Hi Guys. I decided to finally try something I’ve been looking to do for a while. Inspired by @MiniJunkie‘s very nice video for quick tabletop fleet troopers using only inks and washes I gave it a whirl. I think the results came out pretty well and I learned a lot while doing it.

I’ve still got some work to do on the basing and will add a matte finish to most of the miniature so I will post updated pics later. I did gloss coat the shiny part of the helmet and I have to admit I used paint on the black part of the helmet. The vest, boot and guns I did with ink thought. The shirts are army painter blue wash. The pants are a 3:2 mix of dark tone and mid brown from Army Painter (I think, lol. Memory fades). The leader is light tone. I did use metallic paint for the ends of the guns and the belt buckles.

The Leaders boots are a 1:1:1 of black ink, red ink and mid brown wash. It took a couple of coats but I think gives a leathery look. This is something I could probably have done better with.

The flesh ink was a revelation. I needed to thin it something like 5:1 with Vallejo thinner medium but it works amazingly. Providing depth and reddish towns in seams. I may use this for all my future flesh painting. It has an unfortunate effect of emphasizing the “dead eyes” of the faces but I can live with that for tabletop standard.

The advantage if doing the models this way is that you are doing the paint and wash steps all at once. The disadvantage is that you can just correct mistakes by painting over them. You have to paint white then wash again. So some thiughbshould be given to how a model can be done this way. But overall I’m pretty happy with it.

link to the @MiniJunkie video below.

This is extremely cool. I really like how these turned out. Also a big thanks for explaining everything. I would honestly say that these look painted. I don't know how much more or less time it took you as opposed to just painting them out right but they look great. I might try this with the next set of Fleet Troopers I pick up.

Hope to see more of these.

@C3POFETT it took approximately the same time as basecoating although I left things a little longer to dry in between coats. The inks also run more than paint so you have to walk away from the mini after coloring one part because if you try to color an adjacent piece it will make a mess. But with the elimination of the wash steps I would say it took about 1/2 the time my other fleet troopers took, although that’s not exact.

I had a lot of fun doing it and I like how they look. I don’t know that it would work for every figure type (stormtroopers come to mind). For figures that have lots of flat spaces it might be iffy. I’m thinking of trying it with my rebel commandos...

Okay so I primed my first set of rebel commandos in dark greay and then did a white zenithal highlight. It’s actually a very severe highlight but I figured I might as well commit. I wasn’t sure how putting ink over it would look but I think it makes a nice effect.

I only took shots of the one guy so far:

Ironically, it’s hard to see the effect in the pictures because he actual light source is overhead. But it’s quite striking. For the human commandos I’m going to have a bit of trouble matching the effect on the faces and helmets but we’ll see how I do.

The whole mini is basically four colors. The cloak and clothes are dark green game ink with a little flesh ink dropped in and then thinned. Just one coat over the primer. The backpack is actually Vallejo brown leather paint thinned about 10-15:1 with medium to make a wash. That takes about 5 coats to get any kind of coverage. Then his face is thinned red ink in three or four coats. It looks pink until the third coat when it starts to develop a rich red.

I used black ink on the gun to try to preserve a bit of the highlight but without much effect. The eye is yellow ink and a black ink dot for the pupil.

...nice werk effort!...

Nice job on these

I have more or less finished my entire squad of rebel commandos at this point. I’m more or less okay with how they came out although as expected, matching the extreme zenithal shades with some of the areas that I simply needed to paint rather than ink leads to some challenges. I will try to take and post pictures when I get home.

Finally got this squad finished up. Here’s a few more pictures:

All in all I’m pretty happy. I went back and painted the faces white and then used wash on them because they were too dark and not looking good with the ink. Similarly the ink was pooling in the crease between the brim and the hat and the highlights looked odd so I did the green part of the helmet with paint as well. Added some battle damage as practice for Boba Fett as well. The backpacks came out well. The picture doesn’t quite capture it.

All in all they look pretty good for my standards. One more unit ready to roll.