Painting 102 - How to paint a lot of figures without losing your mind.
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In this section, I'll show how I go about painting a large mass of 15mm troops at one time. For this, I'll take you through the steps of painting 50 Old Glory Frankish Swordsmen/Axemen, which are being used (and sold in this catalog) as barbarian warriors for use with AoA.

You don't need to put as much effort into detail when painting a bunch of 15mm figures, as their size and numbers will hide minor flaws. You may notice I haven't done their eyes at all, though I will go back and do something with them once I decide what that something is.

Step 1 - cleaning and basing.

The figures must have the molding flash cleaned off of them, just like any other figure. These have somewhat more than Reaper figures, but it is still not a burdensome task. Just scrape it off with an X-acto knife.

When basing, it helps to consider that these will be in a big unit, and you want to make sure they can face the right direction and not hit neighbors. This is not normally a problem, but you want to be careful with long protruding weapons and shields; make sure they are off to the side of where the figure to the front or side will be.

As in the first tutorial, prime the figures with a spray primer, and be sure to spray from at least 2 sides of the figures.

Step 2 - Planning your attack

Just like with large, individual figures, you should consider how you will paint the figure ahead of time. I decided that these would be very earth toned in clothing, as nearly all of their equipment will be animal and plant derived. These barbarians have a lot of poses, but they all have similar features - boots, pants, a tunic, a weapon and a shield. A few have capes, and a few have fur vests, but these are easy to paint variations. I decided the boots will all be dark brown, with cloth pants, leather tunics, and a ruddy skin color. The shields will all have dark brown back sides, and colorful faces.

When painting a disorganised army like barbarians, it is not at all neccessary to get them all  to look the same. They do not have precision equipment or well organised units and insignia and uniforms. For this reason, I used 3 different colors for the pants, tunics and shields, and painted the figures randomly. I made one exception - the figures with t he fur vests I decided to use as elite/scout troops, so they would have a little more uniformity to distinquish them.

Deciding what to paint first, I again wanted to start with those areas that would be least likely to get screwed up later. The general principal of working from the bottom up of the figures makes the most sense again here.

When painting a large number of figures, you generally paint a single feature on all of the figures at once. So, do all of the figures' boots, then pants, then tunics, etc. This keeps your painting at a high efficiency, as you don't have to change your focus over and over again.
 

Here you see figures that have had their boots, pants and tunics painted. They show what I was describing as a varied look to the army - there are 9 colors amongst those 3 parts, randomly mixed. I did this by making a boot color, painting roughly a third of the figures, then making a different boot color, painting another third, then a last boot color for th remainder. I then did the same for the paints, using a grey, a green and a blue/grey color, and then 3 varieties of brown for the leather tunics.

The paint is not perfectly applied - you'll notice a few streaks on the tunics. Thats ok, as these will get covered up by the next step.

The starting colors were washed with a brown wash, bringing out some detail and putting some dirt on the figures (they are barbarians, after all). This nicely covered various imperfections from the base coats.

At this point, I seperated the 3 basic types of figures for the next steps. Those with cloaks had their cloaks painted in 3 different colors. Those with the vests were to have all their shields painted the same way, while the other troops would get a variety of shield designs painted.
 

The next steps were then to paint the backs of the shields, then the flesh colors. Then the axe handles and the sword scabbards. Finally, the shield faces were done. This leaves only the metal of the weapons, shield bus and hair remaining.

But lets look at the shield patterns. Again, looking for the more chaotic appearance, I went with a wide variety of patterns. On later reflection, I wish I had used a less bright color than the blue, but it is a minor point.

And here are the final figures. Except the eyes, which I hope to figure out soon. The hair was done in 3 colors, and the metal was made by mixing silver with black.

To paint the bases, I first went though all the figures and painted the molded bases, then went back through with a fatter brush to do the rest of the base. I may go back and flock the bases later, but having the bases green first will help the flock anyway.

Again, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to e-mail me at: thane@thanesgames.com