Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Then BTP Goggles.

I wonder what will happen at BTP if they do not meet their KS goal? Does anyone have any insight on the matter? Because as it stands I do not think they will be able to meet it.

Grix wrote:
I wonder what will happen at BTP if they do not meet their KS goal? Does anyone have any insight on the matter? Because as it stands I do not think they will be able to meet it.

Nothing I imagine, just microscopic amount of ego lost,

morning all. I just saw BTP's new video and I don't know what to say. Watching these videos is definitely not the way I want to be starting my mornings though. The screaming, the clapping, the awkward fake smiles. He talks about adversity as if he's on some holy mission.... to make money for himself. C'mon Shawn. This is America, there's nothing wrong (or nothing better) than some hard work and profit. But you have a messianic complex that should be looked at by a professional.

"In every adversity there is a benefit hidden in it." I'm sure somebody was saying that while their bunker in Berlin was being bombed.

text removed.
reds8n

I'm really glad I've never pulled the trigger and asked them to paint anything for me.

Now I just need to wait for Iffy to tell me when it's cool to send my stuff to her

I gotta say, I find the stark contrast between the tone of this thread and this thread on MWG > http://www.miniwargaming.com/content/-blue-table-painting-studio-tour to be really interesting. If I judged by this thread, BTP is the "Great Satan" of the commission world. But going by the comments on the MWG thread, BTP is more like the Messiah of the gaming world.

Of course, all of the comments in the MWG thread look like they were written by e.e. cummings, and not in a good way.

_Tim?

Well, Dakka isn't in cahoots with BTP, so it doesn't make any sense for those in charge here to place them in the best light

But yeah, that thread gave me a chuckle when comparing it to this thread, or even the kickstarter thread lol

Weird. All the positivity on that thread creeped me out a little. I guess it's just not what I'm used to expecting from the internet.

 Zygrot24 wrote:
For my baneblade, assembled (plastic GW kit), magnetized and painted I spent about $300. That's upgraded paint level, btw. I felt I got my money's worth because the tank is beautiful and the magnetization is top knotch.

If its ok with you, could we see a clear sized photo of it? please? and thank you.

Hey internet!

Wanted to chime in on the discussions...

Having paid for 4 armies, tanks and terrain (about USD 10k), the following has been my experience with BTP:

- BTP's main strength is communication speed, flexibilty with changes, turn-around time and reliability (you know they are not going to run away - which is IMPORTANT)
- Their main weakness is a lack of consistency in paint/build quality (I always selected the L4/L6 option)

Examples:
1) The underside of tanks are not painted (only basecoat)
2) We all know that when different artists work on your army, the outcome can be decidedly different. To prevent this, I used the same artist for adding an additional 120 clanrats to my existing skaven army. When the models arrived, the base colours were quite different with the first half (also sizeable) of the army
3) Magnets were missing on several bases or metal slates were missing
4) Gaps in models are not filled
5) The bulkier models (such as black orcs/trolls) cannot rank up properly as elbows/weapons/legs/knees/banners get in the way
6) Large metal models can arrive in pieces (beyond my ability to repair)

I have to say, when I first received my first 2 armies, I was happy. Shawn's enthusiasm is also infectious. As subsequent projects came in, the drop in quality made me jaded. As I am stay in Singapore (other side of the world, sending projects back even for free repair is a costly affair). Eventually, I turned to other commission painters (hello Winterdyne studios!) for the quality I need.

BTP offers value to a less discerning collector when I used them about 2 years ago. Things may have changed (for the better/worse) since then.

The way I see BTP, they don't put out bad product, nor do they fail to do what they say they do. They simply do an uncomfortably mediocre job for the amount of money they request.

 Darth Bob wrote:
The way I see BTP, they don't put out bad product, nor do they fail to do what they say they do. They simply do an uncomfortably mediocre job for the amount of money they request.

That and allegations that the Artiest who paint the armies are not fairly paid for their work. (Directly due to the amount of Over head at BTP.) Apparently you do get a decent job for the amount the artiest is paid...

Well just looking over their site was enough to assure me that they're no longer someone to even bother dealing with; though they may have been at one point. It just feels so dodgy.

 Arrathon wrote:
I don't have pics of my buddies models, But i can offer this small tidbit. The Blood angel army he had them do was a mech army. The tanks were bland airbrushing, without painting the bottom of the tanks, nor the back sides of the weapons (sides that would be hidden from sight) The basic troops were horrible The yellow heads were GOOPED with what looked like a blob of yellow paint that was washed with Sephia afterwards. I will give them this, The 2 hq's they did were top notch, very beautiful models. but everything else, that he paid 1900$ for..was horrible, My small time painting service here in town (just me, not even close to BTP amount of painters) with my lowest quality versus their lowest 10 to 1 any day. The worse part of this whole thing, my buddy had to send the entire army back into them, because they painted the army 2 different schemes, So they took his models and are selling them, buying new ones and redoing it all over again. And he hasn't heard from them in Weeks.

Again..my opinion of them is from seeing thier work in hand, knowing what he paid for it, reading their policies and seeing this muck up. Everyone's experience is different overall. I just wish to warn the OP about small possibilities of what could happen. If you have a large pool of cash for this commission painting, i would recommend GMM studios..lord does that guy do beautiful work.


http://www.bluetablepainting.com/view_gallery.php?galleryID=5510 Found my bud's army on their gallery (hope he doesn't get pissed at me for posting this lol)

And he didn't get a refund? That's terrible!

Seriously!! that's not very well painted for a commission in my eyes! some of those BA just appear to have base colours down, no effort with anything else on them and they also look chalky, I don't think there's anything 'wrong' with them as such, but for the amount of money you pay I would expect a higher standard, even for the lower end of the scale.

Go back 3 months, 6 months, 9 months and 1 year and watch a BTP 'studio update' at each interval. Notice how the faces change.

The employee turnover rate is very high.

Overall skill level has declined significantly.

The best painters from a year ago are all gone.

But regardless . . . how many people, no matter their skill level, can paint a Space Marine in 15 minutes?

During my Skype interview and after discussing my portfolio, Shawn asked me how many figures I could paint in an hour. I told him I could paint three basic level figures if I was assembly-lining a large batch of similar miniatures. He said that I needed to be able to paint six an hour.

Those marines look like they were primed using auto trade red oxide primer of some sort .they have that deep rust orange/red look to them esp the tanks .i don't think its a bad way for a wargamer to get his/her army painted quickly with little fuss. but not what you expect to receive in the post after paying $1900 was it ? i painted the black reach marines using it just messing about to get away from the many other armies i have to paint .i put zero effort in to them it was prime, wash dry-brush blood red or something and pick out a few bits done.they don't look great by any means but then im most likely going to give them and the orks away free to to some younger kids at the club .

Here are two pics front and back for the hell of it .remember im not a commission painter and these were painted as a short exercise in procrastination nothing more .also put zero effort into the pics as you can prob tell

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/854/snv34621.jpg/

overkill76 wrote:
Hey internet!

Wanted to chime in on the discussions...

Having paid for 4 armies, tanks and terrain (about USD 10k), the following has been my experience with BTP:

- BTP's main strength is communication speed, flexibilty with changes, turn-around time and reliability (you know they are not going to run away - which is IMPORTANT)
- Their main weakness is a lack of consistency in paint/build quality (I always selected the L4/L6 option)

Examples:
1) The underside of tanks are not painted (only basecoat)
2) We all know that when different artists work on your army, the outcome can be decidedly different. To prevent this, I used the same artist for adding an additional 120 clanrats to my existing skaven army. When the models arrived, the base colours were quite different with the first half (also sizeable) of the army
3) Magnets were missing on several bases or metal slates were missing
4) Gaps in models are not filled
5) The bulkier models (such as black orcs/trolls) cannot rank up properly as elbows/weapons/legs/knees/banners get in the way
6) Large metal models can arrive in pieces (beyond my ability to repair)

I have to say, when I first received my first 2 armies, I was happy. Shawn's enthusiasm is also infectious. As subsequent projects came in, the drop in quality made me jaded. As I am stay in Singapore (other side of the world, sending projects back even for free repair is a costly affair). Eventually, I turned to other commission painters (hello Winterdyne studios!) for the quality I need.

BTP offers value to a less discerning collector when I used them about 2 years ago. Things may have changed (for the better/worse) since then.

If I was paying $10k, I would want the bottom of the tanks painted. That is just silly that they won't do that. For that amount of money they really should. Leaving out something huge like the bottom of the tanks is a big f-you the the customer because you didn't pay even more. Even if nobody is going to see it while the tank is sitting on the table... the moment somebody picks it up to admire your professionally painted army, you have to shrug your shoulders and explain that you brought it to BTP. Hopefully you won't die of embarrassment.

Problems of gaps not being filled or magnets being left out, that is absolutely inexcusable when you are paying the price of a cheap car.

Btw, I don't know if shipping your stuff to Thailand is cheaper for you, but it is geographically closer than the US or the UK, Nuclealosaur Painting is based in Bangkok.

https://www.facebook.com/nuclealosaur

Honestly I feel that BTP scammed you. That's great that they got your models back to you quickly, it's sad that they ruined them with a crappy paint job. Hopefully you won't have to pay too much to get them replaced and repainted.

Can you link us to the pictures of your army on the BTP gallery?

I think scam is too strong a word. Remember that the 10k was the total amount I paid for over 250 miniatures/terrain or thereabouts I think.

Still, the lack of consistent quality is what eventually pushed me to other studios.

As for a link, the is the last project I did with them: http://www.bluetablepainting.com/view_gallery.php?galleryID=4019

I want to state that I am not trying to smear them and hold them no ill will other then eventual dissappointment. I am simply sharing my experience of working with BTP and clearly, shawn does have fans for his coy's work.

Apparently these are lvl 4 models;

http://www.bluetablepainting.com/view_image.php?imgID=129752

don't look anything like the standard shown in the BTP example of a lvl4 found here;

http://www.bluetablepainting.com/view_gallery.php?galleryID=842

modify wrote:
Apparently these are lvl 4 models;

http://www.bluetablepainting.com/view_image.php?imgID=129752

don't look anything like the standard shown in the BTP example of a lvl4 found here;

http://www.bluetablepainting.com/view_gallery.php?galleryID=842

The marines wouldn't have pased as lvl 3s when I was there. The orks are better and may have made lvl 4, but it's hard to tell with the quality of pics........

I'm just shocked by this whole thread. I am not interested in having anything of mine painted but this puts me off the whole idea of commission painting. I also used to feel guilty for asking for twice the retail value of the miniatures when I painted for friends of mine but now I feel just fine about it. What you get for the money from BTP and most other commission painters seems way off to me... I can understand more than 10 bucks a miniature on high end, one off HQ's but squads can always be painted assembly line style even to a high standard imho. Unless you just want tournament legal (3 colors) I can't see the value in any of it... wow.

If you're looking to spend that kind of money I'd use Next Level Painting. A couple guys I know have used him and his stuff looks pretty good.

http://nextlevelpainting.blogspot.com/

 BladeWalker wrote:
I'm just shocked by this whole thread. I am not interested in having anything of mine painted but this puts me off the whole idea of commission painting. I also used to feel guilty for asking for twice the retail value of the miniatures when I painted for friends of mine but now I feel just fine about it. What you get for the money from BTP and most other commission painters seems way off to me... I can understand more than 10 bucks a miniature on high end, one off HQ's but squads can always be painted assembly line style even to a high standard imho. Unless you just want tournament legal (3 colors) I can't see the value in any of it... wow.

I agree with you, I honestly wanted to get some part of my armies done because of the lack of free time I have. Although considering how disgusting some of these commission artists have acted, I think I will just stay up later myself and paint, I'd hate to give any of them a single penny.

htj wrote:

Marthike wrote:Dude, are you a BTP staff? If you are please stop protending to be a random person off the internet. We aall know this BTP kick stater has nothing to do with wargamming in general.

Are you talking to the person that was quoted in the spoiler? The person that the poster there made clear was affiliated with BTP?

Why would I quote the the spoiler and quote the guy who posted the spoiler, obviously I am quoting the guy, and thank god his being sarcastic, atleast not all people on the internet is crazy.

winterdyne wrote:

 Marthike wrote:
I just watched his stupid video and his lvl 10 cost $5000, one model for $5000? what is wrong with his head?

I don't even think a golden demon winning model cost that much. I have see amazing paint job, definatly golden demon finalist level sold for £150-£250.

His normal models lvl3 looks terriable, If I can earn that much money off a model like that I am set for life, I would be happy to paint his lvl4 or lvl5 models for the same price lol

But in the end this is my opinion so please don't take it as fact.

Just to defend this; a repeat job of the titan diorama I just did (pretty much identical in every respect) would run to around £5,000 including the cost of the models. It was four months solid work (around 450 hours). Edit: Not including the 6 months of back and forth waiting for decent enough parts to proceed efficiently. Pounds, not dollars. Could be done on a much lower budget and look *similar*, but certainly not the same.

Edit2: Conversely, GD finalist level -squads- I can churn out for around £150. Got a pin this year which I wasn't expecting just off a squad of BA.

Edit3: I'll repeat; not providing good quality photos of work is like writing your CV in crayon if you're a commission painter.

Have you sold the £5000 model? To be honest are you ever gonna paint another in your life? and like you said a golden demon finalist model can cost £150 which is what I am saying. I know works that can cost that much, I seen people who spent months painting the same model and personally I don't think anyone is gonna pay £5000 for it model. For that much, I pretty much expect a custom sculpt and the best paintjob I seen out there (even that is a stretch).

EDIT: I did not read the titan part. OK yes if you stick 2 titans dualling it out then obviously it gonna cost that much, the models Would cost £2000+ for 2 titans + parts. However, I did say about level 10. Sure you can paint a board with 10 titans on it at lvl7 and charge £20000 for it but can you do a "LVL 10" of a say dreadknight + custom parts and make £5000?

What has your edit 3 got to do with anything? I am not trying to attract customers or show off my work, I believe even a trained monkey can produce work like BTP. I feel sorry for people who work there. Lastly, did I say I was a commissions painter?

I find it funny that BTP has grounded to a hault on their KS. Also the videos he make, just makes his seem so unprofessional.

 Marthike wrote:

htj wrote:

Marthike wrote:Dude, are you a BTP staff? If you are please stop protending to be a random person off the internet. We aall know this BTP kick stater has nothing to do with wargamming in general.

Are you talking to the person that was quoted in the spoiler? The person that the poster there made clear was affiliated with BTP?

Why would I quote the the spoiler and quote the guy who posted the spoiler, obviously I am quoting the guy, and thank god his being sarcastic, atleast not all people on the internet is crazy.

I don't understand that sentence at all. It looked like you were calling Riquende a sock-puppet for re-posting a reply he got from another website, whilst adding little commentary that would imply he agreed with it. No offence, but your reply there is a grammatical train wreck, and I really can't work out what you're saying. No big deal, though. It's not important.

Yes. It was sold, not for that much, but you get an idea of the time taken and so a repeat job would be charged at that. Will I do another? Sure, if the money is right and I like the concept. Will -anyone else- do another is a better question. If the answer is 'not bloody likely' then the customer is getting what they paid for. I arrive at the prices I charge through experience. I pay myself less than a tenner an hour, so I'm not really taking the piss as far as money's concerned for a skilled job. I regularly do armies at the £3k plus mark, not including model cost. Same sort of hourly rate when you work it out.

Incidentally the model I'm on about took silver in diorama at gduk 2012, coming second to the sword winner. So, yeah, I reckon it was pretty good. It is the devil itself to photograph; what's not been seen (other than fleetingly in some WIP threads) are the internal details, and a lot of the scenic dressing.

My comment about crayon CVs is a direct criticism of BTP and anyone else who expects to be paid for work that they do not show the standard of clearly. Doesn't have to apply only to artistic work.


Edit: I say sold, I should say more correctly it was a commission from the outset.

Edit2: to answer the point about 'smaller' models pulling in big bucks; at the end of the day a client is paying for an amount of time from an artist of a known skill level. Of course it's possible to spend 4 months on a single 28mm mini, but you really aren't going to get a lot more out of it than you could in a couple of good, focused weeks. That's the second factor in determining a quoted price; not just how long the job actually takes, but how long it should *realistically* take. The most I can think reasonably attainable out of a single character model to competition grade is about £1200, and that would be a full custom sculpt, where I am paying a sculptor to do the work (so it wouldn't be GD legal). Something like that is going to be a one-off, and an extremely nice paint job to boot. In terms of cost breakdown, you'd be looking at around 700 quid for the sculpting with the remainder going on the final build and paint, basing and plinth work.

It's been clear for some time now, but now it's almost totally guaranteed: the chances that BTP will be reaching its KS funding goal is next to zero at this point. Good news! people voted with their wallets, and backers began to withdraw when the truth about BTP came out. At one point they may have broken 100 backers, but now they are down to 90, and a bit under 45% of their initial goal.

Shawn has left a bitter comment on his KS with a message to everybody on this thread and the other Dakka Dakka BTP thread:

There are so many of you that are so good to us, but on occasion those that are vocal and harsh are really quite loud. Anyhow, we are still here and not going anywhere despite what some people, who I would rightly call enemies, would have you believe.

Personally, I don't like Shawn. He gives me the creeps in his videos. His "shockwave of happiness" is totally disingenuous, while he is asking for our money. The clapping, the screaming, I can't stand any of it. But I don't want him or BTP to go away. These guys can paint armies faster than anybody out there, I'm pretty sure.

Don't expect quality. Don't expect consistency. Don't expect your bits back or the undersides of your tanks painted. Don't expect your army to look like it has a $10k paint job.

But if you need an army painted in a few weeks and it's ok if it looks crap, then these guys are the people who can deliver, I'm pretty sure.

As long as BTP's ethical issues don't bother you, and their sneaky practices (such as hiding poor quality with blurry pictures), by all means - take your army here.

Just checked BTPs Kickstarter. Its really imploding.

They try to get at least some coals out of the fire by claiming :

" Some of our bigger backers got super excited and decided to just do their projects. They didn't want to wait. The truth of the matter is, that other than the DVD's, we can just help you guys with your project anyhow."

Think they just try to beat at least some profit out of the thing.

I wonder why Shawn stopped promoting the KS project on his YT channel, since weeks not a word about it. At least they commented on the KS and branded all critiques enemies.

I think he dealt very poorly with the critique and somehow i dont buy his humblness anymore.