.... is the Armada equivalent of painting TIE fighters: it sucks, and you have to do it.

I hear ya on that. I’ve got two squads of troopers and 4 scout bikers left and I will be done with the imperials. They’re all primed, i just need to blow a Saturday and get em done. I also have two at rt’s and the pilots left as well. By the time I’m done I will have to start on veers and snow troopers I bet.

I didn't have that much trouble with the Stormtroopers...

After priming, I gave them a heavy, white drybrush. (If you use a white primer, you can probably skip this step)

Then used some watered down black acrylic ink to give the entire mini a wash.

Then I used a very fine brush to hit the stripe on the head, the eyes, and other areas that are black and aren't dark enough. I also hit the weapons with it.

Then I switched to white to bring the armor back up

Followed that up with some final detail work such as a metallic for the weapons, the commanders shoulder pad, and a few other things that are brighter colors.

Depending upon what you want with it, you can get some really weathered troops or something far more shiny. My core set's squads of stormtroopers and bikes (not counting basing, which wasn't much time) took about an hour and a half of work, though about an hour of other things from eating to looking at what others were doing at the release events.

I haven’t received my minis or paints yet but if you just block in the black parts and then wash with a 4:1 lahmian : nuln oil it should be over quick.

8 hours ago, Shadows of the Future said:

I didn't have that much trouble with the Stormtroopers...

After priming, I gave them a heavy, white drybrush. (If you use a white primer, you can probably skip this step)

Then used some watered down black acrylic ink to give the entire mini a wash.

Then I used a very fine brush to hit the stripe on the head, the eyes, and other areas that are black and aren't dark enough. I also hit the weapons with it.

Then I switched to white to bring the armor back up

Followed that up with some final detail work such as a metallic for the weapons, the commanders shoulder pad, and a few other things that are brighter colors.

Depending upon what you want with it, you can get some really weathered troops or something far more shiny. My core set's squads of stormtroopers and bikes (not counting basing, which wasn't much time) took about an hour and a half of work, though about an hour of other things from eating to looking at what others were doing at the release events.

Yeah, all of that... for some white;) That’s part of why it sucks!:)

I liked painting the Imperials more than the Rebels. I have three squads of rebs and two more AT-RTs before I'm done.

I have to say, I actually didn't mind painting my batch of 4 squads. To me it felt more tedius painting the 9 stormies in IA's coreset than this one's though that likely had to do with how I staggered them so I wasn't painting the same sculpt again and again.

On 4/8/2018 at 9:28 PM, Shadows of the Future said:

I didn't have that much trouble with the Stormtroopers...

After priming, I gave them a heavy, white drybrush. (If you use a white primer, you can probably skip this step)

Then used some watered down black acrylic ink to give the entire mini a wash.

Then I used a very fine brush to hit the stripe on the head, the eyes, and other areas that are black and aren't dark enough. I also hit the weapons with it.

Then I switched to white to bring the armor back up

Followed that up with some final detail work such as a metallic for the weapons, the commanders shoulder pad, and a few other things that are brighter colors.

Depending upon what you want with it, you can get some really weathered troops or something far more shiny. My core set's squads of stormtroopers and bikes (not counting basing, which wasn't much time) took about an hour and a half of work, though about an hour of other things from eating to looking at what others were doing at the release events.

Currently working through my storm troopers and its horrible :/

So much work for so little...

2 minutes ago, Soulless said:

Currently working through my storm troopers and its horrible :/

So much work for so little...

That's probably what the Death Star drill sergeant said.

I love painting the storm troopers. It's so easy, I don't need to juggle with a handful of colors and I can paint them in my living room, because I dont need much space and lighting for it.

18 hours ago, KalEl814 said:

You've got the photobucket issue with the post...image won't show.

4 hours ago, Shadows of the Future said:

You've got the photobucket issue with the post...image won't show.

Well that’s ironic since it’s a pic of Darth Vader saying “I find your lack of pics... disturbing.”

:|

That's my Imperials so far. I've also finished the Rebels...and have started on a Stormtrooper expansion box that showed up last night.

There's some problems with my camera trying to adjust and deal with the lighting in a lot of annoying ways. A lot of it makes vader a pain in the rear to get a clear pic of due to it trying to "fix" the gloss I used for part which creates the nightmare for it.

The figures look good. Don't sweat the photography.

Prime in a light gray and zenthital highlight with white. Then plaint the black areas and gun. You can stop right there or use some very watered down nuln oil on the fine detail areas. Also, can paint the guns with gunmetal gray and nuln oil them. Sure there is a lot of them but they aren't hard to do quickly.

1 hour ago, Mep said:

Prime in a light gray and zenthital highlight with white. Then plaint the black areas and gun. You can stop right there or use some very watered down nuln oil on the fine detail areas. Also, can paint the guns with gunmetal gray and nuln oil them. Sure there is a lot of them but they aren't hard to do quickly.

I think it tends to work better to use a lighter drybrush for the metals rather than using a wash with the exception of the launcher. The blasters in the movie are a very dark metal compared to most of the metallic paints.

1 hour ago, Force Majeure said:

The figures look good. Don't sweat the photography.

It's really only Vader that annoys me with it because I can try adjusting things and it keeps messing with it. There's a lightened version of just the Vader that Beasts of War used on their weekly hobby painting stream from this week that makes some things pop out, but it makes other parts worse.

Not planning on buying a new camera because I don't really have the time to add another hobby to develop and the phone's works well enough, just not in dealing with the mixes of glossy and flat of the same base color along with everything else being largely blacks and dark greys anyway...Vader just hits that zone.