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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tomBitonti" data-source="post: 6157393" data-attributes="member: 13107">Hi,Prepping the figures -- cleaning them, removing mold lines, assembly, which can include as little as a little glue, or as much as drilling holes and inserting pins, and after that a bit of green stuff to fill in gaps, and usually includes putting down a layer of primer -- is a task in and of itself.  Depending on the desired quality, the preparation can be a large task.When assembling miniatures, often there must be assembly before priming: You don't want to do any drilling after you paint, nor do you want to put down a lot of green stuff.What would be done is "pre-assembly": Getting the pieces ready for final assembly.  How much you finish the assembly depends on the pieces, and on the final goal quality.  For the highest quality, major pieces will be left un-assembled to ease painting.  For ease of priming, having the pieces disassembled, and as much left on the sprue as possible can greatly save time, but that won't always work, depending on how much assembly is required.  You don't want to prime until the pieces are trimmed and cleaned, and you don't want to prime until you know what color scheme (as least some idea or plan), as the prime color will be a part of that scheme.You'll want to have the figure ready to be put on a base, but not attach it until the main painting is done.  The base will usually get in the way of painting.For the main painting, there are are lot of guides available, online, in magazines, and in books.  As with other artistic endeavors, there is a technical part, which includes basic painting issues such as brush control and basic color theory, but also includes details which are specific to miniatures, such as knowing how to drybrush or do washes, or how to paint faces, armor, reflective surfaces, or gems, and specific techniques, such as attaching a figure to something, to make it easier to hold and more stable for painting; and there is an artistic part, which is more about finding an exciting composition (that works!) and having a good use of color, and light, and dark.  (That is the hardest part for me.)  If you are painting an army (which can grow to hundreds of individual figures), the composition will include not just single figures, but the entire army.Lest that seem too daunting, the guides include simple steps for painting many figures, by which you can get through many figures in a relatively short time: Trim, clean, assemble, prime, then block out a few basic colors, then wash and drybrush for detail, and then add just a few necessary highlights, and you can have a painted figure fairly quickly.  Of course, that works a lot better if you have good painting ability, so to work through the steps quickly and confidently.You will probably get lots of good advice if you repost your question on one of the miniatures forums, say, games workshop, reaper miniatures, or privateer press.  (There are lot more forums / web sites than that; those are just a couple to list them quickly.)There are also a lot of videos showing speed painting, with results of varying quality.  I found a couple, but you're better off doing a search and skimming a couple to find ones that provide the right balance of speed and quality.Thx!TomB</blockquote>

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