Uniformity

[Biggabertha]

Greetings, Brothers..!

 

Thanks to the ETL II, I've come into a new fire of cleaning, building and painting miniatures but I've hit a snag.

 

I want to be able to eventually make a great army I can pick and choose from - essentially the entire current Dark Angels battle company (1000+ miniatures) and I know it'll be an expensive and long journey. I can also play with these models too but my key question is, what do you do about uniformity..?

 

For instance, painting five models one day looks different to another model painted a day later (slightly...) - the obvious answer to this is to paint all ten at once.

But... This is one of my snags: only painting ten or twenty at a time, means ten or twenty will be slightly different to the next batch (different mix of paint etc.).

 

The second snag is getting them all to look the same.

To me, this means they're all in the same pose, wearing the same armour/helmets, have the same gear and even have the same bases. I feel like this creates a really uniform look and feel but it will look REALLY boring on the tabletop in a game (maybe..?)

 

 

What do you think..?

[Hyphont]

A noble endeavor brother, I wish you luck on it. as for uniformity, that is quite difficult.  I think the best way to do it would be assembly line style via army painter products.  Same colored primer, same quick shade, same matte varnish.  minor details will vary but that should keep your over all colors the same.  Depending on how much funds you have to invest at any given moment, you may want to try spraying large numbers of troops at once to help maintain color consistency as humidity and temperature can affect the finish, or if you have the resources, a spraying booth/room with fairly constant temperature/humidity.

 

Age and thickness of paints very as they get older, changing the pigment slightly, plus a general increase in painting skill level can make things look very different as you paint more.  Why I recommend the spray color, should do the best at keeping the most consistent colors.

[marvmoogy]

I'm on a similar journey and have decided on the following for my greenwing:

 

Undercoat (Army Painter angel green spray)

Wash (the GW dark green that I can't remember the name of)

Highlight with the 1st of the 2 suggested GW highlights (again, can't remember the name.

 

I don't bother with the 2nd highlight (moot green?) as, although it looks great in the pictures, I think it looks a little too garish when the mini is in front of you.

 

Re: look, pose and wargear uniformity, this is where my approach differs.  I want my minis to be individual whilst still maintaining a uniform, erm.....uniform! :)  I have made quite a few subtle conversions to this end so that they are unique, but still fit in with the overall army.  Note - I don't tend to do much to my rank and file troopers (if anything!) I only really convert the Sergeants or higher.

 

My 2p!

[Bryan Blaire]

My big question is why worry about it? I can see each unit being mostly uniform, so a squad all having the same colors, markings, etc, but why do you want the same armor marks, same helmets, all the squads to look the same, etc? Even in a battle company, you are going to have people who have armor from different sources because it may have been patched, armor from different ages, possibly different campaigns, etc. Perhaps the paint pigmentation was off after a battle at one world because the world used most of its iron for weaponry already and there wasn't enough to produce the same exact color blue (or something), but some of the squads were required to reinforce a different battle while the rest of the company returned for a better refit. Perhaps the artisans were trying something new for Battle Brother Frank's armor (maybe they painted an extra little freehand skull on his chest or something), so now he stands out a bit.

 

Look at the depiction of the 2nd Company Ultramarines in the C:SM, they aren't all carrying the same type of bolters among the members of a single squad, much less amongst the entire company, nor are they all wearing the same marks of armor (not sure if there are any mismatched suits in there).

 

Then again, I'm a ferret on caffiene when it comes to painting, look at how many different paint schemes there are in my one Chapter. :D

[Garath]

I would suggest two things: take time and buy a cheap chinese airbrush on the net.

 

  Don't paint your squads before you decide on a general color of a company- then do the whole company. Then the next , and so on.

 

  Learning to use the brush is time consuming at first, but will save you enormous amounts of working hours over a longer period .  Trust me on this- I did it for cash. 

 

 Spraying green over 60 marines sure is a lot faster then using a brush.  I'd recommend taking a look at Lester  Burley's tutorial on youtube- he is awesome (hence the name of his site) and gives out good ,free advice each video.

 

   I applaud your intentions.   It's always nice to meet a guy who is not in the hobby for the competitive aspect . 

[Grand Master Belial]

I'll address the second snag. Don't go for the same pose for each squad and do add variations to liven them up a bit. The Sergeants of each squad have a level of autonomy so why not add some character to them. Add a laurel to a

Helmet or a Crux Terminatus with or without robes. Have a Tac Squad with Knives to hand. As you are doing a Battle Company, you already have 20 Assault Marines and 20 Devastator Marines. Make a Dev squad Anti-Infantry and the other Anti-tank. By personalizing squads to a degree, they will remain uniform in general but still have some flair to make them exciting to model and paint and perhaps will give them some flavor on the battlefield as well. I have had a Scout Sergeant lose all of his charges twice in consecutive battles. It became a part of his reputation until his whole unit was wiped out standing up to a dreadnought and holding it up for four turns.

 

If there is a noticeable color variance, add a campaign badge noting the squad had returned from somewhere else and hasn't had time to repaint their armor.

 

And have variations in the gear as well. With 6 Tac squads you can have two of each special weapon and can muster a few combos with a heavy weapon. Marines are an elite Special Force. They usually have some latitude with weapons load outs and the like. This then allows you to field a different squad in different games based on the needs of the army composition.

 

I probably muddied the water but I figured it would give you some food for thought.

[Polythemus]

While uniformity is a major draw to a space marine army, im going to take the opposite tack. I feel that one of the things that brings people into the fold as members of the dark angels space marines is the fact that we have a couple different color schemes going on. This appeals to me personally because painting everything the same is a life draining endevour. Furthermore dark angels are members of the unforgiven legion so whos to say you cant paint and model one of your tactical squads as angels of absolution/vengence/etc. this will even give the illusion of having your green marines look more uniform next to tacts of another chapter, while still giving you a cohesive look. In addition having similar basing will further tie things together that may otherwise look different. Hope it helps.

[Gillyfish]

I would echo the comments about not worrying about uniformity too much. I have achieved an element of it, even though the way I have painted the miniatures has changed over the years. The only two bits that bug me with that is that I used to use a brighter red on bolter casings than I do now and I also used to paint the bases green (now they're brown). That hasn't stopped me fielding those miniatures though. You can always repaint if the differences are that big a deal. But from one day to the next I wouldn't worry - remember you're fielding an entire army not just a single unit, so those differences are likely to become invisible if you have that many miniatures.

[Master Avoghai]

It's always difficult to claim for strict uniformity anyway... You painting skills will evolve with time and since I'm close to the completion of your goal, I can recognize a model painted at the beginning though using the same colours for 15 years now...

 

However they mix perfectly well cos the dark green allow variations that you won't notice at 1st glance.

 

Now that I've discovered the angels green by Army painter, I've gained uniformity, the most important being the base colour.

 

 

 

Only painting ten or twenty at a time, means ten or twenty will be slightly different to the next batch (different mix of paint etc.).

That's actually the problem : using mixed paints. Mine are painted with angels green/DA green then snot green, then scorpion green.

 

I never use a mix... That way I can guarantee uniformity.

 

 

 

essentially the entire current Dark Angels battle company (1000+ miniatures)

Battle company is rather 100+ miniatures, I would say rather 200, with the weapons variations, the transports, the vets, the HQ, the tanks (WW, vindis etc...)

[Biggabertha]

Awesome, thank you everyone for your responses..!

 

I made a slight error - battle company wasn't what I was after, Entire Chapter, was what I was after, lol, hence the 1000+ miniatures. Though it's probably best to stick to just a Battle Company (or three with Raven/Deathwing) for now since 1000 miniatures without an airbrush would be life/soul draining as mentioned.

 

 

All very good points of discussion: I'd like to really thank you all for giving me plenty to think about: especially how not one poster has said to keep them all in the same pose, the same specific armour or boltgun type and so forth.

 

 

I came across these snags when assembling the Tactical Marines and I remembered how frustrating it was to see that four would have roughly the same cheat pieces while the other six would have completely different ones from each other. It did tempt me to cross them with another box of Tactical Marines... but I believed it to be prident to ask the opinions of others before committing to such an (expensive) ordeal.

 

Thank you, brothers!

This hastens my ETL II completion!!

[marvmoogy]

Man, I didn't even think of the cost implications!

Tell you what, ignore everyone's comments above. Buy yourself a load more tactical squads to get your uniformity....then sell me the spares at a stupidly low price!