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I love painting my models but often I end up spending way too much time on a single piece as I don't really keep track of time. In the past I have often ended up with a half painted army by the time a new edition rolls around . Now I've started on a new Tyranid army and I hope to finish it before 8th and I hope to get some pointers from the better organized members on this board!

How do you plan for painting an army in a reasonable time frame? What kind of preparations do you make? Do you stick to deadlines and fixed times per model or keep things more flexible, do you paint multiple units at the same time and which ones should get the most attention? Feel free to discuss your insights.

Giving yourself deadlines helps, games, events etc gets you motivated to finish a unit. I break down my schemes down into steps, and work on two units at a time. I try to do 15-30 mins most nights, and will try to complete one step on all the models. This helps plan timings, if my scheme involves 21 steps, I know I'll get two units done every three weeks. You can alter that approach to suit the time you have available, but it helps me when I'm focussing on a project that's sizable.

I set goal posts for myself. If I'm working on a tactical squad, I'll give myself a week to do the whole squad. I work one color at a time, assembly line style. So, all my greens go first, then reds, blacks, etc. After all my basecoats are down, wash everything. After that, touch up everything, and apply highlights (again, one color at a time across the whole squad). It helps you keep it moving along, and as an added bonus, helps maintain a single unified standard across the unit. Depending on the squad, I may set the sarge aside to put a little more detail into. I managed to bang out all 30 of my Calth marines like this, to a fairly nice standard, in probably 15 hours time over 2 weeks.

Production-lining it definitely helps. Work on an entire unit at once, rather than doing it model by model.

 insaniak wrote:
Production-lining it definitely helps. Work on an entire unit at once, rather than doing it model by model.

This and you don't need to sacrifice quality either.

Getting a cheap airbrush to do bashing helps loads as well. Being able to base as fast as you prime, holy crap, makes life easy

 Antario wrote:
I love painting my models but often I end up spending way too much time on a single piece as I don't really keep track of time. In the past I have often ended up with a half painted army by the time a new edition rolls around . Now I've started on a new Tyranid army and I hope to finish it before 8th and I hope to get some pointers from the better organized members on this board!

How do you plan for painting an army in a reasonable time frame? What kind of preparations do you make? Do you stick to deadlines and fixed times per model or keep things more flexible, do you paint multiple units at the same time and which ones should get the most attention? Feel free to discuss your insights.

I'm sorry... but...




Don't worry I'm not laughing at you!

I kinda have model ADHD so.

Anyway, my only real helpful advice, yes I did have some , is to enter many many contests to help motivate you to work on and through your stuff. I try to either find something I'm wanting to work on, or something I need to work on (because it's part of my army for instance), to go with the theme. Plus you'll get good advice about your painting encouragement and help

At any rate good luck!

Finishing armies, what madness is this?!

In all seriousness I'm finding the Dakka painting competition really helps, you have to get the models finished in a month. I know one of my friends regularly takes part in a similar arrangement on another forum where the target is 200pts per month and that has helped him crack on.

Required equipment:

An airbrush for priming and varnishing, potentially zenithal highlights. In addition to the efficiency savings over rattlecans (far less wastage, more reliability, more control), the ability to throw down some fast, smooth gradient highlights is a boon. Cleaning kit (ultrasonic cleaner, airbrush solutions, q-tips etc) also required.

Decent brushes. You want brushes that maintain a point. Kolinsky sable (Raphael, W&N, Rosemary & Co, WAMP etc). Crap brushes mean crap points, which means more time getting them under control and worse results which means less motivation.

Wet palette. When production lining, you want a mix that lasts, is easy to keep under control. Do NOT work straight from pots thinking it'll be easier. It isn't. A large (25cm square) one can be made cheaply, easily and tastily from a ferrero rocher box. Plenty of articles around on how to make one.

Decent paints. Use paints for purpose. Cheap crap craft paints are hard to work with and produce worse results for equivalent effort (fine for most terrain purposes). I mostly run with vallejo.

Planning/Painting:

Break down the army into manageable chunks - normally for me this is between 5 and 18 models.

Break down each chunk further into stages: assembly & basing, painting, decals finishing. Don't have more than one chunk in any stage and keep the finished stuff in your cabinet and the unstarted stuff in your stash. This helps you keep a feel of progress and helps prevent burnout. Keep each stage/chunk on your desk.

Break down colour scheme into batchable chunks. If you're doing gold, leather, green - all of those are likely to take an Agrax wash for a fast shade so paint all those sections before washing them all in one go. Do the 'majority' colours first up to the wash stage before doing the next base colours. This helps in only having to do controlled washes on small areas.

For colours within each area, paint the whole batch at a time - all faces, red clothes, brown clothes, etc before doing the next colour. For washing pay attention to the above.

Health:

Maintain good ergonomics! Proper desk height and posture really does prevent a lot of back pain in long sessions. Get up and stretch now and then.

Good lighting. In addition to helping your colour perception, this stops headaches more than you'd think.

Ventilation / filtering. When spraying wear a filter mask or respirator.

Keep your painting area tidy. If you're painting something, tidy all the other miniatures and unbuilt kits away. They're irrelevant now.

Don't paint next to your computer. You think "I'll just look up a colour scheme online" and next thing you know, you're posting threads on Dakka instead of actually painting.

Set a goal. When I painted my Marine army, it was as part of a group of four of us. We aimed to paint 500 points per month, with a game at the end of each month, where we used our painted models. Running behind? Tough, you're short this game.

The first month was my core Troops - two Tactical Squads, two Rhinos and a Captain. After that, I painted something more interesting, and varied it; Month two was a couple of large models, month three was back to many infantry.

Plan your colour scheme. My Imperial Guard in 2nd edition copied the Studio colour scheme for Cadians - fatigues were in a three-colour camo, tunics in dark green with red piping. Helmets and armour were another colour, webbing and pouches in brown, boots in black. Weapons had red casings, requiring a white undercoat. When I re-painted, I simplified it down; now, all fabric, webbing, straps and pouches are green. All armour, helmets and heavy weapon casings are khaki, boots and rifle casings are black, and the other parts of the weapons are gunmetal over that black. paint the skin and odds and ends like sunglasses, job done in a fraction of the time.

I started using a "Kan Ban board" ...specifically https://kanbanflow.com/ , after listening to the IC podcast. It's really a great way to organize and prioritize your projects.

My 40K board is categorized like:
To Build
To Prime
To Paint
Building in Progress
Painting in Progress
Done.

You can color code them and put in order of priority, as well as adding specific notes. My BA are all red, Death Guard white, terrain brown, Nids blue etc etc...

It's free.

Thanks for the suggestions so far, they are really helpful.

The consensus seems to be to paint multiple models at the same time and to break down the painting process in small sub parts that can be timed and planned for. I also like the kanban board for keeping track of multiple projects.

In terms of the overall army, how do you keep the quality level consistent and what type of models should get priority? Is it wiser to start on the fringe units and basic infantry or start with the eye-catching units like monstrous creatures?

Mix them up.

Work on the basic guys first to figure out your scheme. Once you have that, start alternating. It gets really boring just working on the rank and file all the time. Use HQs and other specials to spice up your paint schedule.

5 basic guys
Captain
5 more basic guys
Librarian
yet another 5 guys
Dreadnought.

It makes slogging though the monotony of basic troops a little more palatable. There is a limit to how many guys I can batch paint at once. It’s 4, not 5 as I used in my example. But as a nid player, you probably have a zillion gribblies you need to crank out.

I second the Kanban board very strongly. It lets you plan out what you want to do, and break the big task into a series of smaller ones. My own is broken down into something like Assembly/Basecoat/Want to Paint Next/painting/varnishing/finished.

You can use them as well to break down your individual paint steps, so blocks, washes, drybrushing, whatever. It also lets you put EVERYTHING away, so you can focus on one task, while still being able to quickly and easily pull up your planned next steps.

 Antario wrote:
Thanks for the suggestions so far, they are really helpful.

The consensus seems to be to paint multiple models at the same time and to break down the painting process in small sub parts that can be timed and planned for. I also like the kanban board for keeping track of multiple projects.

In terms of the overall army, how do you keep the quality level consistent and what type of models should get priority? Is it wiser to start on the fringe units and basic infantry or start with the eye-catching units like monstrous creatures?

RE: that last point, depends on the army - for Malifaux (skirmish level game) I started with pretty much what I thought would be the most useful at first. Then I moved on to other pieces.

My Skaven, I did infantry (slaves/clanrats etc) then a warmachine (Bell, whathave you) - basically, painting a lot of little units, then followed with a "reward" of a big one. Some people like to do 5 at a time, then move on to something else. I've found I don't mind painting slaves or clanrats at all, but I hate painting plague monks! so I'd mix a few of the ones I liked in after doing X number of the ones I didn't like. It helps motivate me.

Plus, just as an aside, I keep my guys where I can see them and enjoy them!

For quality consistency some change is inevitable: you're going to simply get better at it, the more you paint. To help though, I suppose I'd pick a simple two main colour + your 'pop' colour (name is escaping me atm sorry, I mean the one you do a little bit of).

Going from a random collection of 2 rhino, 1 stormwolf transport, 2 vindicator, 1 3 man bike squad.. to deciding to make an entire chapter of Dark Angels and then choosing to make them a successor, mostly for organizational purposes so can build and field six battle companies instead of having reserve companies...

Step one – Made a list of the stuff in the build.

Dark Angle Codex Chapter
Inner Council/Armory has 64 men, 59 vehicles and 1313 Servitors (almost a whole Chapters strength in servitors, Hail the Honoured Dead)
Company 1 has 286 men, 23 dedicated transports Landraiders of somesort to be determined later. 23 drop pods also to be determined later.
Company 2 has 15-35 Black Knights, 36 RW Bikes, 6 Attack Bikes, 6 Landspeeder Vengeance, 4 Darkshroulds, 20 Assorted RW Landspeeders, 1 biker chaplain and sammy. No additional transports.
Company’s 3 have 122 marines, 20 with jump packs Want this to be oldest looking armor so decided on getting 4x Dark Angel Task Forces from forgeworld. (30 mk4 armor marines per pack, 5 Cataphractii Terminator, 1 Dreadnought, 1 Praetor(stand in for Inner Council Member or different Company Master, with the remainder guys going to fill in as needed for the next 5 companies wherever I feel like adding the figures), 12 Razorbacks, 12 drop pods
Company 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 each have 610 marines, 100 of which have jump packs. Company 5 has 12 Rhinos, 12 Drops pods, Companies 4, 6,7, 8, each have 48 razorbacks, 48 drop pods.
Company 9 has 102 men, 6 rw bikes, 1 landspeeder vengeance, 2 dark talons, 4 nephilem jetfighters and 2 tactical marines detailed elsewhere (ebay purchase gave me a random tactical marine holding cyphers sword, so I detailed these two for guarding that Blade and the Chapter Banner.
Company 10 has 102 Scouts and 117 unassigned neophytes.

Total Vehicles: 298 Vehicles, 31 Thunderhawks
Total Men: 1286 Marines, 117 additional Neophites, 1313 Servitors
Timeline: 120 Months, or one decade to finish this roughly on the 40th anniversary of warhammer 40k

That means every Full Moon to accomplish my goal strictly of the successor chapter i need to assemble and paint the following..
02.48 Vehicles
00.26 Thunderhawks
10.71 Men
10.94 Servitors

This gives me a value system breakdown of the following should be accomplished every time a season turns and four moon go from full to new here on earth.
10 Vehicles = 1 Thunderhawk = 43 Marines = 44 Servitors } all very doable numbers in themselfs in a week.

If i focus on just one at a time..
40 Vehicles a season.
4 Thunderhawks a season (maybe the last few seasons, if i do more then 1.. as those are a tad pricy)
175 Servitors
172 Marines


Determine allied detachments: Space Wolves, Knight House, Titan House, Adeptus mechanius, Each of the other Dark Angel Chapters, White Scars. Determine their squads after requisitioning all the greenwing, acquire a codex after each of the companies are assembled.

Determine Appoc Allies: To do, have some ‘nids that came with some marines with bolters I got off ebay..

Step Two: Assign gear/points to all Marines/Vehicles (hk on all rhinos for example)

Determine if anyone is going to be non-standard/new gear, in my case I made the 3rd company standout with oldest armor I could find online, and newest weapons (grav cannons/pistols, as plasma Does get hot a lot for me.) I also figured since im doing a successor that I could go off-reservation and get some really cool standout miniatures for my deathwing knights and Ravenwing Knights that http://sciborminiatures.com makes for Lion Knights and Vehicles.. to add a totem power to the chapter, because for decades ive been a Wolf-fanboi.. and who didn’t love Thundercats, or Heman with his battle cat

I found a separate page of paper for each company works best, or tabs in a excel spreadsheet.. but with paper I tend to get less confused/overwhelmed plus I still write faster then I type.

Do this twice, second time don’t refer to sheets 1. See how close to the same loadouts you come.. I was almost spot on only difference was scout company loadout. Sounds repetitive, but it Will help you memorize who gets what. So when the time to build comes you can just relax and know that your making these specific X guys out of the kit, and not get overwhelmed and just stare at your figures/bits/boxes for a couple hours in confusion.


Step Three: Storage Space
Depending on the size of a build you are doing. You are going to want, no Need storage space.
Storage Space to display your Minatures when they are finished, when they have just legs, torso, heads, space for arms/weapons. Space to store all the bit boxes you will also need to aquire.

In my case I build a shelf network, Each of them is 4’ Deep x 3’ Wide shelfs spaced 1 AD&D 2nd edition PHB +2” high. I made 3 of these and basically added ~120 square feet of storage that takes up a 10x4 area in my gaming den. Eventually it will get light strips and be glassed in, but for now as basically whole chapter is WIP its still what I consider crude.

Also while you are at it, You need to pick up a few basic things.
-Head Mounted Magnification Device ( I need one, dads not letting me use his as he don’t want me to bring it to my house as he will never get it back. Works soo much better then the table mounted things, as well you know its on your head, you focus with your eyes and can see much closer at least I can. Love it)
-Box Cutter (one of the extenable/snap off blade ones works best)
-Exacto Knife (craft store – I go to michaels)
-Wire Cutter (small long narrow snipper) to get those pesky bits off the skewdohicky that are very tiny that a normal cutter wont get off easily without destroying the bit.
-Cutting surface ( to use said knives/cutters on. I use random 2x4 left over from the shelf to cut onto.. or im also an idiot and cut towards my thumb when trimming the supper tiny pieces.. like grenades or pouches or da crests and such. There is some kinda self healing mat you can get.. but I like wood or a mtg playmat)
A place to dedicate to assembly, AND a nother (could be a couple feet away) for painting.

Step Four: Get your figures
Not going to tell you how to do this. I buy from FW.com/GW.com/local gaming stores/amazon/ebay for bits.. or bids on unpainted bolter guys, after all I need almost thirteen hundred of them, not counting the legion of servitors..

Step Four: Assembly Line
What is an assembly line? No its not going and grabbing all your friends and family and making them put the guys together for you. No way. Its your Army, if they don’t really care what they are doing.. they will just say meeh, this gun looks better on this guy or this vehicle should have a couple of these instead. You may end up with cool looking stuff, but not codex and hard to use on the field as what does it have again? Ohh yeah those assault cannons are typhoons and those typhoons are really plasma and that plasma is plasma but this plasma is grav… It gets confusing and also unless they Give a F it will take all day for 1 figure to get assembled.

If your doing a large army, you need to be more efficient then 1 figure per day. Speed will increase with proficiency. Ive built a bikes, im very comfortable with them.

I can assemble a few bike squads during coast to coasts nighttime broadcast, same with marines, the deathwing I have my neighbor put together while I was learning to do a vindicator, just a fancy rhino really. Same with predator. You can turn a rhino into pred very easy if you don’t put the flat thing ontop in the center back and instead put the round thing for the stormbolter there.

I recommend not putting the arms onto the figures until you get it all painted.

Prime everything on the plastic before you cut it off.. easier then its all done.
I also found its easier to paint the arms/weapons on the skews then off. Then remove and trim and attach to figure. After gluing will have to touch up anyway so may as well do kill two birds with a stone thing.
Paint guys. Im told to wash them at this stage. Ive not done that yet. Others can fill that in.

I keep my guys in formation on the shelf's. As a visual reminder of whats present and whos still “in warp” not bought yet or in the mail from gw/fw/ebay/amazon or in the stack of too do guys on another shelf still in boxes.

Company 5 I started with because I got a couple dark vengeance and dark whatever that gave me a couple balthasar’s so I took it as a hint. All of that company is primed or at the LGS waiting for me to pick it up tomorrow and has a dice20 representing him where would be in the formation on the shelf.

I get overwhelmed with who to paint and what to do.

Most important to me is Battle Company Uniformity. 102 men +vehicles im dealing with after the men.. as the whole chapter can footslog if need be, or hunker down on objectives and let the rw do their thing.

Nobody is getting based until the whole Chapter is finished. I want them all to have the same bases to show they are all part of one chapter regardless of the paint job quality

I move the whole 102 Men to the table. All Guys with bolters go in the back of row, heavy weapon, then special, then pistols, then the veteran sgt ( all my sgts are veterans cuz at this point.. what is 110 points a company )

I will paint all the Shiny Mithril. 1 squad at a time. Sliding them to the left and me and my paints to the right.

Then I paint all the Crystal Green. 1 squad at a time. Sliding them right and me left along the table.

Then I paint all the next color so on and so on, weave myself, my paints and the company in a small double figure eight.

Ill end with the craftstore version of hunter green im using instead of Caliban green.

Then ill go back and do the touch ups and overlay the gold im using on top of whatever is on the figures that needs gilding. All my purity seals are also painted Mithril silver at this point.

Once done I go and add the weapon colors. My various heavy weapons are metallic color coded for what is what.. So I don’t get flamers and melta mixed up and just visually different more interesting.

Plasma is fun cuz when I do.. I turn off the orange light by the furnace, replace the super bright white lights overhead with the blue lights I prefer up there.. even replace my painting lamps with the blue light. Then mix neon+ glow in dark colors until I get a pretty color blend that looks plasma-ey to me.. Smoke a little old toby and settle in and paint about a dozen or so very very very light layers onto the plasma parts of the weapons. Then Its about sunrise so I go to bed.. and get up and touch up the area around the plasma coils that .. the plasma got where it wasn’t supposed to.

Mostly takes a couple weeks to get through them as I get distracted really easy.. ohh shiny…. Ohh look a squirrel. to get through them.. or I want to focus all night on just one guy to make him really stand out.. im using bolter marines for my practice guys as again I need so many of them so may as well figure stuff on on them.. as whats 2 or 3 more when were talking about hundreds. May have the whole company on the table.. but im only doing a battle companys worth at a time.


I hope this ramble helps some..
This is what ive picked up in the past four months ive been working on this chapter. Decided to go successor, so im working on the lore for that.. I just rolled randomly for stuff in the deathwatch books as far as backstory of it goes. Fleshing it out as built guys and figure out who received what award or seal for what.

______
Others seem to have much good advice for you, i am going to incorporate it into my paintapainta too. Thanks for this thread.

Also bear in mind from what i remember..and cross referance on gw site, lists whats in each box
1 Marine Tactical box comes with 1 of each Heavy weapon, 1 of each Special Weapon, 10 bolters, 5 bolt pistols, 1 of each melee weapon.
1 Marine Assault box comes with 2 of each flamer/plasma pistol, 1 evicerator, 5 chain swords, 5 power packs and 5 j packs.
1 Marine Devestator box comes with 2 of each Heavy weapon, There is one kneeling guy in here that works for either a heavy weapon or for the sgt.
1 Battle Demi Company comes with 3 tactical 10 man squads, 1 5man devestator, 1 5 man assault squad.
If buying a battle demi company you need to get 1 more tactical squad and 1 assault squad. that will give ya 5 extra guys. and a whole bunch of extra chests, arms, legs, but not backs.