I prefer what I call the hack paint job to get the ships to the front lines.
It pretty much involves only dry brushing techniques and requires little time.
I usually base coat with a black primer and then do two layers of dry
brushing over that usually with white and off-white(first). I then add
small details as they come to me over the course of using the miniatures.
[quoted original message omitted]
This list has been pretty barren lately (I noticed a tumbleweed bouncing by),
thought maybe this would help things pick up. I've been playing FT for about a
year and other table top war games for a few years now,but I'm just getting
into the miniatures themselves. I've gotten a basic working knowledge of
painting and preparing the minis from various newsgroups,FAQs,and magazines.
What I'd like to know are specific techniques people prefer for the painting
of their ships. What kind of primer do you use? What color patterns and
details seem to work well for you? Do you use decals? Do you kitbash or add
other accessories to your ships? Any other tips for a newbie painter are
welcome as well.
> Date: Thu, 2 Apr 1998 18:46:12 -0800 (PST)
> What I'd like to know are specific techniques people prefer for the
I go for an undercoat darker than the intended final colour of the ship, then
heavily drybrush the main colour over that, followed by a much lighter
drybrush of a highlight colour. For multiple colour
camo' schemes this still works - paint the camo' scheme in dark
colours, then (carefully) drybrush the main and highlight colours. Follow this
with picking out specific details (eg engine, guns) and then add markings and
finally a coat of varnish.
> What kind of primer do you use?
Personally I don't - the dark undercoat serves the same purpose.
> What color patterns and details seem to work well for you?
The traditional spaceship colour (battleship grey) works fine, which is the
colour of my NAC ships. The ESU are in dark green (actually Rifle Green over a
very dark undercoat) and Kra'Vak are a brick red colour. I also have a fleet
of blue ships (EE Space Fleet mainly) and
another in yellow / black stripes (Irregular ships). Colourful
schemes work well (just look at the paintings of Chris Foss and others for
inspiration), although in the end expediency tends to win the day and I go for
single colour schemes because I just want the models on the table quickly! I
tend to steer clear of metallic colours except for small details.
> Do you use decals?
No - I tend to find that there aren't enough flat areas on the models
to put decals on. Decals lift too easily when the models are handled
a lot. Rub-down lettering / shapes tends to work better IMHO.
> Do you kitbash or add other accessories to your ships?
Not yet, but I'm about to try. The Model Aerodrome chain here in the
UK has been selling off a huge number of Fujimi 1/700th naval kits
very cheaply recently, and many of these come with an additional sprue of
superbly cast accessories such as gun turrets, torpedo tubes and AA mounts.
The AA mounts especially look as is they'll make excellent ADAFs and PDAFs for
FT ships.
G'day Glad to here that yet another has discovered the joys of minatures. I
find that the easiest (and often one of the nicest) ways of painting craft is
to undercoat with black matt spray paint and, when the undercoat is dry, then
dry brush with colour of choice (starting with dark hues and working to
lighter shades). Then you can pick out a few details (e.g. exhaust nozzles
etc.) with a solid colour and if you have a steady hand you
could add nose art or the like (by hand, decals don't seem to work -
well at least not for me).
Cheers
Beth
P.S. Didn't bother to explain dry brushing here, but if you're at a loss or
want a few tips drop us a line.
> At 18:46 2/04/98 -0800, you wrote:
> This list has been pretty barren lately (I noticed a tumbleweed
heh!
> thought maybe this would help things pick up.
Well, I am by no means the best painter out there. I get by. I do a
satisfactory job, but, as the guys who attended the GZG-ECC a month or
so
can tell you, others do a far better job. ;-) (Rick Rutherford, for
one;)
But here's my $0.02 worth...
I use gray Krylon primer for the base coat of my ships. The NAC and NSL, and
most of my Superior Ships then get a coating of Gunship Gray (Testor's Model
Master spray enamel; #1923), the ESU and my Superior Entomolians get a coating
of Burgandy Red Metallic (#2905), the Kra'Vak a coating of Green Metal Flake
(#1630), the Sa'Vasku a coating of Black Metallic, and the FSE I paint a
'standard' Ral Partha Gray. My Hyperions and Battlestars also get the Ral
Partha Gray treatment (my Omegas will once I get them put together). The
Vorchans I coat with an Anthracite Grey (closest thing I can get to
bronze-ish at the shop I frequent), then coat the wings in a Ral Parth
Dragon Purple. I have a handful of miscellaneous ships that I have painted in
gunship gray, Ral Partha gray, and flat black. And for the most part I paint
my fighters the Ral Partha gray, then add various details.
I really haven't done much to highlight my ESU ships, except add yellow funky
symbols to differentiate the ships from each other (I kinda borrow Narn
writing for it). The Kra'Vak and Sa'Vasku I haven't added any additional
details. My Entomolian ships I've added some Testors gloss dark blues, reds,
golds, and silvers. The other Superior ships I touch up some details with
gold, silver, dark blue, flat black, and gloss yellow. My NAC and NSL ships
pretty much get similar treatments with various bits and pieces being touched
up with Ral Partha grays, whites, dark greens, reds, orange, purple, blue, and
various shades of yellow. And some ships I've even added Ral Partha
glow-in-the-dark
paint to some of the raised parts for fun.
As for decals and such, I haven't resorted to any. I either differentiate my
ships with slightly different highlight schemes, or one some of the larger
ones (mainly the NSLs) I actually write names on the ships (yes, okay, my hand
isn't that steady, I know; they're not going to win any
contests ;-)
As far as kitbashing...haven't done too much. I've made some minor additions
to the NSL superdreadnought and dreadnought, and the NAC CVL, with some of the
odd bits that are included in the packaging. Gave the NAC CVLs some added
superstructures, for example. But haven't gotten around to doing any of the
other fun stuff (yet).
Haven't gotten around to perfecting any drybrushing yet, so don't use it much.
Well...there ya go. If it's any help.
Mk
On Fri, 6 Mar 1998 04:10:28 -0600, "Brent Jacobson"
> <sirrufustb@sprintmail.com> wrote:
> I prefer what I call the hack paint job to get the ships to the front
If you don't want to get into drybrushing techniques (which I'm only
so-so at)
there is a good technique that uses basic painting. Basically, pick two
contrasting or complementary colours.
In one set of Star Frontiers ships I did, I first sprayed them with black
primer (important: always prime). The ships had a lot of detail that consisted
of a hull with gun turrets and engines on top. I painted the hull metallic
(metallic red or metallic blue), leaving the gun turrents and other detail
parts unpainted. I then went back and painted the detailed parts platinum.
This takes care, but not an incredibly steady hand. If you slosh a bit, just
do some touch-ups later. When this is done, the platinum bits stand out
against the darker hull. Up close it's no hell, but from a distance it looks
pretty good.
In the other set of ships, my wife did the painting. Hers was a much more
basic, but in some ways more stunning, technique. The ships had little in the
way of detail, as the ships were mostly smooth hulled. She took a metallic
green and painted the main hull of the ship this colour. The booms leading to
the engine nacelles were painted metallic, uh, pink (the guys at the mailing
list game at GenCon last year called it the Revlon fleet, but it sure looks
alien). The engines she painted metallic green, except for the one end of the
nacelle, which she painted metallic pink. She went over the ship, painting the
detailed bits the contrasting colour. They looked quite good.
To figure out which ships are contrasting or complementary, go to a house
paint store or a craft store and buy a colour wheel.
If you have detail you want to bring out, particularly on light coloured
ships, you can do a wash. You water down paint, usually black, and paint it
into the crevasses of the ship. The paint will settle into the cracks. The
highlighted areas may have a little bit of paint residue on it. To fix this,
you can just touch up the raised areas. If you learn a drybrushing technique,
using it on the raised portions is good. You can also do a black wash on
engine outlets, air intakes, and exhaust ports to give it a sooty look.
> This list has been pretty barren lately (I noticed a tumbleweed
For my techniques, see
<http://www.primenet.com/~reynol/gaming/miniatures>.
Please ignore the Flying Saucers article. That's how I *planned* to do my FT
fleet, but they ended up very different.
I used wooden buttons and "yo-yo kits", filled the holes
with epoxy putty, added 3mm, 5mm, and 7mm "acrylic cabochons"
and "acrylic round faceted 'gems'" as weapon/sensor modules,
added turret bits from an old SDF-1 model as engine pods,
and painted them a gold-flecked brown.
My armor for DS is primered white (to show up any flaws
I missed in cleanup), basecoated black, "wet-brushed" dark
gray, drybrushed lightly with light gray, then detailed with
bright blue, bright red, gold, and/or light gray.
- Sam
> trapper wrote:
> I've been playing FT for about a year and other table top war games
I've
> gotten a basic working knowledge of painting and preparing the minis
Well, I'm not the worlds greatest painter in the universe, but here goes:
Primer: I used to use some generic brand of gray primer. However I use Armory
brand white primer now. It dries faster and it grips the paint better.
Paint scheme: Well, it depends on the mini. For my FT ships, I tend to stay to
a standard battleship gray color scheme. For genre specific ships, I try to
get as close as possible.
Detail: FORGET IT! I can't paint detail for the life of me. My hands are not
steady enough. (Remember Gene Wilder in Blazing Saddles?) So decals are my
only source for letters, numbers and insignias. My local game store sells
W.W.I aircraft decals for Hostile Aircraft miniatures. They would work great
for NSL ships. Right now, I'm painting some minis for Heavy Gear and I am
using decals from... gulp... THE EVIL EMPIRE!!!! The chests of my Hunters and
Grizzlies proudly bear the
regalia of the the CNCS' 63rd Heavy Gear Regiment--Prophet's Swords.
(Ok, they're Dark Angles decals. I dare GW to sue me!)
Finishing Touches: Of course, the whole mini gets a nice coat of Krylon matte
finish. For ground pounders they get some flock glued at their feet. For
starship minis I like to use large based flight stands for BIG ships (Carriers
and SDNs) and normal bases for everything else. My large flight base supply is
running dangerously low now that the Evil Empire has done away with Space
Fleet. However they do have some new large bases that they use for their
Falcon Grav tank and Necron Destroyer minis. I hope they sell those separately
soon.
> PS: Mark Siefert,welcome to the HGML!
<Bowing to Thunderous Applause> Thank you... Thank you...
I'm picking up quite a few helpful suggestions,keep it up! Some of you have
quite innovative designs,the OU Dreamtime pattern sounded especially
interesting. Since many of you seem to be more interested in a quick & dirty
job to get your ships painted and on the table,you might be interested in this
method I found on The Miniatures Page:
http://www.jps.net/minipage/workbench/brigadefast.html
Elsewhere on the site (in the workbench section,IIRC) there's a review of a 3D
starship combat system called Moondragon. The models look interesting,although
I'm not sure if they're in the same scale so as to be useable with the FT
range.
> I prefer what I call the hack paint job to get the ships to the front
I also use an easy paint job. I use Armory black primer. Then I use Tamiya
Color acrylic paint (because of its thickness) in dark colors to paint "nebula
stripes" on it. I have used cobalt blue, French blue, deep woods green,
burgandy, and very dark grey. I use ONE color per ship. this allows me to
differentiate between the ships. It also allows me to divide my small fleet
into multiple fleets to game with miniature impaired friends. The "nebula
stripes" are NOT straight lines, nor are they parallel to each other (though
they rarely tough or cross). They are closer to zebra stripes. I usually try
to paint these on after the primer is dry to the touch but within an hour of
priming them. This blends the edges of the "nebula stripes". I do NO (or
almost none) detail to the ships. This is very quick and looks good on a black
mat or starfield.
[snip]
> What I'd like to know are specific techniques people prefer for
While I don't have any ship painting experience, I do have a fair amount of
experience painting miniatures in general. Painting usually consists of
several stages: cleaning, priming, basecoat, shading, highlighting and
detailing. The amount of time spent at each stage, as well as the techniques
used, will determine the overall quality of the job.
I'm not going to bother with in depth descriptions of each stage, but I will
go over some of the more technical stuff.
Shading: Basically there are three ways to get shading on a model: an overall
wash of thinned paint or ink, selectively adding shading to particular parts
of the model, or by highlighting. The first two methods are very similar,
differing mainly in the method of application and consistency of the paint.
Washing is accomplished by painting the surface of the model with a very
thinned down layer of paint. The paint will accumulate in the recessed areas
of the model. When you first try this out, you will likely be tempted to apply
too much paint, flooding the detail. This will look good when the paint is
wet, but once dry it won't look so hot. You shouldn't need anymore paint on
the brush than you use to paint the rest of the model. I usually use a mix of
ink and paint and water when shading.
Highlighting: This consists of painting lighter shades of your base colour on
the raised portions of the model. As an example, to highlight red, you can
either mix a bit of yellow in the red, or alternatively you can mix white with
the red. Note that highlighting is not the same as drybrushing! In general,
highlighting takes longer, but IMO gives a much nicer finish, especially on
flat surfaces like starship hulls. Good highlighting techniques lead naturally
to blending of colors,
which is _very_ tricky to do well.
Drybrushing: This works best on rough surfaces like chainmail. On flatter
surfaces it tends to leave a rough texture on the model which some may find
undesirable. This is much less noticable on small miniatures since the flat
surfaces are very small. The key to drybrushing is to get the
brush _really_ dry. I use an old towel to remove the excess paint.
The thinner the paint you use, the longer it will take, but the surface will
be less grainy. If you use more than one stage of drybrushing, remember to use
a lighter touch on each successive stage for the best results. A lighter shade
will help, too.
Details: Use a very small brush;). Another helpful tool is the technical pens.
They come in a variety of colours and are very helpful for lettering and
insignia designs. Makes blacklining a snap! The main drawback is they don't
work very well on dark colours. The way to get around this is to paint the
area white and then make the letters in reverse with the pens. I have also
known people to carefully cut out letters from stickers, paint over the
stickers, then peel them off. Works very well but takes forever. Imagine doing
"New Anglian Confederation" this
way...
> -trapper
I hope this helps you out some. I could go on for a lot longer in private if
you want.
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