I saw Neveroddoreven's post about a painting service and had to take the opportunity. In my opinion, he's the best Character painter on the forums. You can argue that, but I don't think anyone would argue he's among our top tier of painters. We PMed back and forth for a little bit then progressed to emails.
We agreed to do a unit of Skinks and a Skink Chief. I provided him with a Steg banner arm to make a standard bearer and included some extra bits from the TG sprues to add to the Champ/SB's shields. I linked him my plog so he could review it and see what I have done with my color scheme. While he waited for more the models to arrive, he put together a chart of options for me to choose from.
I ended up choosing the scales from D with the tail/crests of H. I asked for the orange -> yellow tail from G for the SKink Chief. Next, he painted up a test model:
The Skink was too yellow, so we chatted about it and he sent another test model photo for approval:
These were more on target so we moved forward. While he was painting, he regularly sent me emails with updates on his progress. When the unit and Chief was done, he sent me a couple photos to review:
I noticed a couple Skinks were missing some stripes on their crests. We chatted about it, and he tweaked them and sent the final pictures:
After my final approval, he shipped me the models. They arrived very securely packaged. There was no damage. The Skink Chief received extra packing love. So, here is a summary:
Pros:
excellent communication
high level of painting
great time table for the whole process
excellent packing
gave me some great ideas to incorporate into the rest of my army
Cons:
the models I painted look shabby now...
it will take hours for me to add yellow stripes and red stripes to all my skinks...
So, I would highly recommend mailing some models to the UK. You will be glad you did. I've been pestering him to finalize some pricing some I can get some more models painted.
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