Cool
Mini or Not: On the surface it's a site for rating people's mini
pics on a 1-10 scale... but in reality that's the secondary function,
as it's an excellent resource with literally thousands of images of
minis, from every manufacturer you can think of, painted by people at
every painting level you can think of. No matter where you are, there's
something you can learn from here. There's an ever-increasing articles
section, with great tips for things like mini photography, senmm, complex
gems, and other stuff which is just as handy. It also has a forums section,
a store that stocks Spyglass (Steve Buddle) and Freebooter (Werner Klocke)
minis, and a book! The CMON Annual for 2003 is an excellent buy (although
the postage is a bit expensive as it's a hardback at the moment - it
may get printed in paperback at some point), with good quality pics
of heaps of different kinds of minis and 3 great tutorials at the back.
I have some pics in there too... but that's not why you should buy it
:-).
My
CMON gallery: just my stuff. Go on, go vote...
The
Jenova Project: Inge is one of my favourite painters, with a particularly
distinctive style. Excellent tips section with really clear tutorials.
Number
9 : neat site showing his personal stuff with a few tutorials as
well. He has some of the nicest painted Warmachine models I've seen
yet.
Chest
of Colors : You'll
have seen some of these lovelies on CMON under the username Mahon. This
is his site, well worth a look (and check out the linked site on painted
clothing, nifty!).
JRN:
Jakob Rune Nielsen's site, finally, yay! This is one of my all-time
absolute favourite painters - he does beautiful things with colour and
conversions. There are some tuts, galleries etc as well as a bit of
a bio. Well worth a look.
TMCW
: A Yahoo model group with a focus on conversions - it's usually pretty
quiet so chances are you'll actually get feedback rather than being
lost amidst 40 queries about where to buy Vallejo paint... what kind
of camera to buy... why Golden Demons suck...
....
and on that note, we have the Mini-Painter
Yahoo group, which tends to get inundated with those queries. It's an
excellent group, with some really good people on it, but please, if
all you want is to know where to get paint? check out the archives *first*.
There are over 3000 members with around 1500+ total posts a month, and
the thread comes up on average once a week to once a fortnight, so there'll
be plenty of info on online stores, game stores in many different countries,
etc. The site is a good one for getting feedback and help, no matter
where you are - active posters include some very talented people, so
if you're just starting out or have been painting for a while and just
want to finetune stuff, this group is really helpful.
Fantization.com
: one of the places I buy my paints, brushes and minis. I like the Vallejo
brushes, although I tend to go through them very quickly due to painting
all the time and being a bit, um, brutal with them. I've had very good
experiences to date with Fantization, with prompt shipping which is
charged at a good rate, not the scary shipping some US/European companies
try to pull when confronted with a buyer from NZ (usually classed as
'rest of world' with accordingly freaky postage - I'm assuming it's
a 'too hard' cost for the slackers who can't handle the thought of filling
in a customs declaration). A friend of mine had a problem with delays
when he ordered something that wasn't in stock, but in my last order
I ordered something that wasn't available and it was just deducted from
the bill and everything else shipped promptly. The site has a good range
of minis and accessories, a painting section by Matt Verzani (a reason
in itself to go have a look :-) ), and at the moment one of my minis
(Eilea) is showing up on a banner
on the front page, so I'm quite pleased. Takes Paypal too, which is
something I look for in a mail order site as it saves me the hassle+bank
fees of a currency conversion.
Albino
Rhino : I've bought some things here, mainly paint, because the
price on Vallejo paints here is awesome. Also takes Paypal. It's a smallish
business, so the stock is sometimes limited, but there's a very good
selection throughout a bunch of mini ranges.
Electric
Ocean : I don't spend much time online, but if I did, this is a
site I'd check on a regular basis. Really frequent updates (daily I
think), and an excellent place to check in on because he also lists
updates at other people's sites. Way cool :-).
