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Today I decided to start painting up my very first bones figure, basically to see what it was like and whether it stood up to the claim that you could paint it straight away without priming. So here goes;

1) Tidy up. I use my trusty scalpel as it is very good for all things plastic(or so I thought). On plastic I've found that its best to use a scrape technique to remove mould lines but found that I had to rethink this method with the bones figure. Being a softer plastic nearly rendered this method invalid; I had to do it on some hard to reach areas but then had to basically carve the lines off. Eventually after a longer tidy up period than usual the figure was nearly mould line free. The thing that is the most fiddly is the small shavings that tend to be left in the crevices; they are very hard to get rid of. That done, dropped the model into water with some detergent.

2) So would the claim of 'paint it straight away!' stand up to scrutiny? Yes and no. I decided (luckily it was the right choice) that seeing as the model has a lot of exposed flesh(its an ogre! Sorry no pics) that I would coat it with a solid foundation using dheneb stone with some thinners added. Well bless my cotton socks it worked! The paint went on without a hitch, I was even smiling. A lot. But alas... Now onto the armour. A basecoat of chaos black (mixed with water) , and lo and behold it was not happy about this. Neither was I. In panic I changed over to vallejo black primer thinking that this stuff can take on anything, not this plastic!
Again the paint would bunch up leaving bare islands of model showing through. So I had to keep going back over and over and over areas til the paint stayed where it was supposed to be.

3) Conclusions are; Use a foundation as a basecoat and cover the entire model, but don't use water to thin it; use an acrylic thinner. You need really sharp blades and to change your technique for removing mould lines.

4) You might think this has been a criticism of the bones range; it isn't. I like them but need to adjust how I approach painting them, also because of the cheapness of the models it allows me to indulge in buying the many reaper models that I like. The reason for posting this was that I'd not seen anybody else post their experiences of them; if you have, please post your thoughts and tips.

Yeah you can't add more than the tiniest amount of water and expect it to stick well, bones plastic doesn't like it at all.

As far as cleaning mold lines, yep don't try scraping or sanding, it doesn't work at all and leaves a rough mess behind. Get in there with an extra sharp blade and just carve out any lines.

Don't prime it. Most primers won't stick at all, and will just rub right off the model. For larger models, you're gonna have to use an airbrush to put down a foundation paint or just bite the bullet and do it by hand.

If you just have to spray something on it, then you can't handle the model at all while painting or fingerprints, smears and other marks will be left on the never-drying paint. You'll need to do several layers over it, and then apply a liberal gloss/matte coat to make it safe to handle without rubbing off paint.

Small or thin models don't handle the bones plastic that well. It's soft and bendy, so tiny models or ones holding long weapons like spears and swords will generally be pretty bendy and warped. You can drop the model in boiling water and shock it to a better position with cold water, oftentimes its better just to chop off the offending weapons and replace with something more rigid.

Larger models however, are great with bones. Cthulhu, for instance, is made for this stuff. Cheap and lightweight, super easy to assemble and stay assembled, and nearly impervious to damage, bones plastic wipes the floor with GW finecast, forgeworld resin, and is so much better than metal its not even funny. I want those hours of my life back putting together large metal models that fell apart if you looked at them wrong. Make all giant monsters out of bones plastic.

Some models handle the bones casting process better than others. Older reaper models can come out with less defined details compared to their metal counterparts. Newer models like the ones that came out as part of the kickstarter look much better, leading me to believe that the way bones models are cast doesn't hash as well with older models, but new ones are designed for it.

HTH

How does the paint hold up on the more flexible pieces? Can it bend at all with out cracking and flaking off? I have a couple packs that I haven't gotten around to painting yet.

They used Hydrophobic plastic for miniatures usually painted with acrylic paints?

Wow... that scares me... And I was excited for bones. Not taking primer is never a good sign.

nkelsch wrote:
They used Hydrophobic plastic for miniatures usually painted with acrylic paints?

Wow... that scares me... And I was excited for bones. Not taking primer is never a good sign.

A single base coat of foundation paint or Reaper HD paint and they are good to paint with any normal technique.

They're actually very easy to paint.

I can tell you that using black Citadel primer works very good for the Bones miniatures. I'm not one to paint over white, so I did not attempt to paint directly onto the plastic.

A little bending does not appear to knock the paint off.

My only concern is straightening out the ones that were bent to all get out. The skeletons are really bad. I keep wanting to test the hot water technique and while I have my doubts it will work, it won't hurt to try.

I think they are nicely detailed and while I'm still torn on the bendy plastic, they are worth the money (which is very little).