To get back on topic, I got some bones minis and decided to paint them, and compare to regular.

First, I highly recommend priming them anyway, even if they say they don't need it.  Besides the light weight and bendyness, I think the biggest challenge is you have to really be careful not to touch an area that has been painted already.  It doesn't take much to rub the paint right off.  There is also less detail in the mold, but that's OK unless you plan on using them for display.  Things like detail for hair is one of the biggest differences.  Rather than detailed whisps that you get in metal, each hair strand is about as thick as one of their fingers.  When you paint, it looks like like hair and more like a glob.

I'll see if I can get a picture of one of the ones I did.  Be warned though, I'm an amateur painter and not a great one by any stretch of the imagination.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;582753I'll see if I can get a picture of one of the ones I did.  Be warned though, I'm an amateur painter and not a great one by any stretch of the imagination.

Send me one, and I will see what I can do.  

You have the right of it, though.  Instead of sitting here speculating on the figs, I should just go get a pack and see how they turn out.  Good time to see if my paints will re-constitute, too.

OK, here are two of them.  Again, keep in mind I'm no professional painter.  I have a few touchup things to do, but you can get the gist of it.

WTF are you talking about? This is good painting, dude!

Quote from: Sacrosanct;582817OK, here are two of them.  Again, keep in mind I'm no professional painter.  I have a few touchup things to do, but you can get the gist of it.

Geez, did you just dip them in a paint can and call it good?  Do you use brushes or rollers?  Don't post this horrible crap ever again.  :rolleyes:



Maybe you should consider submitting some of these for consideration in various contests or what-have-you.

Thanks, but my drybrushing sucks.  I have no idea how they do it so well for the good stuff.  And my hand isn't nearly as steady as it once was.  Nor is my eyesight.  I had to finally break down and get a magnifying lamp.

To put these into context of comparison, the bugbear and others were minis I painted in the mid 80s.  The wyvern is one I did in the mid 90s.  So the plastic ones should be fine for gaming use as far as detail of the model goes.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;582854Thanks, but my drybrushing sucks.  I have no idea how they do it so well for the good stuff.  And my hand isn't nearly as steady as it once was.  Nor is my eyesight.  I had to finally break down and get a magnifying lamp.

As I understand it, drybrushing works best with ink instead of paint.  I was only getting around to a modicum of skill before putting everything away and not getting back to it again.  It takes a lot of practice and a lot of going over the same area to get the effect just right.

Okay, some painting tips.

Dry brushing is best done with a fairly large horse hair brush, a nice soft one.  You want highly pigmented paint that's thick enough to be a bit gloppy.  Don't use inks or a damp brush whatever you do they'll just streak everything.  It's called dry brushing for a reason, you're really depositing fine layers of dust on the figure's high points.  You're better off starting with your base color and adding a touch of white or yellow (for brown, orange, and red) and doing three or four progressively lighter passes.  This works well if you can do a batch of three or four figures at a pass.  It's also a good idea to get all your drybrushing done before painting belts and straps and pouches.

Washes can be done with thin coats of good paint or inks.  If you're using inks you need to be careful to only put the wash where you want it as they can really darken your base coat.  Good paint, like liquetex artist's acrylics or the pre Iron Wind Ral Partha paints can be thined out and used to do nice washes.

Craft store paint is garbage so it's not great for either technique but it's fantastic for scenery that you don't want to waste expensive paint on.

Quote from: David Johansen;582884Washes can be done with thin coats of good paint or inks.

Washes!  Dammit, inks are used for washes!

Clearly, I will have to start over from the beginning again.  

Quote from: David Johansen;582884Okay, some painting tips.

Dry brushing is best done with a fairly large horse hair brush, a nice soft one.  You want highly pigmented paint that's thick enough to be a bit gloppy.  Don't use inks or a damp brush whatever you do they'll just streak everything.  It's called dry brushing for a reason, you're really depositing fine layers of dust on the figure's high points.  You're better off starting with your base color and adding a touch of white or yellow (for brown, orange, and red) and doing three or four progressively lighter passes.  This works well if you can do a batch of three or four figures at a pass.  It's also a good idea to get all your drybrushing done before painting belts and straps and pouches..

Yeah, I know, but it feels like I waste so much paint getting so just a tad is left on the brush, and it's against the core of my being to waste stuff

How hard core are you feeling?

I ask because pastels are pretty much pure pigment and come in a fantastic array of colors.  Finely ground pastel can be used to drybrush.  Serious model builders use them to weather tanks and pre-ground stuff can be obtained through the model trade.

There's no waste that way but you do need to put a good fixative on the figure as there's no binding agent neither can you handle any other part of the figure than the base while painting it.  You also need the figure to be just the right dampness for it to stick at all.

So, like painting non-metallic metallics using oil paints it's one of those advanced party tricks for the truly hard core painter.

Quote from: RPGPundit;582744We still don't know what they're position on Next will be.  I don't think there'd be much point in creating an SRD for 4e, because its pretty obvious not enough people like it to make any product for it.

Its kind of irrelevant anyways, since you don't need an SRD to make 3rd party products.

RPGPundit

It's not at all about the commercial rationale.  It's a public, irrevocable way of saying "we're sorry, we screwed up, here's the one thing we can do that might help.  Now go and hybridize!"

RyanD

Quote from: RSDancey;582916It's not at all about the commercial rationale.  It's a public, irrevocable way of saying "we're sorry, we screwed up, here's the one thing we can do that might help.  Now go and hybridize!"

RyanD

Maybe, except I also think it kind of depends on just how bad a fuckup (in terms of market loss) 4e really was.  They might even end up winning more people over by just ignoring 4e completely, but making a big deal of 5e being Open.  
Both are implicit admissions that their previous policies were a big mistake, but the latter doesn't draw attention to an edition that they might (at this point) just want as many people as possible to forget about completely, while drawing people's attention to their new edition with which they hope to fix things.

RPGPundit

If there's one thing I've learned about certain 4e fans, is that they will actively try to coordinate a boycott of a product they don't like based upon largely false or otherwise minor issues.

Quote from: RSDancey;582296They should make amends by creating an SRD for 4th edition and releasing it under the OGL v 1.0a.  The game is effectively commercially dead, so there's no economic harm that could come to Wizards.

And they should commit to releasing an SRD for D&D Next under the OGL v1.0a too, and then keep that commitment.   I haven't seen or read anything that looks like it couldn't be reverse engineered anyway under existing OGL Open Game Content so there's no genie to put back into a bottle but it would be a show of good faith.

This seems like the sensible thing for WotC to do at this point, though I suspect they may delay opening up 4e to the SRD until after 5e is released if for no other reason than giving them time to work out their position on 5e and the SRD.

On saying that, as we can see from 13th Age, its not hard to create material that pretty much utilises 4e's mechanics already in any case. All a delay will do is create an opportunity for everyone else to ignore the work they did from 2008 to 2012.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;583093If there's one thing I've learned about certain 4e fans, is that they will actively try to coordinate a boycott of a product they don't like based upon largely false or otherwise minor issues.

Where as fans of other editions will eagerly buy product they don't like?

4e has hardcore fans like any other edition, for sure, and the current position certainly makes them vocal. But there are still plenty that play other editions of D&D and/or are looking forward to 5e.