Are you Slap-Chopping? - Now includes Suck Cut (yes, really!)

[carlos marighela]

All comes at the price of being described as an old slapper, albeit one that knows their chops.

[boneio]

I’m running out of YouTube hobby channels I can watch

This ^^

I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the words "slap chop" start popping up on YT channels I previously respected.

• Firstly because it's a horrible combination of sounds and words (how many of us have positive thought-associations with either of those words??)
• Secondly because Hobgoblin has been doing this for years, and as others point out, it wasn't really 'new' even then, just he's really good at it 
• Thirdly because every channel has become a clone of every other channel*

*I'm led to understand this isn't the channel owner's fault as such, it's because The Algorithm rewards awful clickbait titles and band-wagoning. One could point out that none of that matters if the channel owner is just, y'know, creating content because they want to rather than trying to be an "influencer" (shudder), or to "monetise" (less of a shudder, to be fair) ... but that's another can of worms.

[snitcythedog]

For those that don't know, they ripped off the name from a late night infomercial in the US. 

I find may of the you tube channels to be less helpful and less thoughtful than most blogs.

[driller]

If there is something this godforsaken hobby needs is some class, and re-naming grisalles to slapchop is not a step in the right direction. That word smells like GW stores.

Obviously, it's underpainting renamed by youtube dipshits. Also, I haven't seen a "slapchopped" figure that didn't look like shit. You really need an airbrush for the underpainting, for the figure to look good in the end.

[carlos marighela]

That word smells like GW stores.

You mean greasy hair, pimple cream, teenage angst and desperation?

To be fair there's a GW store not a five minute walk from me. Smells quite neutral, largely due to the almost complete absence of customers.

[clibinarium]

As others have pointed out, this is painting "en grisaille" which has been around since the early 14th Century(?) It's just doing it crudely and quickly, (nothing wrong with that for speed painting if that's what you need). It seems pretty fast, but I personally don't like the results in most cases. If its a quick drybrush there's a texture to the underpainting which shows through and doesn't look great. If you paint en grisaille with a brush (or very careful progressive dry brush) it can work, but is much slower. Here's Marco Frisoni doing it that hard way for nice results.




The bigger problem to me is the colours that result. They often end up desaturated over the black or darker grey underpainting, and the contrast between this and the same hue over white, doesn't look right to me. To be technical the black to white underpainting is giving you the "value" i.e. dark to light, and the contrasts or inks or whatever are giving you the "hue" i.e. what we usually refer to as the colour. The problem is that separating these ideas into two distinct processes can falter when working with practical pigments- for example. Yellows are usually so transparent that they allow a lot of black to show through (and the result can be very greenish).

Greyscale to colour is a thing in digital painting too. This explanation opened my eyes as to why its not the best idea there either. Give it a look if you are interested in understanding colour theory




Having watched a lot of these Slap-chop videos, what I've seen is generally very quick paintjobs that trade speed for quality. Or at least very few people seem to be able to make it look nice. Actually, Hobgoblin here has got about the best results I've seen so far, and I think there was someone else who had posted Fireforge(?) civilians recently which looked nice.

[ced1106]

Zenithal priming followed by a glaze. Contrast paints and washes are pretty much subsets of glazing, I'm pretty sure.

It's a very old technique, older than plastic. The Flemish (or Dutch Masters?) painting technique started with a monochrome sepia painting. Painters would make monochrome paintings, then buyers would select a painting, that the painter would then color in. This minimized the amount of time the painter would spend on a painting that might not be sold, so he could paint more monochrome paintings for customers to choose from. https://www.oldholland.com/academy/the-secrets-of-old-masters/

Zenithal priming and glazing tutorial. I actually wrote one on BGG using the same mini's...!
https://www.boardgamequest.com/how-to-quickly-paint-board-game-miniatures-part-2-zenithal-priming/

My painting often involves colored primers and washes, since this skips the primer step. I'll use Zenithal when it's a human figure with many different small areas to paint. Drybrush from black to white, with a dark wash to reduce the brush marks. Glaze or paint as you wish.

Still waiting for a painting technique that gets rids of mold lines...

[Daeothar]

No I haven't tried it just yet, but I do plan to.

I recently re-discovered an entire WHFB Warriors of Chaos army I had built and undercoated black more than 15 years ago. I was a bit put off by the black primer, since the army mostly requires caucasian skin tones and loads of horses, and I've long since transitioned (back) to a white primer/undercoat.

Then I saw this latest Youtube craze. And regardless of the rebranding of an ancient technique, personalities of Youtubers, and an insipid name, it does look like a fine technique to quickly paint up an entire army.

I'm a layering, wetblending and glazing kind of guy myself, and my productivity is really not that high, so a technique that looks simple, fast and yields decent results is absolutely interesting to me.

For the record though; I've seen plenty of really nice results using this technique. Not award winning by a long shot, but absolutely good enough for me to accept as a finish for an entire army. There are examples that are shit, yes. But I can recall even more utter crap paintjobs using simple blocking and layering or dipping. So, for small projects consisting of individually distinct miniatures, I'll obviously stick to my tried and tested old-school painting, but for an army that would otherwise remain boxed for at least another decade or more? Absolutely.

And the fact that people are actively looking for ways to put all kinds of new products to use is a good thing in my opinion. It's obvious that people rile against the blatant monetization of Youtubers, and there is always resistance against new fads (that name is ridiculous); I remember the vitriol when Armypainter came out with their dipping solution back in the day. It was pretty much the same; 'they ripped off Future Floor Polish', 'the results are too glossy', and 'I used this technique back in the seventies already'.

All true, but at the same time, loads of people finally got a fully painted army on the table as a result. And if this slapch- (sorry; I just can't ) method does the same for painters worldwide, I'm all for it

[Malebolgia]

The whole YouTube thing left me with a sour taste. As if it's something new or the newest trend or something. Urgh.

But the technique itself works a treat, I have been doing it even since Contrast was released. For example, this big model (50mm base) took me slightly more than 2 hours by doing zenithal priming with airbrush, getting contrasts on her and then some fast highlights and glazes. By using my old technique of doing a single colour priming and then painting everything it would have taken ages!



Same with these Walking Dead miniatures...I think each one took slightly more than an hour to fully complete. Zenithal priming, contrasts, highlights...and it's basically done.

[driller]

Malebolgia, your figures look great. This is why the whole thing needs an airbrush. With the brush-drybrush, bad looking textures are created. Also, the airbrush somewhat negates the muddy desaturation Clibinarium has mentioned, which makes 99% of youtube slap... no way I'm using that word... GRISALLES ugly. (Irks me how they are all so satisfied with their results even tho the paintjob looks awful. Marco Frisoni is probably the only exception, but he is a whole different category, and he underpaints like a master.)

[TheDaR]

I agree that "Slap Chop" is not really anything revolutionary and new, other than the packaging of it for people who don't have any sort of art background.  People have been doing en grisalles for hundreds of years, and even in the wargaming hobby space, painting with inks or other translucent pigments over a zenithal highlight has been a speed painting technique I've been aware of for at least a decade.  Slap Chop is just a specific pattern of that general class of techniques. 

It does have a couple of semi-interesting specific refinements over the more general advice I've seen shared around the mini painting space.  First is doing a two tone drybrush, starting with a rather heavy all over drybrush of medium grey and then going to a lighter and more precise drybrush of white.  That grey midtone helps eliminate at least some of the chalky effect that drybrushing or even airbrushing straight white over black undercoat can give (and is something a lot of people repeating or reviewing the whole Slap Chop thing seem to miss or dismiss).   Second is specifically using the new-ish Contrast style of acrylic paints (GW Contrast, AP Speed Paints,  or similar), which tend towards being nicely translucent but still fairly vibrant.  Contrasts over white (or off whites like bone/buff/beige) is not quite really new anymore, either.  But combining the two to take advantage of the contrast of a still quick en grisalle with the shading/pooling effect of Contrasts is what makes "Slap Chop" what it is.

It's also specifically advertised as a speed painting technique, not one targeted at higher quality paintjobs.  "Quick but effective" was the original tagline.  Great if you want to get a hundred figures on the table in only a week or two and are okay a paintjob that more suggests a lot of the detail than actually displaying it.  Beyond that, though, it's just some clever marketing of the phenomenon of one niche of the wargame hobby rediscovering more broad artists techniques and it suddenly being the next greatest thing.  I mean, even just zenithal highlighting suddenly became a big deal like 10-15 years ago, in this space.  Or people suddenly "discovering" oil  washes, pin washes for panel lining, and other things military scale modelers have been doing for literal decades.  Or learning about sculptamold type materials for doing terrain like railway fans have been doing for same, and it suddenly being everywhere about 3-4 years ago.

[Bloggard]

blimey, some very interesting stuff above.

[Warren Abox]

So glad to find this thread - I don't feel alone anymore!

Not much to add about the state of Wargame YT or the history of this technique, but I can say this: a black undercoat followed by a white drybrush works way better on 15mm figures and smaller than it does on 28mm and larger.

The smaller figures lack detail, which allows for better white-on-black after the drybrush.  The brush direction doesn't matter as often.  And smaller figures really benefit from a higher contrast between dark and light in the undercoat than the bigger figures.  Even then, it's not a cure-all.  It's a great tool, but you have to know when to use it.

[Major_Gilbear]

Ignoring the faddiness and the silly name for a moment, it's a technique that (like so many others) still takes moderate skill, practice, and equipment to make best use of, and which rewards neatness at each stage. Spraying even with rattlecans clearly gives better results because the thin veils of colour that you apply later highlight any roughness from alternative techniques like drybrushing in the underpainting and can spoil the finished look.

Two things to maybe consider further:

1) In the same way that GW sell two different off-whites for use with Contrast (a very light grey for cool colours, and a very light ivory for warm ones), I'm surprised that the current fashion focuses so much on completely desaturated undertones. For example, using something like a warm ivory over an olive green base would provide much better results for anything that might be flesh tones or warmer tans/brown/ivory (including things like skeletons or zombies). Similarly, something like a very pale yellow over a blue-grey would be better for rich reds. You could even force some interesting results if you use contrasting colours, which might be suitable for demons or other unnatural creatures, or the use of sepia tones if you wanted to try something different for say a Wild West game.

2) Without an airbrush, there are still other fast methods for achieving a greyscale that don't use drybrushing. For example, if you apply a gloss white spray, you can then apply either a dark wash (where the gloss finish of the white encourages it to sit more heavily in the recesses), or use oil paint which you then wipe off (which could arguably produce much more contrast than any other method).

All of this also ignores that "speedpainting" techniques (like this one and dipping) could be combined as well. I think more than the dumb name, what most disappoints me about the fad on YT is how little real effort most video makers have put into exploring how to better exploit the technique, and instead they've just gone down the tired route of copying the exact same thing from each other. 

[boneio]

Some really nice tips there, thanks. Might try different undertones when I come to paint some 15mm aliens.

Have to agree about drybrushing. I did some 15mm figs by drybrushing white over grey which I'd previously washed in black, and the brush marks are quite evident. I don't mind so much as it sort of looks like texture and the point was to get it done quickly, but at 15mm it's a bit prominent.

instead they've just gone down the tired route of copying the exact same thing from each other. 

That's today's YT I'm afraid. It's mostly people algorithm-farming for views and sadly it's spread to our hobby.