Last week we opened up Super Dungeon Explore, and saw a plethora (some would say horde) of minis inside. Some people (like me) bought the game for its minis and would know what they got themselves into. Some others might just want to get their models glued and down to playing. Then there are others who bought the game because it contained cute little chibi fun, and looked like a good board game. These people are probably sad that the minis didn’t come painted, but don’t really have much time or knowledge on how to get these miniatures painted. This week’s Workshop Wednesday is for you.
Again, this post is for those who want a decent level of paint for the time and money they’re going to be investing into painting. I’m going to be leaning towards cheap, dirty and quick this week. If you want to see how I myself will be painting the models, stay tuned for future posts.
Super Dungeon Explore has a HUUUUGE range of miniatures, so anybody who’s new to the painting gig will probably have quite a few paints to buy and minis to paint. With any luck though, painting everything in small increments should mean that you can finish in no time at all!
Firstly, I would recommend you use a spray primer to make sure your paints stick on the model. Most people use black, but if you don’t mind spending a bit more to REALLY speed up your painting (I’m guessing cutting time by 25-50%), I would recommend colour primers/spray, like the ones from Army Painter. What you’re looking for is Uniform Grey, Dragon Red and Skeleton Bone. If you can’t get those, any neutral grey, dull red and bone-ish colour would work, but make sure they’re matt: a lot of spray paints out there are kind of glossy.
While I’m a big believer in P3 paints, for ease of convenience I’ll be stating Games Workshop paints, since they’re generally easier to get than other paint lines. If you have a paint line or choice or just want to use craft paints feel free. I’ll be stating the colour you’re looking for as well. Oh, and remember to get a good miniature brush. You could skimp and get a cheap brush, but I would recommend paying about 10-20 bucks to get a proper sable brush. It will help you in your painting more than you’d know.
Dull red (Scab Red/Mechrite Red)
Dark brown (Scorched Brown)
Flesh tone (Dwarf Flesh)
A Bone colour (Bleached Bone)
Grey (Adeptus Battlegrey)
A wash (GW’s Devlan Mud or Badab Black)
This is the ABSOLUTE Minimum you’ll be needing. Red for the monsters, flesh for the PCs, grey and bone for the stone and… well… bone. These are used to touch up or fix the bits that you sprayed. The brown is for all the extra bits. The Games Workshop wash is absolutely essential; you slather it on and hopefully it goes into the crevices giving you the shading you require. But everything will be a shade of red or brown, so if you’re willing to spend a little bit more, this is what you could get:
White (Skull White)
Black (Chaos Black)
Blue (Ultramarine Blue)
Green (Snot Green)
Some sort of Metal (Chainmail)
The Blue and Green will allow you to give proper accents to your monsters and NPCs (jewels, hair and the like), and the white and black would probably make for better eyes than you would be stuck with in the BASIC paints I mentioned (bone ane brown, eurgh). White and black would probably help with highlighting and shading the miniatures if you’re being adventurous enough to try. The metal is in case you want your miniatures to have a shiny metal rather than just a grey colour.
I will be going through the post with the assumption that you’ll be spraying most of your models. If you’re not just use the paintbrush to hand paint the bits I sprayed with the appropriate colour.
I glued most of my miniatures into sub-assemblies; generally 2-3 pieces per miniature. What you want is a balance between not having too many parts to spray while ensuring that the spray paint will get into every bit of the model. Spray in a well ventilated area, and I would recommend using a rubber glove so you can hold what you’re spraying and ensure that every bit is painted in. Make sure to rotate your miniature and don’t over spray (you don’t want to lose detail). Here are two examples on how to spray (they show primer but it’s the same concept.. just ignore the zenithal lighting thing for now). If you aren’t spraying then I suppose you could fully assemble each piece, but it’s really up to you.
Phew; that was a lot of talking. Now on to some pictures.
Spray the skulls of the spawn points bone, and the stones grey. Paint in the bones in the unique spawn point. Paint the wood of the chests brown, metal grey (or metal, up to you), teeth and tongue of the boo-booty bone and red respectively, then wash everything with whatever wash you got.
Spray the Dragon and Dragon-Ogre Red. Spray the bases (and all bases) grey. Teeth, eyes and nails should be painted bone, cloth and club brown, chain metal or grey. Wash.
These little dragonlings can just be sprayed red, with the eyes painted in bone and washed.
Spray the Kobold Ironscale Grey, and the Dragon Priest Bone (for his cloth). Paint the skin red, the belts and staff brown, eyes (and teeth, horns, claws etc) and the like bone. If you’d like, you can also paint the skull on the shield bone, the and the shield and jewel in the staff any colour you want.
The kobold knucklehead should be sprayed grey as well, because he has a lot of armor. Paint in his skin red. The flinger and gouger can be sprayed red. Paint their armor (if they have any) grey, then paint the cloth, eyes, horns etc bone. The pouces, belts etc can be painted brown, and the stones with the flinger can also be painted grey. Wash.
The PCs are your centrepiece so you might want to spend more time on them. If you want to spray though you still can. If you bought the extra paints I would recommend having more blues and greens to set them apart from the monsters.
The druid is easy enough. Spray both versions bone (we’ll have a white bear like in the art). Paint the metals grey or metallic, your choice. Paint the belt, wood etc brown, and paint in the skin on the druid. His beard can be green or grey, and the jewel any colour you want. Wash.
I would probably spray both the dwarf and the paladin grey, since they have quite a bit of metals. For the cloth and shield of the paladin, blue is a good paladinny colour, while you can paint the leathers, wood and beard on the dwarf brown. Paint the horns on the dwarf helmet bone and you can, mix white into the dark brown and use that for the paladin’s hair. Regardless, paint their flesh (err, flesh coloured) and paint in their eyes with white and black (if you have them).
I’d probably spray the embermage red and the sorceress bone (since they have quite a bit of cloth). Paint in their flesh, paint their staves brown, and paint their hair and jewellery any colour you want. Wash.
The last few minis don’t really lend themselves to any spray colour. If you want any of them to be a red head, I’d spray those heads red. The rest can be a generic grey. As usual, paint the flesh, paint the hair whatever colour you want (although I might recommend mixing in some white to the green or blue you’re using to change it up a bit). The cloth/leathers can be brown, or really any colour you have. Wash, and paint in their eyes, and you’re done!
I must apoplogise that this walkthrough doesn’t have as many pictures as I would’ve hoped; because I’m going to be painting my minis with an airbrush. If you’d like, stay tuned to future weeks to see how that turns out. That might also help you figure out how I’ll be painting the details on my minis.
