SPA Modeler

Having some guilt from not doing anything with the Millennium Falcon, I wanted to contribute SOMETHING to this little Group Build. I found this kit and thought it'd make an interesting desk ornament for my daughter at college. Hopefully, it'll be a quick but interesting little build...



Unlike the static aircraft models that I normally build, this should end up as a fully-poseable action figure of a Star Wars Stormtrooper. I don't have much experience with these types of kits but the quality and engineering of the Bandai Star Wars series of kits is universally lauded.

The kit is comprised of four sprues. Given the monochromatic color scheme of the typical Stormtrooper, it's no surprise that these sprues are black and white. The white sprue is a VERY shiny plastic that mimics the glossy white exterior of the Stormtrooper armor to good effect. However, I am of the opinion that painted plastic always looks better than unpainted plastic so I am planning on painting the white parts white and the black parts black.


This black sprue contains the black components that are visible including the hands and weaponry.


The last two sprues are also black. One holds all of the interior joint pieces that provide the poseability. The other has a square black base.


Both water-slide decals and adhesive-backed stickers are provided.


I've decided to start with the head. This is designed to be snap-together kit so I will have to do a little bit of pre-planning if I want to paint the components. Since the head is comprised of both black and white parts, I thought it'd be a good testbed for the paint process. The head components are laid out prior to painting. The back of the head (in the middle of the pic) is comprised of two halves, so I thought I'd glue those together first and fill the seam before I paint.


Interestingly, the eye inserts are not black but a dark transparent green.


While I let the putty on the head dry, I jumped over to have a looksee at the guns. Three guns are provided and they are very well represented. I think all Star Wars side arms are black but I might take some liberty and paint these up a little bit.


After cleaning up the mold seams, I drilled out the ends of what look like optical scopes. I'll add a drop of white glue to mimic glass lenses.

Welcome back, John! Glad to see you here! Thank you for bringing another great little kit to the SWGB!! Subscribed gratefully and gladly.

Imperial Stormtrooper eyes are green in the Original Trilogy. Interesting facts here:

http://www.starwarshelmets.com/original ... risons.htm



Kit looks great!

TK-421 why aren't you at your post? TK-421 do you copy?




This should be good! I wonder if Hobby Lobby has these among the Bandai Star Wars kits they carry...

Don't spend too much time on those gun sights...they can't hit anything anyways

You guys are a scream! I love it!

Mike, I saw a graphic once where they superimposed the Stormtrooper helmet over a person's head. The eyes of the helmet fell well below the eyes of the person. That's why they can't hit anything!

New projects are always fun to start with. Finishing can be tough, especially with some kits but I'm thinking this one will be fairly easy and quick.

Having selected the head and the guns as my starting point, i primed the parts using Mr Surfacer 1000 thinned with Tamiya Lacquer Thinner. The detail, on the guns especially, is excellent!



Not having decided whether or not to do a weathered trooper or a shiny one, I did some minor preshading on the helmet pieces.


The guns are given a base coat of gloss black and then an overall Alclad Steel finish.


The preshading on the helmet got obliterated when I needed to sand/polish the helmet pieces after the initial white coat. I tried to do a pastel wash after the gloss coat/decal stage but I had a hard time making it stick to the glossy finish so I ended up wiping it off completely. Portions of the guns were painted in gloss black, which is hard to discern in the photos. I'll try and get a better photo of them after I'm finished with them.


Here are the head pieces ready for assembly. Why go through the trouble of painting when the exterior pieces come beautifully molded in glossy white plastic? I'm looking to get rid of the slight translucency of molded plastic. It's a subtle touch but hopefully worth the effort.


Assembly order is superbly engineered. The black insert for the chin filters eliminates the need for tricky painting. I've picked out the filter grating with dry-brushed silver.



The dark green visor is snapped into place.


On goes the top of the helmet. In the bottom of the second pic, you can see some minute dust particles that got caught in the clear coat. They were removed by polishing the area with fine Micromesh.



The head is complete! I now have a better idea of what parts to paint and how to paint them. I can think about doing this kit in bigger sub-assemblies if I can keep track of the parts. I guess I'm going with Shiny Trooper for now.



Scale reference to show how big (or small) the Stormtrooper is.

Nothin' wrong with shiny trooper armor, John, not when it is in your capable hands. I like to see where you take the E-11 Blaster in terms of paint/texture. As it stands, there is a beautiful finish to it, but I was watching a lot of grey/silver/chrome marker dry-brushing in a P-47D video earlier, so I was wondering if your intention was to add flavor to its metal surface or not. Right now, the E-11 looks very Master Replicas to me, which is super shiny and fits in with the approach you are taking...

Thanks for the Blaster pictures! Without intending to, I think I've replicated the look of those pictures. Again, it's hard to see in these pictures but the main body of the guns is finished in Alclad Steel while the grips and frame were brush-painted in black. The guns were given a satin clear coat to unify the finish. Note that the Stormtrooper hand is painted in a matte black.



I know it's not canon but I was thinking of adding some wood grain to the rear stock of the big gun.