How often do you drop minis?

[sam500]

Every time I start work on a large mini I end up dropping it sometime near it's completion.

I would say i drop a mini every 20-30 hours or 1-3 times a mini (whichever comes first).

 

It's not like I don't mount my minis; I guess I'm just a clumsy bastard. :)

 

How bout you guys? Ever get that exasperation after a long hard run and then plop?

Did you press on or did you switch projects in frustration?

[tabascojunkie]

I don't drop mine usually, but I have had a tendency to drop a few of my wife's.

 

 

Sorry Honey!

[Ironworker]

It's a pretty common thing. A couple days ago I was moving some finished Banana War era marines from my paint table to my varnish table and I dropped the BAR trooper and almost steped on him. By some stroke of luck I didn't chip the paint but I have several time.

[Sergeant_Crunch]

It would be a minor miracle if I managed to paint a mini without dropping it multiple times during painting.

[mooseyjoe]

I have dropped a large mini bowling ball style into a troop of my smaller minis. The whole store almost died laughing. I think I must have chipped or bent a half dozen figures.

[Spike]

I think I drop while painting a lot less since I started poster-tacking them down to wooden spools. My fingertips are almost numb now so the spools really help.

 

The only problem I have these days is dropping the brush either a) on my mini, b) on my lap, or c) on the dirty floor.

 

The likelyhood of any of the above three events happening is in direct relation to a) how good my mini was starting to look, b) how white my clothes are or c) how filthy the floor is.

[Helltown]

Per mini or per hour? I think I've dropped every last mini I've painted at least once. The ones I painted before I started to mount them to paint jars got dropped more than more recent minis.

 

When I drop a mini, I just pick it ujp, dust it off (pick off cat hair or whatever), check for damage, and carry on painting. I gave up cursing about it, just painting fiddly bits causes enough four-letter explosions.

[ograx]

I admit to a few fumbles here and there.

[Bodhi]

Don't know if this counts but I quite often throw my sculptures - hard - against a wall to demonstrate the resiliance of green stuff. I figure if they can't stand that treatment they can't stand spincasting.

Once dropped one from six floors up unto asphalt and its survived intact. But I needed two people to help me find it first

 

Out of mistake I have never dropped a main figure but I quite often drop smaller parts that I work on. Main problem - again - is crawling around on the floor looking for them.

 

I also often take my figures out for little walks to look at them in different light conditions (different mistakes discovered in different lights, allways try to go for as many DIFFERENT light varietys as possible during sculpting I say) and have lost (forgotten) a few WIPs because of that.

[Ishil]

I've dropped a few. Even though I attach them to bottle caps, sometimes you just have to hold one in such an awkward position to paint that little bit of detail... I'm sure some sculptors deliberately put tricky bits in, out of sadism.

 

Ishil

[Bilesuck]

I don't drop minis to often, but when I do look out. I dropped a Rackham Minotaur on my cat who sleeps under my feet when I paint, she wouldn't come near the table for a few days. I drop my paint brush about once every 10-20 mins, and thats mini painting or illustration work, my cat has had a few different color swatches on her.

[John Lee]

I don't drop too many while painting, but once I was spraying sealer on one outside that I had spent quite a lot of time on. a gust of wind caught the cardboard that I was using to keep the sealer off the poarch rail and flipped it and the mini into the flower bed. When retrieved, the mini looked as if it was wearing a ghillie(hope that's spelled right) suit. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I think I still have it around somewhere.....anyone have any use for a strumpet in a ghillie suit?

 

John Lee

[Enchantra]

I don't drop them often, but when I do it's a bit scary. Both were very important minis. Well one was actually ceramic! Thankfully on that one the only thing that even cracked was my handsculpted base and that was easy to fix. On the other mini it was a large resin mini I was doing on commission for The Figure Trader. I had it outside on some newspaper for spray priming with flat enamel paint. I weighted down the edges of the paper. It was a hair breezy but nothing I thought would be bad for the mini. I go into my room and suddenly I hear, "Your project fell over out back!" I blinked and went running only to find the mini had fallen over, but thankfully hadn't come apart or broken.

 

Here's the ceramic one linked for possible adult content: http://www.ryksyll.com/~enchantra/chest.html

Can you tell where it cracked in the basing? I sure as heck cannot now.

 

And here's the other one, the Earth Elemental for The Figure Trader:

 

[Orsino]

I have almost never dropped a mini. Apparently, this is because I was saving it all up for a major catastrophe a few weeks ago. While moving nine minis (all the PCs from the current game, minus one) outside for a picture. I got hasty and pitched them all onto concrete. As of last night, I've reassembled all the bits, and saw no damage beyond bent weapons. I'll spend this week touching up all the dinged paint jobs, and with luck will have them spiffy for the game. This is the Krewe on a WorldWorks cardstock castle wall:

[Jen]

I haven't had much trouble with dropping minis (I ususally stick with smaller ones and tack them on to film canisters to hold), but...

 

...I have a dog. It's an 85 pound dog whose tail is at just the right height to sweep things off the edge of my painting table. I had been keeping 'staged' minis there -- things that were waiting for primer or paint. Well, I had a giant spider mini sitting there that I thought was pretty safe from the Tail Of Doom because it had a low profile and was fairly heavy.

 

I was wrong. One night I went back there and found all over the floor...chewed up giant spider fragments. The dog had accidentally knocked it off the table with The Tail, found it, and decided it was a chew toy. Oh, the humanity.

 

 

 

 

I think some of the bits were actually eaten by the dog, though she doesn't seem any the worse for the wear. I'm keeping the leftovers in my bits box in spite of the many tooth marks, just in case I ever have need for chewed-up spider parts...