This repainted figure is not my own work, sadly. I got this figure because we play clix in a gaming store that also hosts some pretty hardcore minis painters. I have a habit of giving away most of my dupes, and I've passed more than a few of the nicer sculpts to the painters so that they can have some fun improving the paintjobs.

(And they can do some amazing work - one girl did up some Brave and the Bold figures to look five times better than pulled form the booster.)

As a thank-you for all the free figures, one of the guys offered to paint any figure I asked him, free of the commission that he normally charges. Naturally, I gave him a duplicate of Ghost Rider 2099 (Kenshiro "Zero" Cochrane). Here's how Zero came out:

Apologies for the dust in the figure; we'd been cleaning the weekend that Kaytee took these pictures, and I guess I must have stirred up quite a bit!

Original figure for comparison:

Anyway, the moral of this story: Hang out with some folks who play other miniatures games, especially ones which require painting. They'll teach you some techniques, tell you which paints to buy, and occasionally offer to do some work for you that looks better than any official Masterpiece figure.

I've also got photos of a repainted The Atom and Hawkman, and Brainiac and Lex Luthor; I'll post those later.

Looks frikkin awesome!

That looks great. I like the story that comes with it also. It is nice to see unselfish kind deeds get rewarded like this.

Wow. That is MFing Amazing. It's crazy how much better these figures look when you get a sweet paint job.

As promised, here are some of the other repainted figures done by the mini-painting guys (or, in this case, a mini-painting girl):

So here's a steampunk Brainiac. Can't say that I've ever considered that before, although he does look pretty good with that colour scheme. Lex looks even more demented than usual.

It's hard to stress enough how great Hawkman looks in hand. The colour of his muscles really stands out, and his wings look great. Even Atom looks a bit better - she's used a dab of lighter colours to suggest the shape of his body via highlights.

The originals for comparison:

They do great work!

QFT

I'm friends with quite a few Warhammer, Warmachine, and Battletech players. Great bunch of guys and always willing to talk about painting figs.

Very nice and great to see GR 2099 getting the attention to detail that has kept me from picking up that fig, though I did love the comics.

I always thought that your avatar was some Pirates of the Caribbean thing.

The mod looks great!

Very nice! I completely agree about hanging out with painters as well. One of the guys I used to play DDM with was great at modding and painting and each year that I went to the championships he would paint my warband for me. I wouldn't do it for any clix team I'd take to Gencon, given the rules for customs, but I have had several done. I've got an Ultimates Magneto that I had painted as the regular Magneto. It is soooooo much better than the Masterpiece version.

Clearly I need more warbot-related taglines.

Out of curiousity, the girl who paints wouldn't be named Meg would it? There was a girl that used to paint DDM who lived in Australia that I remember from the DDM boards.

Those figures are awesome!

On a related note, I am one of those Warhammer players that paints other people's figs (a guy at my venue trades me LE's and other goodies for painted figures), although I'm not quite as good with my HC repaints as your friend. I'm jealous - you really hit a sweet deal there!

dude, sweet re-paints/sculpts

Different girl.

I don't know if Sim does DDM; she seems to like steampunk stuff more than strict fantasy. Although I've seen a set of Roborally 'bots that she painted that look just like something Steve Jobs would sell.