Step Plan Generator

Miniature painting checklist generator

Tell me what you are painting — how many models, what they are made of, whether they are built, how you want the bases and how complex the scheme is — and this miniature painting checklist builds itself around them. You get the stages in order, the jobs under each one, the paints and tools to put on the desk, and a time range so you know what you are signing up for.

Built from a fixed workflow definition, so the same five answers always give the same plan
Tick the steps off as you work, then copy or download the checklist for the desk
Nothing you enter is uploaded, stored or put in the URL

When to use this checklist

Use it once you know which models you are painting and roughly how you want them to look. It turns those answers into an order of work, a paint and tool list, and a time range you can plan an evening around.

Miniature Painting Styles — if you have not settled on a look yet, choose the target finish first. The scheme answer here is what sets the paint list and the hours.
How Long Miniature Paint Takes to Dry— for the drying between coats this plan assumes, so you stop handling a model while the layer under your brush is still soft.

The stages and times come from a fixed workflow definition, not from your own paint or primer, so follow the maker’s instructions for anything you actually apply.

How this miniature painting checklist is built

The plan is not written fresh each time and it is not guessed at. It comes from a fixed workflow definition with seven stages, and your five answers decide which jobs, paints, tools and times appear inside them.

The order is fixed. Build and prep, clean the mould lines, prime, base coat, shade, highlight, base and finish. That is the same order the beginner guide on this site uses, because it is the order that stops you redoing work.
Your material changes the jobs. Resin gets a dust mask, a toothbrush scrub for release agent and a warning about bent parts; metal gets pinning and superglue; plastic gets plastic cement and a reminder not to mix the two adhesives up.
Your build state changes the length. Models still on the sprue get clipping, trimming and dry-fitting steps. Fully assembled models skip all of that and start at gap filling and gap checking.
Your scheme sets the paint list and the hours. Simple schemes get a short palette and one highlight pass; detailed schemes get more colours, two-stage highlights and the longest stage times in the plan.
Your basing choice is priced in time, honestly. A scenic base is often as much work as the model standing on it, and the plan says so rather than pretending otherwise.

Everything runs in your browser as plain JavaScript. There is no model, no server call and no randomness, so the same five answers always produce the same plan — and you can read the whole thing above before you trust it.

Why the times are ranges

Nobody can tell you that a Space Marine takes 47 minutes, so this tool does not try. Each stage carries a per-model range and a one-off setup time, and the two are added up for the number of models you entered.

Batch work speeds up, detail work does not. Priming, base coating, washing and varnishing twenty models is mostly the same motion repeated, so the per-model time falls as the count rises. Cleaning mould lines and edge highlighting twenty models is still twenty careful jobs, so those barely move.
Setup is counted once per stage. Shaking a rattle can, setting up the wet palette and clearing the desk happen once, whether you are painting one model or thirty.
Times are rounded to five minutes. A figure like 2 h 25 min is an estimate, not a stopwatch reading, and it is deliberately wide.
Your speed is not in the model. A first model takes longer than the tenth. If this is your first box, treat the top of the range as the realistic end.

A worked example

The plan above arrives set to the most common starting point on this site: five plastic models, already assembled, a simple texture base and a standard scheme. Here is what the stages come out as.

Default plan for five assembled plastic models
Stage	Time	What it is really for
Build and prep the models	15 min – 30 min	Every model built, joints tight, and nothing left on that will block the brush later.
Clean the mould lines and wash the models	15 min – 30 min	Smooth surfaces and no release agent left behind, so primer has something to grip.
Prime	15 min – 25 min	A thin, even key for the paint to grab, with no detail lost.
Base coat	30 min – 50 min	Every part of the model blocked in with clean, flat colour.
Shade and define the shadows	15 min – 30 min	Depth in the recesses and a clear read of the shapes from arm's length.
Highlight	25 min – 50 min	Raised areas catching the light, so the model reads as a shape rather than a silhouette.
Base and finish	25 min – 45 min	A finished base, a protected paint job, and models that are actually done.

Notice where the hours go: highlighting is the longest stage and the one that shows the most, and basing is not far behind. If you are short of time, cutting the scheme from standard to simple saves more than cutting the basing ever will.

What this checklist cannot tell you

No colours, no brands, no SKUs. The paint and tool lists are categories — "3–5 base colours", "a size 0 brush" — not shopping recommendations. This tool does not price anything or check stock.
No colour-scheme design. It plans the work, not the palette. Which colours go together is a taste decision and a different job.
No safety assessment. Spray primer, resin dust, superglue accelerator and pigments all need real precautions, ventilation and a bit of common sense that a generated list cannot supply.
No sculpt evaluation. A model with a cape over both legs needs sub-assemblies the plan cannot see. Treat the order as the spine and adjust the joints around your models.
No promise that the ranges are your ranges. They are built from a fixed workflow definition and general hobby experience — a guide, not a measurement of your brush speed.

Questions about the painting plan

What should be on a miniature painting checklist?

The order matters more than the length. Build and prep the models, clean the mould lines and wash them, prime, block in the base coats, shade the recesses, highlight the raised areas, then base and varnish. Under each of those stages you want the actual jobs written down — trim the gates, thin the paint, wick up pooling, tidy the base rim — plus the paints and tools that stage needs. This generator builds that list from your answers and adds the bench setup you would otherwise forget.

How long does it take to paint a miniature?

It depends far more on the scheme and the batch size than on the model. Blocking in base coats on twenty models is mostly the same motion repeated, so the per-model time drops; edge highlighting twenty models is still twenty careful jobs, so it barely drops at all. Every figure on this page is a range, on purpose — a time range that pretends to be a prediction is worse than no estimate. The plan shows the stages that eat the hours so you can decide what to cut.

Does this work for a whole army rather than a single model?

Yes. Set the model count to the size of the unit or the army and the plan scales the per-model time with a batch factor: priming, base coating, washing and varnishing all get faster per model in a batch, while highlighting and cleaning barely do. The plan does not split the batch into sittings for you, but the stage times are a decent guide to how many evenings it will take.

Are my answers or my plan saved anywhere?

No. The plan is built in your browser from a fixed workflow definition that is written into the page, and your answers stay in the page while you are on it. Nothing is uploaded, stored, put in the URL or attached to an account — there is no account on this site to attach it to. If you want to keep the plan, download or copy it before you close the tab.

Can I change the plan after it is generated?

Yes, in two ways. Change any answer and the plan rebuilds itself straight away, with the time ranges recalculated. Or tick the steps off as you work, which updates the plain-text version — and that text box is editable, so you can rewrite, delete or add lines before you copy or download it. Copying and downloading always use exactly what is in that box.

Is this the same workflow the beginner guide on this site uses?

Yes. It follows the same order as the how-to-paint-miniatures guide — assemble, clean, prime, base coat, shade, highlight, base — and then stretches each step into the jobs, paints and tools for the specific models you described. The guide explains why the order works; this tool turns it into a list you can tick off and take to the desk.

Where to go next

The plan tells you what to do in what order. These pages fill in the how, and the money.

How to Paint Miniatures with Acrylic Paint — the full beginner walkthrough behind this workflow.
How to Remove Mould Lines from Miniatures — the cleaning stage, in detail, without wrecking the detail.
Paint Thinning Ratio Calculator — work out exactly how much water or thinner a colour needs.
Miniature Painting Cost Calculator — add up what the paints and tools on this list actually cost.
Miniature Painting Supplies: What You Actually Need — the gear guide, if you want the specific picks.

Miniature painting checklist generator

Your painting plan

Build and prep the models

Clean the mould lines and wash the models

Prime

Base coat

Shade and define the shadows

Highlight

Base and finish

Bench setup before you start

Paints and materials

Tools