Golem Painting Studio review and my experiences with paying for paint

I have umm-ed and aah-ed about whether I should do this review, mostly because it is a choice I made and I am the sort of guy who would expect a lot for my money so I would find it hard to be impartial. However, I think that there are bound to be many more people out there that are in a similar position to me, who don’t enjoy painting or don’t have the time and would like to use a painting service but haven’t found any advice on the internet.

I’ll note here that I did not contact Golem Painting Studio after I received my models, not to even say “I got them, cheers.”. I have no intention of doing so because I have plenty of arty friends and I can imagine their frustration if someone tried to renegotiate the deal after they had done the work. Plenty of you will think I am crazy but all I asked Golem to do was to do what they considered a job worth what I paid. They did just that.

So first of all, I suppose I need to have an introduction of why I chose to have someone paint my miniatures. I have never really enjoy painting, I find it frustrating when I get something close to right and then OOPS hand slips and I ruin it. I am definitely a builder, a hoarder and a gamer. I came back into the hobby after a 10 year absence; having gamed primarily from the 90’s to the early 00’s. Being in full time employment kind of stops you being a model fiend but the spare time I do have is for gaming.

I work as an ecologist, which means I spend most of my week in a hotel away from home or sitting on a hill in the cold, Scottish weather being frozen to death. I simply do not have the time to devote to painting.

So I decided, with my increased income from my job, that I should splash out and why not? I did some quick research, warseer and dakkadakka have painting service lists, using my only criteria that they must be in the UK. I emailed four or five different people and over the space of about a week and a half, three of them got back to me. The final two did get back to me but weeks later, after I had already made my choice. I decided to go with Golem Painting Studio as their website was good, they had a space wolf painted squad in their album which looked nice and they organised their own painting events with some seriously famous model painters coming along. They also came with a very competitive price compared to the other quotes.

A note on the price at this point, I emailed every one with an identical email, which basically said “I love this paint scheme on (URL), how much would you charge to copy this? I’ve painted 28 models to a basic standard and I’d like you to finish them please”. From memory they were a mix of six long fangs, one Wolf Priest (I wanted him fancy) and the rest were blood claws and grey hunters with the occasional wolf guard leader. Golem came back with a quote of £100, which was cheap when compared to the other replies which ranged as high as “I would want £15 per model to reach that standard but I can do it to a lesser standard for cheaper.”

After the initial delivery of the models, I got a preview back within two, YES TWO, weeks and at that point I said “Ok and now how much for these, I’ve only painted them Codex Grey”. There was a dreadnought, another six long fangs, a rune priest with a custom chooser of the slain (wanted this to be top notch quality), five scouts, a few wolf guard in power armour, five terminators and another mass of troops. In total I had sent away 72 models, the initial 28 to be finished from my attempt (for £100) and the final 44 which were all painted codex grey. The complete lot of 72 were to be based with snow bases, painted to a similar colour, transfers applied to both shoulderpads, all the weapon options of the dreadnought to be painted, every terminator arm option to be painted with the terminator arms to be wired up for swapping and finally a minor staff conversion for the rune priest. I included my own snow flock, some resin pieces (of which they used none) and slate for them to use.

Including postage the new batch came to £300 so a grand total of £400 including postage. A lot. Especially when I paid in two lump sums. At this point a lot of you will think I am ridiculous for forking that level of money out and I’m sure some of you may think “only £400?”.

I will grade Golem throughout this review, as fairly as possible but take my own experiences as just that and take my scores with a pinch of salt. I am hard to please and I make no apologies for that.

First and foremost - communication. Golem Painting Studios and the person I had contact with (Mike) were good. I can have no real complaints about their emailing. I emailed them for an update twice in a week at around the six week mark because I didn’t receive a reply to the first email. They had their annual painting event and so were understandably busy. They were polite, friendly and best of all, came across as approachable gamers (no surprise since they were ex GW staff). 9/10 for communication.

Speed. The first batch of 28 were done in two weeks, the final 54 were done in a little over six weeks. Golem’s own target is six weeks. During that time they had their event to organise so I can’t fault them for painting that many models in that time scale. 10/10 for speed.

A quick note on the delivery and postage charges. Special delivery (overnight in the UK), which cost as much as they charged me, however a few models were damaged in transit so I’d give an 8/10 for delivery.

Quality, the longest section no doubt. When I received the preview of the first 28, I posted them to Reddit. Reddit came back with mixed reviews, a lot of it unfair. I had taken these models to the 90% completion stage which included me putting a wash over them which darkened the greys and looked messy. Most of the comments picked up on that. This was not Golem’s doing and I am willing to bet that most people could pick out which I did and which I didn’t touch if I lined up all of my models.

However, on the second batch I received much more positive feedback from Reddit. I was elated at that because I don’t know the first thing about painting and they looked pretty good to me. Everything looked pretty good, I paid the final balance and they arrived very quickly as above.

Ok so I opened up the box and one by one started plucking out my models and eyeing them up. Ooo’s and aaah’s but also some what the hells? This is where the problems start.

Golem sent me eight preview photos of around 1/5th of my models. The best ones in my opinion. The dreadnought arms they chose to put on the model were painted to a higher standard than the other two. The grey hunters were posed so that I couldn’t see the missing detail in the images. At first I put this down to the quality of their camera which was obviously a very good DSLR but I should have mentioned the wee bits I noticed that were not up to par before I paid the final balance. I expected a good job and I was fighting the urge to say “do this and this and this”. Like I said at the start, all I asked them to do was to do a job fitting of what I was being charged.

All in all, Golem painted my models from the top down, avoiding some detail under the models where tabletop gamers would not see them. This was extremely disappointing because I paid a lot of money to get a decent quality of miniature. I did not expect to be taking these to a tournament and have people queuing up to see them but if I did put them on a shelf in my room I would like to not notice the missing painted areas.

Another criticism is the work on the transfers. GW transfers aren’t known for their quality but the job that golem did was mixed at best. A few were broken, a lot were creased, I asked for every model to receive transfers but the wolf guard did not get any. Saying all that, this was listed as free on their price quote so I’m not sure how to feel about that. I feel it takes a decent paint job and makes it look untidy.

The main points I have against the models are that with a little bit more time they could easily have reached a good standard. To not even touch the metal parts of the dreadnought weapons or to not touch the basic gun details on the bolters of the grey hunters feels like they had a timer set up beside their paint station and when it hit zero they downed tools and let them dry. There’s simple little touches like the scouts all being blonde that would easily have added a bit of variety to look better. There was a limited palette, which I don’t mind so much but in my opinion either you use a limited palette and do them all completely with that or you use a mixed palette and you do a simpler job. The models just appear like they restrained themselves completely so they daren’t spend an extra second on the models than they needed to.

A reddit comment sticks out in my mind at this point where the commenter said that the first batch was almost as if they painted them to a standard they thought I could not reach rather than paint them to their own standard. This may well be true but it may also be me expecting more for my money.

The basing is good, albeit not quite what I had in mind. I was imagining nearly all white but these look great anyway. No big complaints there.

One of the interesting Reddit comments was that the Rune Priest and the Wolf Priest do not stand out from the rest. Considering they were charged at double the normal rate I think this commenter has a point.

Quality of the job 5/10, Highest quality minis 4/10, Basing 8/10, Transfers 5/10 (Overall 5.5/10)

Conclusion. I find it hard to be objective here. I feel I paid a lot of money and received a slightly sub par performance. If you look at the Golem studio website and see their squad of painted grey hunters, they look great. They are described as the basic package that I should receive. In a lot of ways my models are better, brighter, more awesome. Yet in a lot of ways mine are unfinished. In my opinion Golem painting studios appear to have a lot on their plates, they are being paid by games companies to paint their finished models, which shows how awesome they are. That’s got to be a sign of a good company.

However it means that people like me who are paying £3-5 per basic model might not receive as good a job as the well paying top dogs who are going to be paying £20+ per basic model and certainly not be the priority for their business.

The bottom line I have been asking myself is “Would I do it over again?” and the answer is unfortunately probably not. I’ve also wondered “Could I have done that myself?” and I think with a bit of practice that I could, albeit it with worse highlighting skill. That should tell you all you need to know.