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Street Violence figures 2.0

 Street Violence

One of my first posts on this blog back in May 2020 was an overview of some miniatures I painted about 15 years ago for a modern/near future game called Street Violence. Although the minis looked fine, there were a couple of things that really annoyed me, particularly the glossy varnish and the large aquarium gravel on the bases. So, over the course of about two months I’ve stripped them of their paint, rebased and repainted them. A nice change from all of the grey and green I've been painting lately!

Starting with the most annoying part: stripping the paint. I’ve seen many bloggers and Youtubers use isopropyl alcohol to strip their minis, as it can even be used on plastic figures without turning them into goo. I thought these minis would make a good test case, even though they are made of pewter. But I have to say, I’m not that impressed. Perhaps it’s because I used a non-acrylic spray varnish (I’m not sure, it was 15 years ago), but it took a lot of effort to remove the paint and the results were far from perfect.

I put the minis in a closed container fully submerged in 99% isopropyl alcohol for a week, agitating the container each day so that the IPA would get into all areas. But even after a full week of soaking, it still took at least 10 minutes per figure of scraping with a bamboo skewer to get the majority of the paint off. And in many places, particularly in clothing folds and other fine detail, the paint simply wouldn’t budge.

FYI, if you’re planning to use this stuff, make sure to do it in a well ventilated area, wear gloves and only work for 15-20 minutes at a time. IPA is pretty nasty stuff, is very volatile and can also be absorbed through your skin. I wore gloves the whole time and thoroughly rinsed each mini with water before scraping off the paint. Even so, after about 40 minutes of working I started getting pretty nauseous to the point that I thought I was going to throw up. So, be warned!

Edit: after reading my blog, my wife mentioned that I forgot to clarify that she helped a lot during the stripping process. I hereby would like to redress that gravest of errors. Thanks for the help, hon ;-)

The IPA did soften the glue enough that I could easily remove the minis from their bases. I replaced the GW-style plastic bases with nice and thin 25mm MDF ones, which I textured with coffee grounds.

Some of the minis turned out better than others. On some of the figures I simply gave up trying to remove all of the paint and these tend to look a bit more ‘blobby’. But I hope you’ll agree that they all look better than they did before.

SWAT team

SWAT team (Foundry). Apart from the Men in black, these were the most straightforward to paint and turned out the best, I think

Police
Police officers (Foundry). These also look pretty good.

Biker gang

Biker gang (Copplestone). I’m quite pleased with these, although the face of the biker chick is a bit off.

80's villains

80’s villains (Copplestone). Last time around, I painted these figures to resemble characters from GTA Vice City. This time I painted them to look like characters from Miami Vice, which was spoofed in Vice City. The middle figure is painted up as Ricardo Tubbs, the mini to his right as Sonny Crockett.

Men in Black

Men in black (Copplestone). As they're mostly black, these have changed the least. Although I did try out some grey edge highlighting on the suits. 

Street punks

Street punks (Foundry). Inspired by the Dedsec aesthetic from the Watch Dogs games, I painted these in a bunch of clashing colours.

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