Anyone have any basic tips for how to improve the stock TIE paint jobs? I'm looking at you, Macross, the ones you made are stunning.

I have found that repainting the grey to silver makes them look super sharp.

Unfortunately, I found doing the actual painting too tedious for my patience and level of skill.

I find the stock grey far to light and boring, especially for Vader's ship.

Some grey-black paint on the cockpit and rear flat panels plus a couple of layers of dark wash makes it far more intimidating and is easy to do (it was my second paint job).

What I would like to try for vader is making his ship in negative. Paint the gray parts of the ship black and paint the solar panels a medium gray.

In general, Imperial ships are very boring. They use a uniform grey with little to no markings or noticeable colours. A very easy way to make them look better is just painting the cockpits in a bright contrasting colour. Red works great for this. Another simple method is to give the solar panels some kind of marks.

Here's one I did awhile back.

Paint them bright pink:

Put some blood stripes on it.

Or just paint it all black.

Or just paint it all black.

Suddenly I hear the oldies song Painted black "I see a dark lord and he wants it painted black. No jedi any more they all faded into black! I see the rebels fly by dressed in their snubs Down the trench they go, I have to turn my head to see my wingman explode!"

Put some blood stripes on it.

Or just paint it all black.

Or... BOTH!

Thanks guys. Fun suggestions.

I did some stripes similar to the ones above, and also put a little battle damage on them. That is usually a blast mark or two on the hull, and sometimes some exposed metal on the solar panel areas, looking like scrapes and dings. For that effect I just did a little drybrushing with a metallic bronze paint.

I just water down gw black wash and go over the ship in a drybrush style so that I'm only darkening the ship a little at a time than I do the laser cannons in a bright green. Looks super solid every time