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Howdy all, Bob here, and I have run into a conundrum. The other week my friends and I were mid-game when a new player happened upon us. He asked if he could look at my 'crons that weren't currently locked in battle with the Blood God's finest and me not being a complete tool told him to go right ahead.
To make a long story short he really dug my work with metallics and asked if I would do him a solid and paint the Imperial knight he had just bought. I told him I'd think about it and get back to him next week. Well next week is here and I've decided that I totally wanna paint the sucker but I have some reservations and questions before I get started here and they are as follows:


1) between material costs, time investment, and my current lack of ability to afford working on my own collection (one of the big reasons I'd like to do this) I obviously can't do this for free but I'm also not looking to price gouge the kid too much because I like him and he's pretty new to the hobby and don't want to turn him off to it. What would you charge for a basic "tabletop standard" paint job with no basing or conversion work to speak of?


2) I've never touched a knight before, not to build, not to paint, nothing. What can I expect in terms of difficulty from this kit?

3)Again, having never touched a knight, how long is this gonna take me?

Any and all feed back would be well and truly appreciated.

A Knight is a big project and you shouldn't go cheap. As for the difficulty, it'll depend on if or how it's put together. If you leave the armor plates off you can spray everything else in metallic and save yourself a lot of time and frustration. If I were you I'd watch some tutorials on YouTube and get an idea of how much labor it's going to cost you. I haven't started painting mine yet (just finished magnets and LEDs) but I expect it to take me roughly a week's worth of painting time.

table top standards, i'd charge the MSRP of the knight, which is $157.

paint and flock sand on the base separately then pin the knight's foot on it. The legs are pretty mono pose, you can glue all that together below the waist except for the plates. paint the arms and head separately, look into magnetize weapon options too.

The new kit's nice, not too many mold lines, and easy to work with.

If you really want to do this so you have something to paint, and you want to help this kid out, I'd not look at it like a business.

Work out what your paints will cost - maybe, what, $30 maximum? Factor in another $20 for wear and tear on brushes, whatever, and that is your basic "cost" to do this.

Tell him that it will cost you that, and that is what you will charge him - if he wants to tip beyond that, he can.

If you're not going to be able to charge hourly/terribly accurately, and it's not to pay for your rent, consider just asking for a new copy of a model or set you're going to pick up. Box of something you'd use.
Turns work into physical goods without that nasty math interjecting.

It's not professional, but it feels a little better.

Is his knight already assembled? Mold lines cleaned up, etc?

If not, it's a lot easier to paint, but then you've gotta assemble it, which is no small task, especially if you're doing magnets. It's a pretty big kit.

Do you have an airbrush? The carapace is a lovely giant AB canvas, but all those little armor plates show off brush strokes pretty hard if you dont, so you've gotta be very careful.

Other than that it's not too bad, depending on how much detail you're interested in putting into it. Lots of big flat surfaces, not too many fiddly little details.

I did 2 "commissioned" Knights for my LGS, the deal was I can use them anytime I want.

The main expense for me was the base, its huge and used a lot of material to get it right.

I airbrushed mine so the painting didn't take long really.

As Nykidemus says, its a lot easier to paint when its not fully built.

You can build it up to the point before the armour plates go on pretty safely.

Well, IK is a centerpiece model. Most people want their IK done *really* nicely -- also because it's a freaking expensive, and very large model.

So, the trick to doing it fast is to airbrush it in in pieces, as obsidianaura suggests, but the trick to having a really nice Knight is to spend a lot of time on it. If you want it to look anything like a GW magazine photo, be prepared to allocate lens of hours, in my opinion.

It's a very big model with a lot of pieces. The fit is very good, but it is a bit fidgety, and if you've never built one before, be prepared to spend some time figuring out your first IK. There are a lot of articulating pieces, and you need to figure out what gets painted pre and post assembly -- again, not at all hard, but time consuming.

As to mold lines, it's pretty average for a GW model of its size. I think it's pretty decent, but you'll spend a bit of time to do it properly, for sure.