After posting about my adventures in dry brushing earlier this week, I got an email from Kit over at Reaper Minis. Reaper is the company that Mike and his role-playing group turned us onto since they have an amazing variety and amazing sculptors.
Turns out that Reaper HQ is not that far from where I live now. It’s a stone’s toss from where I attended University and Kit was kind enough to invite me out for a tour of the shop.
Reaper does everything on site, from sculpting the minis, to casting them in pewter, to sorting, packaging, and shipping out internet orders. They make their own paints on-site (after working with Sherman Williams to make the best paint for pewter), as well as brushes and accessories. It’s an amazing operation that’s surprisingly run by fewer people than I thought. They run a tight ship.
In the front of the warehouse is the Asylum shop, a new operation they opened up. Every single mini and accessory that Reaper makes is on the shelves. We were able to not only pick out minis that matched our characters, but accessories like weapon, instrument and even a hat pack. A little snip, some zap-a-gap and you got a new weapon in your dwarf thief’s hand.
One of the Reaper employees went above and beyond to mod-up a couple minis for us, adding a hat to Angela’s gnome bard, and transforming an iron golem into Brian’s battle-axe wielding Warforged Fighter.
My brother is insanely good at this.
We walked out of there with a bunch of stuff that’s made for a wonderful fourth of July painting miniatures. Everyone gave it a shot, even Kris, Ashley, Regean and Angela. We all had a great time. Everyone needs to check out Reapermini.com if you’re interested in this stuff. And if you’re in the area, head over to Denton and check out the Asylum shop. They have painting club on Saturdays.
I will say now, after painting my 4th mini (my dwarf thief Fargrim Sootfoot), that I’ve learned a couple things since my first go at this:
1) The proper tools are ESSENTIAL. Get an assortment of brushes, ceramic palettes, clippers, exacto knives, zap-a-gap glue, sculpty, various base flocking stuff… it’s not as expensive as I thought it would be.
2) Invest in the Reaper paints. I love them. They made a huge difference.
3) Follow the steps and don’t skip ahead. Remove flashing, attach extra parts, prime it, then paint it. Dark first then highlight. Add wash, then when you’re done, flock.
4) Be patient and TAKE…YOUR…TIME. You can rush it and be disappointed or you can slow down and say “I put 30 hours into this.” Fargrim took about 9 hours. It was like time travel. I started to paint, then suddenly it was 9 hours later and my back and shoulders really hurt.
Yeah, I like Dwarves
Relic looks imposing even from behind. Hey-o!
