Wamp / Reaper Competition entry

Odd as it may seem, I can actually enter this as although I sell Reaper here in the UK, I’m not personally involved. All the difficult bits of organising and judging are down to Wamp forum.

This is also my first competition ever so I doubt I’m going to trouble the heavyweight painters very much. Still it does give me an incentive and a good reason to try out a miniature from their bones range. Despite selling these for a good few months now, I must confess as to not having had one out of the packet. I’m also not a plastic fan, as most people know. I got Old Lead Disease many years ago and I can’t see it ever changing. But times change, things progress, and I have to admit a certain curiosity about these new plastics.

First off, its more flexible than I thought it would be. It springs back into shape very quickly, and I can’t see the plastic show any signs of stress when you bend it. This is good because you can push bits out of the way a little to get to the more restrictive areas. However its also a pain because it means the plastic is softer.

The mould lines are small, but visible. Got to clean them off, but how. Metal files are designed for metals and on this stuff are next to useless. Cutting with hobby knives are a bit awkward too. Very easy to gouge the plastic.

What I found was your blade needs to be really sharp to be effective, and used with great care. I also discovered the plastic responds well to sanding. Strangely plastic and wood can be generally worked with the same tools, sandpaper being one of these. So after a little experimentation I made up this.

 

Its just a long thin sanding board made from a tapering piece of balsa wood with two different grades of sandpaper stuck either side. The red is a piece of P80 grit, and the grey a piece of P300 grit wet and dry. Being thin it gets into detailed areas and allows a greater degree of control. Combine it with a little liquid green stuff and the result is pretty good.

 

So here he is in all his primed ogre glory. I’ve covered up the face that is carved into his club as personally I though it looked too twee for an ogre. Sadly he’s not sticking too well to my painting base. I use plastercine as a non permanent adhesive which works well on metal and resin, but not great on bones plastic. Still its a minor thing and he’s not going to be needing his base for too much longer.

Reaper Paint Triads

I had an enquiry the other day about what do the Reaper MSP triads actually look like. It struck me as odd at first as of course I get to see them live. But on the site they’re just represented as three coloured discs. So here is a pic of what you actually get.

A three bottle blister pack containing the base shade, a darker shadow and a highlight all in one pack. Dropper bottles too which saves getting your brush loaded to the stock when you try to get paint out of a standard pot.

TTFN

Tim