Transcript
You ever hear of Brene Brown? She’s a professor who researches shame and vulnerability. And also a podcaster and author and speaker and all that stuff. In one of her early podcast episodes, she talked about a concept she calls F F T, and we’re gonna chat about that today in conjunction with chopping and slapping some minis. With Contrast paints, not chips, dips, chains, whips.
Greetings good humans and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where we do some things for the first time, even if the results threaten to suck! Cause we’re ballsy that way and we understand risks are necessary for rewards.
All right, I mentioned Brene Brown and her podcast. I’ve listened to exactly two episodes back when she first started it. Not “two” because it’s terrible, quite the contrary actually, I think she’s pretty interesting. But we all know we’re drowning in content and there’s only so much time in a day to dog paddle around and keep our heads above water.
Anyway, one of these episodes was about the concept she calls F F T. Which stands for First [bleeping] Time. And there’s always a first [bleeping] time, right? Literally for everything. It’s one of those ideas that I sorta stare at and wonder how in the world I could not have realized it on my own, it’s so fundamental and simple, really. But then I realize it’s me I’m talking about and it’s not really surprising at all.
F F T is an expression I wish I’d heard a long time ago, so I could incorporate it into my emotional thought process. The idea of acknowledging something as just being an F F T can really help you get through what’s most likely gonna be a series of embarrassing failures.
I mean, learning experiences! What? What? I don’t know. Moving on.
Today’s video has two F F Ts for me.
This is the first time I’ve tried shooting a real mini painting video with a decent camera and lens, and boy, trying something you’ve seen done by real pros
can really open one’s eyes to just how “pro” they are.
And here I had a whole paragraph about what a particular kind of a pain in the ass shooting miniature painting is but then I saw Ninjon’s video, where basically he says what I was thinking before I could say it.
You have to worry about keeping the mini in frame, keeping it in focus, capturing the most interesting parts of the painting process and you have to actually not screw up the paint job.
Side note, this is the second time in a month this has happened, where I have a notion and then see someone else do it right before me. The day I uploaded my Crystal Scatter terrain video – NOT pachow – and not the day I released the video – uploading day and release day are two different days for this channel – Vincey V released his miniature basing video incorporating the exact same product.
These are bigger chunks of broken glass. They’re not sharp in any way, ‘cause of the way they’re rolled around and stuff, so there’s no sharp edges you’ll never cut yourself.
The social zeitgeist or global consciousness is incredibly frustrating sometimes. But I guess it can serve as a constant reminder that we are all connected. Either that or I’m in a simulation and the programmer is constantly [bleeping] with me. And I guess this is apparently the f-bomb parade episode.
Anyway, yes, painting minis under a camera is tricky.
And this is my first time – well, technically my second time – I’ve actually tried speed painting. I don’t really like the idea of speed painting even though I really like the idea of the results of speed painting – you know, having a bunch of miniatures completed. This is most likely due to the fact that I rarely paint groups of miniatures as “units”. Since I don’t really play big army games. I typically paint individual miniatures from units for use in DnD or whatever. Or as members of non-unified war bands. And as you’ll see here, I take way too long to do everything, including speed painting. As well as talking on camera.
I will say, after having done this exercise for this video, I’m kinda on board with the idea of speed painting or group painting as something I’ll continue to do in the future.
And of course, we can no longer use the speed painting nomenclature, we must call it Slap Chop. Yeah.
How many times you seen that gag now? triple digits? sounds about right
So, props to the YouTuber who appropriated the term, it’s a cool term and now it’s just sorta what we call this process, but I swear this whole “putting transparent paints over a zenithal base coat” is literally the second intended-use case for the entire category of transparent paints. As my typical luck would have it, I saw Goobertown Minis recently mention the actual French term for this technique which has been around for hundreds of years. And Brent makes a particularly excellent and comical point – which is the best kind of point.
Some folks have pointed out that this is pretty much just the French grisaille technique and it’s been around since the 1300s. Now the way I see it, the French had 700 years to convince me to use the word grisaille. And they failed.
I guess at this point I can just Frankenstein my videos out of better YouTubers’ better content. That’ll be my process – come late to the game, regurgitate what others have already done, cut to end credits. That’ll work, right?
Okay, you in the back there, you can put that shank – I mean hobby knife down, I’m getting to the painting. I swear.
So for this slap chop speed paint experiment, I decided to crack open my Pile of Opportunity – Sci-Fi Edition and paint up some Infinity models. I’ve got a few of these stashed away and I haven’t painted a single one yet. In fact I haven’t really painted any sci-fi genre stuff since I got back into the hobby – but that hasn’t stopped me from collecting any, right? Of course not. C’mon, I’m a good hobbyist.
And another thing that’s probably slightly disappointing for some dear viewers is that while I do have the rule book for Infinity Code One – see? But anyway, I haven’t played it yet and actually collected a lot of my sci-fi stuff with the intention of playing Stargrave, there we go look at this smooth, smooth moves I got going on here with these books and a game called Reality’s Edge, which I have with me right here. This is ridiculous. Anyway, Reality’s Edge is basically a skirmish game version of Shadowrun without the magic and fantasy mashup.
These Infinity models are really nice, though. I mean, sure, I wish they were high-end injection molded plastic, but building these metal cyberpunk figures took me right back to my initial experience with painting miniatures, like literally the first miniatures I ever painted. Which were Ral Partha Shadowrun miniatures. I can remember my first pots of Tamiya paint, cause that’s the paint I started out with, I didn’t use any thinner, I didn’t use any washes, you know, this was all pre-internet and I was just a terrible Dorito-fingered savage and I had just met a couple new friends at this hobby shop and to be perfectly honest I don’t know why Tamiya was recommended to me as the starting paint anyway. I think it’s because a lot of the customer base there built and painted military aircraft kits and stuff like that.
Anyway, these Corvus Belli figures kicked me down memory lane and they are really super nice. Highly detailed. Great casts even, mostly full figures with an arm or two to attach, and really clever seam obfuscation. I didn’t have to do much clean up at all. And all this fine detail is both what freaked me out about painting them and what made me think Contrast paints might be perfect to use on ‘em.
Now I always like to paint minis on bases if I can, I always like as few steps as possible, meaning I kinda shy away from working in sub-assemblies. Once in a while it’s unavoidable, but you know, it’s just like when I shoot video, I hate working with green screens cause that means there’s additional work in post.
I told you: I’m lazy.
So I pulled out one of my boxes from the Pile of Opportunity: Bases Edition – so many editions of the Pile of Opportunity – specifically the “urban” box and I found a few bases that would work for these guys. These bases are from Micro Art Studio, they come in two pieces, the standard base rim and the actual detail insert. I’m not sure what they’re made out of, the material is almost like vinyl or something, they say it’s resin on the company’s site, it’s kinda soft and chewy but still holds detail well. Super easy to carve into and they take paint really well. And superglue works great with it.
The reason I have so many of these Micro Art Studio bases – and I have quite a few – is because I would buy them in bulk when Miniature Market would have these clearance sales. I’d get these packs of 7 or 10 bases for like three or four bucks, which is just a crazy value. You can still get these from the actual Micro Art Studio site, but you know, full price is a different conversation. In fact, I have a video about doing that sort of thing right here. Again, not Pachow.
Anyway, these miniatures have the sorta standard tabs a lot of metal minis have for either slotted bases or company names or whatever, so I usually trim these down with clippers and an x-acto knife to sort of create organic pins to stick into the bases, just for added strength. So you can see here I kinda messed up some of the Dremelling but you know, it’s not an exact science – at least not on my hobby desk. I don’t sweat this kinda stuff, definitely not for “tabletop quality” paint jobs. You can always cover this kinda thing up with basing materials or whatever.
I glued up the various arms and weapons and Corvus Belli really does nice design work, each piece had a nice supported fitting area, and I just used super glue and little bit of kicker.
So then I primed ‘em up for this slap chop thing, but I went with a blue primer for the shadow areas and to be perfectly honest I probably didn’t go dark enough. I don’t generally like to go full black for the shadows, to me the transparent paints just don’t work quite right over super dark undercoats, essentially you can’t really see any color when they go over black, but in this particular case, I definitely should have gone a couple shades darker. Then I just dropped a lighter gray on ‘em from the top with the airbrush, and I’m using Stynylrez primers and just sorta mixing up my own colors. I gotta say again, these are really some good-looking miniatures.
On the first figure I attempted, very poorly, to do the Marco Frisoni technique of slap chop, but I would A need to get much much better at painting and B need a much darker undercoat to make that really work. He makes it looks so easy and so cool! And on top of my abilities being way below par, it was also taking a super long time.
So I ditched that after the first one and went for a standard dry brush. This is definitely a new process for me, this sounds kinda dumb but I don’t think I’m a very good dry brusher. I don’t think I’m very good at dry brushing. I know like dry brushing is sorta the easiest skill to learn in mini painting but I feel like it’s one of those “easy to learn, tough to master” sorta things. But as we all know, practice is what makes us better. And you know who needs a lotta practice. I’m talking about me. I need a lot of practice. Surprise.
I used – oh boy. Somebody’s, somebody’s going to hire me for something, right?
I used the Army Painter brand of Artis Opus knock-off brushes for this, I have some makeup brushes too, I just hadn’t tried these Army Painter brushes out yet, seemed like the perfect time to use ‘em. They’re fine. I think I wish they were like 10% or 20% “softer” but again this is coming from someone who doesn’t have a lot of experience with this technique yet. So maybe they’re perfect and I just gotta develop a feel for ‘em.
Anyway, it’s finally time for some paint. So let’s talk about color scheme for a second. I’m terrible at coming up with color schemes. Literally terrible. I know about the color wheel and complimentary vs crappy color combinations – although that’s never stopped me before from using crappy color combinations. I just have a hard time visualizing what something is “going” to look like in the real world. It’s kinda weird cause I have what I consider to be a decent imagination but trying to pinpoint something in my mind’s eye that’s going to transition from “artistic vision” to the real world is kinda tough for me.
I have this issue outside of mini painting, like as an example when I set up for shooting say an interview, often the on camera talent will have a couple of shirts or tops to choose from and I usually have to ask them to put a particular shirt or something on so I can physically see it in the space in order to make a decision. So trying to come up with paint schemes for minis is always frustrating for me.
And I’ve tried the technique before where you take a photo of the mini and drop it in Photoshop or whatever and like roughly color it, and that kinda helps a little bit but for it to really work for me, I’d have to put in like a lot of time coloring the image to … anyway, the TLDR is I’m not good at picking color schemes. It doesn’t help that a lot of the times when I look at a miniature, especially like a unit like these guys, my initial thought is, well, they’d be all in black. Or maybe some kind of camouflage based on whatever environment they’re assaulting or fighting in. And I also usually steer clear of the box art, I’m not sure why that is. Mostly it’s cause I want to feel like I’m doing my own thing, and then probably a little bit because I know my skill level is so much lower than the box art artists.
At some point you just gotta plunge ahead, gotta get stuff done, right, so I just got some paints out. The one idea that occurred to me when I saw the sculpts was that their jackets are really cool and I had this image of beaten leather coats. I figured their pants would be black then I realized the coats seemed to be overcoats and they had other coats under the overcoats but now, looking at the box art, which I probably should have done at the beginning, I guess those layers are the same material. I didn’t get that by looking at the actual sculpts so I ended up choosing OD green for the third color. Brown, black and green. Super creative. I guess they’re getting in tousles in the forest or something. Even though they’re cyberpunky.
Most of the paints I used on these guys are Citadel Contrast paints. Definitely not a sponsor. Now I kinda like painting coloring book style, where I block in the entire figure with base colors before doing details and highlights. To try to get some variance in texture if not color, I went with a regular paint for these extra military style bags they all have slung over their shoulders.
I typically paint anything that is going to be black or metal with Black Templar Contrast, so I went over all the guns and holsters and armored knee pads with that. Some of the straps – and there are a TON of straps and bandoliers and, more straps, and buckles, and buttons and even more straps – a couple of them stood out so I decided to hit them with a different color but cleaned them up a bit with white to pick them out. And these backpack slash parachute things, I almost went with a rusty orange and I still kinda wish I had. I actually ended up just adding a little blue to the green to add, again, some differentiation. Then there’s all this zipper detail I couldn’t just let alone, so I just went over that stuff with some Black Legion Contrast.
Now I really wanted a splash of color on these guys and I was scrolling Instagram, you know, like we all do, and I came across zero death painting and I really, really like this person’s Infinity models. These red gun bits are so cool – and of course the weathering is top notch. So you know I just stole that idea and cleaned up the areas I wanted to paint red with white and then went with a mix of these three colors for what I hoped would be a sorta “rusty red”. Definitely far from perfect but the pop of color really looks cool to me. Not as cool as zero death painting by any means but still, better than like all black or gunmetal. I added orange to the end of the rocket launcher just for, again, a little bit of variance.
And then for their heads, all I could see in my mind was Ghost In The Shell imagery, and so I figured the brain cases would be basically white and I held off on choosing the faceplate color til the very end. I figured I’d want some kind of color on the faceplates so I did clean them up with some white. Again, I kinda wanted to go with orange but … I was too timid to try it.
Which is nonsense, because I can just paint over it. I mean I still could. There’s just that whole lazy thing, remember. But for brain cases I put down some of the Apothecary White Contrast. And here something happened that I’ve never experienced personally before – the white P3 paint reactivated under the contrast paint. I’ve literally never had paints reactivate, like ever. I’ve used P3 white under Contrast quite a bit. So yeah, pretty strange.
Anyway, then I moved on to the bases, typically I like doing bases, but since I was quote unquote speed painting, I figured I’d just do something relatively simple and add a few washes. I used some metallics for the cool textures on these prefab bases and messed around with these pipe colors here for a bit and the weird blue I put down on this one is just because the texture reminded me of this industrial blue plastic siding or roofing material I’ve seen before. I think actually the base was intended to be like some kind of terracotta tiles or something. And the washes are always fun cause they’re so easy. Right? Yeah, I’m right. Washes are fun. Cause they’re easy!
I finally decided to just sorta use the box art color on the faceplates and it’s not my favorite, I think I might go back one day and maybe try something else. Probably that orange I keep talking about. Maybe just on the sergeant or whatever the leader’s rank is there. Who am I kidding? I’m never going back to these. There’s way too many other minis for me mess up! I gotta get cracking!
I went in for some highlighting and cleaning up some detail and I tried to keep reminding myself that this was supposed to be a speed paint project. I just simply didn’t know when to stop. Basically I just quit when I realized that I would just keep working on these things for days and days if I didn’t. And that’s not to say they would have come out amazing if I had continued, it just means that I would have spent a lot of time getting a somewhat higher level of mediocrity. There are so many details on these figures that I could probably have spent another week on ‘em. I mean, I didn’t even weather these guys.
Okay, originally I ended the work there, but I just couldn’t, I couldn’t quite stop. I had to do a little bit of weathering, I just couldn’t get over not having those cool metallic scratches at least on the red parts of the weapons. So off camera I doused those OD green bags with Citadel Athonean Camoshade – Athenian Camoshade? Athonian? I can never remember that one, but anyway you know what I’m talking about, the camoshade, sorta green brown! And then I matte varnished the minis, which is what I as I always do to finish them, and then I went back with the metallics to both touch up the metallic bits that got dulled by the matte spray and then I just did little tiny weathering on the red parts of the weapons. I feel much better. Even though there’s a ton more work that could be done on these guys.
But there they are, the results of my slap chop speed paint exercise. Now because I recorded every single bit of painting (except for the last part), I know exactly how long I spent on them. And it’s a little embarrassing. I spent over ten hours on these four figures, not counting the building and priming phase. But what’s even more embarrassing is had I not made this a specific “speed painting” project, I would probably still be working on them and I’m 100% sure that the results would not have been much better.
But hey, I painted some miniatures. And despite the uncomfortableness of the camera setup or whatever, I do really enjoy the act of painting. It’s just a cool thing for me. And it’s been at least six months since I’ve painted a miniature. I’m not sure how long a real, “real” speed painting session on a unit of these guys should have taken, my guess is somewhere in the three to four hour range? I don’t know. I guess it really doesn’t matter, maybe speed painting is just like “art” – it’s all subjective.
Anyway, I do think I need to do more exercises with this whole slap chop method and I do think miniatures with a lot of texture and detail benefit from using transparent paints. And I know that you’ve heard that from plenty of places. I am looking forward to painting more Infinity models, they are super nice, again – and also, not sponsored. But, as luck would have it, my next painting project has already been picked out for me. We’ll get to that in next month’s video.
So I guess, uh, go slap or chop something, see what you think of it. Or for those of you that are already knee-deep in dry brushes and transparent paints, definitely let me know how I can improve.
So … go paint something. Even if it’s your FFT!
See ya!