ReaperCon 2020 is fast approaching! Two of my classes are live paint alongs for the learn to paint kits. I am also hosting two seminars about working with Bones miniatures, as well as participating in some other fun events, and I wanted to let you know a bit more about those. Or you can just hop over to the schedule and browse through all the fun ReaperCon 2020 events and find something to your taste.
Bones FAQs Live Video Classes
When Bones miniatures first released, there were a lot of questions about how to work with them. What glue to use? How to get rid of the mould lines? If they didn’t need primer, why did the paint sometimes bead up and fail to cover areas when painting directly on the material? I decided to do some testing and find out what might work well or not with this flexible plastic material. After conducting my tests and studying the results, I wrote a series of unofficial FAQ documents for the Reaper forums.
Short FAQs – no pictures or testing information
Preparation: Glues, Putties, Mould Lines – includes photos and summaries of all relevant tests
The First Coat is the Difference – Primer or not, doing washes directly on Bones, paint durability tests
Some of the Bones I’ve painted for gaming and to practice speed painting and airbrushing.
The Reaper forums are no longer the only gathering place for Reaper fans, and there are a lot of people who prefer information via video format. So I’m going to run two online seminars for the Bones FAQs. I’ll demonstrate the products and methods I find most effective for working with the Bones material, including a few tools that I’ve added to my arsenal since writing the original FAQs.
Zoom: Thursday, September 3, 2020 from 19:00 to 21:00 Central time
Twitch: Sunday, September 6, 202 from 14:00 to 1600 Central time
The Twitch stream will appear on the Reaper channel, so I’m pretty sure they will record and archive it on both their Twitch channel and YouTube channel. It will also likely be a little shorter since I’ll have to finish up a little early so that the Reaper stream team and the next instructor can get set up and running.
You can register for classes (and will need to for the Zoom one to receive the link information).
I love Bones to test colours and for lightweight and sturdy demo pieces to hand around at convention classes.
Reaper Errant D&D Game Presented by Knightheart Gaming
I get together with several of the Reaper artists to play in a Dungeons and Dragons game on Twitch every other Friday. The game is hosted by Frank and Ann at Knightheart Gaming. The game plays out on an epic tabletop display of terrain and painted miniatures, with camera angles that reveal what’s going on only as our party discovers it. We had just stepped into hell in the last episode, so it should be pretty interesting!
I finally painted my character, Fathom, and shipped her off to Frank. Hopefully arrive in time to make her debut at the ReaperCon session. We’ve had hints we should expect to see a pretty special table for this game, so I thought I’d better get off my butt and get my character mini painted finally! I will have a blog up about that after ReaperCon with some tips on choosing colours.
We normally play from 7pm to 10pm or so Central time, but our time slot for the ReaperCon session is a little different to accommodate special convention events. Frank does a great job of making each episode work both as a stand-alone story and as part of a larger campaign, so don’t feel you need to watch any of the previous episodes to be able to hop in and laugh at my bad dice rolling in this one. You can also read a very fun summary of the past few episodes from the perspective of the character Kay Nimblewit (played by Jen Greenwald.)
Twitch: Friday September 4 2020, from 17:30 to 20:00 Central time
The other Reaper artists who play in this game are:
Bobby Jackson: Pujol, the fortunate gnome bard with the unfortunate name
Gene Van Horne: Gooseneck, the barbarian lizard-man who bites back
Jason Wiebe: Corncob Thunderbludgeon, the cleric trying to keep us all alive
Jen Greenwald: Kay Nimblewit the rogue – “It beats being a door”
Michael Proctor: Abran, the elf rager/ranger and keeper of the abs
Rhonda Bender: Fathom, the tiefling “magic user” whose patron just told us all to go to hell
Screenshot from the inside a witch’s hut, featured in last month’s Better Lairs and Dungeons.
You can also watch a stream of Reaper peeps playing in a special convention game set in the pirate city of Brinewind. The dungeon master is Joseph Wolf, and scheduled players include Ed and Dave Pugh (Reaper founders and owners), Ron Hawkins (art director), Jon Overton (social media relations, casting, and more), Michael Collins (man about Reaper). It will stream on Twitch Saturday, September 5 starting at 5pm Central.
If you’d rather play than watch, check out the Games page on the ReaperCon 2020 site.
Crow’s Nest Panel and Sculptors’ Panel
People have requested panels for years at previous ReaperCons. They’re difficult to manage in that environment because the demand for classes is so high that the schedules of painters and sculptors are already pretty demanding, and space is an issue as well. While we’re losing some of what we love in this online no contact ReaperCon, we are also gaining new opportunities, like being able to have some panels!
I will be participating in the Crow’s Nest panel hosted by Michael Proctor. The other scheduled guests are Jen Greenwald and Derek Schubert. We’re going to talk about what makes a quality paint job.
Crow’s Nest is a show that Michael hosts on Twitch. Each week he paints, but he also talks to a guest in the miniatures industry. He’s interviewed painters, sculptors, art directors, and Frank from Knightheart Gaming so far. I can say from experience that listening to his show is a little snippet of what it’s like to sit around and paint/sculpt in a room with these fine folks. A lot of us lurk in the audience when it isn’t our turn in the hotseat. You can catch Crow’s Nest on Twitch Tuesdays at 4pm Central, and an archive of the previous streams is available on YouTube.
Painters’ Panel
Twitch: Saturday, September 5, 2020 from 10:00 to 11:30 Central time
The sculptors also have a panel, hosted by Reaper’s art director, Ron Hawkins.
Sculptors’ Panel
Twitch: Sunday, September 6, 2020 from 18:30 to 20:30 Central time
As these are twitch events I imagine they will be archived on to Reaper’s YouTube channel.
Bird with a Brush 