I have always liked the Imperial ships, but the canon paintjob is a bit boring - especially Lambda´s. I wanted to have a little bit more menacing and sinister look, with some colour added. The Galactic Empire is galaxy spanning by definition, so there must be some variety in the Imperial Navy also, so here´s my take on the Imperials.

Decimator, the current flagship as the Sienar Shipyards are still working on the Raiders. Initially I didn´t like the ship in the game, but it was fun to paint (have to get a second one!) and after receiving Squadron colours it became one of my favourites.

Shuttles. Easily my favourite ship in the game, I like the idea of flying a armed transport in a dogfight. And I have sort of a soft spot for the command/C2/EW functions which Lambda can be tailored to provide.

Latest addition to my fleet. As one cannot have too many shuttles, I made sort of a AWACS (SWACS?) for the shuttle aces. Their pilot talets seem to be more of a result of extra equipment and/or crew onboard than pure pilot skill, so radar dishes and extra antennas are fitting. The back-up visual/laser range finder thingie under the chin is not showing well, but it´s there if the microwaves are jammed.

Bombers, my favourite variant of trusty TIE. Fun to fly, especially in Epic games.

Fighters, I don´t really have lot of them.

Phantoms. They were nice to paint (kudos for somebody who made an excellent painting tutorial), and I sort of like them in the game - especially Sigmas.

I excluded Firespray from the Imperial Navy, I like the ship but it´s S&V from now on. No bounty hunter scum in my fleet! Next I would like to have a flight of Advanced, but let´s deal with S&V first.

These look gorgeous.

Also, couldn't help but think of Purple Rain when I saw the title!

Looks great. And nice touch with the purple sides on the cardboard inserts.

Those are absolutely amazing! Plus, I love the mods on the shuttle.

Wow. These all look great, but I absolutely love your windows!

Those look fantastic. The colour choices are great and subtle worn and rusty effect you've added to the ships are nicely done as well, love the effect!

Skywarp approves.

Seriously, love the color scheme. Well done.

You have a nice collection!

Purple rain, Purple rain...

Nailed it!

Great work all around!

The Decimator's engine glow is menacing .. Windows are flawless.

Thanks for the share.

They look great! Thanks for sharing your work with us!

That's shuttle with the stubby wings reminds me a lot of the Phantom from Rebels. Cool stuff.

Quite a nice collection you have there. I have one niggle though, the colour you've used to represent rust is too brown for me, it makes me think of poop, like some giant space monkey has flung its dung at the ships.

Also, I think I can name all the 40k pieces you've used to convert your AWACS shuttle.

You should do a tutorial on painting glass, the blending on your cockpits are awesome.

Thanks for the feedback, the pics are a tad yellowish (taking/editing decent photos is an artform out of my expertise) but the colours are almost correct.

The windows are super-easy to make, just paint the window fairly dark or black, mask and airbrush 2-3 lighter shades. The blue ones were painted quite dark blue, airbrushed first lighter blue and finally white. The red "submarine" window was airbrushed bright red and white over black. The decimator windows are handpainted, and they were PITA (not to mention less neat) compared to shuttle windows.

A purist might ask why the h*** the shuttle crews have the cockpit lights (even the lo-visibility red) on when in combat, but hey, it looks good after all

The windows are super-easy to make,

mask and airbrush 2-3 lighter shades.

Well that's a contradiction. Airbrushing is a fairly advanced technique that only really dedicated gamers/modelers have access to.

The windows are super-easy to make,

mask and airbrush 2-3 lighter shades.

Well that's a contradiction. Airbrushing is a fairly advanced technique that only really dedicated gamers/modelers have access to.

Well let´s not get in to the semantics as it really easy to do the effect with an airbrush but getting one is of course another question. For me the airbrush is mainly for the simple special effects like the windows here, some masters (like the rest of the airbrushers) are able to do amazing things with the airbrush. If you are ever thinking to get one, go ahead.

For the advise, I use mainly http://tutofig.com , a good opportunity to brush up our french/german also

I have one. Have managed to paint a passable fire elemental, and that was significantly more work than just painting it would have been. Trying to get it to do anything else is an exercise in frustration. To say nothing of the time involved.

I have one. Have managed to paint a passable fire elemental, and that was significantly more work than just painting it would have been.

An airbrush is not a short cut, it´s a just different tool in your bag. Sometimes it hastens the job, sometimes it just an another frustrating extra step to ge your miniature warriors/ships/whatever to sacrifice their virtual life for you. But it gets easier after some time.

The airbrush will reward you, just keep working on.

Those Lambdas are gorgeous

**** I love that purple on black colour scheme!!

Been wanting to add purple to my Imperials but haven't had the courage to take the plunge.

Now that I have seen how great yours turned out Im a lot more confident to go for it.

The good ol paint brushes will have to do for me, the cost to get an airbrush + compressor...well its not cheap

Finally some reinforcements, some of those have been painted for some time, but I´ve been busy (i.e. too lazy) to take photos. But better later than never.

The new flagship, Raider. To be honest, it doesn´t make much of a flagship IMO, the bridge is too cramped to serve as such. There´s barely room for a flag officer when the other seat is pretty much reserved for the Weapons Engineer (FFG, please make an Imperial version soon!), so C4I-type crew members still have to hitch a ride in the nearest shuttle or VT-49. But beautiful warship anyway:

The said bridge:

Aft shot:

Luckily the Gozanti "Cruiser" (Heck, why "cruiser"? It´s a transport/support, can we please use normal ship classification, it works just fine with spaceships.) makes a nice command and support vessel, I kinda like the looks also.

The jammer antenna and the turrets are magnetized.

The engines:

TIE Advanceds:

Defender, most likely to get some colleagues later this year:

And the horrible TIE BUFF, a ship that comes when you buy Imperial Extra Munitions:

Punisher isn't horrible, but I love the paint scheme you have.

I love your colour scheme, reminds me of these chaps;

I always found the pink and black a wonderfully sinister combination.