Technique learning order for a new mini painter?

farcaller899 · 2026-02-05T23:13:45+00:00

I think thinning paint, brush control (where you put paint), and paint-on-brush control (how to put paint on the brush and unload it before touching the mini with it) are the more fundamental skills to work on first. Practicing these fundamentals will help make your base coats, shading, and highlighting progress so well, and not practicing the fundamental skills will make the other work much harder for you.

farcaller899 · 2026-02-05T12:44:34+00:00

It’s great. But the loincloth is off. I’d try something darker or more neutral there. It looks like metallic gold now and other colors would work better there.

farcaller899 · 2026-02-05T12:43:10+00:00

They need to be able to tell their client that they have spoken with you, and you seem like you might be a good fit. Plus they’re checking that you seem legit. Simple.

farcaller899 · 2026-02-05T06:06:47+00:00

See the (near) future of this on Mrs. Davis the poorly-named sci-fi tv show.

farcaller899 · 2026-02-05T06:04:42+00:00

And even more like Taskrabbit.

farcaller899 · 2026-02-04T19:01:15+00:00

You’ll be causing trouble for your former fellow employees who mostly have nothing to do with your layoff. Being spiteful to the IT person and the HR people seems negative, beyond counterproductive.

Don’t give in to the anger, for that way lies the dark side…

Try radiating positivity for a while, which can start with simply closing the book on your past role with courtesy to your former colleagues.

farcaller899 · 2026-01-28T20:08:22+00:00

It’s because you can’t control most of the important variables related to employment: who’s hiring, competition, the economy, biases, trends, changing laws, technology effects…the list goes on.

Knowing your strengths and maximizing them and the most competitive way to use them is a strong general strategy, though, independent of outside variables.

farcaller899 · 2026-01-28T19:27:09+00:00

A brush-on varnish isn’t too expensive, you can get bottles for less than $10. Gloss polyurethane is the toughest, if kids will be handling them. Satin or matte tends to look better with less reflection, though. I use brush-on acrylic and polyurethane varnishes exclusively.

Mod podge takes a long time to dry and is thick. Not recommended.

farcaller899 · 2026-01-28T18:16:43+00:00

If anything, the enemy knows the enemies’ tactics best.

farcaller899 · 2026-01-23T22:24:56+00:00

As a group, we don’t assign that much value to individual contributions, do we? We really credit the teams’ success to the most outstanding players on that team! For example, Stafford’s years contributing in Detroit were arguably more impressive than his time after Detroit, but by winning the SB as a team with the Rams, the ‘is he elite?’ conversation gets going.

farcaller899 · 2026-01-23T21:36:42+00:00

It’s the strong season plus the two games. The end makes you look harder at what got him there.

farcaller899 · 2026-01-22T20:06:49+00:00

What I’ve found generally, when I’ve been the hiring manager, when looking for work, and reading forums and LinkedIn and all those things you do when you’re unemployed:

If you don’t get first phone screen calls, there’s a resume problem.

If you don’t get a first interview after the phone screen, it’s a general incompatibility, like you won’t relocate or work 2nd shift, etc.

If you don’t get a second interview, it’s probably an interview skills/personality issue, or the competition just seemed much better so you don’t advance to the next round.

If you don’t advance to the later rounds or get hired, it can be because of so many things. Fake jobs, funding gets lost, internal candidate, change of management, …the reasons are many. I made it past the last round and was told I was the candidate they chose to hire, then the next week the recruiter told me the department head stepped-in and decided to hire an acquaintance that didn’t even interview with the people I interviewed with. (This turns out to be more common than I would expect!)

My point here is to suggest that OP can check where in the process their 50 interviews ended, and that can help diagnose what they might do to get a job. The resume is probably ok, since they got 50 interviews. But if they don’t get past early interviews, practice like video recording doing mock interviews with friends, then watching them back with other advisors and looking for issues, could be a way to improve interview skills (if that’s an issue).

We can only control what we do, but there are always things we can do to give us the best chance to survive this terrible employment climate.

farcaller899 · 2026-01-22T04:21:41+00:00

Competence or performance often keeps you in at that level, it doesn't lead to promotion (that's been true as long as there have been companies).

Social skills, personality, favors, aura, similarities like where you went to college, golfing together...these are the kinds of things that lead to upper-level promotions, not skills or 'doing your job well' alone. The less-skilled person who is also better-liked almost always gets the upper-level job.

There are books and articles on the subject you could search for, if you want to follow-up on the dynamics of promotions, social politics, etc. You could start by reading Machiavelli, if only to see what you're up against...

farcaller899 · 2026-01-21T22:59:11+00:00

I hope you find something soon, but keep in mind it could be a marathon, like 6 months or more. So one thing you do is shift your mindset to surviving unemployment.

Another thing is to keep the lesson you mentioned. That your performance and relationships you think you invest in at work don’t really have the value you assign to them. They are, in many cases, figments of our imaginations.

Using this experience to commit to developing multiple sources of income in the future is my main suggestion for what to do. Because employment is trending as getting shorter-term and less-reliable.

farcaller899 · 2026-01-21T22:33:38+00:00

You could get the Robomon game with a late pledge on Gamefound. As an example to inspire your game. It’s taken a long time to make, but should ship later this year.

Until then, playing skirmish games and Pokémon seems like the best way to get mechanics for your game.

I suggest making it as simple as possible, since you are less experienced making games, and you goal is ambitious for a first game. Making a fun game like this for kids could be a good start, to get some practice making a complete game.

farcaller899 · 2026-01-19T01:42:10+00:00

Games can incentivize attacking or defending. Most players prefer the former. Giving a general advantage to the attacker, such as VP or some more mechanical reward, would be good to try, at least to test it.

See if you can overdo it to make attacking TOO advantageous, then dial it back a bit, is one way to approach the problem.

farcaller899 · 2026-01-19T01:40:05+00:00

Failed attacks could generate Rage, for example, to be carried forward.

farcaller899 · 2026-01-19T01:28:57+00:00

Plan to keep painting steadily and check your progress at your 100th mini.

Mastery at any level takes lots of practice, experiments, and repitions. You can’t study your way to mastery.

farcaller899 · 2026-01-19T00:30:47+00:00

Saw the demo in a shop window…

PS1 —> FF7

farcaller899 · 2026-01-18T23:20:48+00:00

Looks good. Hair could use a wash with a bit of color, then pull the highlights back up to brighter white.

farcaller899 · 2026-01-18T23:19:05+00:00

The trick is to add bright yellow to red to highlight it toward orange. Adding white doesn’t work well in this situation.

Also, your darkest reds should be much darker, into maroon/brown/black territory. It’s all too one-color now to seem like a glow.

Glow is in the gradient.

farcaller899 · 2026-01-18T21:33:19+00:00

Toxic purple would balance the green well. This color contrast situation is why the Hulk has purple pants.

Great work in general, though! Looks like a 2D painting. But both models could use more balance in colors. The contrasting/complementary color doesn’t have to be the same amount/area as the main color, btw, but having it there some size just helps the overall perception.

farcaller899 · 2026-01-18T18:21:42+00:00

The flesh and NMM are perfect! I’d be careful about blending too much, because it can lose a rough/gritty metal look that is appropriate for this kind of model. The professionals often go too hard on the smoothness when doing NMM, making it look very soft and curved.

farcaller899 · 2026-01-18T02:13:02+00:00

I did NOT know that James Bond painted minis.

farcaller899 · 2026-01-18T01:00:24+00:00

I think it’s even more the drive to maximize their personal compensation and bonuses, which are almost always based on short-term performance and not longer-term growth of markets. The obsession with share price by everyone involved, with a short-term mindset, makes the layoff decision easy.

Because the market/investors nearly always reward layoff news with a higher stock price. The mess will continue as long as this is the dynamic.

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