"Life is too Short to paint" Topic

Ok so I have scuplted standing almost real scale 1/144 figures (which was fun) and have started cleaniing them up and painting them to try a new approach of clear bases.

However I realise there is more to life than painting. Even a single BMP-1 company of infantry, about 80 figures, is a lot of messing about and for what? My usual system is prone figures integrally printed on a base. Ideal for play and easy storage, lots to a single compartment. On the road they do look daft lying down on grass in the middle of the road but no dafter than anybody else.

So this will be my first and last company of clear based figures, overall they do look a bit better but what a waste of time, I could be planning my nest battle instead. I will show some pictures of the finished company as the clear bases are better but just not worth the exta effort if you are a player not a modller.

Since you're printing your own, why not make separate stands for figures lying down and marching down the road? You shouldn't need too many of the latter, since your realistic rules will slaughter them anyway for being out in the open.

Winston sounds annoyed, which would make your time well spent.

I like painting my toy soldiers and tanks, etc.

Funny I thought a lot of battles were fought in dence Urban areas. There troops have to walk either side of the road but down the road they go, even in the UK we have houses directly next to tarmac.

Hmmmm, at this scale, can't you just spray paint them green, or other appropriate colors?

Painting with a brush should be pretty easy too.

For Cold War, no need to paint any flesh, since you can just chalk the green/other colors up to face and hand cream camo.

For the prone figs, if you printed them on a thin sprue by their feet, you can easily clip them off after painting/sealing, and then quickly and easily glue them down to a small, thin piece of clear plastic – thinking that free, clear hard plastic many products come in today from your local retailers.

Glue in place on the plastic with a small dot of Elmer's White Glue/PVA, applied with a toothpick to their bellies. This glue doesn't fog the clear plastic.

Done.

I imagine I could paint a company of troops in about 5 minutes, or less, if the spray can works. Doesn't get much faster than that.

Gluing in place should be pretty quick too.
I'd love to see that, and they would them match any terrain you place them on.

Any chance of your printing troops like that for the Americans, Soviets, West Germans, and British?

Could use some Danes and Swedes too.

I need some prone troops. Want rifles, MGs, RPGs/LAWs, Milan /Sagger/TOW/Other A/T Rocket teams, etc..

I'm torn between using 4 figs to a base for a squad, or going for 1:1 scale ratio. My guess is for many squads I can just go either route. West Germans may need to be 1:1 due to their smaller squads in their Marders – fewer troops per base, or just a few more, depending upon if modeling fire teams or squads, respectively.

Thresher,
You are probably right at the moment the Russians are hand painted khaki then a grey helmet and just a bit of black for boot a and gun barrels. Finaly I flocked the very small bases with the flock of the Hexon II. I'm not tolerant of painting :-) and it is the Utter Drivel thread :-).

In frustration after the post I painted some bases black and tried it on the clear base and it did not look much different. I am now having a go at painting some bases a neutral grey so as to have minimum contrast over a range of base colours (our newer Hexon bases are 3 colour) and ploughed files are often in use, great to confuse the enemy is it a minefield or a ploughed field?

Regarding troops to be honest with my near scale figures (much closer than the metal men I have) and having a resolution of 0,1mm limit on printer resolution figures look like figures and the weapons are very alike at viewing range of 4 ft. Certainly you cannot get different helmet shapes at real scale (1/144), metal figures do so by having circus freaks not "Real Men" but I prefer realistic to cartoons. So unless there are drastic differences, like say the position of a bipod on a SAW eg. the RPk 16 SAW it's well back compared to say an MG 43 you would not see the difference.

As always it's personal preference. However the clear bases may be a major advantage. However to work the clear base needs to be thin, no more than about 1mm to avoid seeing the edge. This is fine for me as I am happy and always pick up the base by the models, some modellers get twitchy about this even basing 1/144 tanks, I guess for this reason ( I can see no other logic for basing a vehicle) and they do spend lots of time on roads and tracks.

I do have real scale Milan in prone but again how would you decide nationality of a figure that small?

Unless you have your own printer 1/144 figures are expensive, it takes about 30 min to print 6 figures thats about the sane as a 1/3 of a tank and they do need to have the supports removed, much harder than doing that on a tank. A resin printer would be better but they are more expensive. Plus I would not want a resin printer in my dinning room. Dropping a PLA reel on the floor is not an issue. Dropping liquid resin would be :-) especially for SWMBO.

Ps, I can't get them printed at the likes of Shapeways, they can't cope with the gun barrels they are to thin. Basicaly home printing has gone beyond the capabilities of commercial printers.

Hmmm, didn't think about supports and their removal (I hate those).

How does Shapeways do it?

Their 1/600th aircraft minis don't need supports?

They just use sprues.

Surprised by the printing time for such small figures. Would have thought those would go a lot faster.

Any chance of your designing these, and then selling them on Shapeways if you make the weapons a bit thicker, in either squad, or more preferably, platoon-sized units (if the latter provides a discount over the former)?

No worries on many/most weapons looking the same, e.g. assault rifles. I suspect the larger MGs in bipod firing mode should look a little different. Generic A/T rocket launchers would be fine too, in many/most cases, I suspect.

Some sort of mottled brown, or gray painted basing might work for the roads, if you match that to what you are using on the table, since those colors also correspond to dirt and rocks mixed in with the grass.

I get the not wanting to paint/assemble minis/vehicles, which is why I use a lot of the prepainted, and/or preassembled 1/144th scale vehicles for gaming.

Funny I thought a lot of battles were fought in dence Urban areas.

You need to specify "battles" better. Most of human history hasn't had dense urban areas with tarmac, thus, most battles as well.

Painting is like meditation while listening to music

Etotheipi, more folk in modern battles so old ones proably more like actions. :-).

Thresher, I had to make the barrels 0.8mm diameter or else everything gets bigger and you begin to depart from real scale even more. SHAPEWAYS has a limit of 1 mm diameter. In addition my bases are only 0,6 mm thick, Shapeways has a minimum thickness of 1mm. So by definition Shapeways models would be much worse than mine, and mine are not perfect scale. I suspect you are hoping for more than is possible. Search TMP for my topic "latest 1/144 sculpts" these are very simple as real detail is too small to see.
Se
14 Bore, To me more like water torture :-).

Can you print them on sprues, instead of the bases?

Not sure what the weapons' barrel thicknesses are, so that's probably an issue too.

Wire could be inserted into the guns to deal with that I suppose, but I wouldn't relish cutting and doing that.

I imagine you are correct, so I just need to be happy with the current ones on offer in metal, and hope someone does more prone figs and some casualty figs too.

more folk in modern battles so old ones proably more like actions

Don't know about that. The Second Battle of Fallujah is a fairly large contemporary battle and it's nothing close to the scale of Thermopylae or Carthage.

You need to specify "battles" better. Most of human history hasn't had dense urban areas with tarmac, thus, most battles as well.

I was thinking the same. We trained for by attempted to avoid MOUT. We all studied Stalingrad, Berlin, Manila and Jerusalem.

Of course today as we see in some situations, e.g. Fallujah, you have no option but to operate in urban terrain. Which limits your use of some of your most powerful assets. I.e. FA and CAS for fear of collateral damage.

Great point. While Stalingrad was the largest, bloodiest battle in history, neither side had any reservations about killing the civilians or destroying the city itself (and one side (at least) had no problem killing its own forces if they didn't move forward). In many ways, that made it more like a game of WH40K than a modern urban battle.

see my post on the Baseing Topic for the results of the boaring stuff. Artisticaly interesting if not revolutionary in its advancement of Wargameing.

Yes, etotheipi GW's 3d version of Epic, Epic40K even included Stalingrad type ruins. But I know when I game, I try to by pass big urban areas. But of course GW advocates putting close combat weapons on 60ft walking targets … So …

Like the old poster I used to have in my dorm room, "Life is hard, play short". Or something to that effect.