Thanks all. Great advice there. I had another friend recommend cupping your hands together and it does help a little. I don't know how people do the really fine detail though... perhaps I abuse my brushes, but I never manage to get a a fine enough point... and dry brushing doesn't work right for me. I understand the theory, but I haven't got the trick down yet.

Thinning the paint sounds like a good idea. I don't have a great range of paints (1 pinkish flesh, one brown flesh) but I could try mixing the two to get a darker pink to pull out the details.

I read a bunch of online articles before, and most of them seemed to recommend going for black primer, but I'm not liking that too much so I think I'll try white next time around. Unfortunately, I primed all 12 miniatures I'm painting for my game in one go so I have to deal with black for now.

Thanks again for the great advice.

Arabin

And no offense to all of you that paint, but this is why I love prepainted minis. Cuz I suck at all this.

They have ladders on that CD? Gah, I need one of those. I spent about four hours last night building two little ladders by unfolding, straightening, and cutting up paper clips! They aren't the most aesthetically pleasing models, but they are crome ladders that I can hook on the side of buildings.

Gangs of Mega-City One (my primary focus right now) has rules for climbing ladders so I wanted to include that tactical element.

Arabin

Having experimented with it, I know it is very VERY easy to remove the dial from most dial based figs. Most of them also fit on a standard 20-25mm base with little issue. They look pretty sharp once based properly!