Octopus Overlords

Anyone have a preferred online vendor for their paints? I am trying to pick up some more colors of the Reaper MSP Core. I wanted to use my local game shop but they only carry Citadel and Scale75, and charge 2x or more per paint pot and it's way easier to figure out Reaper's color scheme. Amazon is pretty spotty for buying individual colors and sellers are charging 2x the price as well. I tried Miniature Market, which actually has a good selection but is sold out of 6 of the 10 colors I am looking for. Worse case I think I can buy directly from Reaper but was wondering if there were any other recommendations.

Amazon is a case of companies having to protect themselves from free shipping. In order to meet Amazon's requirements, they're having to include minimal shipping with the base price of the item. The problem is that when you buy a number of them, you're effectively paying for shipping multiple times.

Miniature Market is my #1. If not there, I'd check CoolStuffInc. I've also ordered directly from Reaper a number of times and have never had a single issue. They usually toss in freebies with decent sized orders, too. I used to suggest TheWarStore, but the last few times I ordered from them were less than pleasant experiences.

Red Grass Games is giving away two free miniature painting books. Link You can either read them for free online, or you can sign up for their newsletter and download them in pdf format.

I keep a 'throwaway' email address for just this kind of promotion. I only even bother to check it if I have an offer to cash in. With that said, I've followed Red Grass Games for a while, and they don't seem like the spammy types.

Thanks, I get Amazon and that the vendors seemed to be baking in the shipping price but as you say, when you are ordering one item at a time I don't want to pay shipping on each item. Miniature Market would have been great, they carry what I am looking for and their price was 50% cheaper than Reapers own website but unfortunately they were out of stock on more than half of the items I wanted. I thought about CoolStuffInc as I have bought other things from them before but just said "screw it" and bought directly from Reaper.

I was getting Citadel paints from an Amazon vendor (Pops Toy Shop) in CA, but they don't sell Reaper stuff, sorry.

Reaper may be refreshing sone of their paint lines, too. Their “case” paint promotions for 16+ bottles can be good deals if you’re looking for bulk.

Miniature Market is my preference if I’m not able to get to the city FLGS or the suburban FLGS.

If they don't cancel Reapercon in September, I may just have to go.

At conventions like Origins, Reaper sells a “fill your own” box for $100. I was hoping to refill some paints from their booth at Adepticon but it was cancelled.

Labor Day can't be that busy for you, can it?

1 month to tax deadline. Summers are good for me, just not in Texas heat.

It's not that bad.

My evenings work...

Nice! I've got printed versions of images that were posted a few months ago that I use, but there is going to be some color variation from the printer.

Easier to test with your own lighting conditions, as well.

I made a thing.
Although the desk I paint at has been repurposed for working at home right now, I made a shelf to hold my paint. I Might need to make another and mount them to the wall though. I don't have much room to expand.

I used hobby wood from Home Depot, finishing nails and wood glue to hold it together.

I also made a brush holder a while back with cheap decorative wood pieces bought from Walmart.

Not sure if this belongs in this thread since it’s really terrain, but my printer has been really busy churning out terrain for Fallout Wasteland Warfare.

hentzau wrote: ↑Fri Apr 17, 2020 3:23 pm Not sure if this belongs in this thread since it’s really terrain, but my printer has been really busy churning out terrain for Fallout Wasteland Warfare.

It will belong after you start painting it!

Gave a shot at painting one of the larger minis i have. Arms,legs and tail were done with contrast paint.

Here's Nyarlathotep from Reaper bone kickstarter
The mini is not part of any game but he's one of the big baddy from the c'thullu universe
Added a couple of mini from Arkham Horror game for size comparison

That look amazing!

Wow, awesome miniature and great job painting.

Fantastic work!

Working on my rust techniques.

So, for those that don't follow the pen-and-paper thread, I've officially retired from GMing RPGs for the foreseeable future (possibly permanently.)

That means that my painting choices are no longer being dictated by the needs of whatever campaign I'm running, including when I paint an how quickly. It means that I can choose to paint what appeals to me for the first time in a long time. I can knock out some board games, I can paint some cool looking pieces (huge dragons, walking huts) that look fun but are unlikely to show up in any games.

It's a breath of fresh air.

hentzau wrote: ↑Mon Apr 06, 2020 4:57 pm Ok, here’s a cleric that I used for Winter Fantasy this year...



Looks fine on the table but up close he’s a big ole mess.

Your standards are clearly way, way higher than mine! I think that looks awesome.

But I'm also dealing with some annoying stringing issues right now that with my printers. Stringing has always been an issue for me, but I think now that I'm printing small things with much more detail -- i.e. miniatures -- and contemplating painting them, I need to address this.

Experimenting with retraction length and, maybe more importantly, travel speed for non-print moves. Let me know if this is something you've have any issues with and, if so, how you solved.

And sorry to hijack a miniature thread with 3d printing stuff. I can move this to a more suitable 3d printing thread if this is too much of a detour.

I fixed most of mine by calibrating my esteps and doing a hot end fix recommended for Enders.

Do you have a hot end that has the boden tube butt up against the nozzle in the hot end, or is there a sleeve in your hot end?

hentzau wrote: ↑Sat Apr 25, 2020 9:47 pm I fixed most of mine by calibrating my esteps and doing a hot end fix recommended for Enders.

Do you have a hot end that has the boden tube butt up against the nozzle in the hot end, or is there a sleeve in your hot end?

Whoa, whoa! This is a PG-13 thread here buddy.

Any opinion on this kickstarter?

EzeKieL wrote:Any opinion on this kickstarter?

Oh man. I love the GW contrast paints, and I love Scale75 regular paints. I’m afraid they’re going to be getting a lot of my money here...

EzeKieL wrote: ↑Sun Apr 26, 2020 10:57 am Any opinion on this kickstarter?

A competitor for Citadel Contrast Paints, with all the pros and cons that come with them. Short of head-to-head tests it's hard to say which is better (and I'd love to see some side-by-side of their blacks and whites.)

What I will say is this: Scale75 is an established company with a very high-quality line of paints. They make what I consider to be the best metallic colors on the market. And they have live videos of the product in use, which precludes camera/photoshop/painting tricks on their examples.

I would back it if I had the money to do so.

Biggest problem here is the stupid wooden boxes apparently. Everyone is asking for a paint only pledge but they keep saying the boxes have to stay in.

I think they probably already made X amount of boxes and need to get rid of them.

The boxes add weight, which adds shipping, which makes people unhappy ...

hentzau wrote: ↑Sat Apr 25, 2020 9:47 pm I fixed most of mine by calibrating my esteps and doing a hot end fix recommended for Enders.

Do you have a hot end that has the boden tube butt up against the nozzle in the hot end, or is there a sleeve in your hot end?

The Voxel/Adventurer3 I have has a one-piece, swappable hot end, so I'm not really sure what's going on in there and can't get at it. But as I look around a bit on the Flashforge site, I see they're selling an "improved" version of the hotend, so maybe that's worth taking a shot on.

In the meantime, I'll continue to calibrate. But this has been frustrating. No matter what I do with travel speed and retraction, still getting an unacceptable amount of stringing that I think would prevent me from even bothering to paint these minis. Will keep working at it.

Plus you are paying for boxes instead of paint, and the boxes likely won't be practical for painting desks (studios? Too presumptuous?)

EzeKieL wrote: ↑Sun Apr 26, 2020 12:24 pm Biggest problem here is the stupid wooden boxes apparently. Everyone is asking for a paint only pledge but they keep saying the boxes have to stay in.

I think they probably already made X amount of boxes and need to get rid of them.

The boxes add weight, which adds shipping, which makes people unhappy ...

I went ahead and backed this. Just got a pretty big bonus from work, and I like paints, so why the hell not.

I'm not going to lie, the presentation/branding of the paints has me swooning. I'm definitely going to get some, I'm just not sure which level. If they're half as good as the Citadel paints, they'll be bonkers.

Scale75's latest update has some good examples over various primers, plus some new videos. I'm actually very impressed with how theirs works over metallics compared to Contrast paints.

Link

I haven’t had a chance to watch, stupid work.

Those painting videos are crazy! I love the contrast paints but these look to be an excellent alternative.

Smoove_B wrote:Those painting videos are crazy! I love the contrast paints but these look to be an excellent alternative.

Yeah, that bust was pretty impressive.

They've put out more videos, including more work on the bust. Today's work on the bust focused on using it over metallics, which I still find very impressive compared to Contrast paints, which seem to have much denser pigments. Which in turn means that both these and contrast paints have a place at the same time, as these will make shading or combining layers practical, which doesn't work that well with Contrast paints.

Here's the full playlist, by the way.

Fidget fidget. Can't afford. Want. Can't afford. Want.

I hate Kickstarter.

The chain mail on that bust turned out really sweet.