This week’s GeekDad Paints! takes us further down the human miniature rabbit-hole for Imperial Assault. Last week I finished up my Imperial Officers (as requested, check the bottom of this post for some hi-res pics); but I wasn’t thrilled with how the eyes turned out. Looking at the Rebel Troopers, I could see that they had a much more defined eye sculpt, so I picked them as the next minis to the table.
Actually, I’d already planned for them to be next – when I was priming the Imperial Officers, I hunted for another set of figures that I could use with the Uniform Gray primer. I wanted to see how it would look if I didn’t do anything to part of a figure but use the colored primer and the Quickshade. The Rebel’s gray pants offered the perfect spot to experiment.
That doesn’t mean that a ton of extra paint didn’t go into detailing these guys! No, there’s that blue shirt with the oh-so-70s wide collar, the white of the helmets, the brown of the belt, not to mention silver accents for the belt buckle and gunmetal for the blaster! And that’s before we even start in on the faces and hands.
As you can see above, these guys also got hit with a bit of the extra black I had from when I did the Royal Guards’ bases. First step was to go ahead and finish off the boots, vest, and the helmet visor.
Next I grabbed the Wolf Grey (See? Told you I had plans for it) and did the shirts. Then I switched gears and painted the belt and buckle before slopping on some Barbarian Flesh for the hands and face.
Gunmetal accents finished off the blaster and then it was time to bust out the Matt White for the helmet (don’t worry, I’ll shine it up later). Incidentally, I don’t know if it’s just every pot of white paint I’ve bought or if white is a particularly difficult color to formulate; but I haven’t had a white paint yet, from Army Painter or Citadel, that wasn’t just a little bit thicker than everything else. It’s particularly bothersome when you’re trying to get smooth white armor, but end up with all your brushstrokes showing. Thankfully(?) I’ll have lots of opportunity to experiment with thinning out the paint when I do the Stormtroopers.
The nice thing about the thicker white paint was that it was really easy to get a tiny amount on the eyeballs. I used the black > white > color > black pupil method to better effect on the Rebel Troopers. Up close, they look a little zombie-ish; but from tabletop distance, under the helmets, they look much better.
Then it was time for the Quickshade! While I was excited to see how the pants turned out, I knew that the brown of the Quickshade would end up dirtying the helmet too much. Despite trying to get as much off as possible after dipping, I did end up going over the helmet with a couple of thin layers of white to brighten them back up. Other than that, I was very pleased with how the Quickshade worked on these guys!
Post anti-shine varnish, I added a layer of Citadel ‘Ardcoat to give the helmet that glossy armor shine (and to prepare myself for the next set of minis). As promised, here’s a hi-res image I snapped with my DSLR (I usually just grab pictures with my iPhone as I paint).
You can see, up close there are a lot of little imperfections – bits where I slopped the paint, where my brushstrokes come through, where I gave my miniature the eyes of the freshly dead. And if I was competing in a painting competition or displaying them, all of those things would really bother me. But I’m not a professional painter, I’m painting these to play with them. And when I pull back from the table a bit, and look at the minis from the distance I’m going to be playing, all that stuff just blends.
Because while this might be serviceable:
I’d much rather play with this:
More Imps coming up next week, then after that, we start delving into some of the unique figures that make Imperial Assault special.
Thanks to Army Painter and Combatzone Scenery for supplying me with paints and scenery sets for this project.
Loving this series… great work.