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To show room standard and golden demon like presentation then yeah i can see how mold lines would irritate you, people presenting a oh wow looky my demon entry, but then it has mold lines leaving everyone going..whaaaa???

but how many people are painting/modeling for competition here?

i would like to see some of the pics that people have posted up that have you so worked up, because on the one hand i understand and on the other i couldn't give a skavens left testical. I'm going to be posting up my army pics soon, they are painted to a good table top standard but i also did the whole army in about a month or 2 even tho i bought them all nearly 2 years ago now and i am willing to bet a million buck that i have mold lines and not perfecty greenstuffed flushness throughout.

The thing is i'm not posting my pics up saying i'm a painting contestant, i'm posting them up saying oh man it's finally done, i think i did an alright job as a first timer and i'm going to play the shiznits out of them on the table top...so i dont' really care if this leg is apparently levitating by itself and that this guy has a sideways mowhawk mold line on his head., because more often then not no one will notice unless they look close and for gameing purposes...big whoop, then again i'm not saying omg look at my awesome painting and modeling skillz peeps.

anyway if it's alright with people lets see your mold lined figs in all their glory or perhaps if you have a non mold and a mold figure to compare, anyway i would just like to see what has the op so vain burstingly perturbed, i think i will post up some of my major couldn't be bothered moments in a little while too for laughs and hilarious comments to ensue lol

Hits_the_spot wrote:Little bit of an over reaction perhaps, but ..... It has made for an interesting thread.

Trust me when I say this thread was not to have sounded as over the top that I made it out to be. I just like to see nice things when they are painted. A personally preference is that a model should not have mold line, should have drilled gun barrel holes, and not be dipped in Army painters’ Dipping Formula and say its pro painted. Those are just my preferences for showcase or display models. I love to see fully painted armies that are painted to a 3-foot standard. It makes playing the games more enjoyable. I apologies again if people think I am attacking their styles or preferences. I am not, far from it. My goal for this thread was to see how many people agreed with me the mold lines mess up a display, showcase, or competition model. The mass outbreak of random “Mold” one-liners was only added because I just got finished watching “Austin Powers: Goldmember” and the Mole part is funny as hell. Now people taking the over the top part was slightly unexpected. This thread was just me expressing my opinion to see if anyone else agreed with I was saying.

Eternalhero1983 wrote:Those are your opinions and I respect them. They are your models, it is your time, and it is your money. I am only voicing my opinion which has not the same as other. I do not like mold line. Someone else may agree with me, but this is not an attack or a movement. This is just one person posting their thoughts so others may know them. This is not a challenge so there is no “come at me bro”. This is not a statement of fact, so leave your mold lines and extra green stuff; however, do not be upset for peoples comments about finally produces especially if it is constructive criticism about the mold lines and green stuff that you leave on your models.

All right dude chill out. I wasn't being serious. I was just ribbing you because of your first post. It came off a touch over zealous. I don't really intend to resculpt mold lines on my models. That would just be stupid.

I work by a rule. If i see a mold line i will remove it. If i dont see it then i figure no one else is likely to either.

I now have a new tactic, I watch TV with a lot of light in my room. Miniatures no paint and lots of stuff to remove unwantedmold lines. However people that blend and use thick undercoats suffer less from mold lines compared to thin black undercoat and drybrushing white. Every >&%!< detail that is wrong is ''highlighted'' as well.

I personally do not like mold lines. They become more visible when washes are used too, so unless I am just doing a test on some crappy black reach marine, I get those mold lines off of there.

I am not a great painter and go for "table-top" quality, but mold lines bug me, so I get rid of them. I am sure I have played with people who haven't taken them off, but I rarely look up close at people's models unless they appear to be painted very well or are interesting conversions and in those cases at least, I never see mold lines.

When I paint my son's figures I keep asking him not to assemble them, but to give them to me so I can assemble and clean the mold lines. He is lazy and assembles them and then expects me to paint them. I do an ok job, but do not put a ton of effort into it because I know it will never look right because of the mold lines and his glue all over the place style.

When I work on my own stuff though...that is a different story. I do my darndest to clean the mold lines and any imperfections, though I do have to admin I miss some every so often.

Maelstrom808 wrote:Meh, I paint/model to the 3ft standard. If a moldline, brush-touch, gap, etc is not particularly noticable from 3ft away, I don't really worry about it. I'm not trying to win painting comps. As long as the army looks good on the table, jobs good.

Agreed!!!!!!

Down with mould lines!

They do sneak up on me every now and then though. I do take particular care when doing armies, but no matter how hard you try there always seems to be the odd one that slips through the net and needs trimming and repainting. >.<

For display stuff however, there is no compromise.

Orki wrote:Down with mould lines!

Sounds like I should create a movement LOL nah too much work

LOL if I see a mold line on peoples pictures I will send them this stamp lol too funny

Eternalhero1983 wrote:

beezley1981 wrote:+ undrilled gun barrels...

That is a different rant all together. That and dipping.

On the next episode of "What grinds my gears"- Truescale Marines (ugh!) AKA I've-just-gone-and-put-Peter-Crouch-on-a-torture-rack.

It doesn't bother me on someone else's minis unless they're someone who can't stop bragging about their own work, then it's just comical. If it's a friend, I'll gently tease them about mold lines if I feel they're really looking to improve. Otherwise, live and let live.

There are hobbyists, and there are gamers. And there is the vast spectrum in between. Having been in the hobby for a very long time, I really don't consider it a "growing" problem, and definitely not the biggest problem in the hobby. (Try: rising prices, poor player attitudes, the rampant recasting that hurts small publishers, legal issues regarding intellectual property, Etc.)

This hobby, miniature wargaming in general, is a community made up of many sub communities. If you look around the major and minor boards and blogs, you'll quickly notice that some of those groups hold much higher standards than others, attracting like-minded hobbyists and gamers. And I feel that those sub-communities do a pretty good job holding each other to the standards they set. Dakka however seems to be more of a melting pot, with extremely detail oriented builders showcasing their work right alongside casual painters that can't invest the same amount of time into their work. This can lead to a lot of raised eyebrows and really screws with the grade curve, but it also makes this a great place where people can learn the tips to improve if that's what they want.

I agree with some points on all sides, and actively practice many things with my minis...

Take my Marine armies (i play a loyalist force and pure nurgle CSM)... I take more time cleaning and prepping than I do painting on these guys, because there are so few models on the table that each mold line shows much more. I know that I miss some (such as on drop pods, I noticed some when I was packing them up)

Then, if you look at my Tyranids... well, only the Tyrants, Lictors and "special" guys get really cleaned up, all the gaunts/gants/stealers... mob and horde guys don't get near the attention, i just simply dont have that kind of time.

And lastly if you see my guard, you see something of a mix... my vehicles and HQ are super clean of mold and flash lines, but my standard troops get some love, but i dont sweat missing some stuff.



Basically, my practices are based on the army... my "low model" armies (marines and ogres) get much more cleaning prior to painting than do my "high model" armies, so you'll see more flash and mold on some armies than others of mine.

I might leave mold lines in strategic places if it looks like the actual components may have been molded

I think it is funny that my little pet peeve now became a run-on joke

Eternalhero1983 wrote:I think it is funny that my little pet peeve

You don't own that pet peeve, friend. Lots of other people have it too.

I have it bad, but only for my own models.

It is not a problem with moald lines during the actual gameplay. You are sieng the models from so faar away that you do not notice the mold lines.

yea sorry bro, if i'm putting it on a table then i'm not going to spend an extra hour on each model cleaning up the mold lines and filling in the gaps perfectly so that I can spend 30 minutes on paint to play with it.

on a show piece? for sure. time WELL spent. but then you got nothing BUT time if thats the case!