Paintedfigs.com - High Quality Miniature Painting at the Lowest Rates on Earth
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Are You Being Served? How to Pick the Right Miniature Painting Service By Lucas Como Not enough time or inclination paint? A familiar curse among busier wargamers. Many look to "miniature painting services," a glorious label that applies to everything from high school kids raising cash for minis, to Asian sweatshops cranking out armies by the week. Here are some tips to think about if you decide its time to take care of the "I buy 'em faster than I paint 'em" problem. Making Your Pick: Four Things to Look For Quality - There is no point in paying for a paint job that looks bad. As tight as your budget maybe (you've already paid a lot for those minis!) don't break down and pay for something low grade, just because its cheaper. It will look bad, you will feel bad, and the world will be a worse place. Make sure the quality is good enough. Not good enough for the money, but good enough to be proud to own. Price - Quality is important, but it has to be affordable. If the work looks great, but you are uncomfortably paying those prices, then these are not going to be people you can keep sending armies to in future. You want a price range that supports your hobby, not constrains it. You don't want a miniature painting service, you want a miniature painting solution. This is the problem with "trade in" services: its a little like an animal chewing off its own leg to get out of a trap. You solve the "trap" of what are unaffordable painting rates, by sacrificing some of your precious minis. Don't do this. Find a solution that supports your hobby, not confines it. Service - Miniature painting is about service -- and that means you should expect to be treated well. It is important to find a service that is able to give you the time you need to make sure your army is what you want it to be -- down to the last mini. These companies will welcome your input, because that way they can be assured you will like the work they do and will send them minis again in future. If they don't, then they simply do not get it -- and you should not patronize a painting service that doesn't understand what service is. Do they refuse to assemble or clean flash? Can you send them random snippets and ideas for your army? Can they accommodate your enthusiasm and questions about the work as it gets done? Are they friendly and keen to hear your thoughts, or do you get the feeling they see your input as an obstacle, and not a resource? How quickly do they reply your emails? Relationship - A lot of time, trust, and money goes into picking a miniature painting service. After you find one that can paint how you want at a price that you're happy to pay, you'll want to be able to work with them again in the future. Did they treat you like a person, or like a transaction? Do they know your first kid's name, or do you wonder if they'd even care? A service that is interested in you as a person is going to do better work for you than one that doesn't care or have the time to care. It's hard to not care about someone when you've chatted with them about Johnny Damon leaving the Red Sox (he will pay for that crime, you mark my words). Its just human nature. A good relationship translates into better work, better service, and a real interest in your happiness. Quality Quality: Finding the Good Stuff for Cheap There's quite a range out there. You've got high end, display case work by the Polish masters at MicroArts, to the simplest base-coat-only, "wargaming" quality by some others. If you're disappointed by the prices you see at first, don't get discouraged. Good quality is out there, and its cheaper than you may realize. A good idea is to try out what people are offering on their lower end. True painters will give you good quality at the low end because they simply feel bad turning out something that looks substandard to them. True professionals on the other hand, will not want to give you something that looks bad because this hurts their brand. I feel professionals are a better bet because there are more true pros out there than true artists, and they worry about brand and reputation day and night. Their standard quality will probably by fairly high end looking -- they wouldn't be in business if it looked bad. Quality: Pictures, pictures, pictures Pictures are your best friend. Look for large images that fill up at least half or more of your screen: it's hard to hide true quality in large images. That said, unless you are used to looking at minis in huge, five megapixel images, truly enormous pictures will not give you an idea of how well a figure is painted. Look for websites that have lots of pictures up. These are services that are proud of their work, and are not just showing the cream of the cream or work they did just for the site. They are also making a very important filtering decision: by showing lots of their work, they are guaranteeing that anyone who wants their painting, knows what they are getting into. If you don't see golden daemon quality on their site, don't ask for it. Even if they can do it, they are probably not interested in offering it. Quality: "How We Paint" The better painting services will declare, up front, how they paint. This way anyone with technical knowledge of painting will be able to understand exactly what is on offer -- and can check this against what they get in the end. For standard or basic painting, look for at least one shade and one highlight. Even with just one shade and one highlight, through good use of inking, washing and drybrushing a painting service can give you some truly excellent looking work. Do NOT accept painting that does not include at least one shade, and one highlight. Anyone who offers less than this is either using a quick-and-dirty, easy technique (which is fine if their price reflects this) or just doesn't get it. For higher end work, look for services that declare how many shades and highlights they use. Two shades and six highlights are a good high end. If the service you are looking into doesn't list this information, just ask them. Painting weenies will love to talk to you about this sort of thing, and will be happy to have a prospect who knows something about painting. If they tell you that they paint "'Eavy Metal" or "Golden Daemon" quality, this is either a dodge or them not understanding your very basic question (both not good signs). Quality: "Glazing" and "Dipping" Not everyone likes the look of glazing - typically a watered down paint layer over a heavily white-drybrushed, black-primed surface. It is excellent for creating contrasting light and dark and giving depth and presence to minis. On the down side, the drybrush undercoat can look quite messy and the minis can look rather dark overall. If you do like the look of glazing, just make sure you're not paying an exorbitant fee for what is at the end of the day an extremely quick and easy miniature painting technique. Dipping is another technique to pay attention to. Dipping is the process of taking a basecoated mini and either brushing on or dunking the entire figure in a polyurethane varnish, Minwax wood finishes are popular for this. It works great on some miniatures like SST bugs and tyranids, but generally looks foul on anything else (unless you are a gloss varnish freak). Look for services that are sparing in what they offer dipping for, and that offer it at a lower rate than their regular painting. Like glazing, this is a very quick and easy technique. When done right, it's worth it. |