Is Slapchop the Answer to Painting Huge Armies?
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- Опубліковано 26 сер 2024
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If you have been around the miniature hobby lately, the term “slapchop” is one that is hard to miss. It’s a funny name for a painting  technique that shares the same name with a 1990s infomercial. And it is all over UA-cam and the Internet; everybody seems to be using it.
While it is immensely popular, I couldn’t help but wonder how it stacks up one-on-one against previous tried and true methods. Namely, zenithal highlighting, and good ol straight white priming?
I am going to approach this from my usual, high-efficiency, high-volume, yet high-quality painting focus with the ultimate goal of helping you fully paint all your armies. 
Does “slapchop” truly level up your painting game while maintaining your miniature painting speed? Or can the old warhorses of the miniature painting hobby stand up against it? 
Watch and see! 
I prime in medium grey with a heavy white drybrush and mostly use speedpaints. Makes the minis look like a black and white drawing before painting.
I think with slap chop you want to use a lighter grey. I use the slap chop method because I don't currently have an air brush but I use the lighter Army Painter Ash Grey. When I use it comes out much less dark. I think if you have an airbrush Zenithal is the way to go, but if not the slap chop is fine but make sure your grey isn't too dark.
Yeah I think a lighter gray would have helped too.
Also you can zenithal with white aerosol primer or paint. Here’s a video from broadsword war gaming where they do that:
ua-cam.com/video/ghgKwJ44rbE/v-deo.html
I had similar results early on with Slapchop, I found I needed to go heavier with white, not just grey, or even using light warm tones like sand/tan/buff to encourage wearmer, less dull results.
Yes and at that point it’s just zenithal highlighting that can be done so much faster with an aerosol can or airbrush.
You haven't applied enough grey or white in the slapchop drybrush, and that's why it looks so dark. You need to go heavy grey with a smaller drybrush, and then heavier white (but lighter than grey) with a larger drybrush instead of light grey with a large drybrush and light white with a smaller drybrush. Your slapchop priming looks nothing like the Honest Wargamer, which is why your mini is so much darker. As a result, your negative opinion of slapchop is based on faulty testing.
I’ll probably take another go at it with a lighter shade of gray and much more white. But it still takes a lot more time to do than simply zenithal highlighting. It may work better on character models but may slow down large projects.
Great video! Love the details like telling us what paints you use. Slap chop has a lot of variety and depth to add to a miniature. Heavier on the brighter second and third coat produces a brighter model. For the third white over grey/brown coat, I use down brushstrokes to simulate zenithal technique. Another important tip: when dry brushing, don’t use a paper towel. It sucks out too much moisture from the paint and changes the consistency. This results in stiffer paints that don’t flow with the textures of the model.
I find that with the slap chop method, using a high quality artist acrylic white works much better. Also, I don't prime with black; I use a dark grey instead
The white prime looks nice. I love Slap Chop. Its a game changer if you don't have an airbrush. When your dry brushing I recommend using a textured surface for wiping off the paint instead of a paper towel.
It’s actually possible to zenithal without an airbrush. A white paint out of an aerosol can at 45 deg all around gives similar results.
@@no.6minis I use a plastic glove for drybrush...works even better for wiping off the paint imho.
Really enjoyed the video. I've had a ton of luck doing "slapchop" but applied with an airbrush. Black prime, mid gray pretty heavy, then lighter white.
Yeah, definitely needs a lighter gray and a lot more of it.
@@no.6minisWhich is then, essentially, a two stage zenithal 😊
I always feel like 3 tones are better for slap chop. A dark, A mid, and a bright. Put on in order of Mid over the entire model, then turn model upside down and do the darks in downward strokes and then flip it up right and do the bright again doing only downward strokes.
Yeah my follow up video redid slapchop to better results using three tones. But it’s just varying intensities of white drybrushing.
@@no.6minis Oh man, I just realized how old this video was. My apologies. I'll sub and check out your other videos to see what results you've had.
Slapchop is great but I agree its too dark for me. Starting off with uniform gray and dry brushing white gives a similar look but overall so much brighter which I enjoy. Could also go black spray, grey spray at 45 degrees (not zenithal, but more intense so black is only on underside of model), then white drybrush with only downward strokes
1. You can control how light or dark you want your slapchop.
2. The make up brush you used on your first pass was far too big for the purpose hence why the process took longer.
Noted. I’m not docking slapchop. I know it works for a lot of folks. But for me personally, for 1/10 the time I can just zenithal highlight and achieve the same thing.
@@no.6minis that is true but the highlights with zenithal will give harsher highlights since it’s from 1 angle. I personally do both.
it's worth emphasizing that you need to let each layer fully set before zenithal highlighting / " slapchopping " otherwise you'll just get a smudged mess. :)
also I just use a creamy white "slapchop" over black base coat. Works well.
good video, thanks for making it. my thoughts, the lighter colored speed paints are a bit too transparent for slapchop/zenithal highlight. to get a similar effect, try a light/midtone wash over the white and before the speedpaint or prime in light gray/light color with a white drybrush. of the two, prime and wash is quicker for me.
Prime and wash is a great technique! I haven’t used it yet but will give it a try.
Brilliant topic. Indeed it's more crap chop with crusader skin!!!😂 Will stick to'pure white for my mass combat project though zenithal looks great too.
I find that spped paints over a white primer look great UNLESS you accidentally get a colour where you didn`t want it and try to paint over the speed pain. Then the speed paint just shows through it all - it is SO dense with pigments. How do you correct this? Thanks.
I think if that happens, correct the mistake with white paint or primer before painting with speedpaints.
@@no.6minis Thanks very much.
Thx
try a lighter grey (ash grey from Army Painter) or even a more sandy tone if you want the model to be a bit warmer.
Yeah I’ll admit that uniform gray was too dark. I did a follow up video to this with basically a white drybrush for slapchop and it turned out a lot better. Still a lot more work than pure white prime or zenithal, but it turned out better.
Galing! 😊👍
I mean, in my own experience, when you doing your slapchop with grey, you didn't really push the color on the mini. With out the mid tone to transfer dark and bright part, your painting is going to be dark as hell. The point of slap chop is to making the shadows natural and sooth from black primer to mid tone and then to white highlight. You might want to brush more onto your mini to do a better slap chop.
Agree. It’s not a method I use much but I have a follow up video where I used nothing but various shades of white for the drybrush step. It turned out much better.
Hapsburger Donkey has one of the best (in my opinion) army painting methods I've seen...he does an entire Republican Roman army with excellent results, should look him up...similar in some ways to all methods above...
Will definitely check him out!
Those are great Greek minis. Where are they from?
Yup! Greek Spartans from Warlord Games. It’s for their Hail Caesar game system.
With slap chop go hard with the gray then lighter with the white it looked like you were not hitting the model with the gray hard enough. At the end there should be very little black showing on the end product. You basically did exactly what every one does with trying slapchop for the first time. the gray is meant to cover most of the black. except in the very recesses. it was not the white it was the gray that was the problem. But with all that said. I always feel do what works for you just like you said.
your priming for slap chap was just awful ... you need more mid tones (grey) and highlights on edges. Model is way to dark for contrast paints to work.
Yup a few people have commented that and I agree. I did state at the start of the video that I was following the original Honest Wargamer video on slap chopping. I know it’s been evolving since then and the correct way is to gray prime and white drybrush to varying degrees.
I had a follow up video to this one where I did it to “today’s standards” to better results. But there are so many faster ways of achieving the same thing in so much less time that slapchop just isn’t for me.