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I’ve always assembled my models in full prior to painting them. However I’m going to start a custodes army soon and wondered if it would be easier/produce better results if I tried painting before assembly. I know people do it but have no idea of the repercussions of this approach.

Should I prime and paint whilst on the sprue? Do I take the parts off and attached them to toothpicks or something? My reason for considering it is I imagine it will be easier to get all the small details right without the other components getting in the way.

TIA.

You most certainly want all part taken off the sprue and the mould lines cleaned up before you attempt any painting. The joint spots can be on very open areas so you want those cleaned up before the part is painted up otherwise you'll have scrapes and marks that you'll have to paint over.

You can attach the parts to tooth picks and such and make the attachment point a joint or hidden area on the part that won't otherwise be painted so that the pick doesn't get in the way.

After that I'd suggest dry fitting to see where it is practical to fit bits together and where its not. Some areas are going to have a smooth join that would benefit being glued together so you can paint smoothly over; whilst other areas (eg arm joints) you can get away with painting then assembling as the join area is hidden up; although you might find some of those areas might benefit a dark wash to fill in the shadowy area just to smooth over the join area.

Personally i semi assemble then paint. Something along the lines of leg torso head and backpack. Then after painting add the arms/weapons and finish up with my wash. I perfer to wash at the end because i like my armies to be battle worn and covered in grim. If you go for the cleaner look before adding the arms/weapons do the standard highlights etc

I do both, depends on the modell.
But usually I bend a paperclip and cut it into pieces. Than I put a piece into cork. Then I drill a hole into the cleaned piece - After removing it from the sprue - and glue the piece to the clip.
It makes painting the pieces a lot easier.

 Kustomer D wrote:
I do both, depends on the modell.
But usually I bend a paperclip and cut it into pieces. Than I put a piece into cork. Then I drill a hole into the cleaned piece - After removing it from the sprue - and glue the piece to the clip.
It makes painting the pieces a lot easier.

Do you find this quite time consuming?

ofc painting before assembly is time consuming cuz you are painting alot more details as it is very easy to get to them.

but you ofc has to find a balance. i would never ever do it on rank and file models, but for elites, heros and vehicles it realy makes them pop and thus it is worth the extra time.
for the basic custodes you dont need to go too crazy, just paint the head seperatly from the body, but if you make the shields you need to keep that seperated too.
but for say the jet bike, you would need more sub stages.


and yea, NEVER paint on the spure as you cant clean the parts when they are on a spure, plus when you cut them off there are grey plastic dots on every part from where you clipped it from the spure.
attatch parts to paperclips(a pin vice drill usualy has a drillbit that matches the thickness of a paperclip), toothpics or blu-tac.

What I do is spray primer while they are on the sprue.
Cut off the pieces from the sprue and clean up the parts where they were cut.
Touch up any parts that missed the primer with a paint of the same color.
Put together paired pieces (chest and back, for example. Or when a weapon comes in two pieces).
Paint the different parts independently (head, torso, legs, etc).
Glue together fully or mostly painted pieces.

Sometimes I'll save the washes for after assembly or I will put the mini together prematurely because the remaining parts will be easily accessible after gluing the model together. I do this especially with large models that would be hard to paint as a fully assembled piece.

I don't know if it's time consuming, but it sure forces me to get my minis painted before they get put on the field.