If you dig deep enough and look hard enough you will find all sorts of advice on the net about painting and modelling figures, (go ahead, try it!) The aim on this page is to share the way I do things and hopefully avoid repeating what you can find elsewhere. At the moment this doesn't amount to much, but the following might be useful to someone.
I bought a pot of tiddlywink counters from my local toyshop. There's probably a couple of hundred in there, cost about £3. I superglue the primed figures to the base and then build up the base with Milliput which helps hold the figure to the base. I sprinkle a mix of fine sand and fine talus onto watered down PVA spread onto the base. The talus stops the texture across the base looking too uniform. The bases are then painted, drybrushed and decorated with static grass, cork rocks etc, all of which I get from Antenociti's Workshop base-boxes. A bonus of using plastic for bases is that drilling holes for field grass etc is very easy. One word of warning, add the Milliput before you paint your figure, otherwise you risk getting the Milliput that gets on your fingers all over your paint-job.
What do you get for your gaming friends who have everything? Nothing, you make them some fridge magnets. Instead of basing on a plastic counter I super-glued some figures to some small but powerful magnets I bought from the learning zone in my local Borders bookstore. They were about 20p each. The glue won't hold them for long but if you use Milliput to build up the base they stick well, although I still recommend they are pulled off a surface by the base.
Its no good having finished a paint job that is so good you could swear your figure was actually breathing (one day...) if you can't display it to others. Having spent hours working at this I thought people might be interested in seeing how I do it. First I must say I owe a debt to three sites with good advice and ideas. For some really solid advice on settings and set-up Tom Weiss' information page was really useful. I had a problem with reflections on my pictures making the detail obscured and causing contrast issues. If you have a similar problem then Michael Casavant's page on photographing minis is well worth a read. Turns out I needed to diffuse the light (even an aging bunny like me should have been able to figure that). Finally I really liked the idea on Mad McGobbo's site for a light box. (check under 'tutorials'.
Putting these together I came up with the following. First a light box with 'in-built' diffusion. This was important as the Ikea spotlights I use get very hot, and would burn the kitchen roll that others use as diffusers on their lights. To do this I took a cardboard box, cut it to the shape in the picture, cut large windows and taped greaseproof paper over them (1). Another sheet was added for the 'roof' (2). For the stage a single sheet of white A4 thin card was curved across the bottom and back (3). The curve helps eliminate lines and shadows in the background. The dimensions of the box are given in the picture.
For lighting I used the spotlights (1) I have aleady mentioned, close to the side windows but not touching. They are pointed slightly inwards, towards the figure. For overhead lighting I use a cheap halogen desklamp (2). Lemons, by the way, are entirely optional!
The camera I use, a Canon A20, is old, 5 years old, which for a digital camera is positively ancient but it can still give very good pictures. Using the manual setting I have the white balance set to tungsten, the exposure set to +2 and the flash turned off. I use a tripod and set the camera about 25cm from the figure. Oddly enough I find that the zoom combined with the macro setting gives the best shots.
Well there you have it and in case you are wondering if the light box makes a difference have a look at the figures below. Not a huge difference but definitely worth the 30 minutes it took to make. You will have to take my word for it but the it gives a more accurate representation of the colours on the model. Now, of course, I just need every computer owner on the planet to calibrate their monitors to the same as mine....
