Planning: the Paint Scheme

So my first project will be to paint a large group of Storm Troopers — the old school ones I should say, though I much prefer the Kasrkins much better (they look much close to COG Gears than mine do). That said, this is about testing my paint scheme.

It Had to Start Somewhere

For me, it started with an image. And that image is this one:

I loved the metallic blue armour of run-of-the-mill COG Gears and thought they would be a great theme for the army. But I'd have to dig a bit deeper for more details:

• the fabric under the armour is a black-grey;
• leather straps and (based on other images) ammo pouches are dark brown;
• boots are a dirty metal, with metallic blue accents;
• gloves were also black-grey;
• the helmet had plain metal and black-grey base, with blue accents; and
• lenses and lights are glowing blue

From there, it was off to the trusty Games Workshop website to have a gander at their paint collection. I saved images of the paint spots (which, at best, were approximations of the actual paints) and use Adobe Photoshop to test them against colour samples from the image.

The List (and a small challenge!)

Most of the colours were going to work translate reasonably well:

• Black-grey areas could be Chaos Black, possibly mixed with Codex Grey;
• Leather bits could be Scorched Brown
• Lenses and lights would be Enchanted Blue working up to Ice Blue
• The armour would be ... now that was more difficult

See, I needed a metallic blue. And in theory that could be accomplished in a few ways:

1. paint the armour metal and wash it blue?
2. mix metal with wash and apply?
3. mix metal with paint and apply?

The truth was, I'd have to see each of the options and compare with the picture to really know.

To the Workshop!

So I took a trip down to the local workshop, sat down at the paint station and busted out a few paints. I tried all three options with varying levels of metal, paints and wash and found what I thought was a great, workable mix. And so, my final list of paints that I took home were as follows:

The end result was that a 1:1 mix of Enchanted Blue and Chainmail came out to a blue-grey with a dulled metallic sheen to it, which matched quite well with the COG Gear armour. To deepen it, I plan to use a black wash, and then use a 1:1 Enchanted Blue and Mithril Silver Mix as the highlight. On the shop palettes, these two mixes looked great. I'll see how they look on the models in the next few days.

Overall, I'm very excited to see how these Storm Troopers turn out, despite the fact that I think I have a decent idea of how they'll turn out: awesome!