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chaos0xomega wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
My local store says that the Mega Set shipment is stock on a container in port somewhere, nobody in the US is able to get them in stock at the moment.

That is a big fat lie,
Several stores in my area got them

Are you sure they got the mega paint set and not the starter set? Because the starter sets are available widely, I have yet to see or hear of anyone in the US being able to grab the mega set from their locals or even US based online sellers (trust me, I've been looking).

My local store in Erie has it on their site - https://griffons-lair.myshopify.com/products/tap-paints-warpaints-mega-paint-set?_pos=16&_sid=948969dcb&_ss=r

Veldrain wrote:

My local store in Erie has it on their site - https://griffons-lair.myshopify.com/products/tap-paints-warpaints-mega-paint-set?_pos=16&_sid=948969dcb&_ss=r

That's the regular Warpaint mega set. The Speedpaint set is this one: https://griffons-lair.myshopify.com/products/speedpaint-mega-set?_pos=2&_sid=c2ed805fa&_ss=r

My bad, but they seem to have that one as well

I had put a pre-order in for the Speedpaint mega set with my FLGS and picked it up this week so they are getting out there.

 insaniak wrote:
Still waiting for my original preorder. Apparently expected arrival into Oz is now late May. Tempted to order some from overseas in the interim, as it would likely get here quicker.

There's a shop in Melbourne that has starter sets (not the mega set or individuals). But the guy in the shop commented that he had them shipped from a UK supplier, not the Australia based supplier because apparently the price difference was massive (which maybe explains why they're not much cheaper than contrasts over here).

For all my whinging, I grabbed a starter set and will give them a go, I want to see if they can blend or if it just ends up as a dark brown mess at the blend line.

 solkan wrote:


Source Comics and Games in Minneapolis.

As an aside, The Source rules!

I wish it was still my FLGS.

I'm late to the party I know, but here's my first crack...



Trying to see how it goes with blending. It's not terrible for blending, but also not as easy as I was hoping. The "reactivation" doesn't really work well for blending since it doesn't reactivate smoothly, it reactivates in grainy chunks. So you have to mix them while they're still reasonably fresh. On the other hand, if you try and blend them too early they'll continue to bleed into each other after you've got them looking nice. For example, I had some nice vibrant yellows on his arm where the "flames" are, but the red bled into the yellow and while they are still kind of orange-ish they don't have the vibrant yellow as when I initially painted it.

I think it's easier to blend from light colours to dark colours (start with the yellow and go to red rather than starting from the red and going to the yellow).

I don't love the colour selection for the starter set, the purple is very dark, with a yellow and the red also including the orange isn't very valuable, a black would have been nice, maybe another brown.

It is easier to avoid coffee staining than it is with contrasts because of the slower drying time (though I never had a big problem with contrasts in that regard anyway). Most of the staining I got was when I tried to go back and correct something after it had started to dry.

That came out nicely.

 CptJake wrote:
That came out nicely.

For the amount of time it took it came out pretty well, I wasn't timing myself but it was maybe 10 to 15 minutes if I had to guess. I started with a brown primer (rattle can from Vallejo), drybrushed it white with a nice big brush, then hit it with the Army Painter.

I am trying to think of ways to bring more colour contrast into the speedpaint / contrast techniques, as I think that's a weakness of any 1 coat solution, the red just looks too, uniform I guess? If I were painting it traditionally I'd blend some blues and purples into the red especially around the shadows to give the skin some variation in colour, but not sure how to achieve that with the speedpaints.

Maybe in the drybrush stage different colours could be used (e.g. white, light grey, beige) in different areas to create contrast after the speed paint is applied, but I dunno if it'd show through.

I did feel like the speed paints I've used are "stronger" than the contrasts I've used, but I don't know if that applies to the whole range or just the specific colours I've tested. What I mean by that is the highlight areas are a bit more vibrant rather than feeling washed out like can happen with contrasts I've used. On the one hand that's good, on the other hand I wonder if these can't be controlled by using different coloured primers as much as contrasts could.

Another crack at blending, this time using blue/bone/purple.

The red contrast I used on the bloodletter is definitely nicer than the blue and the purple. The purple is very dark and harder to get smooth, I almost feel like it needs more medium or maybe it just needs to be a bit lighter in tone. The blue is somewhere in between in terms of how much I like/dislike it.

I am finding that different colours favour different types of blending techniques, and it's definitely not as easy as I hoped.

Blending the blue into the purple, I couldn't figure out a good way to do it, where the colours mix just becomes very dark if not approaching black. So instead of having a nice transition you end up with a dark line between the colours. That's if I tried blending with paint on my brush, if I tried blending with a clean brush it was almost the opposite problem where too much paint would be removed from the blend line and it'd become pale. Maybe somewhere in the middle it can be made to look nice, but I couldn't find that point.

Blending the blue into the bone wasn't too hard, the bone seems to dry slower than the blue so I found the easiest was to paint the bone first and have it cover a larger portion of the area than you want it to, then paint the blue over a slightly smaller area, clean the brush off then blend it by dragging some of the blue into the bone, but you need to clean the brush frequently. If you drag too much blue into the bone, you can pick up some fresh bone colour and drag it back into the blue. Not hard, but also not as easy and fast as I was hoping, this model probably took me about an hour to paint, which isn't terribly fast.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:


I am trying to think of ways to bring more colour contrast into the speedpaint / contrast techniques, as I think that's a weakness of any 1 coat solution, the red just looks too, uniform I guess? If I were painting it traditionally I'd blend some blues and purples into the red especially around the shadows to give the skin some variation in colour, but not sure how to achieve that with the speedpaints.

I've seen Sorastro pull this off on some of his Lord of the Rings Journeys in Middle Earth videos using Contrast by having or mixing up two different shades for the skin and more roughly blending them on the model while wet. Possibly a little flow air or drying retarder could increase drying time to make it more practical.

deano2099 wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:


I am trying to think of ways to bring more colour contrast into the speedpaint / contrast techniques, as I think that's a weakness of any 1 coat solution, the red just looks too, uniform I guess? If I were painting it traditionally I'd blend some blues and purples into the red especially around the shadows to give the skin some variation in colour, but not sure how to achieve that with the speedpaints.

I've seen Sorastro pull this off on some of his Lord of the Rings Journeys in Middle Earth videos using Contrast by having or mixing up two different shades for the skin and more roughly blending them on the model while wet. Possibly a little flow air or drying retarder could increase drying time to make it more practical.

That looks really good. He does really well blending the contrasts out into the background colour so as to not end up with a tide mark where it finishes, I'll have to try that and see if I can emulate it.

Sorastro is a wiz with contrast.
His wookie video, Sanctum and much other are alot of contrast.

Never used contrast before, got the Mega set of these from army painter. They feel... weird. Like painting with just washes. I like how they look on fantasy minis, but, not so much on sci fi

Those look great AllSeeingSkink... the Skink in particular came out really well, that's a lovely blue.

Thunderhead Studios has some videos online were he live painted with speed paints
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1469738703

he is doing Black Primer, white drybrush, speedpaint, drybrush+details

 Pacific wrote:
Those look great AllSeeingSkink... the Skink in particular came out really well, that's a lovely blue.

Cheers. I had considered doing a whole regiment of each but the Bloodletter is a bit too plain looking and the Saurus took a long time to paint. Might try another Bloodletter using a mix of purple and red rather than just pure red and see if it adds a bit more visual interest, and perhaps use a mix of grey/white/bone for the basecoat.

The Bloodletter was pretty quick to paint though I don't know if I'd recommend it as an army scheme just because the blending was fiddly, not really hard, but if you waited too long between applying one colour and the next then the blend could become a mess. I guess if you don't mind that risk then it's a good scheme for only a few minutes per model. It was a one-coat-wet-on-wet blend so it was super fast to do.

The Saurus I think took a long time to paint because I was trying to avoid the gold bits and claws for fear of having bleeding issues when painting over them, if I do more I'll probably just paint straight over those with the blue and wait a few days before doing the gold/claws to avoid bleeding. Maybe also only blend the face rather than blending the whole way down his body.

So far, I've found purple doesn't blend easily into blue, but blue blends into bone, red blends into orange/yellow, purple kinda blends into red but I haven't tried it over a larger area.

Just seen a suggestion on YT that the reactivation issue can be avoided if you thin regular acrylic with speedpaint medium. It's apparently the water that's the issue, so this, along with ensuring your brush isn't too wet after rinsing.

Can't test myself as I've yet to take the plunge, but others may wish to try.

Also adding a splash of regular white or off white to a Speedpaint to create a more opaque highlight shade works as well.

Finally got my hands on the Speedpaint Starter Set, and had a play with some Epirian SecDef models.





There's a walkthrough of the painting process here.

Overall, I'm a fan. Super quick and easy. The reactivation was largely not an issue, other than the yellow on the mortar - I think because I had put a coat of white over the Gravelord Grey spillover, but didn't wait for the white to fully dry before applying the yellow. Other than that, it dried quickly and touching up spillover with white (using the above linked tip of not watering it down!) worked just fine.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Just seen a suggestion on YT that the reactivation issue can be avoided if you thin regular acrylic with speedpaint medium. It's apparently the water that's the issue, so this, along with ensuring your brush isn't too wet after rinsing.

Can't test myself as I've yet to take the plunge, but others may wish to try.

Also adding a splash of regular white or off white to a Speedpaint to create a more opaque highlight shade works as well.

Interesting, I can't test that because I only have the starter set which doesn't come with the medium and I haven't seen anyone selling individual pots yet.

BUT, Goobertown in one of his earlier videos said reactivation was an issue *specifically* when he put medium on his brush and rubbed it around a little bit.

Another thing I've noticed with them, even if you paint within the lines, sometimes (not always) as it dries it will bleed into the next colour, and even if you paint a regular acrylic next to a speed paint (again, trying to paint within the lines) then sometimes the regular acrylic will be drawn into the speed paint. Sometimes this is fine as it may just create a dark line between the colours, other times it's annoying if one colour dominates the other and just makes it look like you were sloppy in your application. I'm sure it'd be solved by waiting X days for the paint to fully cure or varnish it first, but that's not an issue I want to be dealing with on something I'm trying to paint quickly. I think Goobertown avoided this by using is "prime black, drybrush, then apply speed paints in thin coats" method rather than the "one coat and done" method.

Yep. Slogan should be

Speedpaint: We hope you like blending, because it's going to happen whether you want it or not

After playing around with these some more, I have to say that I also really like the brush that came with the starter set. No idea how long it will last, but it's fantastic to use with the Speedpaint - large enough to hold a reasonable amount of paint (larger than I would have thought to go for, honestly) but with a good point for when you want to get into tricky areas.

 insaniak wrote:
After playing around with these some more, I have to say that I also really like the brush that came with the starter set. No idea how long it will last, but it's fantastic to use with the Speedpaint - large enough to hold a reasonable amount of paint (larger than I would have thought to go for, honestly) but with a good point for when you want to get into tricky areas.

I think it's just a #6 Round, if you want another. I've been alternating between #6, #2, and my usual #1 rounds depending on surface area on the figure.

As for Speedpaint medium. It may very well be just Liquitex Matte Medium, or the Danish equivalent as the sets say "Made in Denmark." I've used liquitex with regular acrylics and Speedpaint, and it has been fine. Anyway, it's cheaper to buy a big bottle of liquitex instead of the equivalent in the tiny bottles.

As for Speedpaint reactivation, I've not had that problem, but I do live in an arid area with low humidity. My problems are usually small amounts of paint drying before I can apply it (like for eyes). Matte Medium makes a difference there.

I like how they don't half-dry and smear during painting like Contrast does, but bleeding has been godawful for me and paint even runs up models through capillary action so control is basically zilch. I'm painting some Arachnaroks with them but they'll be useless for man sized models.

still can't get my hands on it, local store is saying its been recalled due to reactivation?

chaos0xomega wrote:
still can't get my hands on it, local store is saying its been recalled due to reactivation?

I can't find anything about a recall, but I did find THIS from about two and a half weeks ago:

Army Painter posted a statement on the delays for their Speedpaint Mega Set on Friday April 22nd via their Facebook Page, we shared the statement on our Facebook Page too. Basically the transport truck carrying thousands of bottles of the Speedpaints was in an accident and the paints were a total loss, luckily the drive was ok.

Army Painter is now allocating the sets as they get them built and sent out, so we're getting small quantities every other week or so. All retailers are dealing with this same problem and we are filling customer orders on a first ordered first filled basis. With the current situation there is no exact ETA as you can see by Army Painters statement they've got all hands on deck trying to get these paint sets built and sent out to everyone.

With that... we would like to thank everyone that pre-ordered with us, it won't be to much longer now so hang in there. If you would like to pre-order a Speedpaint Mega Set you can click on the below link to pre-order your set and we'll ship it as soon as we're able to. All pre-orders under the "2nd Wave" will ship after al the current customers pre-orders are filled that don't say "2nd Wave".

chaos0xomega wrote:
still can't get my hands on it, local store is saying its been recalled due to reactivation?

Not heard anything about a recall. My local store had some starter sets, they've sold out now and have had no additional stock. No mega sets and no individual pots, I haven't been able to get my hands on the medium to even try it.

Speed painting with Speedpaints by Kev Dallimore at North Star Miniatures.

Recently I purchased four more Speedpaints, and here are my opinions.
Grim Black: This is what Gravelord Grey should have been. A black stain which does mute the primer underneath. Flows well. Still, it's really a stain, and not for use when you need a solid black area.
Magic Blue: A vibrant medium blue, and my favorite of the four just purchased. Smooth flow unlike Talassar Blue Contrast which is the closest Contrast that I own.
Absolution Green: A good forest green color. Doesn't flow quite as well as the above which left some tiny white spots that I had to go over.
Purple Alchemy: This is disappointing. While I like the color, which is a match for Tyrian purple, it behaves like Contrast paint in all the BAD ways; basically half-drying and smearing mid brush stroke. It also chips easily. Since I like the color, I'll try again but with added medium to improve the flow. I also had the thought of mixing with Hivelord purple which works fine, but doesn't contrast enough for my taste.

EDIT #1: Have tried using Purple Alchemy with Liquidtex matte medium at a 3:1 ratio (speedpaint : medium). The flow is greatly improved, and there's no repeat of half-drying and smearing mid brush stroke. Don't know if it solves the chipping problem as that's not something I really want to test. [I varnish my figures anyway, so if the figure avoids damage until then, it's good.]

Sorry for this bit of necromancy but this looks like the spot for this...