Looking fantastic, guys!

Couldn't wait for this guy:

Needs a few touch-up's, but he was good enough to play with tonight

Awesome! Thanks for sharing

Decided not to bother even attempting the eyes. Cleaned up Gaarkans smeared lipstick and stuck the varnish on. I think the colours look better when not taken against a white background as my phone seems to wash out the contrast then.

Working all weekend again but I'll try and fit in Jyn Odan after work next week if I finish any day at a reasonable time.

Edit:

In fact it was earlier than I expected so base coated Jyn as I primed her a few hours ago.

Those wookies look awesome, Muz. I like how much like fur you've made the plastic look. I especially like Chewbacca's eye area and forehead. Looks so authentic in the latest photo.

Ah, my suspicion was correct on the next episode. I looked at my unpainted minis last night and thought this has to be the quickest to paint!

Also we get early access videos now? Yay!

Edit:

So thanks to the guys that recommended nail varnish racks to store the paints. At £7.50 these are an excellent solution in the UK to hold 27 paints. I'll buy a third for the base paints now.

Edit 2:

Jyn Odan finished now. I'll upload pictures when I can but need to hurry back to work.

I'll chime in with what little experience I have with painting. I used to paint mini's years ago and thanks to this thread, all of you and especially Sorastro, I'm painting again. I've always painted the eyes of my figures. Here's how I do it, and by no means am I an expert.

When you begin painting a face, paint the whites of the eyes first. Try to keep the paint to just the eyes, but if you go outside the eye a little, it won't matter at this point since this is the first thing you're painting.

Next paint approximately the middle third of the eye with the eye color. This will be the color of the iris. Just paint a stripe of color down the middle of the eye, about one third the width of the eye. When you look at someones face, you usually don't see the entire iris, hence, you don't have to paint a round shape.

Lastly, continue painting the face however you had planned. I find it much easier to paint the face color up to the eye and cover any over painting mistakes from the eye, than to try and paint the eye itself precisely.

When possible, I try to paint from back to front. An example would be eyes, face, hair, hat, etc. This allows me to reach the small and difficult to reach features and correct any mistakes with the next layer as I move out on the miniature.

I'll try and find some old mini's tonight that demonstrate the results that I tried to explain above.

Just my little contribution. I hope its helpful

Thanks,

XiliX

Sorastro, not to look too far ahead, but I'm putting together my shopping list to paint the Stormtroopers and E-Web Engineers from core, plus the Heavy Stormtroopers and Kayn Somos from Wave 2. But I'm trying to figure out what is best for Kayn Somos' pauldron. The base I can only assume would be Jokaero Orange. But the shade and highlights I'm less sure on. What do you think?

Edit: Also, are you satisfied with Mechanicus Standard Grey + Nuln Oil for the blacks on the Stormies? It seems like you've been using a mix of MSG and Abaddon Black, followed by Nuln Oil for your blacks on more recent figures.

I'm not a painter.

Going to cheat and commission a painter.

But!

I could not look at all these glorious paint jobs without at least commenting and saying:

"COOL WORK EVERYONE"

Sorastro, not to look too far ahead, but I'm putting together my shopping list to paint the Stormtroopers and E-Web Engineers from core, plus the Heavy Stormtroopers and Kayn Somos from Wave 2. But I'm trying to figure out what is best for Kayn Somos' pauldron. The base I can only assume would be Jokaero Orange. But the shade and highlights I'm less sure on. What do you think?

Edit: Also, are you satisfied with Mechanicus Standard Grey + Nuln Oil for the blacks on the Stormies? It seems like you've been using a mix of MSG and Abaddon Black, followed by Nuln Oil for your blacks on more recent figures.

Hi Leveton! Hmm I've had a quick look at Kayn Somos and that orange is quite a subtle shade; I might try shading with an Aggrax/Nuln shade as it's pretty dark and grimy towards to lower portions (probably thinned so I could shade it down in a few layers). But there's also more of a yellow component than we find in just Jokaero Orange. Without running some tests I wouldn't like to offer any more suggestions than that as the last thing I want to do is offer bad advice, but I would try getting some more yellow in there - either as a highlight or possibly mixed into the base, or even as a glaze..?

Regarding your black question; I think on reflection that we can just about get away with using pure MSG as a base for the Stormtroopers - especially for the smaller crevices as the Nuln Oil concentrates so nicely there that it easily darkens them down. Also, the fact the rest of the mini is white means that the black needn't be as black as we might expect as all that white makes the grey look darker by contrast . Having said that, perhaps for the gun and dark part of the gloves I might either add an additional Nuln Oil layer or - as you've noticed I have been doing generally for larger black areas - mix a little black into the base.

Hope that answers your questions ok!

Yeah, that helps. Although I'm not seeing much yellow in the pauldron. It looks like a pretty plain orange to me. What's more, I'm more interested in matching the OT sandtrooper costume than card art.

But I'm also just judging the Jokaero Orange from GW's website. Haven't actually seen anything painted with it in person.

Totally forgot to upload this last night.

Aiming to do the latest episode tomorrow night if I can finish work at a reasonable hour to do the whole thing in one sitting.

I'm not a painter.

Going to cheat and commission a painter.

But!

I could not look at all these glorious paint jobs without at least commenting and saying:

"COOL WORK EVERYONE"

I once thought like that, but I'm glad I tried it myself. It's so much fun and feels awesome when you finish and put them on the board. Nothing like murdering all of your friends with 3 squads of newly painted storm troopers

I'm not a painter.

Going to cheat and commission a painter.

But!

I could not look at all these glorious paint jobs without at least commenting and saying:

"COOL WORK EVERYONE"

I once thought like that, but I'm glad I tried it myself. It's so much fun and feels awesome when you finish and put them on the board. Nothing like murdering all of your friends with 3 squads of newly painted storm troopers

White. Black. Shading wash.

I am thinking about doing the Stormtroopers myself. Just like that. One, two, three.

My two biggest problems are:

1. Too much paint, on the brush or on the model. When I see gaps in the paint, especially around details, I panic and try to cover the bare bits only to clog them up and ruin the miniature.

2. Hand shakes. My normally steady hand starts shaking when trying to paint miniatures for no reason.

I'm not a painter.

Going to cheat and commission a painter.

But!

I could not look at all these glorious paint jobs without at least commenting and saying:

"COOL WORK EVERYONE"

I once thought like that, but I'm glad I tried it myself. It's so much fun and feels awesome when you finish and put them on the board. Nothing like murdering all of your friends with 3 squads of newly painted storm troopers

White. Black. Shading wash.

I am thinking about doing the Stormtroopers myself. Just like that. One, two, three.

My two biggest problems are:

1. Too much paint, on the brush or on the model. When I see gaps in the paint, especially around details, I panic and try to cover the bare bits only to clog them up and ruin the miniature.

2. Hand shakes. My normally steady hand starts shaking when trying to paint miniatures for no reason.

I started painting after seeing Sorastro's tutorials on how to paint stormtroopers and probe droids. I can say that my hand was shaking a lot in the beginning too and I did and still do a lot of mistake. For shaky hands, I've noticed that if I try to keep my hand as steady as possible and for example make a small dot on the figure, my hand shakes. Lines etc. are easier. I've found that moving the brush back and forth a little (not painting the figure of course) just before painting the detail gets rid of the shakiness.

How much to have paint on a brush I don't really know a proper answer. After getting paint on a brush I usually do a small test line on a paper before moving to the model.

And like the saying goes: "Practice makes a master and even masters practice."

I can say that my hand was shaking a lot in the beginning too and I did and still do a lot of mistake. For shaky hands, I've noticed that if I try to keep my hand as steady as possible and for example make a small dot on the figure, my hand shakes. Lines etc. are easier. I've found that moving the brush back and forth a little (not painting the figure of course) just before painting the detail gets rid of the shakiness.

Also a couple of beers work wonders.

I suppose I'm not the worst painter in the world

White. Black. Shading wash.

I am thinking about doing the Stormtroopers myself. Just like that. One, two, three.

My two biggest problems are:

1. Too much paint, on the brush or on the model. When I see gaps in the paint, especially around details, I panic and try to cover the bare bits only to clog them up and ruin the miniature.

2. Hand shakes. My normally steady hand starts shaking when trying to paint miniatures for no reason.

I had never even held a brush before Sorastros videos. Now I'm not going to say my painting is great, however I would hope you would agree that they look better than unpainted for playing at tabletop distance.

If I managed to do this I see no reason why any other person completely new to the hobby wouldn't receive similar results.

To answer your questions:

1) I have no idea how to determine what's enough paint or not. So what I do is mix all paints 50:50 with water or lamian(sp?) media for shades (only when they aren't used neat). I've not had any issues so far, at least to my untrained eye, of this clogging up details.

2) My hand shakes as well and it shows in my paintwork. However I sometimes rest the figure on my knee with my wrist on my lap and this helps a lot. I just forget to do it a lot of the time. I think investing in corks to stick the minis too would help as well but I always forget to order some.

2. Hand shakes. My normally steady hand starts shaking when trying to paint miniatures for no reason.

The trick is to anchor your moving parts down as much as possible, so keep your hands together, and rest your elbows or possibly wrists against the table (depends if you like to hold the mini at your eye level or close to the table). In this video at 2:20-2:45 you'll see what I mean:

Also, do what the snipers do and control your breathing. When it's time to paint that eye pupil, take a few slow breaths at first, then midway through exhaling, stop breathing. Just stop exhaling with half the air still in your lungs. You have now good 5-10 seconds to hit that bullseye and start breathing again. Little hardcore advice, but hey, it works

I'm not a painter.

Going to cheat and commission a painter.

But!

I could not look at all these glorious paint jobs without at least commenting and saying:

"COOL WORK EVERYONE"

I once thought like that, but I'm glad I tried it myself. It's so much fun and feels awesome when you finish and put them on the board. Nothing like murdering all of your friends with 3 squads of newly painted storm troopers

White. Black. Shading wash.

I am thinking about doing the Stormtroopers myself. Just like that. One, two, three.

My two biggest problems are:

1. Too much paint, on the brush or on the model. When I see gaps in the paint, especially around details, I panic and try to cover the bare bits only to clog them up and ruin the miniature.

2. Hand shakes. My normally steady hand starts shaking when trying to paint miniatures for no reason.

1. Thin your paint. It's better that it's too thin than too thick, you can always add more layers. Also, if you're worried about this use citadel's layer paints instead of the base colors. They have less pigment in them and should give you more leeway. After 9 storm troopers you'll start getting the feel of what consistency works for you

2. I rest my hands on my table when doing anything delicate. My hands shake like crazy, luck for me, my table doesn't seem to have that problem.

3. If you're going to follow Sorastro's guides (which I highly highly recommend), follow them in order. He does a wonderful job of adding complexity and techniques with each subsequent video. So if you start with Storm troopers and skip to wookies next it might be overwhelming. But if you do them in order by the time you get to wookies it will feel pretty easy (I'm not there yet, just finishing my Nexu, but I've watched the video and thought "wow, it's that easy to make them look that good? I need to paint faster...")

Fun thing I noticed today. Looking at what paint I have already, IG-88 will be the first one of these I give Sorastro more money than Citadel for painting. I consider this an appropriate distribution of funds.

Fun thing I noticed today. Looking at what paint I have already, IG-88 will be the first one of these I give Sorastro more money than Citadel for painting. I consider this an appropriate distribution of funds.

Plan to do IG-88 after dinner. I'll need to double check but I think I have all the paints already. Which is a first.

Can't wait for Diala as I like her skin colour. Sorastros paint test looked good too.

Fun thing I noticed today. Looking at what paint I have already, IG-88 will be the first one of these I give Sorastro more money than Citadel for painting. I consider this an appropriate distribution of funds.

Plan to do IG-88 after dinner. I'll need to double check but I think I have all the paints already. Which is a first.

Can't wait for Diala as I like her skin colour. Sorastros paint test looked good too.

I don't see a new video up, why is everyone talking about IG-88? Did I miss something?

Fun thing I noticed today. Looking at what paint I have already, IG-88 will be the first one of these I give Sorastro more money than Citadel for painting. I consider this an appropriate distribution of funds.

Plan to do IG-88 after dinner. I'll need to double check but I think I have all the paints already. Which is a first.

Can't wait for Diala as I like her skin colour. Sorastros paint test looked good too.

Yeah, it's funny. He ended up doing the 3 heroes my rebels use first, and I only voted for 1 of them! (and it looks like Diala would have won without my input anyway). Funny how things work out.

Almost done with the Nexu, who went much faster than my trandos. I think Jyn will be a day or two at the most, she's already primed. I'll probably skip to IG-88 after her just because he also looks like a day or two tops. I'll clean up the wookies and him and basecoat them all at once though.

It'll be my first shot at green stuff, curious what that will be like

Fun thing I noticed today. Looking at what paint I have already, IG-88 will be the first one of these I give Sorastro more money than Citadel for painting. I consider this an appropriate distribution of funds.

Plan to do IG-88 after dinner. I'll need to double check but I think I have all the paints already. Which is a first.

Can't wait for Diala as I like her skin colour. Sorastros paint test looked good too.

I don't see a new video up, why is everyone talking about IG-88? Did I miss something?

I don't see a new video up, why is everyone talking about IG-88? Did I miss something?

Patron early access I'm afraid. It should go public in Friday.