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| Vinyl animals from various manufactures. Chair is a 3D plastic print. |
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| Characters from the book I'm working on: Raccoon, Mouse, Rabbit, and Duck. Yeah, the names are real original :) |
Actually, most of these animals won't be in the book, but I DO have some actual figures for my characters sculpted (by Steve Barber of Steve Barber Models) and painted. I'll photograph them once I get them based ... hey. here's a pic of the sculpts (and yes, they're meant to be cartoony.)
Painting soft plastic
I see this question a lot -- how do you paint soft plastic. Reaper says it's Bones minis don't need to be primed, which I think is perfectly true -- if you don't mind your paint chipping away like gangbusters. The problem -- My problem is that I use Testors to prime my figures, but on soft plastic, Testors (and a few other Walmart brands) always dry with a very sticky surface. Even Fusion brand which is supposed to be formulated for plastic dries very tacky.
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| Repainting vinyl animals let's you change their breed/skin patterns, such as with the Hampshire pig on the left. |
After a few trials and experiments I hit upon my own method for getting soft plastic figures (and vinyl, which includes all those cool dinosaurs!)
Army Painter Primer. It sucks on metal (will chip away,) but it's about the most perfect plastic primer on the market. Now, it still has a minor issue: The stuff I get is labelled "matte," but it always dries with a glossy sheen. And this layer still doesn't hold a layer of paint as well as I would like. So after I prime a figure, I'll give it a brush layer of black craft paint -- Delta Ceramcoat Black to be specific.
Then paint as usual.
I did my first monochromatic zombies from Zombicide using this method. All of those zombies were thrown into a box together and have been stored like that for a couple years, and still no chips.
Granted, I still take care of my figures (I don't shake that box very much), but the AP+craft base layers still holds up well. If you already have Army Painter Primer, grab some Delta Ceramcoat and give this a try!
If you use a Walmart brand without any issues, let us know specifically which (specific) brand you use.
I wouldn't mind using the Walmart stuff -- Army Painter isn't cheap -- I just don't know which brand to try. "That 99 cent stuff" isn't an answer (that's about the only answer I can find on different forums.)
I haven't had any problem with the paint chipping off my Bones yet. Are you using Reaper paints on them?
ReplyDeleteYep -- Reaper HD.
DeleteWashed the figures in soap and water first, too.
If I'm careful with them -- moving them from shelf to gaming table and back -- they'll be fine, but figures like that, I would like to be able to throw in a box and not have to worry about them; mostly because I have to transport them from my shelf to friend's game table, so there is a lot of transport going on.
Somewhere in the Reaper forums, someone actually did some prime vs. non-priming testing. They painted the figures in various combinations and then tossed them into a box. Shake lightly and see results. Both primed and non-primed figures had some level of damage (he counted it even if it was just one or two chips.) You can check it out here: http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/48669-bones-the-first-coat-is-the-difference/
This guy also admits later in the thread, that his tests were carried out on the original set of Bones, which was apparently "bendier" than the current batches: I'm working with figures from that first batch (painting for my friend.)
The Reaper forum poster (further down the thread) also says he doesn't prime his Bones figures anymore, but that the later batches have better material.
I like my method also, because it works well on the plastic figures but also on the vinyl animals, which have different properties. And with all the figures on my table, it's nice to have a one-size-fits-all priming process for everything.