Infinite Perspectives – Painting Misconceptions
by Matthew Lyons | Feb 1, 2016
A semi-regular Infinity Blog from Matthew Lyons @ragequitmatt
Far, far later than I expected I am finally getting round to my second blog post. I was planning on covering how I paint my Infinity terrain, as I feel this is one of the most important aesthetics of the game. However my plans changed when I recently tweeted a picture of this months releases:
 |
| A fantastic selection of new releases | | |
2 people both tweeted a similar sentiment 'the models are awesome but I don't think I can do them justice'. Now this is something I find very interesting, and funnily enough I had a similar reaction when I got into the game. All the models presented for Infinity are painted very well, if I am honest, they are to a fantastically high standard and by just 1 guy - Angel Giraldez. Clearly this is something any company would want, their models shown off to the best possible level, but that doesn't mean Infinity models painted to a tabletop standard don't look great! I've seen plenty (have a little google search), and it's the same as any other game system: if the models are coherent, based the same and have all the relevant areas of detail painted they look fantastic! I think Infinity draws more attention regarding painting as you tend to use such small numbers of models, so people naturally try and paint individual models to a higher standard. However, that doesn't mean you HAVE to. This is something I am going to explore myself shortly, as I am planning intro-games for a few buddies and I will paint up a quick Morat and Pan Oceania starter force (watch this space) for the full mini-gaming experience.This brought up another point that I wanted to cover, 'Infinity models are small', let's take a look at this picture: |
| I wish space marines were truescale.. |
Here we have 2 Infinity models side by side, a Pan Oceania Fusilier and a Blood Angel Space Marine. I purposefully used a Space Marine as they are a model most people can instantly appreciate the scale of. The Infinity model is just a grunt, a basic guy in your army, nothing special, and he has a basic firearm. He *IS* smaller than the Space Marine, but at the same time he is just a human - not a genetically engineered killing machine. Here you can also see the level of detail between the models as well, but I can guarantee you that a basecoat followed by a well applied wash will make the detail pop just as well as any GW mini.
 |
| 'What's in the box!' |
|
|
This is the next comparison, same space marine, but this time it's the Ltd Edition Achilles from the Aleph faction. Achilles is not human, he's an artificial construct based on the mythological characteristics of the Greek hero of his name sake. He's awesome. He is now bigger than a space marine. That's right kids an Infinity model that is not small. It is still a detailed model, but again, nothing is stopping you from applying a nice nice wash and because of the detail inherent in the model it will stand out without you needing to spend painstaking hours having to apply fancy painting techniques.
 |
| Soggy-Rat (TM Aaron Bailey 2015) |
|
|
Finally, I wanted to end with one of the larger Infinity infantry models (and one of my personal favorites) a Combine Army Sogarat. This guy is a heavy infantry model armed with a special weapon (A Feurbach). As you can see this guy is massive, he is essentially a big, angry, space monkey (think the Brutes from the Halo franchise).
The key thing (for me at least) with all these models, is that they are not small, they are appropriately scaled and do not suffer from the big hands, big head syndrome that 'heroic' scale minis suffer from. The models are so well detailed and well defined (unlike things like the Avatars of War range *shudder*) that a basic tabletop paint job will do them justice. Then, once added to a fully painted board of terrain, it will create a fantastic game experience.
I suppose for my next blog I'm going to have to put my money (paintbrush) where my mouth (blog) is. Balls.
You can hear more of my ramblings on the Infowar Podcast: http://infowarpodcast.com/
