Model assembly level while painting

[Logiter]

Hey all,

 

I'm about to start a project and want to put a lot of care into my painting. My main army (Marines) get sprayed their power armour colour from a can, so I've always fully assembled my models before painting.

 

So my question is what is the ideal level of assembly for power armour marines for painting, beginning at priming?

 

Do you do each bit individually? Shoulder pads on arms? Torso on legs? On or off base?

 

Would love to know what people do before I start in on my guys.

[E_50_Panzer]

I did my HH blood angels with legs and torsos assembled, both weapon arms assembled with or without shoulders, heads on a stick, and backpacks on a stick. My legs were glued to bases.

[Logiter]

Do you ever find gluing over painted surfaces weakens the bond?

[Stoic Raptor]

Use a liquid mask or scrape away the paint where you'll be applying glue.  Gluing paint can be messy and is undeniably a weaker bond because you're only adhering the paint layers to each other rather than the solid part underneath.

[Tyberos the Red Wake]

Assuming you aren't using a technique that benefits from the entire model being whole, such as zenithal highlighting, you want to leave as many parts off as possible if the goal is as perfect and complete a paintjob as possible. If the goal is to be as quick or efficient as possible, then you want to assemble as much as you can instead.

 

I get a nagging feeling in the back of my mind when I miss details or make small mistakes, so I've taken the "assemble as little as possible" route. Generally for multi-part kits this means the only things I glue before painting are torso back to torso front, and sometimes weapon to arm. But everything else is unassembled, and requires a lot of time and effort to cover the glue points and mount everything on sticks. It also makes spray priming more of a hassle as you now have far more pieces to spray instead of just a couple full miniatures.

 

If you want a balance between the two, I would only glue legs, torsos, and maybe one arm, possibly both arms. Leave the backpack, shoulders, head, and weapon off. This will let you easily reach every inch of the miniature and will still allow you to easily do shadows and highlights from bottom to top since the figure's main body is assembled already.

[Ascanius]

I've gone back and forth while working on my Iron Hands Taskforce. I've fully assembled some and just painted what I could reach, while with others I've done lots of sub-assemblies.

 

The last five Legionaries are sitting on my desk as I type; ironically, this process probably worked the best, which is a fine thing to learn as you're near to finishing a project.

 

The main thing with painting in sub-assemblies, for me, is to use a little bit of Blu-Tac to mask the areas where you want to glue things on - the neck on the heads and its socket on the torso, for instance, and where the arm attaches to the torso. It's easy to scrape away the Blu-Tac with a knife or toothpick from these areas after painting to reveal the bare material beneath.

 

I assembled torsos and legs together and glued them to the base, then attached pistols, grenades, pouches, and swords before undercoating. Each arm was kept separate, but weapons and trigger hands were glued to the appropriate arm. Heads, backpacks, and shoulderpads were all separate.

 

I painted the main armour colour on the bodies first, then finished metallic details, then the leather for holsters, pouches, and buckles.

 

For the arms, I did the main armour colour, then did everything on the weapons except the final highlight on the metal. After that, I glued the arms in place on the torso.

 

For the heads, I drilled vertically into the necks to stick them on toothpicks, then attached them after the arms so I could make sure the direction of the head made sense with the way the gun was posed.

 

The shoulderpads and backpacks are currently unattached, but once they're finished I'll glue them on - experience has shown me that with the pouches and shoulderpads impinging on the space at the back of the model, sometimes you need to attach the backpack at a slight vertical angle to make it work, or tilt the shoulderpads differently from the position of the underlying arms. This is partly because of the challenge of attaching plastic Mk IV arms to resin Mk III torsos, though.

 

While finishing up the backpacks and shoulderpads, I've started doing the bases - just pushing texture paint around the feet, then washing it afterwards and neatening up the rim.

[Imren]

I'd say it depends on the type of model. if the model have one weapon in each hand (terminators, assault squads, CC scouts etc) Then you can fully assemble them and still reach all details and crevices.

 

If the model is holding one weapon with both hands (tactical squads, bolter scouts, scout snipers etc), it will inevitably cover parts of its body with its arms, so in such cases, assemble the model all the way but leave the two hand held bolter separately and glue it in later.

 

If the head is bare, then I suggest to paint it separately as well.

 

Cheers

[Major_Gilbear]

I would only assemble what you can whilst still being able to reach the model with a brush. If you're not sure, keep an old brush near your assembly area and do a "dry run" to check.

 

I used to keep as much separate as possible, but after painting a huge number of push-fit minis, I've realised that it does take notably longer for (often) negligible gain in the end result. However, there are situations where bits get in the way to such an extent that painting carefully around them becomes difficult enough to slow you down noticeably.

 

Hence, I would suggest leaving off things like the right arm and bolter (assemble these as one piece, then glue them onto the rest of the model afterwards), backpacks/capes/loincloths that interfere with other areas of the model, and heads if sensible to do so. Also, banners, icons, and any such "big" eye-catching elements are much easier to paint if they re separate.

 

Another consideration is to try a multi-stage approach. This is especially suited to spray-painting (whether by rattlecan or airbrush). In this situation, you begin with more parts left separately so that you can paint them all quickly and easily with your various spray colours. Once you get them to a basic stage of colour and wash/shade, you then do some initial assembly to reduce the number of separate pieces you're painting. Then you continue painting as normal, and finally glue together the last parts. A good example of this is is you have a scheme where the heads, backpack, shoulder pads, and weapons are all different colours to the rest of the marine - so you paint them all separately initially, then glue on the pads, the head, and the gun to one arm, then carry on painting, then finally stick on the backpack and the arm with the gun at the end.

 

Whichever way you go, it helps to scrape a little paint off the areas to be glued with a knife to get a good bond with the glue. I would also suggest putting a small thin brass pin into these separate parts before priming - it gives you something to hold whilst painting them, and it helps to get a good strong join when you assemble the parts later on. Using a thin pin here also gives you a little bit of flexibility too, as sometimes it's very hard to judge how well things line up when you assemble and paint them in parts. These pins are best left a bit long to help you hold them - you can always trim them shorter before gluing them later.

[Logiter]

Thanks for all the insight folks, I appreciate it! Hoping to start soon, so you may see a thread pop up on the board and you can see my progress!

[Bloody Legionnaire]

I use an airbrush and it makes the whole priming and painting process much easier because of how close in and accurate I can get with my spray patterns. I usually do not assemble my marines very far at all before priming with it. I do always glue the torso front and backs together and every once in a while I'll glue the back packs on before priming. If you're going to continue using cans of spray primer though I would try to assemble as much as possible. It's so easy to put too heavy of a coat of paint on when it comes to using spray paint cans.