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50 shades of brown

"You need to be John Blanche good to get passable results with Army Painter product"

Not really a fan of paint companies producing "complete sets" then additions like this.

There are 79 speedpaints and 216 fanatic standard paints. That's not enough for John Blanche's palette?

Thorgut wrote:
Not really a fan of paint companies producing "complete sets" then additions like this.

Same.

Even more this seems a little under handed that they removed the flesh wash in the overhaul which seemed to be a popular wash previously, only to return it with a new name in what seems like a limited FOMO set. I assume they will sell the colours separately once the novelty of these sets wears off, unless they are going full-GW mode on them.

What does make me amused is that John has ranted on facebook in the past at people using his 'blanchitsu' name and style to imitate him, but now hes going to be promoting paints they will see people do exactly that more often.

He was probably complaining because other people were making money on his name - now he gets to cash in.

He was miffed some years ago but then came into contact with a lot of those people and is now kind of proud, played with them and even takes inspiration from their work.

chaos0xomega wrote:
He was probably complaining because other people were making money on his name - now he gets to cash in.

Actually he was whinging about a guy making a really flattering fan video on youtube for his tiny hobby channel that he couldn't conceivably have been making any serious income from, and his primary complaint was that "blanchitsu" isn't a style that could be analysed and explored by anyone but rather was HIS style for HIM and HIS friends featured in WD only and this piffling upstart was clearly trying to use The Maestro's name to increase their own notoriety. It was genuinely such a petty "old man yells at clouds" little rant that I had to move Blanche into the "the art is not the artist/never meet your heroes" category.

So yeah this does make him look like a big honkin' hypocrite.

 Dryaktylus wrote:
He was miffed some years ago but then came into contact with a lot of those people and is now kind of proud, played with them and even takes inspiration from their work.

And for clarity, this incident was well after the INQ28/Blanchitsu "crew" had formed around him.

Ridiculous.
Let me not even get started on blanchitsu.

Army painter more paint sets? Yeah no thank you.

Hilarious actually, since I think you should go back to the beginnings of army painter and Dipping... A true fit to 2 very incomplete, amateur, subpar "Techniques/style... if you can even call them that...

I have never seen the value of specific sets, simply because I mix what I need rather than using colours as they are anway

but Vallejo is liked among the painting crowed for their very specific sets of colours, so I can see a market here for doing the same but different


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 NAVARRO wrote:
Hilarious actually, since I think you should go back to the beginnings of army painter and Dipping... A true fit to 2 very incomplete, amateur, subpar "Techniques/style... if you can even call them that...

funny enough, back in the days it was pretty common locally for the Tyranid and Chaos players to use wood glaze from the hardware store long before AP made their product to recreate the specific look from the artworks
like making a tournament horde army in 1 weekend with building, priming, painting some details, and literally dipping them

Sorry, AP is trash, but blanchitsu is fantastic and the 28 community is the best part of the whole scale modeling world.

Eh, I’d be tempted by this for a specific project (e.g. a Vampire Counts army for Old World), but what I’m wondering is if Gee Dubs corporate really pissed John Blanch off?! Him calling AP the “best paints on the market” seems like a big F**k You to his recent employer, no?

Citadel have never been the best on the market and people stop advertising GW products the moment they don't work there any more isn't anything special

AP follows the 80-20 rule.

80% of the cost of leading brands and 20% as good

NuhJuhKuh wrote:
Eh, I’d be tempted by this for a specific project (e.g. a Vampire Counts army for Old World), but what I’m wondering is if Gee Dubs corporate really pissed John Blanch off?! Him calling AP the “best paints on the market” seems like a big F**k You to his recent employer, no?

Current business partner is always better than previous business partner, that's the marketing rule.

While Blanche is well known and regarded for his art style in the tabletop industry (not my personal preference but I understand why others love his work), his color palette always seemed quite limited and I'm surprised they'd choose him for a paint set. Paul Bonner? Absolutely... but Blanche? Mostly earth tones and black.

 warboss wrote:
While Blanche is well known and regarded for his art style in the tabletop industry (not my personal preference but I understand why others love his work), his color palette always seemed quite limited and I'm surprised they'd choose him for a paint set. Paul Bonner? Absolutely... but Blanche? Mostly earth tones and black.

I think his limited palette is actually perfect for a paint set. Both are about using only a few colours and you'd not need many other colours for a similar effect (maybe a black and a white if they were not included in the set). Miniature painters tends to more colours than traditional canvas painters (who mix more) so adapting his palette for miniature painters could necessitate a few more paints. The Zorn palette (not exactly comparable to Blanche's palette but still fits to a degree) works with four paints while miniature painters trying for a similar effect would more often than not use a few extra paints for the sake of convenience.

I'm actually a bit confused why there will be two Blanche sets. His style is rather constrained with a small handful of paints (and their mixes) and not one that uses many different colours. That the unifying colour range is part of what makes his work so distinct.

To me a Paul Bonner set, on the other hand, could be larger, like two/three sets based on themes. Maybe one with a goblin/monsters, one with a dwarf/humanoids, and one with more of an landscape focus?

Mario wrote:
I think his limited palette is actually perfect for a paint set. Both are about using only a few colours and you'd not need many other colours for a similar effect (maybe a black and a white if they were not included in the set). Miniature painters tends to more colours than traditional canvas painters (who mix more) so adapting his palette for miniature painters could necessitate a few more paints. The Zorn palette (not exactly comparable to Blanche's palette but still fits to a degree) works with four paints while miniature painters trying for a similar effect would more often than not use a few extra paints for the sake of convenience.

I'm actually a bit confused why there will be two Blanche sets. His style is rather constrained with a small handful of paints (and their mixes) and not one that uses many different colours. That the unifying colour range is part of what makes his work so distinct.

To me a Paul Bonner set, on the other hand, could be larger, like two/three sets based on themes. Maybe one with a goblin/monsters, one with a dwarf/humanoids, and one with more of an landscape focus?

Fair enough and I agree about the Bonner part (though I'd add that his color tones would make for a great mega-paint set as well). Regardless, I fully expect some truly epic Golden Demon quality cracked earth bases to be painted with the Blanche set in the years to come!

Interesting to read everybody hating on the army painter paint. I know the older stuff was a bit rubbish, but everyone seems to like the new fanatic line. Is that not any good?

Yeah, I have a few Fanatic paints which aren't (limited sample size admittedly) any kind of trash product and seem to have experienced the same recent, noticeable step up in quality as most other ranges.

 Phobos wrote:
Interesting to read everybody hating on the army painter paint. I know the older stuff was a bit rubbish, but everyone seems to like the new fanatic line. Is that not any good?

I used to like their washes for Epic scale minis, if not for 28mm. Had limited exposure to their war paints, those I did try some were good some were diabolical.

I'm enjoying their new speed paints though, and after getting my hands on just a few colours of the fanatic paints they are a vast improvement over the old ones. I'd switch over to them if I could get them reliably over other brands, but other brands are lot easier to source.

 Phobos wrote:
Interesting to read everybody hating on the army painter paint. I know the older stuff was a bit rubbish, but everyone seems to like the new fanatic line. Is that not any good?

it was basically the middle that was bad
Washes/Inks have always been good, original warpaints weren't bad either but changed to the worst, 1st Speedpaints had some problems but current Warpaints Fanatics and Speedpaint 2.0 are good

NuhJuhKuh wrote:
Eh, I’d be tempted by this for a specific project (e.g. a Vampire Counts army for Old World), but what I’m wondering is if Gee Dubs corporate really pissed John Blanch off?! Him calling AP the “best paints on the market” seems like a big F**k You to his recent employer, no?

It's just marketing. Marketing will always say its the best product on the market because why would it say anything else? Every product is the bestever when it goes through official marketing.

It's the same as how every preview interview for a film will have every actor and director showering praises on how amazing and awesome the film is and how revolutionary and groundbreaking it is. The negatives only come out if the film absolutely crashes and then its all "well I told them it was the wrong choice but they didn't listen to me" and so forth.

Yall are overthinking it - it is marketing, but its marketing fpr the simple reason that JB will be making money off the sales - of course hell say its the best thing ever.

That's a lot of paints to recreate the Zorn palette. Neat idea though.

Another way to look at this...

John Blanche has given a hell of a lot to the hobby - 40k isn't 40k without Blanche, whether you like his style or not. With that being said, how much has he actually made - financially - as an artist?

A significant proportion of his art is likely locked away in GWs vaults, and outside of a few niche projects (the odd personal art book, some prints, gifts to friends etc), thats where it will stay. Unlike what we've seen from some other artists - especially over the last two years - he'll never be able to trot out a piece on ebay to cover some bills.

I'm not trying to suggest he wasn't paid well by GW, but I also get the impression (again, based on his art books and such) that money wasn't exactly a driver; its unlikely he got paid what he really should have been, and I imagine he didn't exercise stock options and the like (unlike others in the industry, who were able spin that into starting there own companies).

A lot of these people - Blanche, Stallard, Sawyer etc - are getting on in years. Something like this that helps cover bills... really, why not?

 Gomezaddams wrote:
Another way to look at this...

John Blanche has given a hell of a lot to the hobby - 40k isn't 40k without Blanche, whether you like his style or not. With that being said, how much has he actually made - financially - as an artist?

A significant proportion of his art is likely locked away in GWs vaults, and outside of a few niche projects (the odd personal art book, some prints, gifts to friends etc), thats where it will stay. Unlike what we've seen from some other artists - especially over the last two years - he'll never be able to trot out a piece on ebay to cover some bills.

I'm not trying to suggest he wasn't paid well by GW, but I also get the impression (again, based on his art books and such) that money wasn't exactly a driver; its unlikely he got paid what he really should have been, and I imagine he didn't exercise stock options and the like (unlike others in the industry, who were able spin that into starting there own companies).

A lot of these people - Blanche, Stallard, Sawyer etc - are getting on in years. Something like this that helps cover bills... really, why not?

As for them doing it an making a buck, yeah why not, professional athletes do it all the time. That said I'm not lining up to buy what ever car or fragrance brand they are helping to advertise either.

As for Blanche, I can certainly recognise his importance to the hobby and specifically 40K. However my first thought about him is as an illustrator, not a model painter, so I find the link a bit tenuous. I'd get it more if he put his name to a set of pens or notebooks for sketching or something, at least in terms of his name being a recommendation. Though perhaps that's because I never considered trying to paint models with the same pallet as Blanche is known for, outside of some Mordor orcs perhaps.

 Dawnbringer wrote:
As for Blanche, I can certainly recognise his importance to the hobby and specifically 40K. However my first thought about him is as an illustrator, not a model painter, so I find the link a bit tenuous. I'd get it more if he put his name to a set of pens or notebooks for sketching or something, at least in terms of his name being a recommendation. Though perhaps that's because I never considered trying to paint models with the same pallet as Blanche is known for, outside of some Mordor orcs perhaps.

He famously used GW paints for his illustrations, so perhaps his recommendation implies that these colours are just as good for 2d as for 3d use?

He's also had some very serious health issues in the last few years. I can't begrudge anyone using their fame to secure their financial situation

 kodos wrote:
I have never seen the value of specific sets, simply because I mix what I need rather than using colours as they are anway

but Vallejo is liked among the painting crowed for their very specific sets of colours, so I can see a market here for doing the same but different


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 NAVARRO wrote:
Hilarious actually, since I think you should go back to the beginnings of army painter and Dipping... A true fit to 2 very incomplete, amateur, subpar "Techniques/style... if you can even call them that...

funny enough, back in the days it was pretty common locally for the Tyranid and Chaos players to use wood glaze from the hardware store long before AP made their product to recreate the specific look from the artworks
like making a tournament horde army in 1 weekend with building, priming, painting some details, and literally dipping them

Idk, sometimes you find a paint or a set that are just perfect for what you like. I really like Scale 75’s African Shadow paint because it works as a base color for so much, dries super matte, and I don’t have to mix anything. Their true metallic metal gold/silver sets are quite nice even if sometimes I still prefer to go straight to Vallejo Metal color.

Makes sense to offer a paint set of the essentials for a painting style, and at least it’s not a “OMG SLAPCHOP” set with YouTube peoples soy faces plastered on the packaging.


Edit: Also I recently picked up a couple of the Warpaints Fanatic triads and I think they’re great and would be really helpful to a beginner. Most of the time I still find myself using white or pale yellow to gradually highlight since some of the jumps are too stark, but the paints themselves are nice. Way better than the Army Painter products of yesteryear.