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 jah-joshua wrote:
and sipping Mimosas from a Brazilian girls navel...

Ugh, do you know how dirty belly buttons are? For sanitary reasons, you should only drink hard liquor neat from a navel.

 curran12 wrote:
Hey, I have nerve damage in my arm and I can't hold a paintbrush still. I need to pay services to have painted armies, but thanks for the insult. Jackass.

Hey, thanks for yours.

Nowadays "nerd" is hardly an insult, at least not in the way "jackass" is, so chill, please. I meant no disrespect to anyone, I just reflected on the fact that some people are willing to pay a lot of money to have painted armies, making commission painting sort of a luxury service -but at the same time, the painters seem to struggle to even get minimum wage since the work is so time consuming. This weird situation has led to the kind of shenanigans that BTP is pulling with the OP, i.e. a rushed job with an insane price tag.

Of course I understand why disabled people would hire painting services. What I'm having a hard time grasping is how someone who loves miniatures and has the ability to paint them himself would pay somebody else thousands of dollars to do what is an essential part of this hobby, instead of doing it themselves. But to each his own of course.

Because people find value and worth in different things to you, that's why. Being physically capable of doing something doesn't necessarily follow that one wants to spend the time or effort doing so.

And RULE #1 here guys.

If anyone feels any post is out of line, not in accordance with the rules of Dakka Dakka, the only appropriate 'response' is to report it using the "Alert Moderator" button.

Thanks!

 Acephale wrote:

 curran12 wrote:
Hey, I have nerve damage in my arm and I can't hold a paintbrush still. I need to pay services to have painted armies, but thanks for the insult. Jackass.

Hey, thanks for yours.

Nowadays "nerd" is hardly an insult, at least not in the way "jackass" is, so chill, please. I meant no disrespect to anyone, I just reflected on the fact that some people are willing to pay a lot of money to have painted armies, making commission painting sort of a luxury service -but at the same time, the painters seem to struggle to even get minimum wage since the work is so time consuming. This weird situation has led to the kind of shenanigans that BTP is pulling with the OP, i.e. a rushed job with an insane price tag.

Of course I understand why disabled people would hire painting services. What I'm having a hard time grasping is how someone who loves miniatures and has the ability to paint them himself would pay somebody else thousands of dollars to do what is an essential part of this hobby, instead of doing it themselves. But to each his own of course.

Time.

As you get older and (potentially) graduate from entry-level jobs to higher-paying ones, you often become more become what's called "time-poor" even though your financial situation improves. Getting married, having a family, etc are also huge factors and take a massive chunk out of one's "free" time. The other thing is that "the hobby" is made up of three main streams, as I see it: Modelling, Painting, Playing. As others have stated more than a few times now in various threads - it's actually ok to only like one part of it. Or two. There's no rulebook that says you have to love all three or get excommunicated from the church of nerds.

 Azazelx wrote:
The other thing is that "the hobby" is made up of three main streams, as I see it: Modelling, Painting, Playing. As others have stated more than a few times now in various threads - it's actually ok to only like one part of it. Or two. There's no rulebook that says you have to love all three or get excommunicated from the church of nerds.

You obviously haven't been getting the emails.

Buying GW models is THE hobby

 jah-joshua wrote:
i wish this was a business full of "rich nerds" who paid me to indulge my artistic pretentions, while living on my yacht, and sipping Mimosas from a Brazilian girl's navel...

Well they are rich nerds, just not paying enough to make rich commission painters


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Acephale wrote:
What I'm having a hard time grasping is how someone who loves miniatures and has the ability to paint them himself would pay somebody else thousands of dollars to do what is an essential part of this hobby, instead of doing it themselves. But to each his own of course.

I'm not sure why it's difficult to grasp. If I wanted to turn around and start playing 5000pt fantasy games, you're looking at, what, 200-300 models. It takes me 2-3 hours to paint a model well (including assembly, cleaning, priming). That's 400-900 hours. I would realistically struggle to dedicate more than 5-10 hours a week to it (some weeks I'd put in 20 hours, other weeks I would do nothing).

So you're looking at 1 to 2 years work While I enjoy painting, I know by around the 50th model I'll be wondering "why in the hell am I doing this to myself?" and my motivation/interest/joy will be gone.

OR, I could pay a commission painter, if they had no other projects and were working on it full time could paint it in 2-3 months (even if they have a waiting period of several months it's still faster than I could do it).

It's one thing to enjoy painting a model or two here and there it's entirely another thing to turn around and try and paint a huge army to a decent quality. It's why most my "armies" are speed painted and don't look great, my well painted models are mostly 1 off's that aren't related to my armies, I just painted them for fun.

I thoroughly enjoy modelling and painting. It's my main 'thing' to do in this hobby.

That said, once I finish the 1-200 models I have to do up, you can bet that if I were to decide to do another horde army, I would be considering a 'bargain speed painting' service. Life gets busy fast.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 jah-joshua wrote:
i wish this was a business full of "rich nerds" who paid me to indulge my artistic pretentions, while living on my yacht, and sipping Mimosas from a Brazilian girl's navel...

Well they are rich nerds, just not paying enough to make rich commission painters

too bad for them that the quality will suck.

for 17 per infantry, should they look better? probably a bit. Should they be display worthy or even worth taking individual pictures of each model? probably not.

the badly done level 6s is pretty much just a slap in the face though.

kb305 wrote:

for 17 per infantry, should they look better? probably a bit. Should they be display worthy or even worth taking individual pictures of each model? probably not.

They should be painted to whatever standard was used and agreed on as an example for the quote of $17 a pop. Regardless, they should have their belts painted at the very least. Not left undercoat black.

 Azazelx wrote:
.
Time.

As you get older and (potentially) graduate from entry-level jobs to higher-paying ones, you often become more become what's called "time-poor" even though your financial situation improves. Getting married, having a family, etc are also huge factors and take a massive chunk out of one's "free" time. The other thing is that "the hobby" is made up of three main streams, as I see it: Modelling, Painting, Playing. As others have stated more than a few times now in various threads - it's actually ok to only like one part of it. Or two. There's no rulebook that says you have to love all three or get excommunicated from the church of nerds.

Of course it's ok. Also, people can do whatever they want with their money.

But perhaps it's not that surprising that some of us - people who actually do enjoy painting and modelling and also don't have the type of income where we could spend $8k on a paintjob even it we wanted to - are a bit baffled by the sums spent on painting services.

Personally I'm not really "time-rich" (I work and I have a family) but I paint a lot in my spare time anyway. To me, a lot of the charm of this hobby lies in actually building an army, and a part of the satisfaction I get when I look at my armies comes from the fact that I've painted them myself, which required a long, slow and concentrated effort, a lot of mistakes, a lot of learning and a lot of fun. I would hardly get that kick looking at pre-painted models or models that someone else painted for me. Also, if I spent $8k on having a toy soldier army painted, my wife would probably castrate me.

But as I said before, to each his own.

I'm far too poor to pay someone to paint my stuff, but for those of you who get all hurt over someone who spends their money on a commission for WHATEVER reason they may have, I am sure if we evaluated your life, everyone would find things that seem silly to them as well.

I don't hate painting, but I find that I have only so much time and I very much prefer playing. This means fewer painted models on the table. Some people who aren't me may have the resources to pay someone else so that they can, like me, enjoy the game and not worry so much about the hobby while having painted miniatures. I totally get that people take pride in their minis, I do as well. But to get bent out of shape over what another person finds value in is short-sighted and lacks empathy.

To each, their own.

 Acephale wrote:

But perhaps it's not that surprising that some of us - people who actually do enjoy painting and modelling and also don't have the type of income where we could spend $8k on a paintjob even it we wanted to - are a bit baffled by the sums spent on painting services.

Personally I'm not really "time-rich" (I work and I have a family) but I paint a lot in my spare time anyway. To me, a lot of the charm of this hobby lies in actually building an army, and a part of the satisfaction I get when I look at my armies comes from the fact that I've painted them myself, which required a long, slow and concentrated effort, a lot of mistakes, a lot of learning and a lot of fun. I would hardly get that kick looking at pre-painted models or models that someone else painted for me. Also, if I spent $8k on having a toy soldier army painted, my wife would probably castrate me.

But as I said before, to each his own.

Exactly. I mean, I do paint my own stuff as well. I wish I knew someone local who would take the tedious drudgery of assembly off my hands. As for the amounts, I just think of the amount that I (or many of us) spend on the hobby in general (product, in my case) and think if I flipped it over to paying painters rather than yet another KS or models to join the piles of unpainted stuff I'd certainly be in the shoes of being able to pay a painter.

 Azazelx wrote:

 Acephale wrote:

But perhaps it's not that surprising that some of us - people who actually do enjoy painting and modelling and also don't have the type of income where we could spend $8k on a paintjob even it we wanted to - are a bit baffled by the sums spent on painting services.

Personally I'm not really "time-rich" (I work and I have a family) but I paint a lot in my spare time anyway. To me, a lot of the charm of this hobby lies in actually building an army, and a part of the satisfaction I get when I look at my armies comes from the fact that I've painted them myself, which required a long, slow and concentrated effort, a lot of mistakes, a lot of learning and a lot of fun. I would hardly get that kick looking at pre-painted models or models that someone else painted for me. Also, if I spent $8k on having a toy soldier army painted, my wife would probably castrate me.

But as I said before, to each his own.

Exactly. I mean, I do paint my own stuff as well. I wish I knew someone local who would take the tedious drudgery of assembly off my hands. As for the amounts, I just think of the amount that I (or many of us) spend on the hobby in general (product, in my case) and think if I flipped it over to paying painters rather than yet another KS or models to join the piles of unpainted stuff I'd certainly be in the shoes of being able to pay a painter.

Well you sir are in luck. Meg Maples is moving down there - She was a staff painter for PP, and check out the Marvel stuff she has done..
http://arcanepaintworks.blogspot.com/

 darefsky wrote:


Well you sir are in luck. Meg Maples is moving down there - She was a staff painter for PP, and check out the Marvel stuff she has done..
http://arcanepaintworks.blogspot.com/

Have a look at her pricing page before you consider Meg. Though her work is indeed unreal, her prices reflect the work involved (and may be comparable to our fantastic commission painters here on Dakka).

 Azazelx wrote:
I'm a painter, and enjoy painting my models for the most part. I've got very few that were not painted by myself - just a couple from friends and some rackham prepaints that I'll go over one day when I've got nothing else ot paint (read: never). But I've found that I hate assembling and painting (to a lesser extent) vehicles. (snip) Would I pay someone to assemble and basecoat those for a reasonable price (letting me have the fun of detailing and finishing?) damn straight I would.

What I would give to live near you. I love assembling and building the models, and I hate painting them - what a partnership we could have.

 darefsky wrote:

Well you sir are in luck. Meg Maples is moving down there - She was a staff painter for PP, and check out the Marvel stuff she has done..
http://arcanepaintworks.blogspot.com/

Thanks for the links, but you misunderstand slightly. I don't need a 28mm painter. I'm saying I could afford a painter if I needed to. Except I'm quite happy to paint my own stuff. I need someone to assemble tedious vehicle kits. I've heard she's moving to Australia, but by "local" for an assembler, I mean close by, within the same city rather than the same continent. Ideally even, I'd pay for it via some form of quid pro quo with painting.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ouze wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:
I'm a painter, and enjoy painting my models for the most part. I've got very few that were not painted by myself - just a couple from friends and some rackham prepaints that I'll go over one day when I've got nothing else ot paint (read: never). But I've found that I hate assembling and painting (to a lesser extent) vehicles. (snip) Would I pay someone to assemble and basecoat those for a reasonable price (letting me have the fun of detailing and finishing?) damn straight I would.

What I would give to live near you. I love assembling and building the models, and I hate painting them - what a partnership we could have.

There we go - this be what I'm talkin' 'bout!

And posts like this are both the blessing and the curse of the internet. It sounds ideal, except for that Pacific Ocean, NSW and no doubt a good chunk of continental USA in the way.

It all depends on what you think the convenience and quality are worth.

I paint my own miniatures.

I occasionally paint for commission (and at one point earned as much doing so as my day job of the time (sadly, more of a comment on how little social work made in the early 1990s than how much I earned painting minis)).

If I had enough money I would still hire Victoria Lamb to paint an army for me! (I just think that she is that good.)

The Auld Grump

 Ouze wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:
I'm a painter, and enjoy painting my models for the most part. I've got very few that were not painted by myself - just a couple from friends and some rackham prepaints that I'll go over one day when I've got nothing else ot paint (read: never). But I've found that I hate assembling and painting (to a lesser extent) vehicles. (snip) Would I pay someone to assemble and basecoat those for a reasonable price (letting me have the fun of detailing and finishing?) damn straight I would.

What I would give to live near you. I love assembling and building the models, and I hate painting them - what a partnership we could have.

Well I also love painting and hate assembling, so between me and Azazelx, you should move to Melbourne I'm sure you don't want to be in Iowa as winter rolls around anyway

 Acephale wrote:

Of course it's ok. Also, people can do whatever they want with their money.

But perhaps it's not that surprising that some of us - people who actually do enjoy painting and modelling and also don't have the type of income where we could spend $8k on a paintjob even it we wanted to - are a bit baffled by the sums spent on painting services.

Personally I'm not really "time-rich" (I work and I have a family) but I paint a lot in my spare time anyway. To me, a lot of the charm of this hobby lies in actually building an army, and a part of the satisfaction I get when I look at my armies comes from the fact that I've painted them myself, which required a long, slow and concentrated effort, a lot of mistakes, a lot of learning and a lot of fun. I would hardly get that kick looking at pre-painted models or models that someone else painted for me. Also, if I spent $8k on having a toy soldier army painted, my wife would probably castrate me.

But as I said before, to each his own.

There are people who love gardening, and spend hours and hours in the yard weeding, trimming, planting, and pruning in order to create a garden that they are well and truly proud of.

Other people also want to see their vision for a garden realized, but don't want to spend all of their (limited) free time up to their elbows in dirt. So they hire gardeners and give them careful instructions, so that the garden matches their vision.

And yet more people just want to enjoy a pretty garden around their home, and recognize that people other than themselves are more skilled at doing that. So they hire gardeners and landscapers to craft a vision which they lack the artistic eye to create themselves.


The fact of the matter is that not everyone likes painting, or hobbying, or either. Some people love painting and hobbying but not as much as playing, and don't have time for all three. For those people there are commission painters, who honestly speaking don't make nearly as much as their skill and effort deserves. $8,000 might SEEM like a lot of money, but that's only 400 hours at $20 an hour. How long do you think it would take you to paint 9,000 points of Chaos Dwarves to the standard the OP is looking for? I'd probably take close to that just to paint up 3,000 points.

The counter point to the cost factor is, as with any contract labor, a price is quoted for the requested project.

Had they quoted more or less my decision might have been different. I actually passed on another painter because their priced seemed too low. The quoted me a price for the quality i requested and that was not delivered after repeated attempts to have this resolved.

This is the sole reason i am upset. I even said when they were behind, that i am more concerned with quality then speed all I want is some WiP pictures. But as I stated these never appeared and if you time their videos the entire army appears to have been "painted" in 3-4 days.

I searched for reviews even with a friend and they are oddly hard to come by. I would urge anyone to post a review positive or negative of commission service. And trust me when i say i REALLY wish this would have been a positive review.

How can someone trust the quality of any work on BT site when it is very possible that the artist who did that work is no longer with the company?
There is no way of getting good commission from them without knowing what artist is working on the project.
This is even worse when several "artist" are working on a project, the project is dictated by speed and quality of the slowest and least talented artist.
This is proven in the videos where there is no consistency and BT was waiting for one of more painter to complete the project.
I could only suggest them if you are looking for something very basic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIZGKhkPAHc

is this the one you wanted tenebre?

.. it does look a lot better.

Karnophage wrote:
How can someone trust the quality of any work on BT site when it is very possible that the artist who did that work is no longer with the company?
There is no way of getting good commission from them without knowing what artist is working on the project.
This is even worse when several "artist" are working on a project, the project is dictated by speed and quality of the slowest and least talented artist.
This is proven in the videos where there is no consistency and BT was waiting for one of more painter to complete the project.
I could only suggest them if you are looking for something very basic.

It's part of a studio manager's job to ensure consistency of quality, regardless of the individual. Whether this is through objective quality checks or a predetermined painting method and style (eg 'eavy metal) is largely irrelevant, but it should be done.
I've had a few painters work under the winterdyne 'banner' such as it is, and I managed the quality fine. Timing, something else, but the quality is IMO the most important thing.

Looks better, but you can cleary seen the beards and details in the beard unpainted. Just black and airbrush on top.

Those armies look GREAT from a distance, but the individual miniature is ... well.. okayish

Man I'd be worried about taking BTP to court. A judge or jury (or whomever the deciding party is based on the type of court involved) would have to be familiar with the ins and outs of painting, assembling, and the hobby in general. Most laymens just don't understand the time, quality, and money involved in this suit. I'm mean if you took some "dude" off the street and showed off the OP's first video, I could see a great many being very impressed simply because they do not know any better.

winterdyne wrote:
I've said this before in this thread, but I'll repeat, more clearly:

To rework this army is a massive, massive undertaking.

It is not possible to remove / retouch much of it because of the 'OSL' glow effect. (I use quote marks to imply derision).

It's a full repaint (and most likely rebase) of each and every model that is needed to up the quality in any meaningful way.

I would be dubious about this - cleaning up existing models and/or stripping paintwork if required takes FAR LONGER than assembling fresh models off sprue. This is actually the reason I don't take on 'redo' jobs. My pay per hour is already low enough, without taking on more work for no return.

Edit: Due to the number of OOP and converted models, it is extremely difficult to reproduce the model collection.

An attorney definitely needs to be involved who can successfully relate what Tenebre was expecting versus what he got. Because if you don't know what you're looking for, it's easy to be misled.

 MightyGodzilla wrote:
Man I'd be worried about taking BTP to court. A judge or jury (or whomever the deciding party is based on the type of court involved) would have to be familiar with the ins and outs of painting, assembling, and the hobby in general. Most laymens just don't understand the time, quality, and money involved in this suit. I'm mean if you took some "dude" off the street and showed off the OP's first video, I could see a great many being very impressed simply because they do not know any better.

Most lawyers can do an adequate job of explaining the difference in quality. We've all heard how BTP explains their method and level system and the models demonstrably have not met those qualities of service.

I really hope it doesn't come to that tho. A good lawyer could explain the situation to a judge, a great lawyer is someone who gets the issue sorted with a single letter.

RoninXiC wrote:
Looks better, but you can cleary seen the beards and details in the beard unpainted. Just black and airbrush on top.

Those armies look GREAT from a distance, but the individual miniature is ... well.. okayish

I agree but the glow is saving it there, it must be florescent paint or something, looks pretty nice. They probably need to skip things or the painting would take stupidly long.

If you need perfect, check this out:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/555190.page#6160192

It only took 2 years. Send your army over there tenebre

kb305 wrote:

RoninXiC wrote:
Looks better, but you can cleary seen the beards and details in the beard unpainted. Just black and airbrush on top.

Those armies look GREAT from a distance, but the individual miniature is ... well.. okayish

I agree but the glow is saving it there, it must be florescent paint or something, looks pretty nice. They probably need to skip things or the painting would take stupidly long.

If you need perfect, check this out:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/555190.page#6160192

It only took 2 years. Send your army over there tenebre

But it won't help BTP if this goes to court - since Tenebre didn't ask for glow.

The thing is... that glow is actually pretty easy to do - and it does look nice, when done right - but the thing is that doing the glow effect is fast.

They whipped this thing out quickly, rather than trying to fulfill the commission that they were hired to do.

If I were in Tenebre's shoes... I would already have begun legal proceedings, I'm afraid. What BTP promised, and what they delivered, were two very different things. :(

The Auld Grump

kb305 wrote:

RoninXiC wrote:
Looks better, but you can cleary seen the beards and details in the beard unpainted. Just black and airbrush on top.

Those armies look GREAT from a distance, but the individual miniature is ... well.. okayish

I agree but the glow is saving it there, it must be florescent paint or something, looks pretty nice. They probably need to skip things or the painting would take stupidly long.

If you need perfect, check this out:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/555190.page#6160192

It only took 2 years. Send your army over there tenebre

You joke. But I have clients who've waited years for their product. The lizardman diorama (or rather the stegadon on it) I did actually was entered in two separate golden demon contests (2011 and 2013) before shipment. Finalist twice, lol.

Good work is worth the wait.