The Bust: the Ideal Format to Start Miniature Painting
You want to get into miniature painting, but every tutorial shows pieces covered in tiny details and you have no idea where to start? Good news: there is a format designed exactly for this. At Minivatar, busts are made with painters in mind, and they are the best training ground we can recommend for your first brushstrokes.
Why the bust is the beginner's format
A bust is a face, shoulders, an expression. No thin legs, no weapon held at arm's length, no corners your brush cannot reach. You focus on what brings a piece to life: facial features, the gaze, the volumes.
The surfaces are larger and easier to read than on a full-body figurine of the same size. Every area is accessible, every mistake is fixable. That is exactly what you need while learning how to load your brush, place a shadow or make a relief stand out.
And since the bust carries your face or the face of someone you love, motivation hits differently: you are not painting an anonymous piece, you are painting a portrait.
54 or 110mm: two sizes, two approaches
Busts come in two sizes, 54mm at 18€ and 110mm at 31€. The 150 and 180mm sizes are reserved for full-body human figurines, so no need to look for them in bust form.
To start, the 110mm is the comfortable choice: the facial surfaces are generous, the volumes well defined, and your brush has room to work. The 54mm is perfect later on, when you want to train your precision on a more compact format.
What a bust will teach you
A bust concentrates the most useful skills in miniature painting:
- Skin tones: laying down a base flesh tone, then shading and highlighting it without flattening everything. The skill that will serve you on every future piece.
- The eyes: the step every beginner dreads, far more approachable on the generous surfaces of a bust than on a gaming miniature.
- Materials: hair, fabric, the metal of a pauldron. Every area of the bust is its own little exercise, at your own pace.
At these scales, the AI automatically simplifies very small elements like thin glasses or small jewelry to guarantee a clean print. That is fewer traps for your brush.
A portrait born from your photo or your imagination
Your bust is created in Photo Mode, from a photo of you or a loved one whose features the AI detects, or in Imagination Mode, from a simple text description. Custom Mode even lets you describe a universe missing from the library while keeping the face from your photo. And on the trust side, your photo is deleted after generation.
A bust of yourself as a knight, your partner as an elf, your best friend in cyberpunk style: the subject of your first painting project is already sorted.
A resin made to be painted
Every bust is printed on demand in SLA resin in our French workshop, then delivered in raw resin, ready to paint. The surface of HD resin is fine and even: your colors go on cleanly, without the layer lines of standard plastic prints.
To get started, the classic approach works: a primer coat, then large areas first, details last, and the eyes at the very end.
Budget and lead times to get going
Your first bust costs 18€ in 54mm or 31€ in 110mm, shipping not included and calculated at checkout. After your validation, the 3D model is prepared within 24 business hours, then your piece ships within 10 business days. Just enough time for your paints to arrive too.
Your turn
The hardest part of miniature painting is getting started. Create your bust from a photo or a description, and check the Pricing page for the full format details.