Rebel Scum!

And proud of it!

Some figures almost paint themselves. Others are a real trial of patience. These guys fall into the latter category. Truth be told, they were a real b✽✽✽✽r to paint, but they turned out right in the end.

These are the Rebel Troopers from FFG's Star Wars: Legion core set. They've been sitting on my painting desk in various stages of completion for months now. They are nice figures and I was looking forward to painting them, but first I had to make some decisions about the kind of scenery I intend to use and some appropriate colour schemes. I know there are people who happily mix Snowtroopers with Shoretroopers, or forest-camo clad Rebel Commandos with Tauntauns - but I am not one of them.

Early on I decided that my Star Wars: Legion forces would be operating in arid to semi-arid environments. At a stretch they would also have to look okay in more tropical or temperate settings, but they would not be seen (dead or alive) on Hoth.

With that in mind I decided to go with lots of pale sandy and earthy tones suitable for arid settings, with some green shades and a three-tone camo pattern to fit in better with more vegetation-rich scenery. It was a bit of a compromise, intended to get the most utility out of the figures, but I was happy with it.

I had expected the camo pattern to be the most difficult part of the painting process. Certainly it was time-consuming but it went fairly smoothly. Perversely,  some of the 'simpler' areas turned out to be the most difficult and frustrating. This was mainly because I struggled to achieve the blend of colours and tones that I wanted. As soon as I got one part right, it made another look 'off'. In my head I knew exactly the look I was after, but achieving it meant a seemingly endless round of trial and error that I had not anticipated. There were moments when I came close to chucking it in, or stripping everything back to the bare plastic. 

The whole process took so long that by the time I finally finished them I was really fed-up with the project and they were quickly packed away out of sight. There they stayed while I moved on to other things. Several weeks later I remembered them, dug them out and with the benefit of fresh eyes,  I looked at them again and thought "hang on - they look rather good!" 

Here they are, so you can judge for yourselves.

Motorcycle Emptiness

This little beastie is a companion piece to the MDF shed model in my previous post. It came in the same kit, but I had set it aside for another day.

It is a very basic kit; just a bare motorbike silhouette with a few extra bits added to give some detail.

It only took a few minutes to glue the handful of components together, but it still looked quite 2-dimensional and I wasn't very satisfied with it.

I could have let it be, but being me I couldn't resist tinkering with it to add some more detail. This is probably one of the reasons why my projects take so long, but I know that if I had just left it 'as is' it would have bugged me.

It would have been easy to go completely to town on detail, but I restricted this to the barest areas around the wheels and frame. These were built up with thin strips of plasticard.  The frame and forks should really have a round profile. In reality they would have been tubular, but I decided this was just too much effort when every other part of the model was 'square'. My only concession to this was to file some of the sharp edges off the MDF components, the exhaust pipe being the most obvious area. 

Detailing begins. The basic kit with additional rear mudguard added.

More detailing. Forks, frame, mudguards and supports added.

The exhaust pipe filed to a rounder profile.

As I'm no expert when it comes to vintage motorcycles I scouted around for some useful reference photos as a painting guide. The model is probably quite generic anyway, but a search of the internet produced a few useful examples of which the BSA M21 seemed to be the closest match - so I based my colour choices on an example of that.

Painting the model was quite straightforward. The whole thing received a base coat of matt black and then the various details were picked out in appropriate colours. As if to prove that I make things up as I go along, half way through painting I decided that the fuel tank looked wrong without a filler cap. This was remedied with a thin sliver of round plastic, glued on top of the tank. It's a small but important detail - at least I think so. 

The finishing touch was to add the registration number to the front plate. A hunt through the bits box unearthed some micro-scale decals that were just the right size. Each of the letters and numbers were added individually. This was by far the fiddliest bit of the build but I think it sets off the whole thing a treat.

I did have a look through my collection for a suitable rider, but have no appropriate figures for an early to mid-20th century motorcyclist. However, I did find an old Citadel fantasy 'Arabian' horseman who was begging for a chance to swap his steed for something with a bit more horsepower. Please excuse my silliness. I just couldn't resist :-)  

"Nice bike, but I still prefer my chopper"

Until next time...