Hi Chris,
Allow me to make some remarks about your emphasis on saving cost. Our budgets are of course all different, and some must economise more than others, but in my experience many modellers apply some curious reasoning while trying to save money.
What I meant with curious reasoning is this: I see many modellers spending fortunes on building their grey army of kits of which 99% will never be built or painted, yet some still say they are finding tools and paint so expensive.
My advice to keep cost of the hobby within limits is this: Only buy a figure when you are directly going to paint it. For some this happens once or twice a year, so yearly cost could be around $50-$100. Spend the rest of your budget on getting the best possible tools and paints. These last a long time, possibly a lifetime.
Just an example: When you buy 20 bottles of Vallejo, 5 excellent, and 5 mediocre, cheaper, brushes, you spend about $150. If you treat them well, this lasts you at least 5 years. This boils down to $80-$130 per year (including the newly bought figures), which can hardly be called expensive.
If you can stick to this, you keep your budget tight, while still possessing good materials that allow steep learning curves and results that get better with every figure. Only downside: It's difficult, because it requires discipline to suppress the urge to buy stuff. I certainly don't manage all thetime, but I do tend to shift the spending to better tools than to another figure. Well, I try at least. Until the next REALLY cool figure....
By the way, another practical way to save: keep an eye on second hand forums. Some modellers give up their hobby and sell off their stuff at very low price.
Cheers,
Adrian
