Heroes of the Empire
Welcome returning and new readers! Today we will be looking at some of the heroes (villians?) of the Empire: General Veers, Director Krennic, and an Imperial Officer. I know that many people will be shocked to see the Empire’s powerful force users left off this list. That was intentional, as I fully intend to see that they get the full attention they deserve, but that will be in their own update sometime in the future. As it is, these three characters will be quiet enough for this one update. I painted all of them in parallel, but each has their own color scheme as I wanted all of them to readily identifiable on the battlefield. Krennic keeps his distinctive white, Veers is in his military grey and green, and the Officer in stoic black.
As with the line infantry, I cleaned and assembled the models before priming. With these heroes I spent a little more time filling in their gaps. Krennic needed no work while Veers and the Officer needed just a few minutes to clean up their shoulder joints. I primed them grey like the Stormtroopers, but once they had dried I hand painted their exposed faces with black primer. The black primer will help the flesh tones stand out from the colors of each character’s uniform.
All three characters received the same dark grey base coat as the Stormtroopers. I used this as an opportunity to tidy up the areas I primed black and to make sure that I had complete coverage. This step is more important on the characters, who will be subject to much more individual attention than all but the most (un)lucky Stormtrooper. Then I put flesh tone on the areas I had primed back and painted parts of their kit (belts, boots, holsters, etc) brown. Krennic, who is going to be all white, then I painted the tunic of the Officer black and Veers put on his green shirt. This got all my base colors established before moving on.
In the next step, all of our heroes got a light grey highlight on their pants, while Krennic’s entire uniform got the same treatment. I also went in to paint gun metal metal on the belts, weapons and rank pips, and started filling in details on various bibs and bobs. The Officer got a dark grey highlight on her tunic, while Veer’s green shirt was highlighted with German military grey. Veer’s goggles also got some attention. I started these with dark blue and highlighted with two progressively lighter shades of blue before adding a final white highlight. This was done at various stages of painting (I summarized here for clarity).
Next, each character had their main colors taken up with a brighter layer; Krennic got his white base coat, and Veers a lighter green. The Officer, whose tunic was already black, skipped this step. Each character also had their flesh touched up and gold detail was filled in. I also painted their eyes black, and then went back with flesh to neaten it up. The last part of this step was applying the technical paint to each model’s base.
Again, it is important to give technical paints time to fully dry, which can be longer than normal paints. When the technical paint was dry, I did a few touch ups and finished their eyes before moving on to washes. To finish the eyes, I put a line of white on the eyeball, and then put a dot in the middle of the pupil. The base black should still show around the edges of the eye. Areas of clothing, weapons, and equipment were washed black, flesh got a dark flesh tone wash, and finally the lower legs and feet (and the bottom of Krennic’s cape) got a brown wash. I didn’t wash any of these figures heavily, and was lighter with the brown weathering wash, as heroes tend to have better access to shower/laundry facilities.
The final steps were applied to each character individually, given their different looks, but some things were done together first: the final highlight on their rank pips and weapons, the flesh highlights, and weathering. Then I worked in the final base color for their uniforms and added any highlights. I neatened up details, like hair, eyebrows, and various other details, as well as making sure that the weathering wasn’t overpowering. The area where this required the most attention was Krennic’s cape. I worked two light shades to blend the weathering color into the white so that the colors weren’t so jarring.
Highlights for each character were as follows: Krennic got the white treatment. A thin layer was used to bring up the brightness in some areas while the washed out white was left in some areas to provide depth and help make the model feel more real. Veers’ armor was edged with off-white bone and light grey was used to make his armor contrast with the green of his shirt. The officer’s hat and tunic were highlighted with both dark and light grey, and then areas with a light grey highlight were touched with the same off-white color as Veers’ armor.
I am fairly satisfied with the results on all three models. I painted them in a group the way I described here in essentially two three-hour sessions, with a thirty minute session to apply the washes in the middle. Krennic came out quite well, in my estimation, but I also feel that he has the strongest sculpt. I hope that y’all have found this interesting or helpful. I am looking forward to next week, when I tackle Death Troopers. Hope to see you then.
Also the first tract of reinforcements have arrived.
-Ben