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This is probably a recipe for some matches with gasoline but here goes anyway. Basically any site/gallery you browse you will see 'em. Folks with poor - to decent tabletop quality painting, a fancy logo, big words ( pro painted, highest detail, comission this and comission that etc. ) and calling themselves a studio. People can ofcourse do what they want, I just really don't get it. I just saw a Blood Angels miniature on sale for 200 dollars that had gotten 5,4 on CMON.

I am, in the most neutral and objective kind of way interested: What's up with that, what's the idea?

It just somehow gives a weird impression to call your work professional, pro painted to the finest detail when it's getting a 5/10. I guess you can understand "pro painted" two ways, but to me the term does include a promise of quality, not only that the person is doing it for a living. The great painters I understand, this is in no way directed at them. There are some truly professional comission painters out there with awe-inspiring work. And I'm fine with people doing this, I just find it a bit odd.

Perhaps that's their product: Table top quality at that pricing level.


Not everyone can afford museum pieces for their hobby.


That said, if they're pricing it as a 10 but selling a 5, then they're trying to make money and either are too enthralled with their own skill to think it may not be worth that price, or they just want to make a quick buck.

People want to buy more minis, minis cost money, they come upon the brilliant idea to make money from what they're already doing. They have no idea what their stuff is worth and throw a random number on a paintjob. Eventually they lower it and figure out what can sell. After a few months they realize they'd make more money just getting a job at McDonalds than painting row after row of marines and quit painting other peoples' minis all day.. This is the life cycle of the majority of painting studios.

However, I'd say there's more of a market for tabletop-quality minis than there is for showcase stuff. If you can crank out okay-looking models for your customers that just want their army painted, and meet the deadline, you're already a better artist in my eyes than all the Crystal Brush winning superstars CMON can crank out. Professional just means you're getting paid, and low cost work is more lucrative if you're efficient with your time and energy.

Surely painting models for money is a pretty key definition of "professional painter". Doesn't necessarily make them any good.

 RunicFIN wrote:
This is probably a recipe for some matches with gasoline but here goes anyway. Basically any site/gallery you browse you will see 'em. Folks with poor - to decent tabletop quality painting, a fancy logo, big words ( pro painted, highest detail, comission this and comission that etc. ) and calling themselves a studio. People can ofcourse do what they want, I just really don't get it. I just saw a Blood Angels miniature on sale for 200 dollars that had gotten 5,4 on CMON.

I am, in the most neutral and objective kind of way interested: What's up with that, what's the idea?

It just somehow gives a weird impression to call your work professional, pro painted to the finest detail when it's getting a 5/10. I guess you can understand "pro painted" two ways, but to me the term does include a promise of quality, not only that the person is doing it for a living. The great painters I understand, this is in no way directed at them. There are some truly professional comission painters out there with awe-inspiring work. And I'm fine with people doing this, I just find it a bit odd.

When you see artwork in the world do you think it's all good ? Being a Professional Painter does not mean they are good. It just means they get paid for their work. If someone is willing to pay you to do it wouldn't you ? This is one of the things I learned in art school when I was growing up. Even some of your best artists in the world aren't that good. Making a name for yourself is the first thing you learn.

Scores here are based off of peoples opinions. What some might find ugly others find beautiful and acceptable because they might not be able to paint.

There are two possible scenarios - over inflated self worth. In todays society, a highly likely possibility.

The other already being largely addressed - tabletop quality (however you define that) is a much larger market than display quality.

If you are a fast painter who can produce mediocre paint jobs at a rate that allows you to net a decent income...those jobs are much easier to find than an outstanding display quality paint job. If your site and gallery are filled entirely with your best, high end work - it doesn't allow customers to see what they will be paying for. Managing expectations if you will.

Looking at my own clientele - I probably make more off my 15 minute paint jobs than I do off from my 15 hour paint jobs. Not only that - but I have a good 3 month backlog of 15 minute paint jobs, whereas my backlog of 15 hour paint jobs is probably closer to a months worth of work. There just aren't that many people out there who are willing to pay $700+ for a miniature. There are many more who are willing to pay $700+ for a whole army though.

Other than a handful of fat cats - your customer base for high end paint jobs is really limited to manufacturers. Many of them have painters who they deal with (either internally like Heavy Metal or specific independents that they have a long relationship with). It is risky for them to rely on an untested independent to paint a miniature on schedule for a release.

However, most people could (if they wanted to) afford to pay $5-10 per miniature to clean, assemble, paint and base it. Since many people truly don't enjoy painting miniatures, and many people are truly slow at painting miniatures - it isn't a bad deal for those who are able to produce volume...

You know...Fast, Cheap, Good - pick two out of three.

It's also worth pointing out that CMoN is an unreliable guide as to paint quality. I've seen an awful lot of good miniatures scored low simply because they weren't painted by multiple-GD-winners or by someone in the CMoN 'in' crowd.

Also, don't discount people "hype"-ing their product. "Marketing" is a big component to anything these days and keywords are essential on the web when trying to snag potential buyers from demographics....Bill Hicks said some things about marketing and those in the industry that I agree with...

I am not sure ...is this a rant or a question or just a big declaration?
(being honest here).

I can agree with the overall sentiment (if you are getting paid for it, its professional) and that some people just want painted minis and are willing to pay for basic painted minis.

When dealing with purely luxury goods, I have no problem with high prices - after all, we are not talking about heart medication here.

However, I would have a serious problem if the product received did not match what was advertised or promised (great minis in the pics, but bad minis delivered).

 insaniak wrote:
It's also worth pointing out that CMoN is an unreliable guide as to paint quality. I've seen an awful lot of good miniatures scored low simply because they weren't painted by multiple-GD-winners or by someone in the CMoN 'in' crowd.

Couldn't agree more.

 Sammoth wrote:
If someone is willing to pay you to do it wouldn't you ?

I do if the price is right ( what 90% of people are willing to pay I just don't see worth my time, I rather paint my own minis and work in another job to make a living like someone mentioned before. ) I've painted for 2 stores, 3 people and one game manufacturer before. But still... I'd never call myself a professional nor a studio. But that's just me.

I guess it ( the topic ) comes down to the mentioned market bit, or in some cases, a little overconfidence.

A. As someone who paints "OK" minis, I actually understand I am not the best. So to reflect that, I charge very little.
B. Probably common, but people want more table top ready models than display models.
My two cents

Do you have any examples of this work you claim is subpar for the price being asked?

I don't particularly see the problem myself. If you paint absolutely horrendous miniatures (say only a basecoat) and you manage to sell it to people, great.

If you make said horrendous miniatures, overprice them and as a result nobody buys them, mweh, who cares, no harm done.

If you are an amazing artist and fail to sell your stuff, your prices are most likely too high and you need to come down, at which point you are very likely unable to produce the miniatures in the expected time to make a profit.



Painting is intensive work. Looking at my miniature collection, I have 1000+ hours of work in it and most of it is high-end tabletop coloring at best. If I paint a model and have to charge a decent hour wage, you're looking at something like 50 euro for a space marine, and I doubt anybody is going to buy it at that price.

At the end of the day, becoming a painting studio is more of a "I can live with less money because I like painting stuff" than it is a get-rich-quick scheme. It is far too time intensive to make "good" money with unless you're a big name in the business.

And truly professional paint jobs can get REALLY expensive real fast.

http://arcanepaintworks.blogspot.com/p/commissions.html

Just check out Meg here. She paints gorgeous models, and charges a price to match.

The problem is you need to charge appropriately for your time, and an experience painter can put out quality work much faster than an inexperienced one.

I am pretty sure that in order to be a "professional" you must make enough money from the said trade to live on. The problem here is that people are claiming to be "pros" and they don't seem to have the painting skill to be considered professional. I paint nice tabletop quality miniatures and sell them but by no means do I claim to be a professional. If I had a larger inventory of painted models I could certainly be considered a pro but it will take years to reach that level.

Think of it like this: - insert family-friendly analogy here-. Its the same thing when you label something "professionally painted" and its just a tabletop quality. Very disappointing.

Edited by insaniak

To be honest, as long as things are done neatly, tabletop or display can both be professionally done. I've done both.

Theik wrote:
If I paint a model and have to charge a decent hour wage, you're looking at something like 50 euro for a space marine

Basically this, for me to pick up my brush. But some folks and stores are willing to pay this. 90% won't though. And personally I'm not that much into "comissions" anyway- I do singular miniatures at times but would never paint an army. Well, except if the payment would reflect the hours...

Counterpoint, why are you expecting golden daemon show pieces at "reasonable prices"? a 5.4/10 is a pretty good paint job. Technically a 3.0 is tabletop standard. I see 2.0 as tabletop minimum, and anything at 1.... i suspect that the model's condition is such that even if you gave it a decent paitjob, the glue that ran everywhere and traces of finger-prints and crooked arms defeat any paintjob applied.

if you're paying, say $100 for a squad of 4.0-5.0 tac marines, then you somehow pulled something off and got lucky. There's a lot of costs to consider: buying the kit, cutting, cleaning. Then several stages of painting and assembly and basing. Material costs at every step+labor. If we start with material costs at $50, that's $5 a model for paint job. it's about an 30 minutes of work from box to base per model for a 3.0 paint job (assuming you are moving from one model to the next, and not counting any waiting time). at ten models that's 5 hours of work. About half of a work day. As you start scaling on the detail, the time cost goes up, and so too does the material cost. $200 for a tac-squad at 5.0? Yeah, that's about fair.

I don't know what model you were looking at, so I don't know what it comes down to. But then you also have to look at the flip-side of it, that this guy might be riding on the hope that someone needs a model fast because they're haded to the tournament and little Mr. Miffy ate Sargeant Awesomicus, and you need a replacement right meow.

the one thing that *I* don't get, is why every gamer feels the need to be indignant about the fact that anything handled by anyone automatically destroys the value of the object and reduces it down to the cost of pennies. I've had people push me to sell them my stuff, while at the same time insisting that I drive the price down to the point where I'd honestly just throw it in the trash. I'm not stupid. If you're on my case and you ask about whether I've sold something off on a regular basis, it's clear you want it, and find it valuable. I'm not going to sell it at a tenth of what the store is selling it for, just because it's not behind a glass counter. (I'm especially looking at you MTG players) Same thing with books. I'd read through them , they'd come out the other end in near-mint condition (as if it were handled a few times at the book-store), and people insist on $2, instead of the 50% of $15 I was asking. This is the one thing that just drives me nuts. If you want to pay flea-market trash prices for stuff, don't set a demand for gently used items that've only been handled with white gloves.

Yeah I don't really get why people in this hobby (or cards, for that matter) are so obsessed over "mint" conditions. When I bought the collector's edition of the new 40k rules I was given a normal ruleset for free because GW screwed up the shipping and wanted to make up for it.

I opened it and read through it once. According to a regular at our club, this "devalued the book" and "giving more than 10 euro for it would be silly".

I ended up selling the book for 40 euro to somebody who honestly couldn't even tell I had read it once (it was, after all, in perfect condition), but for some reason, just the idea that somebody else has taken the book's virginity seems to lower its value.

Likewise, models seem to devalue like crazy if you use them, which to me makes no real sense. Obviously if you drop it, chip off paint or throw it against somebody's face it's going to get broken and is no longer in perfect condition, but I own miniatures to play with them. I sometimes sell them when I no longer play an army or if I decide I have improved in my skills since doing them and want to start over, but somehow people believe that the fact that I have used them to play with somehow makes them less valuable than the grey plastics they came in originally.

Oddly enough, this seems to especially come from people who have horrendously painted miniatures themselves. I can only imagine that it is partly because they simply do not take the effort themselves to properly paint their miniatures, so they do not realize the time and effort that goes into them, regardless of them having been used or only looked at.

Well to be fair Second hand miniatures may not match your army the way you want it to. that usually means stripping and repainting. which is god awful depending on how its built and painted. the rare exception to this would be something like orks, which look fine mismatched.

As for books and collectable card games and stuff, it probably just the collectors mindset like comic books they expect everything to appreciate in price dramatically (like those first edition comics and stuff). some cards can get that way but not all.

 Desubot wrote:
Well to be fair Second hand miniatures may not match your army the way you want it to. that usually means stripping and repainting. which is god awful depending on how its built and painted. the rare exception to this would be something like orks, which look fine mismatched.

As for books and collectable card games and stuff, it probably just the collectors mindset like comic books they expect everything to appreciate in price dramatically (like those first edition comics and stuff). some cards can get that way but not all.

There's ways around that: Deathwatch armies, mercenary armies, etc. If you are stripping-repainting, then why are you buying comission minis? It's one thing to buy junk lots or army dump sell outs, because someone doesn't want the stuff anymore, they dont' want their money back, they just want to get rid of it. In that case stripping is fine because you are probably paying less-than-new prices. That's a different scenario. But if the seller advertises as a painting service, and you're intent is to strip the model upon receipt.... i... uh.... just.... don't understand that. I'll be honest with you. If you are seriously considering buying the second-hand army, you've gone through the process of coming to the conclusion that you are satisfied with the assembly/cleaning done to the models. If you are buying a new model that falls under comission.... same thing applies.

As to the colormatching: it's also completely possible for the same mis-match to happen just as you paint. Dye lots could change on you (like GW seems to like to do about every 2 years) or you change paint lines, or your mixing is off by a certain amount, or your paint style changes, or you forgot how to do something since the last time you painted the army and it's been weeks/months, your brush deteriorates or gets replaced and doesn't behave the same way.... you are just as likely to get an inconsistent coloring in your army by doing your own painting.

I get the collector's mindset. I've encoutnered collectors that honestly valued what you had and honestly valued what they had, but then there's people who seem to think that something only has value if they themselves own it. I mean, lets say a refurbished Ford truck from the 1940s... the job wasn't done quite right, the parts used aren't the ones on the original vehicle, and some things could use a spot of attention, but that doesn't mean that that truck is now suddenly worth as much as the scrap junker still rusting in Billy two-teeth's swamp. Converseley, just because billy two-teeth has a 1940's truck doesn't mean it's a collector's item if it's been rusting and needs a back-hoe to be removed from the ground, along with an electro-magnet to get the parts that fell off and sank into the mud underneath it. All I'm asking for is a fair assessment.

 poda_t wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
Well to be fair Second hand miniatures may not match your army the way you want it to. that usually means stripping and repainting. which is god awful depending on how its built and painted. the rare exception to this would be something like orks, which look fine mismatched.

As for books and collectable card games and stuff, it probably just the collectors mindset like comic books they expect everything to appreciate in price dramatically (like those first edition comics and stuff). some cards can get that way but not all.

There's ways around that: Deathwatch armies, mercenary armies, etc. If you are stripping-repainting, then why are you buying used minis? It's one thing to buy junk lots or army dump sell outs, because someone doesn't want the stuff anymore, they dont' want their money back, they just want to get rid of it. In that case stripping is fine because you are probably paying less-than-new prices. That's a different scenario. But if the seller advertises as a painting service, and you're intent is to strip the model upon receipt.... i... uh.... just.... don't understand that. I'll be honest with you. If you are seriously considering buying the second-hand army, you've gone through the process of coming to the conclusion that you are satisfied with the assembly/cleaning done to the models.

If its not what they want then its not what they want having them make a deathwatch or mercenary army is kinda besides the point. And im fairly sure most people arnt going up to commission painters to nickle and dime them just to strip (though i wouldn't be surprised if its happened)
"If you are seriously considering buying the second-hand army, you've gone through the process of coming to the conclusion that you are satisfied with the assembly/cleaning done to the models."
This is not the way EVERYONE thinks. as well Second hand army can mean more than a well painted full lots and to be frank in a swap shop/flee market style environment, the inner haggler tends to come out looking for a better deal. its diffrent buyign directly from a store and stuff.

As long as someone gets paid to do a job, weather they're good at it or not, can claim to be a "pro". The person painting the figure can charge what he likes. That doesn't mean anyone will or should buy it.


Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and some people need glasses.

Theik wrote:
just the idea that somebody else has taken the book's virginity seems to lower its value.

People that still have their virginity, value it greatly

If quality client gets is equal to quality in advertising, it's OK. If someone prefer to play than to paint, and thinks that prices are fair, who are we to judge? Why would we bother?

And I think that there is an analogy to clothes. We all value custom-made, tailored clothes, right? But most of us actually reads it wearing factory-made mediocre-quality jeans or sth. That was what we was willing to pay for. Of course some factories charge more for the same quality, but we don't blame them, don't tell them how to go about their business, we just buy other brands if we think they charge too much.

 Flinty wrote:
Surely painting models for money is a pretty key definition of "professional painter". Doesn't necessarily make them any good.

I'd expect a pretty good paintjob from a professional painter. To my mind, professional is in the same league as skilled artisan - someone time-served, experienced, and good at it.

Someone who's painting tabletop quality for money is (to me) a commercial painter.
I wouldn't have a problem with someone being a commercial painter - anyone who paints for pay has my respect - but if they claimed to be a pro I'd expect some consistent high-quality work.

But that's just what I think.

I think you have Professional confused with Outstanding.

Both the CEO of McDonalds and the guy who owns the corner burger joint are professionals. Only one of them could be considered outstanding.

 Grey Templar wrote:
I think you have Professional confused with Outstanding.

Both the CEO of McDonalds and the guy who owns the corner burger joint are professionals. Only one of them could be considered outstanding.

I don't know, I'd call both of them outstanding: Getting that CEO position isn't easy, and it's certainly not easy when you're competing against chains. I've encountered "professionals" in construction as well, and the evidence can be seen in the "creative" "workmanship" employed in the "work" that was done on the $750k house I live in.

Either way, what does the skill of the painter matter? I think most abstract artwork is fit to go from easel straight to the fire or recycling bin. Going through all of the steps from shrink-wrap to light box, there's a lot of time. If you're buying a piece that fits under the "comission" label, whether commercial (Thank you Chrissy_J, you capture the spirit of the argument and the idea) or professional, you're paying for a service. If you want Jamie's "I'm quitting because I can't take this to college" army, then, yeah, you're not paying for a service, you're buying second hand, and the effort only applies if you choose to value the fact that you can consider this a done army, and you really, really, really don't want to spend time painting. Even if the paint-scheme is.... "creative" in it's color scheme (but well executed, meaning 3/10 or better), it's uniqueness makes it attractive because it makes it harder to swipe off of you, and easy to ID the owner if it got misplaced.

Then there's also the utility of it. Are you really going to buy a model that's better than a 5/10? really? I'm going to be touching it at least 10 times each game, if not more, which will cause wear and inevitable damage to the paint job. A display piece is quaint, lovely, but I don't have the space for it, and I wouldn't play with it. Now, in this sense, I completely agree with OP, because I've looked at GWs models, and they are just bloody ugly to begin with, but that then comes back to what's been repeated since what, about the 3rd or 4th post? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Doing something as a profession doesn't mean your good at it.

But on the hine sight who cares they either get buisness or they don't nothing to see here folks.