+ Star Wars: Shatterpoint +
+ This blog is nearly all 40k-themed, but we do occasionally do something a bit different – and what better than something from a long time ago and from a galaxy far, far away? +
+ Shatterpoint is a game that looks like a cross between a skirmish-style wargame and a boardgame. It focuses on small groups of eight models or so a side; each of which is ~40mm tall, with fairly realistic proportions. There's some stylisation, which is there to blur the line between characters that appear in live action and characters that appear only in the cartoons. Otherwise, the proportions are fairly true to life, with only minimal exaggeration. +
+ The figures come unassembled, on sprues familiar to most wargamers. For anyone who has built models before, these are a breeze – the parts for each model are labelled with a letter and sequential numbers (e.g. B01, B02 etc.), so you can simply work through in a build-by-numbers approach. Parts are structured on the sprue in a sensible way, so if you clip, clean and assemble parts as you go, you won't have any trouble. +
+ This kit is 'Fear and Dead Men in Las Vegas', and consists of Darth Vader, a Stormtrooper Sergeant and two Stormtroopers. Most of the models in the game are named individuals or at least members of a specific group, but not these chaps! I was a little surprised to see everything on the same sprue – rather than having, say, the Stormtroopers separate from Vader – but in the context of the game, this approach makes sense. +
+ I got the models built over the course of an evening, and – since ol' Darth's lightsabre looks a little fragile, I have stored them safely in a display cloche for the moment. +
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+ Painting the Stormtrooper Sergeant +
+ I haven't sat down and painted a model from start to finish in what seems like months. What little hobby time I've found has been taken up with batch painting and dreary repetition, so I wanted to sit down, take my time, and enjoy the process of painting. +
+ I decided to start with the Stormtrooper sergeant for a number of reasons. Mostly, it's because I think Stormtroopers are amongst the most iconic visuals of Star Wars, and I've always though they looked awesome. Secondly, as a painting exercise, they're an ideal chance to explore painting high-contrast black and white. +
+ Painting black and white are famously challenging and intimidating – so I decided not to bother, and instead take it easy by painting grey instead! +
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+ Facetiousness aside, the point I'm making is that white and black aren't inherently any more difficult to paint than any other colour – just as you wouldn't limit yourself to the brightest tint and deepest shade of red for a red model, so we need to take in the whole gamut of greys between black and white for a model like this. +
+ To illustrate the point, (and because it would be good reference) I put together this paint swatch picture using Photoshop's colour picker tool and a picture swiped from the noosphere. +
+ This is the third reason that I wanted to paint the Stormtrooper sergeant first. He's almost completely neutral. There are slight pink and blue hints in the swatches above, but by and large the mixes are all combinations of pure white and pure black. This makes mixing a bit more approachable – unlike working with spectrum colours, I haven't got to worry much about hues muddying each other; and so could concentrate completely on tone. +
+ Importantly, the model pretty much matches the pose of the reference. I wanted to enjoy this process, so having a reference that matched the model would make things more approachable. +
+ I'm afraid to say that I don't have any work-in-progress shots; I just wanted to go with the flow and enjoy myself. Here are the colours I used: +
+ I worked over a GW Grey Seer spray base – no zenithal highlights, no fiddly bits, just a plain flat base. Sometimes I find going back to safe ground is useful, and particularly so when I'm experimenting with other aspects of the painting – in this case trying a high contrast model like this. +
+ The model still needs a bit of spit and polish – most obviously the base. I'm also going to repaint the shoulder pad in a colour. White is apparently correct for Stormtrooper sergeants, Omicron suggested that the Star Wars canon plays a bit fast and loose with this – and a spot of colour is a nice opportunity for a glaze. Think I might go with orange, which is a nice colour, and fairly 'safe' in background terms, being used by Stormtroopers of Commander rank, as well as Sandtroopers and Stormtroopers on Admiral Thrawn's 7th fleet. +
+ The back of the model shows where the purple is used for shadows, but I haven't made much of the opportunity to show how white reflects colours – an experiment for another time, now I have this experience under my belt! +
+ Since he is pretty much pure neutral, I'm tempted to paint the bases for this squad as though they're on the deck of a ship. I might have a play with gloss varnish to see if I can get a reflective deckplate feel. +
+ A shot under artifical lights (the others in daylight). +
+ Not perfect, but a great result from this experiment, I think. I shall look forward to the other two Stormtroopers, and then tackle Lord Vader. +
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