"100 Miniatures in 10 Hours!!" Topic

Usually as each holiday passes I look back and lament about all the painting "i didn't" do with that extra day off. Well this weekend I have given myself a challenge to paint 100 Miniatures in 10 Hours!! Now this is not 10 straight hours but I will use a stop watch to keep track of actual painting time and report on my final tally for the weekend after devoting just 10 complete hours! To start I have about 28 miniatures that have some paint on them, more or less, the othe 72 are primed but not painted.

Of course if anyone else is inclined to take up the challenge please post and let me know so we can give running reports on our progress, i.e. 2 hours, 5 hours, 8 hours etc...

Check back on this forum for my progress! 05...04...03...02...01...BEGIN!

I did that once. Of course, they were 10mm figures :)

Give'em Hell Deano!

Yeah, baby! GO,GO!

deaoware: What painting detail are you looking for? I mean, 10 hours might be fast, but it might be slow, depending on how the final figures look. ;-) (I'm thinking single colors from spray cans here...) Regardless, good luck! 100/10 is probably an unattainable goal for me.

10 in 10 hours is fast for me. Good Luck.

Are you counting the time needed to set up your painting area, or do you have a "permanent painting place?" I have to get out and put away my supplies every time I want to paint something, which easily adds 30-45 minutes to my total painting times.

What kind of paint job are we talking here? I can do 6 plastic GW orcs in an hour with base coat and wash/ drybrush, or the base colors on one Reaper fantasy figure. There's a difference. :)

I'm just going to try to finish what I bought at Gencon this year, *before* I leave for next year....

Go for it mate. Sorry about the other day didnt mean it to be personel I have had a rotton time of it over the past few weeks sorry. wrong words at the wrong time.Respect big up for the Deano. Go splash it on them,cheers.

With my in-laws in town its going to be tough, but hey I'm willing to give it a shot. I really could use to have 100 more minis painted. I almost feel like I'm dueling but everybody wins in the end no matter how many you paint.

No problem Long Ben, I post so much everyone at some time or another is bound to disagree with me. As for the "quality". I intend to paint to my normal standard which is detailed but minimal drybrushing and blending. I am not counting "basing" as I do all my basing at once. And yes, I do have dedicated painting area in my basement. Anyway here is my first report:

I am now 2 hours and 35 mins and 43 seconds into the challenge and I have finished 9 figures. 5 Chronopia Berserkers from Excelsior which I chose for the easy flesh. I did add "body paint" and did a wash to the skin. I finished these exactly 1 hour 5 min and 28 seconds into the project. I next started on 4 Gauls from the Pendragon range (actually they have individual names but they are basically Gaulic/Celtic figures in chainmail, gambeson, and helms). I got really behind on these because of the detail in the gambeson and leather strapings. The faces were also somewhat small so I had trouble doing the eyes and facial hair.

So with 7 hours and 24 minutes and 17 seconds left I have 91 miniatures to go. In order to make up some ground I am going to do some "assembly line" work on some Carnage lizard rides I have which will hopefully get me 20 plastic figs in an hour. That would give the 10 I need for that hour plus make up the 5 from the first hour and 6 from the second!!! Will post later. Thanks for all the great encouragement!!

I'm now 4 hours, 36 minutes and 22 second into this and I am seriously treading water. Even the assembly line miniatures require so many passes it takes an hour just to get two or three colors on each. Not to mention I only had ten - not 20, so now I have to find another 10 easy to paint minis to make up for those. I only finished 2 minis this pass hour (a female Paladin and an AEG cleric/shaman figure). I am hoping to make up a lot of ground when all of the figures I have paint on but am still detailing are done - that will give me at least 20 in that hour. Hopefully though I won't be too far behind for it to make a difference. I also have to decide whether a mounted figure and mount should count as 2 miniatures or 1!

A mount and rider should definetely count as two. I'm going to be painting my silver helms and their horses separately for sure. I just assembled the horses today and that was a big enough task for one day.

This is an excellent post, whether you succeed or not you should feel good about it. Its a noble effort! When you get a chance I am curious what the figures you are doing are and what you do with them, game? Collect?

I want to try something like this. I paint for a living and I try to set goals like this but since I have to keep a high quality level, the time thing usually loses out. I may try this on my chaos marines tonight, its just alot of silver drybrushing and then painting in the black spots!

Horse and rider, definitly count as two. Keep up the good fight deanoware!

I might be doing something like that (OK, I don't have that many unpainted figs), but I lent my glue to one of my friends (as I haven't assembeled the figs yet...)

All right, I've been inspired... after 2.5 hours I've finished a 3" high minotaur and 5 assorted 25mm fantasy figure. Key word here is "finished", as I didn't begin them in that time period. They're for rpg use, until I need them for a game they'll collect dust in the shadowbox. :)

I can do that with 1:3000 ironclads. Shake the can, psssshhhhh. Done.

Jana that's not bad - six figures (one large). But even at that you would need to average 10 figures an hour to make th pace I had in mind. I'm 6 hours, 41 minutes and 13 seconds into this and last night I finished two Simian Gorillas from the 100 Kingdoms game and three more Reaper miniatures. In total I've done 17 miniatures in six and three quarter hours of painting. Clearly I won't make the 100 but I do intend to keep going until the end of the holiday weekend just to gauge what is possible. One thing I've come to realize is if the average gamer paints 3 miniatuers an hour (which is what I am averaging at the moment) and spends 3 hours a day painting - five days a week (assuming you miss a day or two here each week) she would paint 40 miniatures a week, meaning it would take just about two and half weeks to paint 100 miniatures. Actually this is not a bad clip if you consider the average "boxed wargame" contains about 60 miniatures you could paint up the entire army in two weeks - probably quicker since most of the painting would be "assembly line". And I doubt even the most compulsive miniature purchaser doesn't buy 40 miniatures a week!! So the question this begs is...why do so many of us claim to have huge backloads of unpainted miniatures? Do we spend a lot less than 3 hours a day painting (assuming 1.5 in the morning and 1.5 in the evening).

Yes.

Unfortunately, I go for longggg stretches without painting and then do a binge session where I paint lots at a time. Usually this coincides for some event that I've committed myself to. :-(

My last big binge was 800-odd tribesmen for our Ishlandwana re-fight. I spray primed them black but then found that the primer didn't cover all the metal so I then had to sit down and paint them all a black base before I could do any flesh. That in the space of a week! I got a base flesh coat on most of them, but that did me in for painting for a while.

I have recently been trying to do a little bit each day, but 3 hours is more than I can manage. There just isn't enough "free" time...

Regards,

Howard

absolutely!

Altfritz. 800!!!!!! Were these 10mm, mounted 20 to a base?

No. Darkest Africa tribesmen from Foundry. Maasai,Amazons, Asande, etc. I'm an addict... :-)

The reason we have too many figs is thats its way easier to buy than paint so buying becomes the main priority. I always convince myself, "ah, its just one more fig or ten, that'll be easy" but after telling myself this 5-10 times a month lots of stuff adds up. The web doesnt help either, with ebay and online stores its way too easy!

I have been inspired though, I will finish my chaos space marines as well as painting everyone elses stuff!

Thanks again for the inspiration!

I should clarify a bit. I *attempted* to paint the 800...of course, I only succeeded in spray priming and putting a black base on them. And that entailed a lot of cramped hands! A few warbands got a little more detail, but to date I cannot think of a single warrior whom I would count as fully "done"; that is , with base finished (they're all on washers), shield and spear attached. :-( There are several, perhaps even several warbands, which are *mostly* done. Sort of like being "mostly dead"...where's Miracle Max when you need him? :-)

I once tried to do a 'marathon' painting session of about 40 Space Marines. The first 10 were pretty good, but towards the end the quality really dropped.

Then again I've seen figures in painting competitions that look like they've been painted by someone with the brush stuck up thier nose!

Ok, so I'm a painting snob I went to artschool!

Yeah, I spend a LOT less than 3 hours a day painting. If you look at it realistically, your average working stiff has, what, 4 hours in the evening when he gets home. At least an hour of that is taken up with dinner, and if you want to spend time with your family, or watch an hour of tv... pretty soon it's 10 or 11pm. I don't know a lot of people who can paint that late. I know less people who can paint in the am before coffee. Weekends get sucked up just as fast.

When I painted our WFB armies I did half a sprue (4-6 models) a week, assembly line style. My goal was to put 2 colors of paint on each model every night while waiting for dinner to cook. (We have a huge painting table in the kitchen). That was maybe half an hours work.

Anyway, last night I got in about 40 minutes painting before my eyes stopped working, and I worked on several pieces, getting two finished and ready for spraycoat. That's 8 figs in 3 hours 10 min, all of which had paint before this weekend.

I'm working on a gallery webpage so maybe I can show y'all some of them.

"...before my eyes stopped working". I've certainly been there before Jana and like Nick said that's usually when the quality drops. Anyway I am going to be giving a final tally for my "challenge" before the night is out. Either way I feel like I've accomplished something with all those I've inspired. Heck, if I count the miniatures I finish, along with those finished by those of you I have inspired - between the lot of us we've got way more than 100 for the weekend! Kudos!

Theres also the question of the kind of miniature your'e painting. Some types have to be detailed properly, like Napoleonics so you cant get away with a rush job.

Deanoware, its not just the eyes that stop working, the brain shuts down as well. If I'm doing about ten Guardsmen or Space Marines you can gaurantee that unformity (like them all having a brown holster or something) at least one will get missed out and I have to go back

Man, your right about that one Nick. You get the whole batch done and are about to pop them off the painting boards and then you see it. The dreaded gleeming primer or worse yet the realy dreaded BARE METAL! Then you start looking in the same place on the others and find you've missed more of the same. I've even had a few times where I've missed the same thing on the whole lot. Brain and eye fade is the worst.

I put it down to lead poisoning.

I also have 'dropped bolter syndrome' the amount of bolters I lose by dropping the damn things whilst I'm assembling figures! Where they go is a mystery, though I did find one that was superglued to the sole of my shoe once.

Yea, I call them awe s!*ts! First of all let me just say that this was a great idea of yours Deanoware. I know for a fact that I couldn't even come close to 100 though. Maybe 20. I was trying to think of some of my best awe s!*ts. A few are the clear coat milk splotch, the not enough room on the base for the last figure trick, the after you clear coat run down the middle of your best painted face plop, oh yes one of the best the powdered primer puff, the spilled pot of paint on your finished 18 different colored French Old Guard is always nice. Man I could go on and on, but I won't. We are getting a little of thread. Sorry Deanoware.

Well, 6 days later here is the final tally: At exactly 10 hours, 2 minuts and 50 seconds I completed my 10 hours of painting. My final tally was 56 painted miniatures consisting of 20 painted individual miniatures and 18 painted mounted miniatures (which I counted as two). It has taken me nearly a week to put in the 10 hours which I certainly didn't expect but most of that is due to the fact that I didn't finish before I went back to work. I had gotten to about 8 hours by the end of the day on Monday and it took me these next three days to get the other two hours completed. All in all I think the challenge was really fun and I really enjoyed all the support. Actually I had gotten into a funk after getting back from GENCON and just couldn't put paint to brush after seeing all the well painted miniatures at GENCON - actually being used in games. So I came with the idea of the challenge and now I've built up a rhythm again and hope to get another 50 or so miniatures done in the next week!! In the meantime I'm on call for any of you who find yourself in a funk, just post a message here and I'll be sure to lend you my ear..

Hmmm...Deano, you have inspired me.

I dont have as much time to do it, but Im going to shoot for 10 completed figs by the end of this weekend. I have some that are 1/2 way done, I'll start small and see if I can knock them out. They are 20mm infantry...I'll throw in a few 15mm vehicles too.

Note to self: "Be like Deano!" :-)

Yes, we should all adopt the motto "Be like Deano"

I decided to see what I could accomplish in 10 hours after your inspiring post. I completed 25 ECW Royalist cavalry figures, 5 dis-mounted Dragoons and two Generals. All of the figures were 28mm Redoubts. Final tally: 10 hrs, 13 mins, and some odd seconds. I paint to what would probably be considered a high "gaming standard" (base-coat, wash, highlights and a bit of blending on certain areas). I have to say that it was a lot of fun working to that deadline. There were a lot of "Hmmmmmm......what would Deano do here" moments and I found the experiment to be extremely self-satisfying. Thanks for the inspiration, Deano, and I'm going to do it one more time this week before I leave for vacation.

Wow!!! BM if you count the cavalry as 'two' figures that gives you a total of 57 miniatures - you beat me by one! Plus considering the "standard" you held to I would give you another nod! I actually went back over a couple of mine with some washes and some shading here and there...everyone stay tuned to the painting forum for my next challenge!!

OUCH! Don't call me BM! Where I come from that stands for bowel movement!

Just kidding! I saw your next project (painting times per different manufacturers) and I'm sorry I'll be unable to participate as I'm going on vacation for the next three weeks (I know, rub it in!). I'll be sure to check out the boards when I get back, though, because I am curious to see which companies get the "detailed-all-to-heck" award. I've noticed that GW and Old Glory tend to take longer for me than others do, due to all the extra stuff they have hanging on them. Hope that little observation helps.