Painting plastic mini's

Just bought some hero clix guys for my new Mutants and Masterminds campaignand was wondering if anyone had had any success painting and altering these figs. If so what kind of paints did you use? Primer?

Thanks

The Seraph of Earth and Stone

I recently have had similar questions myself, wanting to rid some decently sculpted but thickly and horribly painted clix of their paintjobs.

I can't personally attest to any of the methods below, but here are some links to those who have done this:






http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=24262



http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=34304



http://boards1.wizards.com/archive/index.php/t-47066.html
http://groups.msn.com/DrBedlamsKitbashLaboratory/paintingminiatures.msnw


Hope those help.

Personally, I'm going to try some Pine Sol at home this weekend, and if that doesnt work I'm going to try some acetone or goof-off.

If you are not striping the paint off, I hear normal mini / acryllic paint will stick well enough to a heroclix fig without extra primer.

Frankthedm is correct. Acrylic paint adheres well to the mini's and then you can seal it with a varnish once you are done. If you need to strip the paint, I can't offer any suggestion because most solvents will effect the plastic.

To alter the mini's... Most strategies will still work. You can remove and replace bits. I use Zap a gap (superglue), because I was afraid the plastic might react oddly to model glue.
I got a cool soldier/merc mini heroclix that had an arm broken off. I drilled a hole, glued in a wire and sculpted a new arm. worked like a charm.

I generally repaint the mini without primer or stripping and it works pretty well. If you do primer... Test on one you don't care about. Some aerosols have solvents that will effect soft plastic.
If I have time this weekend, I'll take a couple of photos so you can see. Don't hold me to that, but I'll try.


Game ON!
Nyrf

I tried spray primer on one of the D&D miniatures and I ended up losing too much detail. I used thinned paint-on sprimer on another miniature and it worked like a charm.

I've also painted directly over the D&D miniatures, without using primer, and it works just fine.

As Promised... Here are some photos of the plastic mini's you get from MageKnight, etc.
I repainted them. The sculptures on many of the mini's are quite good. Often the paint jobs are not.

Simple paint jobs:





More involved paint jobs:




And here is a conversion. The Heroclix mini was missing an arm. I have no idea what it was, but I'm into cyborgs and things, so I created a mechanical arm. I haven't painted it yet, so it's perfect to show the conversion...



I hope that illustrates the options you have with Plastic mini's. I took them all of the clicker bases (except the last one because I'm not done with him yet.) That's the easiest to do.
I didn't prime any of these mini's. I used the original paintjobs as 'primer'. I imagine if you kept the coat really light, a primer would be ok.

Game ON!
Nyrf

Good Work.

The thorn crawler makes a great ankheg / fiendish centipede.

The older Doc oc's arms make great Bionic commando arms!

Death merchant on a shyft serpent is a fantastic mount combo!

pjcc.com still has a samll amount of MK and HC figs

Thank you I really appreciate it, all of your help.


The Seraph of Earth and Stone

Nryfherder, the wings on that clix repaint are awesome. Very nice work.

Just to update a little, I have tried several of these methods recently with various clix miniatures and here are my actual results. I will try to post up some pics in my miniatures thread soon.

I took pine sol and goof-off, put a quantity of both in separate glass jars with sealable lids (so they wouldnt lose effectiveness through evaporation) and dropped in a few clix into each one. I put different revisions of heroclix and Mage Knight minis into each one to see if there was any difference in the paint between older and newer sets.

Results... goof off was the clear winner.

I checked them all after a couple days, and the goof-off had done such a job on every mini that I put into it that the paint slid off with just finger pressure. I used an old toothbrush to get the deeper recesses but it came off under running water pretty handily. It did soften the plastic somewhat, but after a good rinsing and a couple days sitting out, the mini hardened back up with no loss of detail at all. Actually, on one I did a little repositioning on while it was soft, and it was *much* easier than doing it when it was still painted, so I would suggest this method for anyone who is going to do some converting and repainting.

The pine sol did... nothing. Nothing at all, not a thing. I used Pine-Sol brand, full strength, and it didnt so much as fade the paint, and no amount of scrubbing removed paint. Maybe it works on metal minis with normal acrylics, I dont know, but it certainly did not work on a single clix I used it on, and I left 'em in the sealed jar for almost 2 weeks. They were, however, *really* clean and smelled nice.

After this exercise, I did realize that if I was going to do repainting of my clix, from now on I will be stripping; there was a *huge* amount of detail on the figs that is just impossible to see under some of the thick paintjobs they have. The ones I exposed were like completely different miniatures.

Just my 2 cents on my own experiment.

ledded said:

Nryfherder, the wings on that clix repaint are awesome. Very nice work.


After this exercise, I did realize that if I was going to do repainting of my clix, from now on I will be stripping; there was a *huge* amount of detail on the figs that is just impossible to see under some of the thick paintjobs they have. The ones I exposed were like completely different miniatures.

Just my 2 cents on my own experiment.

Click to expand...

Thanks Ledded. I'll have to try the goof-off trick.
The sculpts on the mini's are often very good, but I agree that the paintjobs are designed to be durable, so they are thicker than the skin on my arm.

Game ON!
Nyrfherdr