MtP's Hobby and Painting Log

[Mike the Pike]

Mid-war Free French,à la Bir Hakheim, from the new 'unofficial' list or a Heer Aufklärung force.

[Konrad]

Those are pretty sharp! Nice detailing on the helmets.

[YellowStreak]

Mid-war Free French,à la Bir Hakheim, from the new 'unofficial' list or a Heer Aufklärung force.

I was planning on reorganizing my Legionnaires around that list.

[ashmie]

Superb Sir, well done on these.

[Mike the Pike]

As some of you know (sorry for the spam) I have set up a wee miniature painting service.

On Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/risingson76/

And my eBay store here: http://www.ebay.com/usr/scoundrel_1976

Here are my first 3 offerings...







Whaddya think? Would you buy 'em?
Any tips, advie, comments or criticism are welcome.
Cheers
MtP

[Primarch]

Well, they're a bit too tiny for my tastes, but well painted.
IMHO you could try weathering the decals a bit. The rest of the vehicle looks like it lost a fight with a blowtorch, but the insignia is still fresh.

Good luck with your business.

[me_in_japan]

Prim makes a good point about the decals - I hadnt noticed, tbh, but he's right nonetheless.

One question I have is: what's your time/sales rate ratio? I mean, how long did you spend on these and how much are you expecting to get for them? This has always been the thing that gave me the most pause for thought about commission painting. I'm interested to see how this goes for you. Your painting is certainly not an issue - it's easily good enough for commission work - I'm just wondering what your speed is like. Best of luck with your endevours, regardless

[Mike the Pike]

@MiJ: This is an experiment in progress at the moment as I haven't sold anything yet.
I noticed there ean't much 'pro-painted' stuff on Fleabay for Bolt Action, apart from Warlord's own 'Battle Ready' Tanks (retail at 5500 yen) and IMHO are pretty plain...



No commander, no stowage, not much weathering etc. They haven't even painted the tracks.

Then there are the guys in Hong Kong. They charge between 5-6000 yen per model. Again they are OK but no charcter, just air bushed with a few details picked out.



In my very humblest opinion my tanks are nicer than theirs. I model the commanders and extra bits and leave them seperate for safe transport.

So, I have set US$50 as my price, but I may peg it down a little just to attract attention.

Here's my reasoning, and why I am comfortable at that price point. I bought all the models from warlord at a special 'bundle' price 3 for 40pounds IIRC. This worked out at just over 2000 yen per tank. So I figured if I can get each one done in 3 hours, 'paying' myself 1000 yen per hour, I would be OK. The extra from the exchange rate would cover materials (paint and glue). Ideally I would want to pay myself the NZ minimum wage of $15.75 or 1242 yen.

I have been keeping a record of how much time I spend on each stage, using a stopwatch, to see if it's all worthwhile. The German tanks, you see above came in at right about 2 and 1/2 hours from opening the box to finished weathering. (of course there were breaks in between).
Here are the times for the above Panzers...

Trimming from sprue and tidying up before assmebly: 20 minutes. These kits have a lot more parts than the Russian or American ones.

Assembly: about 40 minutes each. Over engineered German crap! Much like in real life. Putting the 'skirts' on the Assault Gun took ages and I said lots of naughty words.

Air Brushing: 1-2 minutes to undercoat and about 30 minutes total to put on 4 layers for the Dunkelgelb yellow base colour and the two tone camo. I did this Henry Ford (Nazi loving prick) style, with a few of my own tanks on the assmebly line. It's not a swooshy Eldar style. My Dark Eldar Flyers took considerably longer.

Detailing: 40 minutes each to do paint the tracks, pick out the tools and MGs etc and paint the commanders. Again not a 40 minute solid block. This was in a couple of sessions.

Finishing: 20minutes. Here I muddied the tracks, applied some soot etc and applied the transfers.

And done! so, right on that sweet, approximately 2.5 hours a tank, I had hoped for. Now I just need someone to pony up my asking price.

As for the Russian and American tanks, they, like their historical counterparts are much simpler and are much quicker to assemble.
3x Russian Tanks, Only +/-60 minutes to get them trimmed, assembled and painted! Fewer parts, less fiddly, simpler colour schemes.
3x American Tanks, only 40 minutes to get them trimmed up and assembled.
I figure (easily) under 2 hours for each tank, which would pay me 1500 yen an hour, give or take. Not too shabby. Just as long as people come along and buy 'em, hence the social media Blitz yesterday (Humblest apologies for all the spam guys).

I think if people actually buy my stuff, I can make a nice self-sustaining business, which will give me a bit of extra pocket money in my Paypal account to use for my own hobby stuff. It will never be enough to make a dent in the household budget or fund trips to France but that was never the plan. And, if the whole thing fails and no-one buys anything, I'll just scrap the whole thing and keep the tanks for myself.

I don't know if I'll branch out into Infantry or other genres because, the former are more labour intensive and as we know the latter are priced so high that you could only really break even or make a profit if you were a real 'pro' painter, CMON 8-10 level etc doing Premium pieces.

Anyways, that's my 2 yen. whaddya think? Am I kidding myself? Or is it worthwhile?

[Mike the Pike]

Even though I was actually quite busy this week (for me anyways) I managed to paint up 6 and a half new tanks for my little eBay experiment. Hopefully people actually buy a few this weekend, so I can get the project really rolling.

This week, special thanks go to Theresa may for totally feckin' up the UK and sending the pound further into the long drop. Sorry to all you who actaually have to live with the consequenes of her arrogance, whether Tory or Labour or other.

Anyways...

Here are some Russians. A T-34/76 obr.1941, a T34/76 obr.1943 and a KV-1 which came with a KV-2 turret.

[Mike the Pike]

And some Merkins. M-4 Shermies of course.









Not too shabby, I reckon. Whaddya think? How about the weathering? A better level?