How-to Tuesday: Model Prep

There’s nothing worse than seeing a nice paint job ruined by a mold line.  Despite the fact that this hobby centers around monsters, elves, robots and magic, when it comes to the actual models, realism is the goal.  Mold lines defeat that by reminding us that these are, in fact toys.  Shame on them!

Rather than re-invent the wheel and try to write a How-to, I scoured the youtubes for some videos discussing model prep.  Like painting, words and pictures only go so far, so Videos are the best way to show some of these techniques.  Here’s the best of what I found.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deKOtLHg6lw&w=420&h=315]

I’ve also had a huge influx of folks that are brand new to the hobby, so all sorts of good questions have come up, like: How do I “pin” a model?  For that sort of thing, check out this video, which covers the subject beautifully.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQTsyEqr9tM&w=420&h=315]

Lastly, I’m one of those people who pin everything.  I also hate having to base around those big tabs all the models have on their feet.  So, I usually cover the slot in my base, build them however I want, and then pin my models to my base.  I’ve covered this before.

That said, I just have too many projects, and basing isn’t my favorite part of modeling.  So, I’ve invested in Dragon Forge resin bases for my next three armies.  Since my regular “pin through, then bend tabs over” method won’t work for resin bases (because there’e no empty space underneath).  Instead, I’ll be doing something like this:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfTHmhuv5Ws&w=420&h=315]

I hope these helped!  Ciao.