Star Wars painting finished!

It’s taken me three years to finally have all of my Star Wars boxed figure sets painted. (3 boxes of 10) I started with Stormtroopers back in June 2017. Of course, I’ve owned these figures for just over thirty years! This weekend I decided to just get the last few finished, regardless of anything else happening. They have been on my desk/painting tray for way too long.

From the 1988/89 25mm figure sets released by West End Games (sculpted and cast by Grenadier) here are:

SW25 Zardra (Bounty Hunter from ‘Tatooine Manhunt’ adventure)

SW28 Boushh (Leia in disguise from ‘Return of the Jedi’)

SW29 Rebel Merc

SW80 Kid

and…. I have absolutely no idea who the male with a blaster is. He’s not actually meant to be in any of my boxed sets! His base says Ral Parth 1988. He fits in perfectly with all my Star Wars figures and I hadn’t realised until today he wasn’t one. I guess someone gave him to me at some point. My best guess is shadowrun. If anyone has an idea, I’d like to know!

EDIT: A friend helped find him! #20-963 Battletech, Dropship Crewman – Marik.

Most of these sat around because I didn’t have an idea of how to paint them. Boushh was easy and finished back in July, but I couldn’t come up with a colour scheme for the others. In the end I went with simple stuff and haven’t fussed about detail. They aren’t aliens, and if they are used in any of my games it’s likely to be as NPCs standing around in the background. So, no fuss, no highlighting, no eye detail, done. I did enjoy doing the female rebel merc, once I decided to paint her in camouflage. Hers is the only figure I spent a lot of time on.

This leaves seven figures on my tray, but I expect to double that once something arrives in the mail this week. This will also mean the tray is full of stuff I want to paint.

April Challenge Painting

I started the month with good intentions, but the last few weeks (and sudden cold and wet weather) have found me preparing stuff for Shadowrun and not painting. As well as finishing off a nearly done figure, I got four more (that were only undercoated) completed, and started a sixth.

This is only five figures done out of the ten I hoped to complete for Ann’s April painting challenge, but it is more painting than I’ve achieved any other month this year!

From left to right:

Reaper 03893 “Mal” Catfolk Warrior, SW76 Mon Calamari, SW26 Bossk (trandoshan bounty hunter), SW77 Engineer, & SW27 Weequay

The Reaper figure was a recent purchase (by comparison) to be used in my d20 Gamma World game as one of the player characters. The four Star Wars figures are by West End Games/Grenadier 1988/89 from boxed sets I bought way back then. I chose colours for the Mon Cal based on typical images available online for the race, and while I checked images of Bossk himself, I decided to go with something different for his scaly skin and jumpsuit. The others were whatever appealed to me when I sat down. The “frill” around the engineers neck is a light metallic silver-blue and his face is more even in RL. My camera has lightened/darkened the front/side in the image inaccurately.

I put a lot of work into the catfolk mini – lots of dry-brushing fur to bring out the texture and detail that the figure has. The others I wasn’t as concerned with, and I’m happy with the way they look.

April Challenge: “Paint the crap you already own!”

While I have made a considerable effort over the last few years to paint the figures I own, there’s always more unpainted. I’ve done more writing over the last 12 months than painting. With my gaming on hold (due to Covid-19), and some more free time at home I decided to get painting again as well as write. I’m not working from home (not possible with my position), but by the end of the month my work may close down regardless. It’s nice being a bit lazier than usual and catching up on some computer games, but I can paint as well as do all the other things.

 

 

Ann (Ann’s Immaterium) has just announced an April painting challenge that’s perfect for this. I have 9 Star Wars figures (West End Games/Grenadier 1988/89) that have been on my desk since some time in 2017. (That’s when I painted the storm troopers – it’s really been too long.)

Last week I started to look at these again – and dusted them off. The cat man in the picture hasn’t been on the desk for years (only months, I think), and he just qualifies. I did a lot of painting on him over the last week and he’s almost but not quite finished.

There is absolutely no reason I can’t finish painting ten miniatures in one month. Let’s see how I go!

Painting – Snake men and Star Wars

The most impressive in this round of painting are my Reaper (Dark Heaven “Legends”) #02498 Snakemen.

These are great figures. They were easy to paint and they will be great as “Hissers” for Gamma World, and Ophidians or Yuan-ti for D&D. They do tower above the Star Wars figures, both being about 45mm high. This leads me to my recent dissatisfaction with Reaper. I’ve had problems with painting Bones figures, but my concern here is size/scale.

I ordered a number of Reaper figures following Christmas with some specific plans for each figure – most of those I received are much larger than I expected. I’ll use them, but I might have looked at something else if I’d know their true size. I wish Reaper didn’t just class whole groups of figures into broad categories, and actually gave a height of each figure on their website. Dark heavens figures are “25mm Heroic Scale Fantasy Miniatures”. I expected the snake men to be around 30 to 35mm high, not one-and-a-half times as large. My catfolk warrior (not painted yet) is also Dark Heavens and he’s a full 35mm high. (At least a 7′ tall cat-man isn’t out of place in Gamma World.) How are any of these 25mm “heroic”?

My four Star Wars figures are Ral Partha (in conjunction with Lucasfilm & West End Games, 1988-89). These are all 25mm figures and definitely NOT heroic. They look a bit small against my other miniatures, but most of them I’ve been gluing onto a 25mm round base which makes them look a little taller. These are part of some boxed sets I bought long ago and really hope to finish painting this year.

SW23 “Shrike”, a Gand. While this figure came out to be used with the WEG’s adventure “Tatooine Manhunt” (which I have), the figure is based on “Zuckuss, from The Empire Strikes Back.

SW73 “Female Minor Jedi”, SW75 “Ewok” and SW78 “Male Minor Jedi”. The male Jedi is a little dissapointing – he has a seam across his face that I didn’t notice until I inked them. It actually puts his eyes at slightly different levels. I wasn’t going to try and clean up the face and repaint, so it can be treated like a scar. He’s not painted in traditional Jedi colours either, since if he gets used for anything it probably won’t be as a Jedi.

I’ve built up a collection of Star Wars pre-painted minis – aliens and humans holding laser guns work great for Gamma World humans & mutants. These will fit right in, and now I only have eight of the figures left to paint.

 

Star Wars – More figures!

I had a great break from work for about two months. I’d hoped to get a lot of painting done, but, of course, lots of other things happened and not as much painting as I wanted to get through. (Now I’m back working again! The weather is improving, so I’m hoping I can keep painting something regularly.)

 

Front view

Here’s four Star Wars figures that I think were finished in August sometime, but I only got them photographed yesterday. From left to right:

“Rebel Characters” – Alien Student of the Force (SW72), Old Senatorial (SW71) and “Bounty Hunters” – Rebel Scout (SW30), Boba Fett (SW21) .

Before I managed to make a tree for one of the players in Gamma World, we’d been using the Alien Student as our sentient mobile tree. I had this in mind when I came to painting and liked the idea of the alien being a plant creature. It got a solid dark purple base coat, and then I worked up the greens over the top. The ‘old man’ got bright colours to make him a little more interesting, mostly red-yellow. The ‘rebel scout’ was given a simple military look – I wasn’t aiming for any actual ‘rebel’ theme. Boba Fett got colours to match the images I’d turned up, as much as possible and some more distinct basing.

 

Rear view

 

I’m pleased with how they have worked out. They can certainly be used in any further Gamma World gaming, but there is always the potential of actually playing Star Wars again in future, or using figures without obvious technology in D&D or Pathfinder. I still have 14 more figures waiting to be painted, but they can wait untill I get through more of my Zombicide survivors!

Painting for Gamma World

I finished the last of this group last weekend, but only got around to photographing them today. We had been using most of these figures for some time, but unpainted.

 

So here’s the group from left to right:

Red Desert (Green Folk, Cacti), Hack (Pure Strain Human), Ambo (Altered Human), Bitcoin (Live Metal), Ironbark (Green Folk, Tree) and Where (New Animal, Feline).

I didn’t paint the humanoid feline – that’s actually a D&D pre-painted mini that I specifically bought for the campaign. I may have to rework it, since the game character is male but the figure turned out to be female. There is a second D&D catfolk figure that I thought was female – I’ve seen more images now, that make me think that one is actually male, but rather effeminate looking.

Three of these figures are from my West End Games Star Wars figures – two from the Bounty Hunters set, and one from the Rebel Characters set. The two bounty hunters appeared in “The Empire Strikes Back”.

 

 

Dengar, Female Gambler and IG-88: I didn’t want to copy the colours from the movie for my Dengar/Hack. That has a pale grey/white under-suit and dark rusty brown armour. My armour is more a dark grey/gunmetal, with silver edges and the occasional brownish patch. IG-88 in the movie looks shiny silver and/or dark brown rust, depending on the shot/image. I started with a dark grey, then gunmetal. Touches of silver, antique copper and antique gold add some variety. The Bitcoin character is an android – he looks human at first glance, but has glowing red eyes. Using a distinct robot figure makes the figure stand out on the table and helps remind me that he’s ‘live metal”. At some point I may find another human-looking figure and paint him up “correctly”, maybe with silver showing under wounds or something. The ‘Rebel Characters’ set aren’t based on specific movie characters so I just went with colours I felt comfortable with.

 

 

The two plants in the group were mostly scratch built. I got some plastic trees in a $2 tube of plastic dinosaurs! Most of one of these was trimmed slightly, glued into a base and given a full repaint over the former green plastic. I’ve been doing garage roof repairs recently and kept a bunch of thin silicon “bits” with this in mind. The tree roots are glued silicon (trimmed where necessary) and with moulding paste to fill the gaps and blend the edges together before painting. A bit more glue and some sand helped texture the bases.

 

 

“Ironbark” was my first plant; I then went on to making a cactus. My first attempt at this looks like a mutant Christmas tree (no picture) and the second is the one on the right. Paddle pop sticks cut to make a cross-shaped stalk and then foam-core board carved to shape and glued on top. Plastic tree “leaves” made great spines once stuck into pin holes. My wife (who plays Red Desert) said she’d been thinking of a mexican-style cactus, so after collecting some more cacti images (Saguaro cacti) I collected small sticks/branches from the garden and produced the figure on the left. I was hesitant to break the “arm” branches and glue them to the more upright shape that the Saguaro actually has. I may try that with another branch and see if I can get it to the right shape without making it too fragile and do yet another cactus. I’d like to do a more realistic tree and a bush too, but I’ll need to go model shopping – I could do with some flock for leaves. I’ve got wire, so some green-stuff wouldn’t hurt for this type of work either!

 

Star Wars – Painting Stormtroopers

Star Wars 40307 “Stormtroopers” (Lucasfilm, West End Games)

10 Stormtroopers SW61 – SW70.

 

When my Gamma World game got going this year, I dug out my Star Wars minatures thinking that they would be of more use than most of my fantasy figures, since most of these figures held guns! The Stormtrooper set has been particularly useful, since we’ve been playing GW1 “The Legion of Gold”. They have been perfect to represent the many golden-armored warriors that are fought in groups of generally five or more.

They were unpainted in the first session I used them, then got a spray white undercoat soon after. I’ve spent the last week finishing the set as well as the main Rebels/Bounty Hunter figures that I’d picked out to represent the player characters. (The PC’s should be my next post.)

A squad of ready Stormtroopers!

The best part about this ten piece set of one-piece metal figures is that each one is unique. While a couple have similar poses, this variety isn’t common now unless you buy a large set of multi-part figures.

Nearly all the Star Wars figures I purchased at this time (3 sets back about 1989) have been well produced figures, nicely posed, well detailed, not much flash to clean up, and few mold lines. I’m quite sure they came in a neat cardboard box at the time. I’ve still got the insert sheet with names, images and film/RPG detail that came with each set.

I decided to try something different with my last lot of painting: These got an extra spray of white undercoat, then a very good coat of black ink. It really picked out the detail and while looking more grey than the typical bright white, they looked good. I put them all onto 25mm round bases, and started going over each one with more white paint. Black for the “body-glove” and on helmets, black and gun metal on weapons. I’d painted the bases with a mid/dark grey then realized I needed more contrast, so went over them with a blotchy coat of black, then gun-metal. It can vary slightly with lighting, but the bases now appear to be black with a shiny silvery sheen.

These troopers don’t look like they just walked out of the clone factory! I could have gone back over them with another coat of white paint, but I like current appearance. They aren’t bright and shiny – they look like they actually been out and wearing the armor for some time.