Question: Do you prime coat all your minis before painting? I've watched Sorastro's video and he begins by spraying a base coat. Outside of Vader, would you use white primer for all the minis?

Yes, it's a good idea to prime your miniatures. If you're new to the hobby, you can't go wrong with a can of Games Workshops white primer, Skull White. There are cheaper alternatives, but GW's are common, and it does the job well.

I spray everything white that isn't going to be predominantly black. Heck, I've even started spraying the darker miniatures white these days! GW also do a black primer.

Just make sure that you spray nice, thin coats, about 20cm from the mini, or you can clog the detail.

Question: Do you prime coat all your minis before painting? I've watched Sorastro's video and he begins by spraying a base coat. Outside of Vader, would you use white primer for all the minis?

Always prime everything! Also scrape off the mold lines and wash (plus dry) the figure first. Some lukewarm water and a small amount of handsoap works well.

Thanks for the tips. What about varnish after painting? Is liquid varnish just as good as a spray varnish?

Pro tip: the black primer is way better than the white one (games workshop). Where black gives a great bisect wit just one layer, the white one needs at least 2 to 3, making it a lot more expensive.
I use a spray on matte varnish cause it's very quick and gives an even coverage.

There are many strong opinions about priming, it seems. Some people say white, others black or gray. My take on it is that white primer lets you get much brighter colors but black gives you deeper colors.

I did all my priming for IA in black except for the storm troopers which I did in white and the AT-ST I did gray.

For varnish just use Testors Dullecote as Sorastro suggests, its awesome.

White will give more vivid colours but is harder to work with, especially with pre-assembled single pose models. With certain sculpts, getting your brush into some of those little nooks with any kind of brush control is tough. When you use white ou have to deal with these nooks as having little white spots under armpits, etc., whereas with black, hose hard to get to nooks just end up with a little black spot... which just becomes a shadow that no one ever notices.

I used to prime white years ago... now I always go black... and never go back lol.

When I need to paint those hard coverage colours like red or yellow, I simply paint those areas with a thin layer of light grey after priming. Light grey covers black beautifully and those reds and yellows that take countless coat after coat when you paint them on black, go over grey quite easily.

Just my 2 sheckles.

I struggle to see the details on black primer, so use white all the time, yes darker colours are bit harder but hey I can put up with it.

for varnish I discovered an almost bomg proof method, I even dropped a metal mini from shoulder height onto concrete and it didn't chip! Also scattered an entire team across a hard tiled floor and suffered no damage.

The method is using a synthetic water based paint on Gloss varnish (from hardware store), then Vallejo paint on matt varnish, then spray on matt

My experience over many years in the miniatures hobbies scene is whatever you do somebody will say do it another way. My 2 cents worth of advice is decide what kind of painter you are. I paint to play - one of my playing friends plays to paint. His painting is far superior on a painting level to mine but he will spend 2 weeks painting a mini and I will spend 2 hours. I am happy with the result on the table so I can look at the figure and play the game happily for me that is the issue.

I can appreciate great painted mini's I love the look of them and can spend hours looking at them or video's etc and yea my painting over the years has improved but I aint sitting for 2 weeks with one model - I would miss the game time:)

Oh undercoat - the best I find is car primer. You can get plastic primer and its around 1/2 the price of GW stuff and works the same.

I started painting the figures after watching Sorastro's tutorials. I've primed my figures mostly with Army Painter's white primer. It works well in my opinion. The reason I used that was because it was suggested in the videos. When painting the probe droids I also didn't have the gray primer so I just used the white and then painted a thin layer of Citadel's Uniform Gray or Citadel's Gunbelcher. I painted one droid with one gray and 2 with gunbelcher since I liked the metallic sheen more. White can be difficult to paint over and I found that I needed 2 thin layers to get a solid color. So certainly the project took me longer.

For IG-88 I used the gray primer and it certainly saves a step and speeds up the project a lot.

For varnish I recommend buying a spray matte varnish. I use Army Painter's matte varnish (because the local gameshop only had that) and it has worked well. I got some glazing on my E-Web Engineer. I don't know if I did some errors with that, or if the temperature outside was bad or too windy or whatever. But other figures I've sprayed with the varnish have turned out great.

I started originally with a paint on varnish since I thought I don't want to go to the balcony. Varnishing the stormtroopers wasn't that bad but the probe droids were a lot more annoying. After painting the varnish on 2 probe droids, I gave up and bought the spray on varnish.

So far I've painted 2 squads of stormtroopers, the probe droids, 1 E-Web Engineer and IG-88. None of them are very good but they look better than without the paint. And it's fun to paint them. The most annoying part is that I somehow failed to notice the skewed gun on the E-Web Engineer and now that I've painted it, I don't know if I can straighten that. Dipping the miniature into hot water doesn't seem like an option now.

These are just my experiences. I'm a beginner myself trying to figure good ways to do things.

So far I've painted 2 squads of stormtroopers, the probe droids, 1 E-Web Engineer and IG-88. None of them are very good but they look better than without the paint. And it's fun to paint them. The most annoying part is that I somehow failed to notice the skewed gun on the E-Web Engineer and now that I've painted it, I don't know if I can straighten that. Dipping the miniature into hot water doesn't seem like an option now.

I'm not sure if it will work but what about using a hairdryer for a few seconds on the painted mini to straighten out the gun?

It certainly works on unpainted minis. However I have no idea if it would crack the paint or cause some other ill effect on a painted mini.

So far I've painted 2 squads of stormtroopers, the probe droids, 1 E-Web Engineer and IG-88. None of them are very good but they look better than without the paint. And it's fun to paint them. The most annoying part is that I somehow failed to notice the skewed gun on the E-Web Engineer and now that I've painted it, I don't know if I can straighten that. Dipping the miniature into hot water doesn't seem like an option now.

I'm not sure if it will work but what about using a hairdryer for a few seconds on the painted mini to straighten out the gun?

It certainly works on unpainted minis. However I have no idea if it would crack the paint or cause some other ill effect on a painted mini.

I don't have a hair drier but I might try that at a friend's place. I was also thinking that as I have completely smooth small pliers, maybe I could try heating that in hot water and carefully using that to heat the barrel. Perhaps the varnish will protect the paint enough so that it won't crack.

Or I'll just keep the figure as it is. It has earned some funny comments during gameplay from rebels: "Oh, no. Don't go there since the gun might actually hit you there."