Hand Painting and Machine Painting
Both hard copies and first shots can be hand painted. In the case of hard
copies though, they are always hand painted because at that stage of the
creation everything is done by hand. The most important painted hard copies
generally serve as paint masters so that the people in charge of production
will know what part of the figure gets painted a certain color. These
masters also help them determine what the base color of the plastic should
be in order to minimize the amount of paint required. For instance using
white plastic for a Stormtrooper and painting in the black accents. First
shots are hand painted when the automatic painting process hasn't been set
up or the "masks" haven't been prepared yet. Masks are used to cover up
certain areas of the action figure so that only specified areas will be
painted a certain color by the machine. Usually there is a different mask
associated with every color to be put on the figure. Some first shot
figures have been found that have hand painted accents in addition to
machine painted ones.
Description: Chris Georgoulias