treefrogkate

It depends on how complex the mini is, the material it's made of, and how neat I want it to be.

For a minion quality mini, I intend these to take a single day. I will remove egregious mold lines before painting and sealing, but don't spend much time on this step. These won't have a lot of detail, but will still be a great mini to play with.

For a display quality mini, there is much more detail and more colors. These take over 20 hours to complete. I remove the mold lines and flash with a knife and jewelers files before priming, painted, and sealing.

I primarily order minis from Reaper Mini (www.reapermini.com). I have many metal and plastic minis and they're made well.

When you order, tell me the mini you have chosen and I will order it and paint it when I receive it. I factor about $10 into the total cost for purchasing and shipping your mini to myself because that is the usual cost from Reaper. If you would like to choose a mini from a different manufacturer, that's no problem at all, but we may need to discuss adjusting the price of the finished product if it is much more expensive than ordering from Reaper.

If you already have the mini (e.g. a custom HeroForge mini) and want me to paint it, message me and I'll give you a coupon code for $10 off your order.

The paint job on metal minis is reasonably durable. I have a few minis that I play with regularly that were painted over 5 years ago with no damage to the paint job. I topcoat each mini after I finish painting it to protect the paint job.

I find that the paint job on plastic minis is more fragile. Because the plastic used for models is flexible, the paint can chip off those parts that can bend easily (think swords, staves, arms, etc). Because of this, I can't guarantee that you won't see any chipping on plastic minis.

I usually use a spray-on matte sealant, but also have a good brush-on sealer that I use if it is extremely hot, cold, or humid outside and I don't want to risk lowering the quality of the spray-on sealant.

I use a variety of paint brands depending on what colors I need, and I use a variety of painting techniques to layer the paint and create the shadows and highlights you'll see on the finished mini.

Most minis come attached to a base that I will paint for you. If you want to up your game, here's what I can do:

Fancy base: Add some flock/ballast to the stock base to make it look more realistic (grass, pebbles, etc)

Very fancy base: Place the mini (base and all) onto a different base and use modeling clay and flock to cover the base and make it look more realistic.

Complete rebuild: If you *really* hate the stock base, I can cut it off with a jeweler's saw and create a new base for the mini. This is tricky, though, because even though I use a very strong adhesive for this, I can't guarantee that the mini won't come unglued from the base. This should be a last resort only, and you'll need to convo me.

You may be wondering why it would cost you $100 to get a mini painted.

I won't lie: At the prices I've set, I'm not retiring with bags of cash. I do this mostly for fun.

After I purchase the mini and get it shipped to me, pay for paint, and pay for shipping back to you (domestic shipping is always free at my shop), I'm looking at about $75 profit. If you consider it takes me around 20 hours of work to paint a display quality mini, I'm looking at getting paid a whopping $3.75/hour.

Painting such tiny figures is difficult and requires a lot of practice, skill, patience, and a steady hand. It takes a long time to make sure each mini looks absolutely perfect. I think under $4/hour is an absolute *steal* for that.

No! The techniques are the same for any piece, so I can do any mini you'd like.

Yes! Please convo me and we can discuss. The pricing will depend on how large the pieces are and how detailed you want them to be.