Hey guys,

So I finally finished my first batch of Stormtroopers and thought I would share. I started painting miniatures about 3 months ago - basically in preparation for legion. I started with a single Imperial Assault Stormtrooper, which was pretty miserable. After that I painted about 5 or 6 Zombicide zombies. Outside of that, zero experience, although I have messed around with terrain painting as well.

Anyway, I'm building an Imperial Army I figured that over time I could post my work here. Maybe after long enough we'll see some improvement. I also have borderline OCD, so I'm spending a stupid amount of time on details that people likely can't see.

Anyway, here is my first squad of Stormtroopers. I'm debating if I should do the other troopers in the box, or move on to Speeder Bikes. I'm leaning towards Troopers, since I started to get into a rhythm with these guys and I expect that a 2nd round wouldn't take as long.

Criticism welcome. I mostly followed Sorastro's guide. I think I overdid it on the weathering and didn't like the colour I chose (going for a Sandy / Desert battle look) so I might switch that up next time.

Great work.

IMO, unless you are bored of doing them, carry on with the troopers. Technique tends to improve squad on squad (even for experienced painters very often I find) and you will get them done quicker and more uniform with the earlier ones.

Looks good Copes. Painting Stormtroopers can get a bit tiring (I am working on three squads of them myself right now).

Like the desert terrain you have as well!

Did you make that terrain yourself?

Foam cut and shaped? What did you cover it with? Is it latex paint with fine grain sand?

I really like it. It looks a cut above what I've been able to do.

19 hours ago, Force Majeure said:

Did you make that terrain yourself?

Foam cut and shaped? What did you cover it with? Is it latex paint with fine grain sand?

I really like it. It looks a cut above what I've been able to do.

Hey! I did, yeah, in the lead up to the game as I was experimenting with terrain.

It's foam insulation, cut and shaped. Edges are done basically by rubbing a boxcutter blade along the edges of the insulation. I glued the pieces together in progressively smaller sections, then covered in PVC glue and coated in sand and rocks. After that a sandy colour coat of the cheapest paint I could find, a dark wash, and a white dry brush.

Looks good. I can't tell you how many of those low-lights (grey lines) I had to touch up when I did mine. It definitely is an easy way to make them pop without the over darkening you get with Nuln oil over the whole thing.

5 hours ago, Stasy said:

Looks good. I can't tell you how many of those low-lights (grey lines) I had to touch up when I did mine. It definitely is an easy way to make them pop without the over darkening you get with Nuln oil over the whole thing.

100%, and they still aren't perfect. I'm hoping my second round of Stormtroopers will come out cleaner.

I am similarly new to painting minis - got started earlier this year painting Imperial Assault that my son got for Christmas. I have painted the 9 stormtroopers in that set, including three or four of them that I stripped and did over. I picked up Legion today and I’m looking forward to experimenting a bit with some of the ways to paint stormtroopers that are all over YouTube. I suspect I will continue to prefer Sorastro’s method but I may deviate with squad number two.

your paints look great - and certainly a lot better than plain gray out of the box! I can see they aren’t perfect if I magnify the photos but honestly at tabletop distance no one is going to think these are anything other than stormtroopers and they look good without any distracting flaws. Which is my definition of victory.

Second batch of Stormtroopers done - took me longer than I was hoping. I actually think these dudes are worse than the others. I can't for the life of me figure out how to create a smooth transition on the helmets - no matter how fast I move it seems that the paint can't be moved by water due to being such a thin layer. I'm using white scar... is that what's wrong? Still, happy to be done with these guys and feel that they look good when not super zoomed in.

I'm now debating between Vader and Bikes. I plan to get much more use out of Vader than the bikes, but I'm worried about painting him while still so mediocre at painting. Would hate to butcher such a cool model. Still, I think I'm going to bite the bullet and go for it. Thoughts on difficulty of Vader versus Bikes?

You’re being too hard on yourself. We are always the biggest critic of our own work, but these look really good. Everyone has trouble with the helmets and making smooth transitions. But, especially with two suns beating down from overhead, the tops of their heads should be much whiter than the rest of them.

Your terrain looks great too.

As far as what you do next, you can’t really go wrong. The biker scouts riding the Speeder bike are much easier to paint than the stormtroopers because of the contrasting black on their outfits. The bikes themselves are pretty simple too. I had a good time with everything except gluing the front fins on.

I haven’t done Vader yet but I did paint his Imperial Assault mini. He uses a lot of the same blending as the stormtroopers but it’s way easier to fix mistakes by just covering them in black paint. So, besides his tiny buttons he’s actually easier in many ways. You should think about how you want to do his lightsaber and if you want to try the Object Sourced Lightng techniques.

Yeah, I think your being too tough on yourself as well (I know I always am with myself).

Both squads look great and as said, your terrain looks very good as well!

I can see what you're talking about with the transitions not being so smooth. It's only on the helmets that I would attempt to make any correction.

How I would do it would be to dry brush the darker color into the lighter color using controlled strokes. That should do it.

Thanks for the comments @BigBadAndy and @Thevshi . I appreciate the encouragement. I kind of think I will try Vader next - I've been following Sorastro's guides and it doesn't look TOO complicated, so maybe it won't be as bad as I thought. Can always leave the OSL until I'm comfortable enough to execute that successfully.

@Force Majeure any tips / recommended tutorials on the technique you reference? In particular, what exactly is a "controlled stroke" when dry brushing (or in general)?

I think he just means “not whipping the brush around furiously and randomly” as people tend to do when dry brushing...

Yes, @BigBadAndy has got it right. Normally when dry brushing you tend to swing the brush wildly. In this case, you're going to want to lightly sweep your brush in an upward direction, beginning in the darker paint and into the lighter paint with a "dry brush".

Normally, you don't dry brush like this--maybe there's another term for the technique I'm suggesting--but you should be able to get a smoother transition all the same.

If you aren't familiar with dry brushing, here's a video on it.

In the future, layering would likely be the better way to get a smoother transition:

@copes Don't be too hard on yourself. Also, I had the same problem and I too am a new painter. Speaking specifically to transitions and smooth gradients. Bought some Vallejo Glazing Medium. Used it on my Duros, which also had zenithal priming, and it helped. I also used it on one of my Rebel squad leader jackets. Helped.

You can move the paint around. Zero idea on the technical name or the scientific reason ... don't care ... I just know I noticed the paints thin and, then, behave very differently than they had with water.

7 hours ago, Dash Two said:

@copes Don't be too hard on yourself. Also, I had the same problem and I too am a new painter. Speaking specifically to transitions and smooth gradients. Bought some Vallejo Glazing Medium. Used it on my Duros, which also had zenithal priming, and it helped. I also used it on one of my Rebel squad leader jackets. Helped.

You can move the paint around. Zero idea on the technical name or the scientific reason ... don't care ... I just know I noticed the paints thin and, then, behave very differently than they had with water.

Vallejos glaze medium can be explained as 'pigmentless paint' with drying retarder medium. Mixing it into your paints is making them more transparent, which allows for smoother blends through layers (this technique is called glazing). In smaller quantities it still slows drying time, which allows you to work with the paint on the model, enabeling you to wet-blend (mixing together two colours on the model in an area where you want to transition between the two) and my favourite, two-brush blending (adding a patch of colour and then fading it out towards the base coat by 'smearing' it out with a clean brush).

For helmet domes on stormtroopers I'recommend glazing. What I do on my troopers is paint the top of the dome pure white and then tie it to the base by glazing over a mix of the base and the pure white. I then glaze some pure white over the very top-most part (or I intend to, haven't gotten around to it, yet).

This is all incredibly helpful, thank you! Maybe what I'll do is try and get some of the Glazing Medium for my next Troopers. I spray painted Vader last night, so likely going to work on him this week, then my bikes. Within the next week or two I'll have two more groups of Stromtroopers to work on, so I expect I will try some of these new techniques on them.

Honestly, I may sound hard on myself but for my first models I'm incredibly pleased with how these turned out. Sure, I'm critical of where I went wrong, but its all in the name of doing it better next time. I do appreciate all the kind comments. I'm looking forward to getting my painted army on the table!

Personally I’ve found Citadel’s white paints to be super finicky, be it White Scar or Ceramite White. They work fine when I’m mixing them with something to lighten a shade but alone I really struggle with them. I use Vallejo Model Color White and I’ve never looked back. YMMV of course but I figured I’d mention it.

1 hour ago, KalEl814 said:

Personally I’ve found Citadel’s white paints to be super finicky, be it White Scar or Ceramite White. They work fine when I’m mixing them with something to lighten a shade but alone I really struggle with them. I use Vallejo Model Color White and I’ve never looked back. YMMV of course but I figured I’d mention it.

I’m slowly switching over to Vallejo for my paints. I started off buying a bunch of citadel paints because that’s what I saw people using but frankly the pots are a pain and it’s much harder to measure and deliver consistent “brushfulls” than dropperfuls of paint.

Citadel is more readily available to me, but I've wanted to try Vallejo because I've heard good things. Maybe its worth the long drive to try and get my hands on some.

6 hours ago, Copes said:

Citadel is more readily available to me, but I've wanted to try Vallejo because I've heard good things. Maybe its worth the long drive to try and get my hands on some.

Vallejo is more convenient to use, but as I’ve said elsewhere... citadel, Vallejo, reaper... they’re all high quality paints. You can’t go wrong with them. The best paints are the ones you can access easily and that you’ll actually use.

2 hours ago, KalEl814 said:

Vallejo is more convenient to use, but as I’ve said elsewhere... citadel, Vallejo, reaper... they’re all high quality paints. You can’t go wrong with them. The best paints are the ones you can access easily and that you’ll actually use.

Well said. Personally, I'm not into the GW stuff because they're overpriced and not in a dropper bottle. But the paint itself ain't bad. I've had a bunch of Reaper paints (I got in one of the Bones Kickstarters) but as I run out of those I've been replacing them with Vallejo, which are sold in a store about a mile from my apartment.

Was nervous about painting Vader, but I'm really happy with how he came out. He was my project this weekend. I now have my 350 point army if we play escalation league at my local store.



I avoided OSL and any lighting effects on the Helm since I didn't want to potentially ruin him. The picture isn't the greatest, but I tried blending and highlighting for the first time and it went way better than I expected. I might add some OSL in the future.

Next up? I'm thinking of diving into the ATST!