Army Painter - Speed Paint ANGREVIEW

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WARNING LONG POST
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So everyone, as you know i’m not a famous influencer so noone sent me shit for free.
like every person with common sense i bought my box of Army Painter Speed Paints.
As following there will be my personal rubbish opinion about them, or as i say, my Angreview

1st thing lets talk immediatly about why people are looking into this, lets be frank, fuck GW and their prices, right? Right.
Here the price is 89€ for 23 colours, 1 medium and 1 big brush = 89/24=3.7 per bottle, and it contains as much as GW contrasts.
3.7 VS 6.3 (no brainer here)
the bottle is the droplet one, and has a metal ball inside each one of them, so fuck yes worth everything!

2nd the range of colours is quite wide, i wish there were more browns, but you can easily work with all of them. Many colours are really saturated, few are light in tone, mostly all of them are really vivid, like a punch in the eye, and it’s what people generally want for those kind of things (my favourite one is the Sand Golem one)

3rd the application is smooth as fuck, they are not as liquid as gw one, so they dont run around like screaming kids at the mall, they pool from the edge in a great way and they make no stains/coffe spot at all. I was rock hard, like the sand golem color i mentioned before.

4th you can change easily the effect by giving to the white/light base a different undertone.
Found the best use for this are the flesh parts, adding some regular paint pink or a heat map with yellow/orange/blue on the face made a much better result like i did for the 2 cheering hobbits

5th the big warning in my own experience, those colours are ment to be, as the label says, speed paint: 1 layer then move on with you life, stop playing with dolls ffs.
so here’s the thing, 1 layer and that’s about it, if you put it down and you dont touch it (like what your parents said to you when growing up) the result is great, but if you start to apply extra layers, washes, glazes, other speed paints, the result is disastrous.

BECAUSE IT ISNT THE WAY THEY ARE SUPPOSE TO BE USED

this part is fundamental, we all have to keep in mind that those colours perform in a great way for not important things, like the cheering fans i’m painting, some veichles maybe, terrains, or some warmaster stuff, because doesnt really matter the quality of the final result, being a secondary character/item itself.

if you wanna add more layers and all of that, this is not the product for you, it would necessairly require to be varnished, airbrush is the best option (yeah, like if i own one, right?) or with a spray can, but defenetly not with brush and varnish paint, or you’ll smudge everything once again.

All the colours reactivate, some more, some more, some more, some more and few less, mostly some more. a lot more. Like the white shirt and the guy eating pasta. Same effect.
Having to varnish between layers, remove the “speed” part from the idea itself, but once again, because this isnt the way those colours are suppose to be used, those are not GW contrasts (damn you GW)

So what are those colours good for?
Final glazes, tints, but used as only as final touch to the model before varnishing
Secondary stuff, or some projects you wanna quickly done, some work where you splotch some colour over and you are done with it.

If like me, you dont like the idea of painting with contrasts already, you wont like those either, BUT if you wanna some tool that will help you to quickly do your army, man, those are fenomenal, much more than GW, much cheaper, much more vibrant and much smoother.

Do i like those? Yes
Do i suggest you to look into those? Yes
Would i keep those? Nope (gotta check that amazon refound)

They are not the tool i thought they were, so my bad, even tho i didnt find anything about this reactivation thing on the Army Painter page/videos.
It’s simple not what i was looking for, it seems my idea was actually what GW produces
immagine

so, after all this chatting, i’ll show you what i quickly made in those 3 days


you can see the difference of the skin tone i meant before with the fat guy (white base) and the dwarf+hobbits (pink base)


This is the 1st model i tried, so lot of imperfections, but came out still muddy on the skin, which i used 2 colours, sand golem + camo green layered over


this frog i swear, base with yellow, then green and orange over the areas.
the orange was removing the yellow below, showing the white base coat, while the green was picking up the under yellow, clogging the model, gave up shortly after, when i added some blue in the recesses.

in the, now, splotchy recesses.

:hat8: :pizza: :pizza: :pizza: :pizza:
:mad0: <Ciao belli!

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Can you explain more about the reactivation? Does it occur with dry brushing, regular acrylic paint, or just with more coats of speed paint?

The speed paints reactivate even days after your application when a wet surface goes over them.

If you drybrush on top not much happens, quite regular behaviour, but if you apply another layer of speedpaint/washes/glaze/layering, everything what contains moisture/wet/umidity, will reactivate the paint and mix it on the go while painting.

It’s a cool effect of you wanna smooth surfaces, lets say you made a flat panel and you wanna create a gradient, you can easily fade the speed paint by brushing away with a wet brush.

But if you wanna use it as contrast you’ll have a bad time, you need to seal the speed paint with an airbrush, already harder to do with a spray can, impossible with varnish paint applied with a brush, because ofc, it would reactivate once again

So its perfectly possible to use them also as contrasts, but you need to varnish it every layer, and this removes the “speed” from it

Thanks for the review! I guess I will avoid them (at least for the advertised purpose).

Odd for a new paint. I had this happen with old Citadel paints which had gone bad. I suspect this was because the acrylic medium had already polymerized, so I was essentially just distributing pigment with a wet brush.

What about if you try mixing in some varnish in the speedpaints? Maybe that could help to stop them from reactivating?

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@Anzu wait wait man, the advertised purpose is just to apply 1 coat and move on with another miniature, for their actual purpose they are far better than contrasts in that sense.
it’s supposed to reactivate, i’ll quote what AP told me on instagram:

“we’ve been pretty clear (Here I add, where were they? Didnt see on their page nor site) that they can be reactivated if not properly cured, and recommend a clear coat if you plan to highlight over top.
This chemical make up that allows for deactivation is actually what helps to prevent tide marks (coffee stains) from happening when using Speedpaint”

@KingKobra that might be a nice idea, but i dont own any varnish aside from a spray can, didnt think of that, but i’d say it might lose the ability to flow in such great way…? not sure

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I recommend the matt vallejo one if you get one. About £3

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OH WAIT A SECOND! I have an Antishine from army painter from my paint set that i never used!!
FUCK IM DUMB! I NEVER USED THAT!!
I thought it was some sort of opaque transparent color for remove shine from metal colours, not a protective varnish!!
it might work, but it’s an extra step on something you supposedly do for fast results

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I’ve seen several videos on Youtube about speedpaints, and none mentioned reactivation. I see people talking about it all over now. I would be a bit worried about humidity if they reactivate, or even clammy fingers. I guess not a problem if you routinely varnish, but I never bother for plastic models because it isn’t needed. Makes them a little less useful to me with the extra step.

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I often varnish with brush, but I add a tiny amount of flow aid into it and it really just breaks apart. I’d imagine the same should happen with speedpaints as I imagine there’s a lot of flow aid in those? Even if not, it’s a trivial amount of work either way and if it could make it more useful for you, why not give it a shot? You could even pre-mix.

Or are you looking for reasons to give them away?:smiley:

I’ve put varnish in paints before, and in my experience you don’t even need that much, just a dab. Bear in mind i haven’t tried either speedpaints or contrast paints, only homebrew concoctions made with inks. As for flow aid, if needed, just a tiny, tiny amount.

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Oh my bad, thanks for the clarification! You could also try to add a layer of acrylic medium (e.g. GW Lahmian Medium) on top. I believe this is what they meant in their instagram response. I use that for acrylic inks to remove the shine. Certainly not as tough as varnish but if your goal is just preventing the layer below from reactivating, varnish sounds like an overkill + you have the drying time of a regular acrylic paint.

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There is a medium with the box, right? I’m not sure of the properties of it, but I guess it works differently than regular mediums and will also reactivate? Any normal glaze medium could work too, I guess, depending on what exactly makes it reactivate. Maybe try out a medium first, then if it doesn’t work try out a varnish?

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the medium in the box is just for make the color lighter, not for sealing, tried that already.
added few drops of the old AP matte anti shine varnish to the regular speed paint, it’s harder to reactivate, but still happens

once again i can confirm that those colours are great as mono layer, or eventually if you have an airbrush and you can varnish them after every application

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Ah okay. Too bad I guess.