I know there is a thread where someone made their X-Wings look the exact same as the Xs from the movies, but has anyone done anything like paint their TIEs all red or something else just as drastic?
I'm asking this because I sort of want to do it but I don't have any experience painting miniatures and I want to see how good it looks before busting out the paint.
I'm going to put a red stripe on my TIEs to indicate they belong to the 181st IFW. I haven't actually gotten my pieces yet, because my order would have stripped the store shelf and as a pseudo-employee I'd rather the customers get theirs first. I will also be painting one X-Wing green in order to reflect Corran Horn/CorSec.
CaptainRook said:
I'm going to put a red stripe on my TIEs to indicate they belong to the 181st IFW. I haven't actually gotten my pieces yet, because my order would have stripped the store shelf and as a pseudo-employee I'd rather the customers get theirs first. I will also be painting one X-Wing green in order to reflect Corran Horn/CorSec.
Something along the lines of that green x-wing is what I'm thinking about doing for for TIEs and Interceptors.
My stuff will get here tomorrow, so I'll probably do that one first so you can see it. It won't take me long, it's a tiny miniature…it's just questionable how well it will turn out and exactly what green I'm going to use.
The only reason I haven't yet is because I don't have the skill to paint something that small and detailed. But soon I'll have another guy from my LGS do it for me. I plan on my X-wings being painted in Rogue, Wraith, CorSec, and either leave one generic or if someone feels really ambitious on my behalf perhaps the Krayt Dragon paint of Gavin Darklighter. Or I could be really weird and whitewash it 'ultraviolet' like Ooryl's. My TIEs will be a random assortment of stripes and nuke panels, mostly in red.
Since I got my hands on them, I have been dying to turn one of my X-wings into a StealthX. I might have to do it now that I've mentioned it on here. Should be pretty easy.
Roy
If I set out to customize my minis, I'd want to change the hull stripe color on the rebel ships like they were in TIE Fighter and X-Wing. Organize them into flights, then paint them accordingly.
I have the same kind of stripes on my TIES as the 181st, but orange. I probably should have used yellow to make it a more distinct difference…
I intend to use various colours on my Rebel fighters. I'm going to try to avoid red squadron markings since I want my ships to be unique. I'm going to keep to rather sparse markings.
I haven't done anything drastic to my minis, and likely won't - I want to keep the "look-n-feel" close to the film canon.
That said, I've started adding triangles of Citadel Blood Red to my TIE fighters, and will find a way to add unit markings to each model so they are all individuals. The red isn't working very well against the black of the TIE's solar panels though, so it'll need at least another coat and probably more :/
Also I've used Citadel Foundation Blue (Mordian Blue?) to replace the red on one of my X-Wings - and made it "Blue 5". Sadly, this particular shade of blue lacks "pop" on the table, so I'm probably going to clean it off and try Citadel Snot Green instead. Oh, and I've used Citadel Iyanden Yellow on several panels of Blue 5 which adds flavour.
I'm considering a complete repaint of an X-Wing fighter as well, just for the fun of it. If I do so, I'll start with a white undercoat and work up from there.
I'd think light blues would pop too drastically over the warm hull color of the X-Wings… got any pictures to share Chris?
Even though I'm not very interested in re-painting the ships for X-Wing (play too many other games where the minis don't come pre-painted, so that's one thing I love about X-Wing), I can definitely tell there's a large amount of interest in that. I wonder if perhaps it might be in FFG's interest at some point (like possibly as a co-release with packs of new pilot cards) to take a page from MageKnight and release each ship either completely unpainted or with just the base hull color and shade wash applied, leaving it up to the buyer to detail it out? If I ever got an itch to paint a specific ship, I'd prefer to go that route than trying to work over an already painted model.
Jim
That would be pretty cool, to make the option available for people to specially order unpainted minis to customize themselves. But then they haven't made the same offer for Wings of War players, have they?
Here's Blue 5 (Luke Skywalker's ship before the limitations of blue-screen FX technology forced them to change Blue Squadron to Red Squadron). The blue in this photo shows up way more vibrant than it does "in the flesh". The blue looks almost black to the naked eye, especially from 3 feet away (standard test for wargames miniatures).
Curses! I can't figure out how to add the photo to this blasted forum. Little help?
just_chris said:
Here's Blue 5 (Luke Skywalker's ship before the limitations of blue-screen FX technology forced them to change Blue Squadron to Red Squadron). The blue in this photo shows up way more vibrant than it does "in the flesh". The blue looks almost black to the naked eye, especially from 3 feet away (standard test for wargames miniatures).
Curses! I can't figure out how to add the photo to this blasted forum. Little help?
Upload it to imgur first and then use this button.
Sigh. Take 2. (I'm too old for this sh*t, when I was a boy, we had BBSs and we didn't complain! *shakes cane*)
Here's Blue 5 (Luke Skywalker's ship before the limitations of blue-screen FX technology forced them to change Blue Squadron to Red Squadron). The blue in this photo shows up way more vibrant than it does "in the flesh". The blue looks almost black to the naked eye, especially from 3 feet away (standard test for wargames miniatures).
EDIT PS: Thanks Jak!
Yeah… I was going to say that looks great from the photos.
I've actually picked up some orange paint and re-colored one of my recently purchased X-Wings. Maybe I should have picked a more striking color- orange is close to red- but I wondered about changing the paint schemes a little more dramatically than the "t-65 standard" scheme to make it a little more distinct *shrug*
looks awesome
just_chris said:
I haven't done anything drastic to my minis, and likely won't - I want to keep the "look-n-feel" close to the film canon.
That said, I've started adding triangles of Citadel Blood Red to my TIE fighters, and will find a way to add unit markings to each model so they are all individuals. The red isn't working very well against the black of the TIE's solar panels though, so it'll need at least another coat and probably more :/
Also I've used Citadel Foundation Blue (Mordian Blue?) to replace the red on one of my X-Wings - and made it "Blue 5". Sadly, this particular shade of blue lacks "pop" on the table, so I'm probably going to clean it off and try Citadel Snot Green instead. Oh, and I've used Citadel Iyanden Yellow on several panels of Blue 5 which adds flavour.
I'm considering a complete repaint of an X-Wing fighter as well, just for the fun of it. If I do so, I'll start with a white undercoat and work up from there.
Painting a bright color over black is tough. Here's a couple of techniques I've used in the past to varying degrees of success-
Probably the easiest of the suggestions I'm going to make is this- paint a layer or two of silver metallic (probably the lightest silver you can get your hands on) on top of the black you eventually want to turn out red. After that dries, wash it with an ink or wash in the color you want. If that's still not quite there, try layering on a third coat of a regular paint color. A light grey can work in this application as well. I painted up some Terminators a couple of years ago that I wanted to have a quartered black and white armor pattern. I decided to prime them grey rather than black or white. Worked famously and I found I had to do several fewer layers of bright accent colors for pad trim, jewels, lights, and those other doo dads that are usually bright points of color because I was only working up from grey.
Secondly, you mention Foundation paints- try a base layer of whatever they're calling Merchite Red these days, then layer on a brighter (i.e. your Blood Red) over the foundation layer. I don't know the paint color names since they switched them this last go around, but whatever the red foundation is. If the idea of doing two coats on such a small surface is daunting, mix in a little bright red with the Foundation.
Third, and this is what I do on my red accented Necrons, so it may not exactly be the look you're going for- do the silver coat as above, but instead of hitting it with a red wash, try a coat of Tamiya translucent red over it. On my Necrons, it yields a different sort of look than paints, inks, or washes. long story short, it almost kind of looks anodized.
Anyway- just some food for thought. Good luck!
While I have made no drastic changes I followed a link here and painted wedge's fighter . then mad a generic x wing . Changed the yellow to green on my Y wing .
My 'interpretation' of Corran Horn's Corellian Security Forces T-65 X-Wing. This is just prior to the last step, so it still needs a little cleaning up, and the photo from my iPhone doesn't really show how rich the green really is. Some interpretations imply the green isn't painted over the entire ship, and only the striping, but I decided, given the size of the mini, that would not be noticeable enough. The White Stripes were added to provide some of those markings and help the green stand out. Now I'd just like to make a stat card for Corran and Whistler.
Better image, and more complete than previous.
I'm not navigating this 'share image' thing very well.
I just got into this Star Wars game.. I am a long time player of the Wings of War (Now Wings of Glory) and I am a re-painter.. lol.. I will have a few iconic X-wings and Y-wings.. and a squadron of TIEs.. just for fun..
Nice work Capt Rock - much better than a completely green version.
There is another version someone else did at full scale that is a bit more 'white' than green that also looks good - and might help you as a ref.
:
Yeah, I just felt like the green needed to stand out more on such a small miniature.
CaptainRook said:
Yeah, I just felt like the green needed to stand out more on such a small miniature.
It certainly works - and, the addition of the white bits really make it look good, far better than the one in the comic.
And I know what you mean with wanting the color to stand out, I was having a similar problem with my Blue 2 X-Wing and wound up adding the blue rims around the engines and the grey nose stripe to give it a little more pop.
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Oddly, the interior Left sfoil did not get bathed in their ink wash. I tried the GW Badab Black, but it didn't quite have the same darkness to it. I may just use a little extra black ink in the wash and try again.
Superb job on your "Blue 2" JustinKase, very nice indeed.
