Have You Improved Your D&D Miniatures?

[mmadsen]

The new miniatures provide a inexpensive source of lower-quality miniatures -- that are already painted and ready to use. Has anyone improved their cheap D&D miniatures with some quick ink-washing and dry-brushing? Or given them a full repainting job? Or performed a full conversion, mixing and matching pieces to make something new?

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

Not yet, but I have plans too repaint several of them. However, I've got so much unpainted pewter and even some old lead minis, that they take a backseat to ones that have no paint at all.

 

[heirodule]

This is one I did.

Happens to be on ebay right now.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

Very nice. A little work makes a lot of difference.

 

[mmadsen]

This is one I did.

Nice work, heirodule. What exactly did you do? It looks like you painted the tunic red and the studs silver, then washed it all with some black or brown. And added terrain to the base. Anything else?

 

[heirodule]

Steps:

Dark brown wash on armor
Repaint black areas with flat black paint (black plastic too shiny)
Repaint skin with my own orc flesh mix with a wash too.
Dot silver on studs
Red on cloth
Drybrush some highlights in various places
superglue static grass and sand to the base, then paint and drybrush (sand first, then grass)

I think flocking the bases with grass/sand is the most important thing to improving them. The dominance of the black pastic bases and dark tones of most of the minis make looking at masses of them drab and boring. Flocking lightens the look and ups the contrast between the dark mini and lighter base

 

[Tewligan]

I intended to put a little work into one to see how it came out. However, like CL, I've got too many unpainted figs to spend my rare painting time fixing up subpar minis.

 

[mmadsen]

I intended to put a little work into one to see how it came out. However, like CL, I've got too many unpainted figs to spend my rare painting time fixing up subpar minis.

I was thinking that you could get a lot of "bang for your buck" by doing a quick wash and a little dry-brushing -- not as much work as heirodule put into his paint job.

 

[Altalazar]

To me, the main benefit of the cheap minis is that they are pre-painted - I have far too many unpainted metal minis to ever even think about getting to painting the plastic ones. Though the results above are quite impressive.

 

[heirodule]

I was thinking that you could get a lot of "bang for your buck" by doing a quick wash and a little dry-brushing -- not as much work as heirodule put into his paint job.

The only problem with a wash on these is the paint is so glossy that most washes "bead" heavily. Often you need to repaint an area first. i reccomend experimenting on commons.

Future floor wax (an acryclic) should be mixed into your wash water. That helps the beading some. Different ratios of paint/water/floor wax are reccommended. I usually guess.