Somehow, Palpatine returned.
Cringe dialogue from a terrible film aside, I’ve painted my first Star Wars Legion models, starting with the two Biggest Bads. Darth Vader from the original core box, and Emperor Palpatine from, well, the Emperor Palpatine box.
I watched a couple of YouTube videos to get ideas on how to paint Vader, and used a lot of the ideas from Sonic Sledgehammer’s video in order to get him painted reasonably quickly.
Attempting to use different textures and very slight variations on blacks and greys to show the different materials on Vader’s armour and clothing.
As always, the flaws really stand out when the photo is blown up to this size, so the drybrushing looks rough and I can see some mould lines that made it through my extensive cleanup process. These PVC models in the Legion range – particularly the early ones are certainly not my favourites!
Papa Palpatine was a similar kind of paint process. No video required for inspiration, I just googled some images to re-familiarisie myself with the particular pallor of his skin in RotJ and copied the purple-hued grey.
Adding red-rimmed, yellowed and red-pulilled eyes that you can’t really see because of his hoodie. Slightly-differently-toned black that you can’t really tell apart, and a coat of gloss on his walking stick completed the model.
Something that you can see in these photos are the …chunks of paint on the sides of his robe, and a hair in the middle. All of which are basically invisible in hand, but have now been shaved off with a scalpel now that I’ve seen them in these massively blown up photos. As with most of the stuff I’ll be posting for a bit here, these models count towards both Dave Stone’s Paint What You Got Challenge 25-26, and also Anne’s 2026 Miniature Assembly Challenge.
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
Excellent work on both models, appreciate all the work you put in on Vader to differentiate the different materials in black, and feel your pain on Palpatine, doing all that work on the eyes, for it not being able to be seen.
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Thanks Dave. It’s not so bad for Palpatine’s eyes. If I hadn’t painted them I’d know they weren’t painted and it would no doubt bother me no end, so there’s still a use to having done them! 😀
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Very nice.
I’m impressed at how different “black” can look compared to other “black”.
Nice work
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Thanks Frank. If you look at almost any piece of black clothing you’ll notice it’s not actually true black and your t-shirt will look quite different to your jeans and your jacket even though they’re all “black”. Add in texture, reflectiveness and the ambient light and you’lve got a whole spectrum of pretty -similar colours and shades.
…and the exact same for white!
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Haha, I concur, I was going to say that the different textures can be properly noticed, what a cool job!!
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Thanks mate – always gratifying to hear that it worked!
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Nice work. Hard to get an all black model to look good but you’ve managed it.
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Thanks mate. Luckily the hard work was done by Lucasfilm over the decades. Funny how models like these from GW would be consdiered underdetailed and lacking in enough colours, etc but being based on a live-action costume from a well-known film series we all accept it without criticism..
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Very nice! 🙂 All the above comments say it all I think! I like the glow from the lightsabre (I imagine lightsaber is the more-accepted form in the lore)!
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Thanks John! And yeah, Lucas used the American spelling of Sabre (and forgot the curvature) when he named his laser swords for Star Wars. 😉
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Very nice mate – zoomy photos are the worst aren’t they though?? 😂
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Its always nice to see you working on Star Wars stuff, mate! Its a shame where they put those mold lines. Those are not easy to clean up and are going to mess with details potentially as well. With that said, both of these evil Sith look great and so does the laser sword!
I did get a chuckle about the return of Palpatine comment because its spot-on. There are a couple of comic books written in the 90’s where Palpatine has a veritable army of his clones that succeed him and run the Empire no less. Unfortunately, Star Wars just can’t quit Palpatine even when it should!
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Thanks mate. That’s a super common Star Wars problem, both in the old EU, new EU, official animations and stories and even the TV shows and films. Constant re-use of existing characters where they don’t really fit (Chewbacca on Kashyyk and Yoda speaking to him by name) and then “cloned” characters, ie we have 3 Boba Fetts now with Jango and Din, 2x IG-88, etc etc – every video game starship being the Falcon-but-different, etc… sheesh!
Plenty more Vaders to paint in the future with how often he’s included in their boxes, so I can treat this one like a learing experience. 🤪
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That’s very well said! Star Wars is often “repackaged” and we judge it based on how well its done. I reckon you’ve summed up years of content in a paragraph which is no mean feat 🙂
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Baby Yoda approves of this comment!
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Ah yes the old zoom in pix are a pain in the seat of my pants. That said though your paint work is flawless to my eye. I really love the glow of the lightsaber on Vaders body.
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Very nice work, you got all the textures on Vader really nice, I’ll certainly be using this post as a reference when I come to paint mine!
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Brilliant work mate, though I think you forgot to stick the glass into Vaders hand. 😉
cheers Roger
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