Kitbashing 101
Most people I know don’t use miniatures to play large tabletop strategy games, in fact, skirmish and RPGs with a smaller amount of miniatures are their choice. Since I plan to start playing one such game soon, I realized that I don’t have a suitable miniature and that I will have to resort to the ancient art of kitbashaning to make a model, and I will also enter it in the Agram’s MPC Spring Painting Competition.
In this article, I will show you the steps I took to go from an idea to a complex, currently unpainted miniature.
The miniature I decided to work on is not the typical rank and file soldier we have the opportunity to see in all major table strategy games. The character is conceived as a thief and burglar who will get out of trouble and problems with his skills, tricks and outwitting enemies and problems. For starters, I looked for inspiration in traditional art, and looked for images of some fantastic burglars that could serve as inspiration for the character, poses, and general aesthetics. I found two main motives for posing and character dynamics in the paintings of one of my favorite artists, Brom:
If you like these works, follow him on social media as well.
Accordingly, I have found the parts of the miniatures that I will put together that best fit the original concept. I knew the final miniature would be significantly different from the references, so I didn’t worry about the pieces fitting perfectly. Since I don’t know how to levitate a miniature, I knew I had to have contact surfaces where I could attach or glue a miniature. As I was sure I wanted my feet in the air on the miniature, I knew I would have to have some other contact surface, and I chose a hand with which to be able to achieve this.
To test the assembly of the parts and what the finished figure would look like, I used patafix. It will hold the parts together without gluing them together, making it the perfect tool for “sketching” kitbash and conversions. A miniature composed of patafix can give us the opportunity to change some things before we combine two plastic elements in a miniature marriage.
The moment I was happy with the parts and the pose, I was ready to glue them with superglue and merge them into a new miniature. But when you connect several parts of unrelated miniatures, you will usually have holes and gaps, because different miniatures are connected in different ways. For me, the most visible gaps were between the torso and legs, as well as between the torso and arms.
To fill in the gaps, I used greenstuff, a two-component putty that I shaped and smoothed with silicone brushes.
Since I kneaded far more greenstuff than I needed, I decided to use a portion for the base, as well as an ice cream stick that I used to make a fence at the base.
Now, after painting, all I have to do is adjust the miniature to visually jump over the fence.
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Science behind Acrylic Paints
- Binders (eng. resin) – form a film – in our case probably pure acrylates, I suspect they are styrene acrylates.
- Fillers – in addition to adding volume to the paint, they also affect the viscosity, coverage and appearance of the dry film
- Pigments – the main division is into organic pigments and inorganic pigments. Inorganic ones are more covering but have less vivid shades, while organic ones are often quite poorly covering (yellow for example) but their shades are vivid and bright
Additives:
- Anti-foam
- Rheological modifiers – affect the behavior of wet paint on the substrate (e.g. spillage) and the behavior of the paint when a force is applied to it (brush, roller, spray, airbrush). Rheological modifiers also include thickeners that affect the viscosity of the paint.
- Dispersants – envelop pigment and filler particles and prevent their agglomeration during standing. Good dispersion of pigment and filler affects the coverage and uniform appearance of the dry film. There are a bunch more but I won't go into too much detail
- Solvent – in this case water.
Contrast paints and speed paints – high pigment content, but not so much that it causes high coverage. They are formulated to spread, not to stay where you put them. The result of spreading is that the paint collects in the recesses, where a thicker film of paint remains than on the protruding parts of the miniature. Where the film of paint is thicker (the recesses), the shade of the contrast paint is more pronounced, unlike on the protruding parts where the film is thinner, which is why the shade is then influenced by the color of the substrate.
Composition:
- Binders
- Pigments
- Additives – all listed above + surfactants that reduce the surface tension of the wet paint film, which is why it flows
- solvent
- I would say they do not contain fillers, or contain very, very little of them
Washes – similar in formulation and behavior to contrast agents, only they have a much lower proportion of pigments, certainly no fillers, a higher proportion of surfactants, lower viscosity, and probably less binders.
If we want to greatly dilute acrylic paint or contrast, it is better to use a product intended for this purpose from the manufacturer of that paint rather than water, because it contains all the necessary amount of binders and additives for that paint to retain its properties.
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U ovom članku, naša Dunja nam otkriva znanost iza akrilnih boja.
Akrilne boje – visoki udio pigmenta i dobra pokrivnost. Ako su dobro formulirane ostaju tamo gdje ih naneseš, ne ostavljaju „brush marks“ i suše se dovoljno sporo da stigneš napravit što želiš na minijaturi a opet dovoljno brzo.
Sastav:
- Veziva (eng. resin) – formiraju film – u našem slučaju vjerojatno čisti akrilati, sumnjam da su stiren akrilati.
- Punila – osim što dodaju volumen boji utječu i na viskoznost, pokrivnost i izgled suhog filma
- Pigmenti – glavna podjela je na organske pigmente i anorganske pigmente. Anorganski su više pokrivni ali manje živih nijansi, dok su organski često dosta loše pokrivni (žuti npr) ali zato su im nijanse žive i jarke
Aditivi:
- Protiv pjene
- Reološki modifikatori – utječu na ponašanje mokre boje na podlozi (npr razlijevanje) i na ponašanje boje dok na nju djeluje sila (kist, valjak, sprej, airbrush). Pod reološke modifikatore spadaju i ugušćivači koji utječu na viskozitet boje.
- Dispergatori – obavijaju čestice pigmenata i punila i sprječavaju aglomeraciju istih stajanjem. Dobra dispergiranost pigmenta i punila utječe na pokrivnost i ujednačen izgled suhog filma.
- Ima ih još hrpa ali neću toliko u detalje
- Otapalo – u ovom slučaju voda.
Kontrastice i speed paints – visoki udio pigmenta, ali ne toliki da uzrokuje visoku pokrivnost. Formulirane su da se razlijevaju, a ne da ostaju tamo gdje ih staviš. Posljedica razlijevanja je skupljanje boje u udubine gdje onda ostane deblji film boje nego na isturenim dijelovima minijature. Tamo gdje je film boje deblji (udubine) nijansa kontrastice izraženija, za razliku od isturenih dijelova na kojima je film tanji zbog čega na nijansu onda utječe boja podloge.
Sastav:
- Veziva
- Pigmenti
- Aditivi – svi nabrojani gore +
- surfakanti koji smanjuju površinsku napetost mokrog filma boje zbog čega i dolazi do razlijevanja
- otapalo
- rekla bih da ne sadrže punila, ili ih sadrže vrlo vrlo malo
Washevi – po principu formuliranja i ponašanju slični kontrasticama, samo imaju puno manji udio pigmenata, sigurno ne sadrže punila, veći udio surfakanata, manji viskozitet i vjerojatno manje veziva.
Ako želimo jako razrijediti akrilnu boju ili kontrasticu bolje je koristiti za to predviđen proizvod od proizvođača te boje nego vodu, jer sadrži svu potrebnu količinu veziva i aditiva kako bi ta boja zadržala svoja svojstva.
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