hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr3856.txt

Episode: 3856
Title: HPR3856: Painting toy soldiers
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3856/hpr3856.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 06:44:09

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3856 from Monday the 15th of May 2023.
Today's show is entitled Painting Toy Soldiers.
It is hosted by Klaatu and is about 36 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is I started painting miniatures for war games.
Hey everybody, this is Klaatu and I have started painting miniatures and so should you.
Well, that's the hook of the episode.
You don't actually have to start painting miniatures, but that's what I'm going to try
to sell you on the idea of painting miniatures.
When I say painting miniatures, what I'm talking about is little miniature people, little
miniature models, toy soldiers essentially, which I got introduced to the concept of miniatures
of long, long time ago, back when they were made of metal.
We would use them, everyone, I guess, used them for dungeons and dragons.
You would set up a map on the table or a grid paper on the table and you would put your
miniatures down to represent where you were during combat.
I always liked that, but I never really gave much of a thought to the miniature piece itself.
It was a lot, I mean, it was for me just a board game piece.
Like when you buy monopoly, you get a car and a thimble and a dog or something or you
buy a clue and you get like a piece of rope and a candlestick and a revolver, that sort
of thing.
Miniatures were in sort of my experience and it didn't occur to me to paint them until
I think much, much later and when I, I think I first saw, you know, the fact that people
would paint the miniatures like in a game store, I thought it was cool, but I never, it
never occurred to me that that was something that I could do or necessarily that I wanted
to do because that seemed like a whole new thing to get into, like that seemed complex.
You have to know about paints probably and brushes and you have to have a steady hand
probably, you know, all these sort of things that it just didn't seem like that was for
me.
And I didn't have an interest in it necessarily.
I really didn't, it was not that I didn't not want to do it.
It's just, I just didn't think that that was a thing that I, that I was interested in.
Things have obviously changed as the premise of the episode reveals.
I have started painting these little miniature people and as a hobby, it's like a thing
to do for fun.
And the reason it came to be is that a lot of my gaming has lately migrated to being online
and that is in direct opposition of why I play a lot of the games that I do play like
the board games and the role playing games and the war games and things like that.
I do that because they're physical activities.
They give you a reason to get together with people and to socialize.
But in the context of, hey, we're accomplishing this task and this task is playing a game
for fun.
But at some point within the past three years, I started playing a lot more online on
the internet because there was this pandemic that was happening and it was just safer for
everyone to stay home and game online on the internet.
And you know, it turns out that going on to the internet for your gaming, it gets a
little bit, I dare say, addictive or it becomes at least difficult to leave because of two
things.
One is the internet's a big place.
There's a lot of people.
So if you want to play Dungeons & Dragons on Monday, but then you want to play Star Drifter
on Tuesday and Wrath and Glory Warhammer on Wednesday and then something else on Thursday
and so on, then you can find people on the internet who also want to play those games.
Whereas in real life, depending on your sample size, you've got most people who just want
to play Dungeons & Dragons because that's what they've heard of.
And it's hard to find the people to play the rest.
Not always.
I mean, it just depends on how many people you have to choose from and the common trick,
or at least I think it's a common trick.
My trick is to lure people in with Dungeons & Dragons because it's the thing that they've
heard of.
And then after a couple of games of that, you trick them and you say, hey, you guys, you
want to try this other game.
And then by then, they're your friends and they trust you and so they'll try other things.
So I don't know if everyone does it that way or if it's just me, but I think that's
a pretty good way to do things.
So online is a nice sort of sample set of people to choose from.
And you can just post a game for some other, some random system that no one's ever heard
of.
And you'll find people who just want to hang out and play that game for two hours or whatever.
So that gets pretty, that's hard to give up once you've had it.
Another convenience of gaming on the internet is that it is on the internet.
It's really easy to access.
You don't have to go anywhere.
You don't have to leave the comfort of your office chair.
You're just right there in front of your computer anyway.
And so you're gaming.
Now what that translates into is you are in front of your computer all day, like not
just in the morning and in the afternoon for work and then maybe in the evening a little
bit for your personal project.
I mean, it's well into the night.
You're just always on your computer.
You're never not at your computer.
And that's just, that's a little bit weird.
You do start to feel like maybe that's almost too much time at the computer.
I don't normally even think that there's such a thing as too much time in front of your
computer because for me, like the computer is everything that I do.
It's my creative outlet.
It's my informational outlet and inlet.
It's my work.
It's what I do for fun.
It's everything.
So it's my so much where my social connections are.
Like it's just, it is literally everything.
But at the same time, like you do have to get away from the computer sometimes or you
don't have to.
But I thought that it might be a good idea to get away from the computer from time to time.
And the way that I used to do that, as I've said, is with board games, tabletop gaming
of some kind.
And if that is moved onto the computer, then that is no longer an option.
So I knew that I did, in fact, need some hobby away from the computer.
Now I've said in previous episodes that I've been skateboarding and that's been great.
But the skateboarding is certainly one kind of hobby and gaming is a different kind of
hobby.
And not I'm not trying to suggest that they're not compatible or anything like that.
I'm just saying skateboarding, you are doing a physical activity, you're skateboarding,
you're outside, you're, I just do it on my own.
And you just, you know, you're, you can't really, you have to think about skateboarding.
Like that's the thing that you're doing, at least that's where I am right now.
If I take my mind off of skateboarding, while skateboarding, I fall, not, not, not
good.
So I wanted something where I could just sit down and kind of relax and, you know, like
a lot of times that's just reading, like reading a book.
But once again, like that's a specific kind of activity.
That's a sort of a brain-focused activity.
And what I was really thinking that maybe I needed was something where I could sit down
and yeah, focus on something, but also have enough room in my brain to just kind of let
my thoughts meander.
So I started thinking about painting miniatures again because every time I see them, see, see
miniatures that have been painted by a person, I think they're really cool.
And one thing that I found out was that the miniatures that I, that I purchase a lot
of them, well, I don't purchase that many of them.
But the ones that I've purchased for like, for, you know, for games, for D&D games, I,
they, they have been painted, pre-painted.
And I found out while reading an article that those are hand-painted.
I don't know how I thought they got all the color on them.
I just, I guess I thought it was the plastic, you know, like they probably just use different
color of plastic or something.
It never occurred to me that underneath all of that color, they're just plain old gray,
dull plastic, and people actually sit in a room somewhere painting the miniatures.
So I mean, there's no magical process for this to happen, apparently.
Someone has to sit down and paint the miniatures, and I thought, well, if someone
is going to do it, it may as well be me, or at least I could try.
So here's how I got started.
First, I went over to my shelf of board games, and I pulled it down the, the game Mysterium.
Now Mysterium is a, sort of, at atmosphere, it's not a game that I recommend, to be honest.
It is, but it's an atmospheric game, and that's, that's why I got it.
I got sucked in by the, by the, by the atmosphere and the mood of the game.
It's not a very good game.
I don't care for it myself.
Some people might care for it.
I do not care for it.
I've repurposed all of its assets for other things, including what I'm about to say.
So I opened up the box, and I grabbed the, it comes with these little pieces that are
like crystal balls, you know, like a crystal ball that you would, that a fortune teller,
sort of a cliche fortune teller would, would peer into.
So they, they, they came with these, these crystal balls, and they were all, they're
just clear plastic, different colors of clear plastic.
There's like a red one, and a yellow one, and a black one, and a blue one, and so on.
It's like, I think six different ones, and I looked at them and I thought, you know what?
If I'm going to paint a miniature, this little crystal ball shape is probably as easy as
it's going to get.
I mean, maybe there's one other game I have somewhere with easier pieces than these little,
these little fortune teller crystal balls, but this is pretty close to the, the simplest
I, I can imagine.
So I did some research, looked up how you paint miniatures, and it turns out that in order
to paint a little miniature plastic figure, you need something called a primer or an undercoat.
So I then went onto the internet and looked for primer or undercoat, and I found a couple
of different options.
One was just called a primer, and it's, it's sold specifically for little miniature figures.
And so I bought a 60, 60 mil bottle of, of primer.
It's gray primer.
Now there were a lot of other primers online as well, but they seemed to be for like household
and automotive purposes.
I don't know if that would work.
I don't know anything about paints, like nothing.
This is where I'm coming from, like no background in any of this.
So I just got this primer that said that it's, it is for, you know, like miniature wargaming
painting purposes, like it's a hobby, it's a hobby primer.
So I bought that and I bought a set of, no, I think that's all I bought at that point,
was just the primer, actually.
No, that's not true.
I went to the nearest city to where I live an hour away, went to the warhammer store and
purchased a starter set.
It's called a tool and paint starter kit.
It's got some plastic clippers and a little nail file that you use to sort of smooth out
some plastic, like where the molding, the mold lines are, you know, how the, when they're
doing the plastic molds, sometimes you get that little strip of overhang.
So sometimes you need to sort of file that down a little bit to smooth it out.
So I got that and it had like, I don't know, let's call it 10 paints, 10 different paints
in it.
So I took two and red and yellow, silver and brass and all kinds of different colors.
So I took that and it came with a brush as well.
So I took that, that kit and I had my little gray primer and I took the little crystal ball
and I painted primer over the base of the crystal ball.
Once that dried, I took some silver paint, painted silver over the base of the crystal ball,
but I left the, you know, the, the ball was, was, was clear.
And once that dried, I picked it up and looked at it and sure enough, I had just
created with paint a complete like a crystal ball that actually now looks like a crystal ball.
Because out of the box, if you go look at Mysterium like online or something, you'll see that out
of the box, these crystal balls are just like the, the base of the crystal ball, you know,
like that, the metal part that a crystal ball sort of classically in all the cliches sits upon.
That was, that's just clear plastic.
And then there's like this crystal, an actual crystal ball.
It, it took me so long to even understand what these pieces were because they're just,
they're just, it was just clear plastic and it doesn't look like anything.
It looks, I couldn't tell what it was for a long, long time.
And then once I started painting the primer over, I realized, yeah, this is supposed to be a
metal base with little arms to, to, or, or buttresses, I guess you could call them to, to, to support
the crystal ball. So those should be silver. And then I found out that there were little spines
between each buttress as well. Now, I will admit, these are not, these aren't, you know,
these little cheap plastic miniature crystal balls. They're not, they're, they're not,
they're pretty cheaply made. Like if you look at them, especially after you apply paint,
you realize that, oh, there's, there's little florets and, and sort of a damask pattern
in, in the metal, as if though it's, you know, decorative and stuff. And that, that barely
comes through even after you paint it. Like it's really hard. My partner actually painted one as
well. And she was able to paint like all the little details and really make the little curves and,
and flowery bits and, you know, viny decor kind of stand out. I wasn't quite there yet when I did
these, so mine are pretty plain. But it was still interesting because you, you could see really
quickly how a coat of paint can really not, not, not like accentuate, but actually define the,
the plastic figurine. And it really makes it different. I mean, I, so there were six crystal balls
in there. I did three. My partner did three. And so, you know, you could play around with like,
oh, what if I made the base silver? And then the little metal buttresses, they could be brass.
You know, so you can, you can actually, you can make it look like a different thing. Just,
just again, with a coat of, of different colors of paint. It was really fascinating. And I'd never
seen anything like it. I mean, it might sound really basic if you paint yourself even just,
like, probably even just painting a wall in your house can, can probably do the same thing. Like,
it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll kind of define the room differently. But I'd never had that experience
myself. Like that was the first time I'd ever taken paint to something and tried to create an
illusion with, with paint. So that was pretty exciting. And after I painted the little crystal ball
figures, I, I was hungry for more. So I went back to my game board shelf. And I grabbed, um,
pandemic, uh, Rain of Cthulhu, which is a great game. I think I've reviewed it for Acro Public Radio.
Um, maybe not. I don't know. Um, anyway, it has, I think coincidentally, six figures in that.
There's a detective and a reporter and an occultist and a, um, well, three showgoths. So that's
actually nine figures. Uh, yeah, a bunch of different figures. And so I decided to, to try my hand
at painting though. So again, I put the, I put the, uh, little really thin coat of primer over
them. Apparently the primer helps the paint stick to the, the, the plastic. I guess I don't know
why the primer sticks to the plastic, but the paint doesn't, it's probably got something to do with
chemistry or something. Personally, I would just make all the paint out of primer, I guess,
but I guess you can't do that. So you have to prime it first. I'm, I'm told that's what they tell
me on the internet. Uh, so I primed all the little figures and then I looked at the playing cards
that come in the game to show you what color everything's supposed to be. And, and then I just painted
each figure according to the card. So that was really exciting because I had to like mix my own paint
for instance, red, a little bit of red, a little bit of white for, um, some skin tone, for instance,
a little bit of brown, a little bit of white for darker skin tone, for instance, a little bit of,
um, gold on, on like the corners of a briefcase to make them look, to make them look like, like,
like metal and then brown on the briefcase to make that look leather. Like there were all these
things that were happening and, and just that paint was making it suddenly like believable,
you know, like if you, if you release a little bit of, you know, suspension of disbelief a little
you can look at those little little tiny things and you think, oh my gosh, that's just a little
tiny human carrying a briefcase made of leather with metal reinforcement on that corners. Like,
and it totally works, you know, it's exactly the same thing as when you're, uh, going to an
amusement park or something and there's, uh, or a ca, you know, you see a cause player at a conference
and, and, and, you know, they're dressed in like, um, you know, plastic and, uh, foam core or not
foam core, but, you know, whatever they use, uh, I forget the name of that material that they use
for costumes. But, you know, and they paint it so that it looks like, you know, metal and so you
think you're seeing a, a night in shining armor walk around, but actually they're just a person
in a plastic suit that's painted really nicely. And, and this was a very, very simple, very
miniature version of that. It was a lot of fun. So I painted all those and then honestly by then
I was sold on the idea and I went back to my game board, uh, shelf and took down, um, uh,
chart, uh, what, uh, wrath of a shardalon, which is a, a D&D game that came with 40 miniatures,
four zero, 40. They were all, no, not all, mostly monsters. There were a couple of heroes in there.
And, and so I started painting those took, took ages, um, and it was just a heck of a lot of fun.
And, um, as I, as I did, you know, once you start painting, when you commit to doing 40 miniatures,
then you're almost, you're almost destined to get a little bit better, I think. And, um, it has,
it's been a great learning experience, honestly, like really, really good. And the, the more that you,
you try different things, the more you realize just how, how unique a hobby it is to paint 28
millimeter high toy soldiers. So, I mean, when you hear that, when you hear what exactly you're
doing, it does seem impossible. Like they are really, really small. And the brushes by comparison,
look huge, no matter how small a brush you get, it just doesn't seem like it's going to work.
So here, here are a couple of things that I thought before starting to paint miniatures and things
I've learned since, I'm just going to say them kind of right here so that if you're thinking,
oh, it could be fun to do a little bit of a craft, you know, like a physical craft or a hobby.
This, this might be something of interest to you, especially if you are playing board games right
now with, with little plastic figures that aren't painted, you may be able to paint those. So,
first, first thing I thought miniatures are too small. I have poor eyesight and really bad
eye hand coordination. So, first of all, painting in miniature isn't, as it turns out,
like painting on like a canvas or a house in your wall in your house. The only similarity
is that they both use the physical medium of paint, at least that's my opinion. In my admittedly
limited experience, painting a miniature toy soldier is more like transferring a tiny droplet of
paint from a small brush to a plastic model. So, I mean, I know that's what painting is. Your
transferring paint from a brush to a thing, but it's it's almost like half the time you're just
letting the surface tension of the droplet on your brush kind of burst and pour onto the model.
It sounds weird and I'm probably I'm probably mischaracterizing it, but in a way that's what
that's what you're doing. Like you're looking at this tiny little model to 3D object. So, it has
grooves and like ridges and things like that. And so then you just you take your your paint brush
and you kind of like you sort of point it at the part you want to have it be a different color
and you point at it and you point at it and you kind of get closer and closer and closer and then
when when when you make contact then the brush or the paint rather sort of is suddenly on your
on your model. And what I'm trying to express here is that I mean it's not magic or anything.
I'm just trying to express that it's very rare that I feel like I'm brushing a paint onto a
miniature. I usually feel more like I I'm just using the brush to sort of to sort of touch the model
and and and and when that happens the paint is distributed. Now I mean you do have to make sure
that you're painting in the right place and so on and and you are you know you do move the brush
and you do you do the paint thing. But like if you're imagining a painter in front of a canvas
making these big broad strokes what I'm trying to express is that that's not what painting miniatures
is like. It's it's a it's a it's more of a I guess a precision work almost I think of it almost
like forensics like on crime scenes at least crime scenes on TV. It's you know you're you're brushing
or archaeology you know you're you're sort of you're doing small brushes on something in order to
to sort of uncover a color it's sort of hidden on that model that's not at all what's happening.
But you're not making these big big motions. So a lot of times if you just have your hand on
the desk that you're working on and then you have your other hand on your desk then you can paint
and the how how shaky your hands are doesn't matter like if you have shaky hands or if you just
don't feel like you have that kind of coordination as long as you anchor everything I find that very
often you can get pretty pretty precise not that I'm that precise I'm just saying that's one
thing that that I've picked up on like if you anchor your hands and paint the model that way
then a lot of you know you'll find that you're not you're not about you're not you're not pointing
your brush towards the sword and accidentally smear the models face with silver you know it just
doesn't happen that way it's not that like it's small but you'd be surprised at how precise you
actually can be if you just kind of give yourself a little bit of time a little bit of support
like physical support not emotional support I mean you can you should get emotional support as well
for this but you can do that and and you can be a lot more precise than you might think you can
if you have bad eyesight I do then you can use a magnifying glass too there are I had a magnifying
glass set up for like electronics you know for soldering and things like that so I just use that
for painting painting the models and that that helps that helps a lot it's a little bit like zooming
in on gimp where you zoom in on something to touch it up and you look at it and you're like I don't
know if that's gonna quite pass muster it just doesn't really look perfect and then you zoom out
and you're like oh my gosh yeah that looks that looks fine that looks great and you're only you're
only noticing like the tiniest bit of inconsistency because you have it magnified 800 times or 100 times
or whatever once you zoom back out and you look at the thing or you know once you take the miniature
away from out from under the magnifying glass and you look at the thing suddenly it's fine you're
like oh yeah I get it I mean I'm not saying you know this might not be a recipe for award-winning
you know art pieces I'm just saying for gaming like that's that's been working really well for me
another concern is that miniature painting can be expensive and it's kind of true but there is
a spectrum here so within a certain range of tolerance you can I mean you know you have to be
you have to have disposable income like if you don't have any disposable income then I wouldn't
invest in plastic toys yet that's something maybe for further down the line but if you have some
disposable income then you can choose you you have dials you can you can control in terms of how
much you're spending on this hobby as I've said I started by just rating my existing board games
like a lot of board games if you play them a lot of them come with plastic figures like that's just
as a pretty common thing within gaming like you need a thing to represent something in the game
and a lot of times in this day and age they just stamp them out of plastic and put them in the box
now they don't paint them for you they're just red or gray or blue or white or whatever and
I don't even think they necessarily intend for you to paint them but I mean those are paintable
so if you have a board game with little miniatures in them you could paint those things you will have
to buy paints and I will admit that I have really been enjoying Citadel paints which is from
from like Warhammer and from Games Workshop which those are those get pretty expensive however
you can also use just normal acrylic paints as I have discovered so if you go down to your
local like craft store like probably Joanne's fabrics or or Michaels or or spotlight or art zone or
whatever place you have that sells like art supplies there are very frequently little tubes of
acrylic paint for like three bucks a pop you can buy those and miniatures are 28 millimeters high
typically they don't take a lot of paint so you don't need a lot of paint you will get you will
for three dollars you will get more I'm just making up the number three but the three bucks let's
say you'll get more paint than you know you need so get get like white black and then like red green
and what is it yellow is that the other primary color no no it's red yellow and blue right yeah
because green and yeah because blue and yellow make green so get the primary colors get red get white
and black and you can pretty much mix anything from from those at least that's what I'm told
I don't know how to mix paints really it doesn't seem to follow the same rules as mixing paint
in a digital setting it's completely different so I don't know I'm still still working on on
that technique but you can get cheap acrylics and what you do is you I use just the back of a broken
plate as a palette because it's ceramic so you can put a little dab of paint on your little
on your palette whatever you're using you dip your brush in a little bit of water and then you rub
that water into the paint so you're you're basically you're getting the paint I mean there are
obviously you know YouTube videos and things like that on this subject so don't take it from me
because I don't know what I'm doing but you're you're getting your paints um a little bit watery
almost you don't want it too watery you know you don't want to like drip off the the figure that
you're painting but you get it pretty pretty pretty watery and then you um and and and with these
with with a lot of the craft paints that aren't meant to be used for painting miniatures a lot of
times what I have found um is that they they are very thick out of the tube so you have to water them
down more than for instance if you go out to your local war hammer or games workshop shop store
and purchase a citadel paint or a army painter paint like those are practically almost ready to go
I mean they they still tell you to water them down a little bit like just a just a little bit of
just a droplet but um those are basically ready whereas the the ones in tubes from a generic art
store they're pretty thick but you can water them down and then you can start painting with them
really it works I've I've tried it so um that's like you know I don't know 20 bucks for paints maybe
and then a hundred bucks for your board game uh that's 120 bucks and and like I say uh oh and you
need a brush probably in there as well so that's what 130 hundred and 150 bucks maybe probably
uh for like 40 miniatures potentially like if you get a uh one of the classic uh D&D board games
like a castle what is it castle raven loft or wrath of a shardalon then you're looking at like
literally 40 uh 40 little toy soldiers in one box and you've got acrylic paints and you just
go to town just have a blast oh and you need primer so it will say yeah I round it up 150 bucks
quick note about miniatures though I will say this the the ones that you get in bulk like 40
miniatures in one D&D uh game board game um those are typically going to be uh a little bit less
elegant to paint by which I mean and I didn't know this until fairly recently but the the ones
that come in bulk you know that they average out to like you know two bucks maybe uh per miniature
or whatever those are very frequently not of the same sculpt quality like the actual like the
person who sits at a computer and digitally designs these things and then the equipment that they
use to um stamp them into the you know the plastic that into the molds um it's just not it isn't
it isn't quite as good um there you'll you'll you'll get things like a character with a flowing
cape behind them but instead of there just being an air gap between their body and the cape
there's just mysteriously it's just it's it's solid it says if though their body like
flows right into the cape because I mean in in the plastic that's literally what is happening
there's just plastic there in real life of course when you put a cape on your body doesn't extend
to um to the full width of the cape the cape so that's not realistic um and that's annoying you
know because you're painting and you think oh this isn't that bad tattoo is totally wrong this is
a fine quality of miniature and then you get to the back and you're like oh wait this doesn't make
sense does this big triangle of plastic behind them should I color that as the cape or is that part
of their body where does their body end in the cape start little things like that um and you'll get
the same thing like where if they're holding a weapon like their hand and the the hilt of a sword
you won't be able to tell the difference you'll just be like I guess that's the top of their hand
sure I'll make that the top of their hand wait they must have fingers they must be gripping the
sword so where their fingers on the other side and you won't be able to find them their hair of
course that's notoriously bad like you'll have cascading locks of hair that aren't really locks of
hair they're just an extension of shoulders that happen to go up right up to your head now when
you're first starting out or if you don't care that much then that sort of thing isn't a big deal
and and frankly when you know for for my dnd games like no one's looking at these miniatures that
closely we we put them on the table and we move them around a map and nobody cares what color
they are or how how you know how realistic all of the different materials are and and stuff like
that it just doesn't it's not a big deal but if you start painting for the pure enjoyment of painting
then that sort of thing will drive you crazy and I speak from experience because I've started really
enjoying this uh painting thing and and it just drives me crazy when I get to like yeah a flowing
cape and there's no air gap or or a um a tabored and and it just it completely eats their body and
you know just it really it's it's difficult because you're think you think you're doing so well
at the paint you know you think oh I'm this is one of my best paint jobs yet I've really learned
I've I've really come a long way and then you have to compromise in all these weird little these
little ways you know where you're just the the sculpture itself hasn't provided you the the
surface for something and so you just have to like paint your interpretation of what should be
there you know and that's that's pretty annoying because you can tell when when there's a hand
just painted over the top of a of a sword hilt you can tell the difference between when there's
actually a hand there so if you have a little more disposable income then you might start to look
for other higher quality figures little toy soldiers uh those those exist um some of the best
I guess are warhammer figures they are very specific though I mean they're they're they're created
for the warhammer setting um which is kind of a fantasy sci-fi setting uh the age of sigma are
setting as well that's pretty pure fantasy although I would argue it's a little bit swords and sandal
fantasy um so you know it is very specific they've they've got a certain sort of uh motif going on
with with their miniatures but there are other companies that make miniatures as well for all
kinds of different settings for cyberpunk for fantasy for sci-fi and they get expensive like we're
talking about ten fifteen thirty fifty dollars per model sometimes I mean depending on you know
the how elaborate and how big the model is uh so it can get really expensive but it's up to you
you have you have those dials that you're allowed to to adjust um because it's all up you know
it's it's entirely up to you you can use these models for whatever game you want to play and um
and so you can you can control what you buy how much of what you how much of the things that you buy
and so on um so that's that's the thing about how expensive models are and what was the other
thing that I was thinking that might be oh yeah time um I used to definitely think that I didn't
know that I needed a hobby that would take up like an entire I don't know afternoon or or a day
of of of my time but as it turns out it's not the worst thing to do sometimes you know on a weekend
or on a lazy evening where you don't have anything better to do just sit down and paint a little
bit it's actually really fun um so yes it does take time you're you're right yes if that is a
concern then that's not that's not a misconception it does take time but possibly that's time well
spent not because you're painting a toy soldier like that's not the the value really the the value
I think is more like it's a creative outlet and it's a thing that you can do while enjoying
something else you know conversations with a friend who is also painting or you could put on a
movie or you could just let your mind wander as you paint it it feels like a an oddly sort of
healthy thing on a mental level like it's a mental healthy thing I don't know that that's true
for everyone it might be frustrating for some people it might be a waste of time for other people
but for me it has been fun it's been a nice analog hobby that feels a little bit like solving a
really simple puzzle like you look at a little plastic figure and you think there is a person
under there like there's color underneath this plastic or you know an aura of color floating around
the plastic if you prefer and I'm going to uncover it all and so you dip your paint in some or
your paintbrush in some paints and you start doing the painting and by the end of it and it can
take time because it you know you have to paint and then you have to let it dry and you paint more
and you let that dry by the end of it though you've got this little figure that now reflects what
you had envisioned when you first picked that model up and that's the the real joy I think of
of the hobby as it turns out so if that sounds like something that's interesting to you you should
give it a go I wouldn't let yourself be intimidated by either the the complexity because as it turns
out it's it's not as complex as you might think don't let yourself be intimidated by the price
because there are a lot of different choices for how much you spend on this and don't let yourself
be intimidated by the time expenditure because if you're enjoying it and you find it to be fun
and relaxing or inspiring then it's time well spent I think that's pretty much all I have to say
about painting toy soldiers but if this has been intriguing to you or inspiring then I urge you
to go try it out for yourself really especially if you have some board games with plastic figures
anyway that that's a low risk kind of endeavor go get some primer go get some paints try it out
see if you enjoy it if you do you can keep doing it and if you don't it's okay at least you got
some time with some arts and crafts thanks for listening why don't you record an episode or
right now about your favorite hobby talk to you next time
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