Here is all my painted legion stuff. I tried to take pictures with and without flash for everything. I tried to make some stormtroopers look dirty and some clean. I also tried my hand at OSL for a few minis and added some flames to the snowtrooper flamethrowers. I’m pretty happy with how it all turned out so I wanted to share them. Hopefully my link works because the files were too big to add directly.

https://imgur.com/gallery/nGbBbbK

The link works. Your bases look great and the OSL on Vader worked really well. I think you applied it a bit too strongly on the flametroopers though.

Also, your stormtroopers could benefit from a carefully applied black wash into the creases of their armour to add some definition. Overall though, a great looking force. I really like the AT ST.

For vader, the OSL is great, but I think you might have gone overboard with the highlights for the helmet.

If you go for the really glossy look for the helmet, it normally works out better to not try to highlight in the shine as well or you can create strange looks.

Man, your army looks terrific!

I really like your ATST. Vader looks great and I like the way you did the Heavy Blaster (DSL?) as though it’s getting red hot at the end. Looks cool.

Fir the flame troopers, I think the effects you have done look really great. The challenge is the rest of the trooper is bright white which makes it look like overkill. I think it would be super hard to try to back off the flame effects you have, so instead I would recommend darkening the rest of the snowtrooper. The reason being that the amount of OSL and effects you have from the flamethrower are appropriate for the stormie at night rather than in bright daylight.

Maybe this is useful, I am no expert. You could just apply a crazy amount of dark wash to the back and sides or, ideally, cool him down with some gray/Blue in the back away from the flames. The details on your flames are just so cool that it seems worth it to polish this up a bit. But I don’t want you to get the wrong idea - I think it looks crazy good.

Edit: Just to kind of illustrate, the OSL for the flames look a lot cooler in the incandescent light shots like this one:

The warmth of the light actually makes it seem like all the stories are lit up by the flames and it just lessens the harshness of the whites on the troopers. You have deep shadows giving the impression it is overall pretty dark. As another aside, I really like the gray instead of the cream.

43 minutes ago, BigBadAndy said:

Man, your army looks terrific!

I really like your ATST. Vader looks great and I like the way you did the Heavy Blaster (DSL?) as though it’s getting red hot at the end. Looks cool.

Fir the flame troopers, I think the effects you have done look really great. The challenge is the rest of the trooper is bright white which makes it look like overkill. I think it would be super hard to try to back off the flame effects you have, so instead I would recommend darkening the rest of the snowtrooper. The reason being that the amount of OSL and effects you have from the flamethrower are appropriate for the stormie at night rather than in bright daylight.

Maybe this is useful, I am no expert. You could just apply a crazy amount of dark wash to the back and sides or, ideally, cool him down with some gray/Blue in the back away from the flames. The details on your flames are just so cool that it seems worth it to polish this up a bit. But I don’t want you to get the wrong idea - I think it looks crazy good.

Edit: Just to kind of illustrate, the OSL for the flames look a lot cooler in the incandescent light shots like this one:

The warmth of the light actually makes it seem like all the stories are lit up by the flames and it just lessens the harshness of the whites on the troopers. You have deep shadows giving the impression it is overall pretty dark. As another aside, I really like the gray instead of the cream.

Thanks for the long comment! I really appreciate you taking the time to look closely and comment on so much so I can get good feedback! Legion is my first attempt with OSL, so I am still learning. I agree I may have gone overboard a little bit. Do you think a layer of black wash would work to darken it?

I was wondering how long until someone did OSL for a flame-thrower.

1 hour ago, Spideyfan629 said:

Thanks for the long comment! I really appreciate you taking the time to look closely and comment on so much so I can get good feedback! Legion is my first attempt with OSL, so I am still learning. I agree I may have gone overboard a little bit. Do you think a layer of black wash would work to darken it?

I would definitely NOT dark wash the OSL bits. That would just make the colored bits look bad. If there was a way to make them more white that would help, but I think that ship has sailed.

Theoretically you could dark wash the parts of the mini that are not painted for the OSL. I don’t know if the overall effect will work or not, but I might give it a try. Just make sure you don’t let it look like you typically would in the recesses since you are trying to darken the flat surfaces.

the other option is to simply take the gray and whit you used for the normal snowtroopers, darken a bit with black or dark great (not too much) and paint over those parts on the back of the snowtrooper.

have you watched any of @Sorastro‘s OSL vids? He has great ones of Vader for both Imperial Assault and Legion. But as far as learning how to get the overall effect of a light source I think his best one for helping you understand the technique is the one he did for the survivors in Kingdom Death: Monster:

I am nowhere near this level of artistry and have zero art background. But just watching this helps me think about what makes things look the way they do.

For a lot of my minis, I paint them true to life colors and just let the real world supply most of the light and shadows. For tabletop this works great. But if you are going to commit to deliberate drawing of the light and shadows (which OSL forces you to do) you kind of need to assume bright real world light and then paint on the light and shadows yourself.

Anyway, takenadvice from a rank amateur at your own risk. But I think it’s great that you went for it with the flametroopers. And it mostly works, which I think is why people are trying to give you advice to get over that last hump.

Again, for reference, look at any of your incandescent light photos. They are a great reference for what you are trying to do - a warm light source off to the side.

Look at what the natural light here does to the DSL troopers face on the far right side. This is what you want to recreate with paint. You might be able to do it with shades but it seems easier to do it by just making a dark gray. You don’t even have to blend it, the light source makes a pretty abrupt transition.

I don’t normally put this much effort in (or recommend this much effort for a tabletop mini). But you out a lot of hard work into those flames and it makes sense to ale it a bit further.

edit: sorry for all the typos. I’m doing this from my phone.

1 hour ago, ABXY said:

I was wondering how long until someone did OSL for a flame-thrower.

Yeah I had to do it. I wanted to be the first since I can’t be the best haha

1 hour ago, BigBadAndy said:

Have you watched any of @Sorastro‘s OSL vids? He has great ones of Vader for both Imperial Assault and Legion. But as far as learning how to get the overall effect of a light source I think his best one for helping you understand the technique is the one he did for the survivors in Kingdom Death: Monster:

I am nowhere near this level of artistry and have zero art background. But just watching this helps me think about what makes things look the way they do.

For a lot of my minis, I paint them true to life colors and just let the real world supply most of the light and shadows. For tabletop this works great. But if you are going to commit to deliberate drawing of the light and shadows (which OSL forces you to do) you kind of need to assume bright real world light and then paint on the light and shadows yourself.

Anyway, takenadvice from a rank amateur at your own risk. But I think it’s great that you went for it with the flametroopers. And it mostly works, which I think is why people are trying to give you advice to get over that last hump.

Again, for reference, look at any of your incandescent light photos. They are a great reference for what you are trying to do - a warm light source off to the side.

Look at what the natural light here does to the DSL troopers face on the far right side. This is what you want to recreate with paint. You might be able to do it with shades but it seems easier to do it by just making a dark gray. You don’t even have to blend it, the light source makes a pretty abrupt transition.

I don’t normally put this much effort in (or recommend this much effort for a tabletop mini). But you out a lot of hard work into those flames and it makes sense to ale it a bit further.

I will watch that video right now thank you. And I asked a friend who is a really good painter (though he avoids OSL) and he said a darker gray should do the trick to balance the OSL.

I don’t usually get too crazy for tabletop minis except for really important individual ones typically, but since I really want to improve I made the decision to push myself and try new things. Would you believe the capes and cloth parts on the troopers were my first attempt at wet blending as well?

...nice STORMIES>...nice

23 minutes ago, Spideyfan629 said:

I will watch that video right now thank you. And I asked a friend who is a really good painter (though he avoids OSL) and he said a darker gray should do the trick to balance the OSL.

I don’t usually get too crazy for tabletop minis except for really important individual ones typically, but since I really want to improve I made the decision to push myself and try new things. Would you believe the capes and cloth parts on the troopers were my first attempt at wet blending as well?

I do believe it, although I’m impressed. Your guys look really good. Thanks for posting them.

I have a box of Snowtroopers waiting for me at home. I’m seriously considering trying some OSL on the flametrooper... I’m absolutely garbage at working with green stuff though so I don’t know if I could pull off the flames.

I didn’t make the flames, I purchased them a while ago for something else and was smart enough to make some molds. Now I can make flames whenever I want.