Is anyone else sick of people on ebay, and elsewhere, listing their models as "pro painted" when it's clearly an average at best pain job?
I'm not really one for buying pre-painted miniatures. But I must admit, if I see something with a nice paint job at the right price, I'm not above snatching it up and parading it around a table. I am in no way claiming to be an awesome painter, not one of my models to date would be worthy of the title of a "pro paint job". It's just frustrating to get on ebay and see the crap that people list claiming it has been pro painted.

Here is a couple of examples of models being peddled under the guise of being "pro painted"

Dark Reapers


Chaos Havoc squad

These are by far not the worst examples I have seen.

Haters gonna hate.

Or is that painters gonna paint?

Don't like it?

Don't buy it. Problem solved.

Also, maybe to that person the models look pro compared to, say, their friends models?

GW painted models to one may look pro painted, but to someone else may look amateurish when their standard is 9.5 or higher on Cool mini or not.

Paint quality is subjective.

Pro painted means someone has paid money for the paint job or painted the model with intention to sell it. Many professional painters offer 'tabletop quality' services.

In other words, it's a meaningless label, i suggest you ignore it.

Yes I think it’s kind of lame, I mean if that was pro painted then I have one every single Golden daemon ever I’m so damn good.

It’s even funnier when they think it’s so good they list the models for a lot more than retail. I have seen “pro painted” models listed for more than 3 times the retail prize.

@neil
I wouldn’t even call those “table top” quality I would call them “three colour Min tournament requirement” quality

There's more than 3 colours on them, and also some evidence of shading and drybrushing.

I rmember the pro painted scarabs from way back when. They had a fingerprint in the greenstuff he'd used to build up the base

I remember buying lead Inquisition miniatures which had fingerprints cast into them.....

Your defending it pretty hard there.

I really don't like it either as really there not very good under the "average painters" metric.
As far as it being subjective, yes to a certain degree when its around the same level. Guaranteed though people would agree on an really well painted model, an average one and a fairly poor one.

In my mind its a false claim and it annoys me.

These topics are becoming as common as comp discussions...

Maybe he's the one selling them

It's not very friendly to beginners to have threads bashing on bad painting.

Its not like hes tricking you into buying them. Hes clearly posting and displaying what your purchasing. You either like them, or you don't.

That’s Different if it was some one saying “I painted these, let me know what you think” then I would give some constructive criticism and congratulate them on a good start. Hell the first models I ever painted looked a lot like those ones shown probably not as good.

But I never claimed that they were propainted, I know they weren’t great but they were a good start.

Not trying to bash on anyone's painting by any means, but an honest representation of the quality of the paint job isn't to much to ask. As far as beginners go, everyone has to start somewhere. The first stuff I painted had so much paint on it you couldn't make out the their faces, but I never claimed that they were something they weren't. In all honesty my current stuff isn't a whole lot better.

I guess If you want to get really technical about it, then you would assume the "pro painted" would mean that someone was actually paid to paint it, or a professional painter painted it. So i guess what I'm saying is that, if I paid someone to paint some models and they came back looking like the ones up top, i would be asking for my money back.

As mentioned, 'pro-painted' is subjective.

If you pay for something you are receiving a 'professional service'. IF you commissiuon an army, no matter how poor it is, it could be considered 'por painted'.

Not saying I agree with the term applying, but it does.

If this is a large problem in your life than you are relatively lucky.

I got 99 problems but people mislabeling pro-painted lots on ebay ain't one.

Sigged.

ha ha... yeah maybe I have to much spare time

Nah, I get you Auryn. It irks me too. Partly because I'm a bit of a pedant, but more so as it devalues the really beautiful models that occasionally come up for auction.

And since I can't think of anything sensible to fix it, I'm happy enough to default to letting vendors set what prices they like and buyers can make their own choices. (Since no child slave labour is used in painting these (although it sure looks like it often enough! ), and since the market isn't being gouged I'm cool with doing nothing but having the odd whinge about it too.)

If I started a business painting models and one pays me 5 cents to spray a model black then technically by definition its pro painted.

It's only assumed pro painted means good quality.

Another example collectible miniatures like heroclix are all pro painted.

Were they the ones described as '100% certified c@@l'?



R

OP raises an excellent point. The government still hasn't responded to any of my letters on this issue.

It's because you're including them in your letters about Chemtrails, so they're getting misdirected to BoM rather than PM&C Office for the Arts.

arn't they all machine painted?

People labeling something as pro painted is one thing, but if they don't like it, buyers can simply choose not to purchase it.

There is much worse out there - my ebay hate is scammers who steal images of a well painted version of a particular mini from a random website and re-post it up as the display photo of the model they are trying to sell, and when someone makes the purchase, they instead the model they ship through is some badly painted, broken/disfigured mini, usually missing a limb or two.

my brother got hit by one of the retards a couple of years back - the photo they posted up had an awesomely painted Tau crisis battlesuit in a colour scheme my brother liked, so he bought it. The model we got was a damaged crisis suit, missing one foot, one arm, had no head or weapons, the remainder of the model was barely basecoated, covered in blotches of colour which you could still see the black undercoat through.

Im pretty certain they're production lined by chinese workers. One painter's job will be to paint all silver parts, moved to the next person who does all the flesh, next person does the eyes and so & so on. This is why you get some that are painted okay (in the standards of collectable miniatures) and others are shocking.

Although this is what I've always believed, it would be interesting if someone knew the exact process.

WizKids never went into detail about production methods (fair enough; you probably don't want to know what safety standards are like in the Chinese factories in which are made the miniatures or iPads that you buy). However, you can kinda tell by looking at the figures carefully. I've just grabbed a couple of extra GSXM009 Wolverine models from the heaped box next to my desk. There's a fair consistency in paintjobs between the two models (much better after all these years; the first couple of sets were appalling) but you can spot differences that point to a human painter, IMO. There's no shading. Very ocasionally a model might have a wash but that's rare. Some feature machine-painted elements or decals (such as chest logos).

HeroClix have a higher level of quality than you might expect from underpaid factory workers because the work is so repetitive that once you've painted Wolverine's mask two hundred times, you're probably pretty good at it. And anytime a HeroClix set is being made in a new factory the quality noticeably improves for that set, as the new factory pushes quality up to get the contract before letting it slip back to a more realistic standard. The "Fantastic Forces" set has been reputed for years as having extremely good paintjobs that later sets never matched; partly that was due to a new factory getting the contract at that time.

I think Mongoose's Battlefield Evolution miniatures were the only machine painted prepaints. (although there was a rumour they got conned by a chinese factory and they were actually not machine painted).

I spoke with one of the Cliz guys here and he said they are hand painted. But they have template brushes/pieces to do masks or faces and the like.

So there you go...

Yeah that is the worst, sounds like your brother got hit by a particularly bad one. But it does seem like a fairly common practice.

You just have to check out the pictures as well as reading the description. It might mean painted by a lady of the night or anything. Caveat emptor!

But those children work "like machines", ipso facto, they are "machine painted"... tee hee