(http://www.samuraiswordsets.co.uk/1.jpg)
(http://www.samuraiswordsets.co.uk/2.jpg)
(http://www.samuraiswordsets.co.uk/3.jpg)
(http://www.samuraiswordsets.co.uk/4.jpg)
Painted this one very quickly. I am aiming to get it down to 1 hour per mini and that way I can do a comission service thats had good prices but also makes good money as time per mini is so low.
Technique used: Basecoat, all over thin black ink wash with matt medium, highlights, brown ink on the gold, more highlights.
It takes about 2 hours for the all over ink wash to dry but I dont include this in the time taken in the mini as you can be basecoating other figures or making tea, smoking, whatever.
By next year I hope to get time down to the hour mark and have it a lot neater as I should be a better painter by then in general. I then intend to charge £5 per mini. Do you think £5 is a reasonable price to charge for this quality job? Obviously there are better painters around that blend but they charge anything from £20-150 per mini from what I've seen. I am looking to hit the cheapo market but if I can get lots sold then the quantity will make up for the quality in terms of revenue....thats the plan anyway
I know there are bits of silver on the axe shaft and I am not happy with the back of the axe but it gives a rough idea of the quality I will be offering. Imagine this job only a bit better and neater :icon_w00t:
Bit more work on the axe shaft, it's flat looking, but a good job.
I was concentrating on speed rather than detail. I need a quick method of getting metal the way I like it but should have that right soon.
I used 1 colour for the skin, 1 colour for the trousers, 1 colour for the pouch and one colour for the axe shaft. I mixed the green slightly lighter on the hair highlights so 2 colours there. Used 3 different colour metals on the axe believe it or not.....came out crud* though and not happy that bit. I will highlight the axe shaft with a lighter shade in future after highlighting with basecoat colour, gives more depth as u say
Its just a very quick and simple way of getting a tabletop quality mini I think
Good work for a speed paint, I think you could go quicker and get a better result with 2 tone priming. The skin looks a little yellow to me...
I have 8 or 9 cans of grey primer left. Not thinking of getting more for another 4 years :icon_w00t: I take it you mean white over the grey base? Just spray the white from a greater distance away than the grey? Or how do you go about it?
Thats the skin tone I like :shrug: I may use a pale buff colour in future as a final highlight but will test that out in the future. Cant stand pink flesh but thats just my preference, I'm not racist and am white skinned lol
It looks decent. I think with more practice at rifining your speed painting you can pull it off.
I like it, I'd charge a little more tho, you're def' underselling yourself.
What colour did you use for the hair?
cheers guys, I have been trying to increase my speed ever since starting to paint and its come along quite a bit. I got a bit flustered with this as wanted in under an hour and there were so many gold bits to do, realised I wouldnt do it in time so settled for 1.5 hours :icon_w00t:
I dont know about charging more Bruenor, I like to come in and undercut other businesses to steal their customers. I can offer better painted minis at higher prices obviously taking longer on them but I wanted to capture the low end market first to make it a flowing business. Theres more people willing to pay a fiver per mini than a tenner and if I can get 1 mini done in less than an hour I think I can get 5 uniformed minis done in 3 hours making it an £8 per hour income and manageable. Theres too many better painters out there that charge £10+ prices and I dont think I can compete. Thanks for your kind words though they keep me going :icon_w00t:
The green is a coat d'arm one called Jade Green, havent seen a GW one like it but havent checked their paints in a while. GW Scaly Green basecoat using the Jade Green as a highlight would give a nice effect but I wanted a brighter finish so opted to add a bit of white to it as the highlight and just used it as a basecoat. You could always use all 3 tones for max effect tho
Quote from: Perv on September 05, 2007, 05:20:52 PM
I dont know about charging more Bruenor, I like to come in and undercut other businesses to steal their customers.
As long as you don't steal mine, good luck mate.
There's plenty of folks out there who can't paint for a toffee, and will pay handsomly for a decent paint job.
Will do my best not to mate :icon_w00t: If it all goes well with the £5 figures I may just refer people who want better jobs to here. Bound to be someone around who wants to take a commission. lol I agree theres loads of people who cant paint, just a quick look at what some people describe as pro painted on ebay proves that :shrug:
This is a commission we did for the conversion (of Inquisitor Torquemada Coteaz ), paint job, and a small display base. For those not familiar with the figure we took the eagle off of his left arm and extended the cloak to up to his outstretched arm:
(http://photos.customhobby.com/albums/userpics/10001/normal_dh%201.jpg)
(http://photos.customhobby.com/albums/userpics/10001/dh%202.jpg)
(http://photos.customhobby.com/albums/userpics/10001/normal_dh%203.jpg)
looks very good Mike, love the purple blood :clap2: how long did it take?
Quote from: Perv on September 06, 2007, 02:33:20 PM
Will do my best not to mate :icon_w00t: If it all goes well with the £5 figures I may just refer people who want better jobs to here. Bound to be someone around who wants to take a commission. lol I agree theres loads of people who cant paint, just a quick look at what some people describe as pro painted on ebay proves that :shrug:
If you do, push 'em my way, as of next Friday I am offically unemployed, so the extra pennies would appreciated.
Coteaz looks great Mike, I bet the client was well pleased with him.
It took about 10 hours perv. The client was very happy with it. It was exactly what he described when he commissioned it.
ahhhh unemployment.....best thing that ever happened to me :icon_w00t: If I hear of anyone wanting minis painted I will pass em on to ya
10 hours well spent mate :icon_wink:
Ta.
10 hours, surely you jest?
Bloody good for that, it'd taken me all day and night.
The good thing was that the base was done while everything else was drying. It goes quick when you think down the paints and use a lamp to speed the drying a bit. Plus I had the extra casualties to do while the main one was drying. Not much down time. If I run across any orders for paint work I will let you know. During the summer things usually slow down a bit (people outside not playing with mini's).
Ta.
I have two fairly big commissions on at the moment, but no time restraints on those so I can easily fit in a few small orders too.
Are those the minis on the shelf in the pic?
I think pro painted means that it was done as work job income, not the level of painting.
There was a talk about this once about stuff that was being sold on Ebay by some guy and it was a bit ruff painted.
So if your doing in for income then your a pro painter too.
Me I put "painted by me" on it, got £4 something for an old metal GW Black Orc I painted to sell on Ebay last year, wonder what I would get for my Wyrd TT3 GW plastic Black Orc that got 1st in the fantasy section.
Here is the old and new one.
Are you thinking of selling the Wyrd entry?
Quote from: Custom_Hobby on September 06, 2007, 04:58:30 PM
Are those the minis on the shelf in the pic?
In the top left corner, yes. (I have a separate set of shelves for my commission work, keeps them away from my stuff, and stops me mixing things up.)
They are from the Space Crusade game, the client wants all the minis from the game doing, so far I'm half way through the Imperial Fists team.
The other is for a load of Hersey stuff, and most of that is Ghouls.
Should get tons more for the newer one, Wristy.
Quote from: Custom_Hobby on September 06, 2007, 05:03:36 PM
Are you thinking of selling the Wyrd entry?
He was in the pile that was for painting and selling on ebay so yes. :icon_wink:
Let me know when you are about to so I can help out by posting it all over the place for you.
is it worth doing it thru coolminiornot? do prices for very well painted bits go higher on there?
"I think pro painted means that it was done as work job income, not the level of painting." Pro painted to me means painted to a professionals standard. same as carpentry etc, theres plenty of people who can put up shelves and skirting and coving but professionals do it to a certain standard. If you're not hitting that standard then you are not professional in my eyes. That level of standard is purely in the eye of the beholder though.
You post it there with a link to your auction. It does help get more people over to your auction. I do know that Wristy is entitled to put pro-standard on that auction.
I agree Perv, anything with Pro attached to it should be a top notch job, not the shoddy, paint chucked at it from 2 metres away Ebay 'pro painted' rubbish.
do they not sell thru the site? I thought they did.... just link into ebay auctions then. All publicity helps.
Let us know when its on and I'm sure we can get it going for a high price :icon_w00t:
lol Bruenor, I think 2 metres away is being a bit easy on them :icon_w00t: sometimes I swear they werent even looking at the mini when painting it. maybe they are boseyed and always paint the figure next to the one they want by mistake.....
With one of those massive pasting brushes, used for wallpapering..........
To me Pro painted means well painted as well, so back to topic. :icon_wink:
Quote from: Bruenor Odinson on September 06, 2007, 05:50:51 PM
With one of those massive pasting brushes, used for wallpapering..........
I think those are called "tank brushes" by certain companies :D
When I'm buying already painted minis, I don't care what they call it - I look at the picture to see what I think :shrug: I get annoyed by a lot of modern marketing rubbish and spin, and try and cut through it, where possible.
I dont think I'd ever describe my minis as pro painted, no matter how good I got. Theres always someone better around so am always trying to improve. Maybe if there was a category above pro-painted like "Masterpiece" then it'd make describing pro-painted a bit easier. Golden Demon winning entries are above pro-painted for example.
this is what I think it should be like
1. crud*
2. tabletop quality
3. above average quality
4. pro painted
5. masterpiece
I think that is a solid description of levels of quality
i'd aim for the £5 mark with that mini, but i think you need to learn some shortcuts and get away from the GW painting technique (it takes too long)
the main money comes from the unit commisions (when you get someone asking for 20 minis to be painted) then you have to be fast and precise.
look at the foundry 3 step system (not the paints) you can churn out good stuff in a methodical way that improves the mini per hour ratio.
start writing down your formulas for paint colours or mixing up you own colours of paint.
the key of the low end of the market is to make it look good from arm's length but get the paintjob done in minimal time.
the higher up the scale of painting you go the more variable the price you get, most of it is based on name and reputation
And once you start getting decent commisions people come back for more. It's the initial start up which is hard. Just getting your name out there.
Selling on eBay with lots of notion that you take commisions helps. Then emailing buyers after telling them you can do more etc...
Yeah that's right, I found it really hard to get peopel on board to start with, and now have three that come back on a regular basis with large 50 mini orders at a time.
Would like more single or couple minis jobs so I could spend more time on each one.
Is the Foundry painting book worth buying then, just for tips?
Quote from: Perv on September 07, 2007, 06:51:59 AM
I dont think I'd ever describe my minis as pro painted, no matter how good I got. Theres always someone better around so am always trying to improve. Maybe if there was a category above pro-painted like "Masterpiece" then it'd make describing pro-painted a bit easier. Golden Demon winning entries are above pro-painted for example.
this is what I think it should be like
0. Cheddar
1. crud*
2. tabletop quality
3. above average quality
4. pro painted
5. masterpiece
Quote from: Custom_Hobby on September 07, 2007, 07:15:39 AM
I think that is a solid description of levels of quality
:yeahthat:
Cheers for the advice. I'll check out the foundry 3 step method, think I have seen it although not practiced it. I dont paint enough to improve rapidly but will do when I move and have more time. Anything to get the time down is helpful at the moment :icon_wink:
I dont mix up paints enough to write formulas, I prefer having loadsa paints with varying shades ready at hand. I mix inks and sometimes add a bit of white to a colour for highlights if I havent got the shade but thats it.
As for initial startup being hard, I agree. To go in at the same price everyone else is doing I will need major advertising to make it worthwhile but by offering figs so cheap I hope to spread the word quicker. I am pretty clued up in ways of business but just need my painting skills and speed to catch up with them :icon_w00t:
:icon_cool: Funny Wristaction :icon_wink:
Quote from: Wristaction on September 08, 2007, 06:46:56 AM
Quote from: Perv on September 07, 2007, 06:51:59 AM
I dont think I'd ever describe my minis as pro painted, no matter how good I got. Theres always someone better around so am always trying to improve. Maybe if there was a category above pro-painted like "Masterpiece" then it'd make describing pro-painted a bit easier. Golden Demon winning entries are above pro-painted for example.
this is what I think it should be like
-1. Bungle
0. Cheddar
1. crud*
2. tabletop quality
3. above average quality
4. pro painted
5. masterpiece
Quote from: Custom_Hobby on September 07, 2007, 07:15:39 AM
I think that is a solid description of levels of quality
:yeahthat:
:icon_wink:
Quote from: Bungle on September 08, 2007, 10:19:58 AM
Quote from: Wristaction on September 08, 2007, 06:46:56 AM
Quote from: Perv on September 07, 2007, 06:51:59 AM
I dont think I'd ever describe my minis as pro painted, no matter how good I got. Theres always someone better around so am always trying to improve. Maybe if there was a category above pro-painted like "Masterpiece" then it'd make describing pro-painted a bit easier. Golden Demon winning entries are above pro-painted for example.
this is what I think it should be like
-2. Gi6ers (King of photoshop)
-1. Bungle
0. Cheddar
1. crud*
2. tabletop quality
3. above average quality
4. pro painted
5. masterpiece
Quote from: Custom_Hobby on September 07, 2007, 07:15:39 AM
I think that is a solid description of levels of quality
:yeahthat:
:icon_wink:
:icon_whistling:
:icon_tears:
:icon_cool:
If that were true then he should be doing my image of Kyrie, lol.