. Or I can bake it on the parchment and peel it off after. At any rate, if has a firmer consistency than my sculpey, so i'm hoping I can get nice hard edges, though my style is softer in general. The reason I put the cut-out on top is that I can use it to transfer the lines to the fimo. I used a pin tool (ceramics tool, similar to an industrial strength paint pokey tool) and presed it along each line, letting the clay pick up the impression through the paper: So you can see the lines- much easier to follow as I sculpt! Then I started sculpting! Hard to see with white on white, but the nice thing about these clays are that they are to some degree compressible. Which means unlike wood or plaster where I have to carve away, I can compress the edges to get the relief. I do still carve some away though. So, still in progress, but it's been fun experimenting with this. I'm hoping to make some more progress this weekend!

So, as you may or may not have seen in the Summer Exchange thread, I painted up a Bathalian for RobinH. I included a note that had most of my thoughts/directions (or lack there of) with it, so I think I'll just post a bunch of pictures, and post part of the note below. Lots of pictures (and loads more I didn't put here) - I'm pretty happy with how it turned out overall, even if there's a few rough patches (I really should have painted the hand/book BEFORE it was attached to the muchroom). And now for my novella, for perspective, it's directed toward RobinH (in case you wonder who "you" is): Spoiler tags because WALL O' TEXT ETA - as you can see in RobinH's photos (in the Exchange thread) I patched up the black on the base after I took pictures - I didn't notice it was scuffed up before I took the photos.

I entered this one in the Arbor Day Contest. This is my take on Tinley, a mini I got as part of my Secret Sophie gift exchange. Thanks again Fanguad! I painted her partially in homage to Butcher's Summer Lady, but she does look more like a spring lady! I sculpted the base out of sculpey and green stuff. The tree is wire, milliput and birch seed leaves. The robin was painfully small to sculpt. I might ask for some "spectacles" for christmas... Sorry to take lots of pictures- still trying to practice my camera fu!