Here's my latest project. I got rid of most of my faux-Hoth guys on eBay and decided to rework my entire rebel forces. Right now I'm painting a core set in ROTJ uniforms with Luke in Bespin colors. I will add to this army with 1 each of various things, painted the way they looked in the films, until they hit 800 points. It will be my rebel loaner army and reserve pool of spare units.

Much as I trumpet Her Awesomeness Teri The First, Queen of Youtube, Baroness of Star Wars and 3rd Duchess of Wargaming , I don't really like her Endor color scheme so I made my own using some of her ideas but with a very different slant. I have another squad of these primed and ready to paint, maybe I'll time my painting of the second squad. If I don't get around to painting them till after I get another warm day for priming, I'll do up an AT-RT and batch paint the pilot with them as well.

Luke was very quick and dirty. Primed off-white, then a thin even coat of off-white for the clothes, pink for the face, yellow for the hair. Grey for the weapons, brown for the belt. Grey wash all over, then a darker wash on the weapons. Blue on the saber blade with a light blue highlight. If I have the time I'll go back and add a slightly darker, browner, shading wash to his boots to make them look more like the films and toys of my youth.

The rebels were primed off-white. Then I painted the faces brown, pink, or whatever I choose for the squad's Duros. Green for the rim of the helmets, and the vests, coats, pants and gaiters. Guns, gloves, bandoliers, a ponytail, and certain backpacks were painted grey. Boot tops, backpack straps, belts, and certain backpacks, were painted brown. Scarves were painted grey or left off-white: whatever was needed to contrast best against backpacks and the ponytail. Undershirts and helmet details were left off-white. The base was given 1 coat of light yellow. Any big egregious errors were then corrected: mostly this meant putting new bits of off-white where other colors had gone outside the lines. The whole model was then given a grey wash. When this dried the guns, binoculars, ponytail, and little backpack details (on the Hoth backpacks) were given a very dark wash. Any errors that the wash failed to hide were then touched up and a second coat of yellow was applied to the base. They're far from my best work but I am spread across many games, and I pretty much reserve my best efforts for vintage Citadel pieces. They do however (I think) readily convey what I want them to. Especially at tabletop distance, and/or to newbies which is the intended audience for these pieces. It's really important to me when I run demo games to use models that the uninitiated could realistically expect to paint themselves.

Bonus pic:

Good work but much yellow in Luke's outfit if you're going for "movie accurate."

It's much more grey, Sorastro had access to the Lucasfilm visual library and he came up with the grey that he put in his tutorial.

They look great. I love the Luke mostly because it reminds me of the Kenner figure from the 80s. That's not an insult because I actually use the old "Kenner Line" as inspiration for my miniatures. Always have since painting the WEG miniatures Along time ago in a zip code far, far away. (Actually it's like around 250 miles)

18 hours ago, Zrob314 said:

Good work but much yellow in Luke's outfit if you're going for "movie accurate."

It's much more grey, Sorastro had access to the Lucasfilm visual library and he came up with the grey that he put in his tutorial.

I am not. I am going for pop culture accurate. Luke wears khaki and Hoth-Han wears blue in my world. Snowtroopers are much whiter than the cool kids want them to be. Etc.

1 hour ago, TauntaunScout said:

I am not. I am going for pop culture accurate. Luke wears khaki and Hoth-Han wears blue in my world. Snowtroopers are much whiter than the cool kids want them to be. Etc.

That's cool. I figured you were going for that, but your title was more ambiguous.

2 hours ago, Zrob314 said:

That's cool. I figured you were going for that, but your title was more ambiguous.

Well, most of the pop-colors are that way because mere casual viewing of the movies leads one to that color conclusion.

This isn't your only Luke, is it?

13 minutes ago, TauntaunScout said:

Well, most of the pop-colors are that way because mere casual viewing of the movies leads one to that color conclusion.

Also I don't think that is the case. I think the perceptions of people who were alive in 1980 are heavily influenced by the Kenner figure.

1 hour ago, Zrob314 said:

This isn't your only Luke, is it?

It is now, I sold the other one. I have another unpainted one somewhere too.

Where do you think Kenner got the ideas for their colors though?

Luke looks lighter in the movie than in Kenner. But not what I'd call a grey.

Snowtroopers are usually pretty white. It takes certain lighting conditions to make parts of them appear tan, usually light has to pass through the capes at a distance to turn the cloth tan. Or maybe it's tan cloth that looks white under the right conditions! Either way a casual viewing of the movie can lead one to a white conclusion.

Han looks pretty dark blue in the original movie, but the Kenner figure is a brighter blue. The prop might be browner but the movie can lead one to see it as blue. More than anything this a detail that has had some serious revision. I think he got browner when they remastered it. Maybe that's just a rumor.

Veers is the one Kenner got really wrong though, he's supposed to be all green not all grey. Pausing the "original theatrical release" DVD clearly shows him as green. I painted mine grey and black though to be more Weggish.

5 hours ago, C3POFETT said:

They look great. I love the Luke mostly because it reminds me of the Kenner figure from the 80s. That's not an insult because I actually use the old "Kenner Line" as inspiration for my miniatures. Always have since painting the WEG miniatures Along time ago in a zip code far, far away. (Actually it's like around 250 miles)

The idea with the color schemes on these models is, I want them to look nice from 36 inches away, paint fast, and I want new people to grok what they are.

So, my rebel troopers actually wear a lot more green than the real ROTJ rebels if you look close. But what looks real is not always the same as what looks good . Film and miniatures are very different mediums. I think if I painted them truer to the films, it would fail to adequately communicate "these are ROTJ rebels" to the viewer, and take me longer to not-communicate-it, besides. Likewise, I could paint actual camo patterns onto them but at a distance like the scale of the models would create, camo doesn't always look like camo. Pointalism can turn it into one color.

The idea (with all my Legion painting) is to get a ratio of maximum effect to minimum effort. Increasing my time had better have a major payoff in visual effect or I won't bother. I'm not, by definition, going to get my best work. But I am going to learn some things about choosing color application order, using contrast, and whatever else, to apply to other projects. I didn't really have time to tackle another-other game when Legion hit, so my Legion armies are a big experiment in economy of painting.

...And just to prove I'm not making up excuses for my natural laziness and poor hand-eye-coordination, here's what I can do if I really try hard. But I simply don't have this kind of time to put into Legion.

Now, these are far from perfect but in my defense, the camera magnifies them so that tiny errors not visible to the naked eye are glaring. The eyeballs on the scouts, a lot of the highlights, and some the ork rivets and stuff, look fine in person but are magnified into sloppy smudges, by the camera.

Maybe I should reshoot them farther way then crop the image.

Edit: I just started batch-painting a new Endor squad, an Endor AT-RT, and two Hoth Atgar Towers. 17:51 to drybrush the atgar crew white, paint all the grey accents onto their uniforms, paint everyone's faces pink, and deal with a toddler that kept getting out of bed.

Edit: Just spent a whopping 52:08 blocking in the green, brown, and grey on the Endor squad and RT pilot. I was in no rush, I ate a sandwich and drank a beer while I worked. This is by far the most time consuming aspect of the batch of new rebels. Tomorrow everything gets a grey shading wash. Then the guns and binoculars get a much darker wash. Then 2 coats of yellow on the base. Any glaring mistakes that are not hidden by the washes will be dealt with as needed. So I've proven that the Endor colors take a lot longer than the Hoth colors. But that's no huge surprise, and they still aren't prohibitively time consuming.

Edit: I just spent 16:01 relaxingly applying the lighter wash to these units (troopers, RT, 2x Atgars) plus to a AT-ST and Snowspeeder.

Edit: Spent a whopping 36 minutes putting yellow on bases and dark washes on guns etc. Atgars need more dark wash, I had to stop shading them due to a disaster with a puddle of wet yellow on the bases. The mistakes and the enormous amount of time involved was because I had two "helpers" with me.

whenever I figure out how to post pics and have once again a great camera... had a house fire destroying everything... I'll post my movie accurate rebel troopers which look outstanding. What I would like to add though is to do an extensive search on the internet to find authentic star wars props and such to figure out what the accurate colors are to be. For example but spare me for not looking into the exact color this moment, it isn't green per say, more closer to a blue green. As a Artist whom always never went below a 98% regardless of any school year, not only do I know colors but I'd like to point out in the movie for instants.. the background trees are green, their camo is shades of green, their helmets are not the same color... More of a blue hue, though details I personally don't feel like going into at this hour of night. When I painted mine using Vallejo acrylic paint model color, I mixed a certain blue with a certain green and matched the color seemingly perfectly. Hopefully this is helpful though even without the specific details.

23 hours ago, Tokous said:

What I would like to add though is to do an extensive search on the internet to find authentic star wars props and such to figure out what the accurate colors are to be.

Not what I'm going for but thanks. I do have a color wheel and know how to use it. But this project is all about minimum effort to reach acceptable results. And matching the exact color of the prop won't always effectively do waht I want it to do anyways. Using the prop's color does not, for example, account for the effect that distance in the atmosphere has on color, matched to what the distance would be given the scale of the minis. Better to simply find effective colors that communicate loudly to the uninitiated "these are like the Endor guys" with the least amount of brush-time possible. I don't actually care if I own ROTJ guys you see. I just want a demo set basically.

Sorry to hear about your house.

Edit: another 28 minutes of work to put the second coat of yellow on all the bases (squad and AT-RT is now done) and finished the AT-ST, did a little more shading work on the Atgars (they still need more paint on their bases) and started drybrushing a snowspeeder. So I will have to add up all the times and get some kind of a very shaky estimate for the rebel squad. Should have painted them in isolation!

never a issue, glad you know what you what and aiming to achieve it. More power to you and hopefully you reach your goal.

On 3/30/2019 at 3:29 AM, TauntaunScout said:

It is now, I sold the other one. I have another unpainted one somewhere too.

Where do you think Kenner got the ideas for their colors though?

Luke looks lighter in the movie than in Kenner. But not what I'd call a grey.

Empire used a lot of coloured lighting. Much more than the other two films, so the costumes are often a different colour than what people (especially toy manufacturers) believe them to be. There are some more naturally lit shots of the costume which show them to be a very khaki grey.

3 hours ago, srMontresor said:

Empire used a lot of coloured lighting. Much more than the other two films, so the costumes are often a different colour than what people (especially toy manufacturers) believe them to be

True but the colored lighting is part of the movie too. I’m not stressing out about it I just want newbies to grok the units during demo games.

No, I agree. Painting them any colour to match how they looked in any given scene is totally legitimate. If I could pull painting Vader and Luke like they appear in the Carbonite chamber, I absolutely would.

So here's a core set painted up the way the "normal" way. I never liked running demo games with my faux-Hoth rebels I felt like I had to waste time explaining them. So now I have green and brown rebels in the hats and stuff from the forest scenes, and Luke in the costume he's sculpted in, not a vague repaint of something else. As not-Hoth units get released that are too good to pass up, I'll paint them in "normal" colors until this sub-faction hits 800 points.

Not that there's any "normal" way to paint a ROTJ rebel on an AOTC vehicle. Or for that matter a Duros in an ROTJ-esque uniform. That's partly why I'm not trying too hard to get everything just so.