Hello Everyone,

I was just wondering if anyone had any experience touching up the paint on vintage star wars figures, I have done a lot of model making and am fairly comfortable with making the paint look good. I was just wondering what paint to use for the detailed parts ie the hands and feet eyes etc etc.

Thanks

Hey welcome to TIG.  

I would just leave the figures as they are. Ok they might have some paint loss, but hey that adds to the vintage charm.
Moreover this way your figures stay authentic vintage figures. Touched up figures are mostly frowned upon in this hobby.

Painting beater figures in totally new paint schemes, is off course something else.
We have a whole thread devoted to custom figures with tips how to paint them.

http://www.imperialgunneryforum.com/t69-vintage-customs-thread

Hope this helps

Cheers
Marco

Hi thanks,

It is more of a case of reusing very badly scuffed up and sometimes badly 'customised' figures i have acquired over the years to make them half useable again.

'restoring' & 'repairing' figures via paint to make them look better ( ie. how they used to look ) is frowned upon even in your own collection. They are yours to do as you please but..... useable for what?

I have several duplicate figures, some have very bad paint work, I have two boys who love star wars and I was going to let them have them to play with.

I agree with the replies stating that repainting figures is not encouraged here, if the figures are repainted so your kids can play with them then I would suggest a little customizing (i.e. use slightly different paint colors or paint areas that are not supposed to be painted) just to set them apart easily from not repainted ones....

Great to see you back Carlos   It's been a few months- hope all is well.

Hi James,

I've missed being around!!! I recently finished a new home project that took me several years to bring to an end and that, along with a ton of work (with a lot of traveling involved) and a small amount of family illnesses (everything OK by now) have kept me pretty tied up... Fortunately things are starting to get back to normal so I decided to check back on the forum and see what's going on.....

Thank you for welcoming me back my friend, how are you by the way?

Cheers!

Carlos

aussiejames wrote:

Great to see you back Carlos    It's been a few months- hope all is well.

So going back to my original question, what paint would I use ?

Hi 'thefax'  to TIG, Marco already posted a Link to a really good figure customizing thread, here on TIG, which will give you some great tips on how to sculpt and paint your own customized figures  

http://www.imperialgunneryforum.com/t69-vintage-customs-thread

Also this guy has some pretty cool customs and 'how to' articles

http://www.erikstormtrooper.com/index.html

Personally i think that the modelling acrylic paints that you can buy in 'games workshop' stores are pretty good.
Hope this helps mate.

chris.75 wrote:

Personally i think that the modelling acrylic paints that you can buy in 'games workshop' stores are pretty good.
Hope this helps mate.

agreed - acrylic paints are the way to go - I use "Testors Model Master" paints myself but I am sure there are other good brands as well  

As it has already been mentioned many times in the thread - Please do not paint the figures to look "original" . Do something custom on them so that there can be no confusion later that they have been painted ... change the color of something , add extra details or anything you can think of that makes them look different enough that it is obvious that they are customs and not original  

You will never match the charm of a 30 year old beater with a new paint job, id leave them as is, so your kids can enjoy and appreciate some 30 year old figures, that have had a special life, if they want some colourful figures buy them a tonne of $1 loose moderns, cheers

I've found very, very fine layers of humbrol enamel worked great on vintage figures, but you have to get it right the first time otherwise it's a los but if done right it will be very hard to chip and you will get good long use out of it. My first customs as a kid were done this way and the paint has held up great, even if some of the first figures are painted poorly. However if you are painting around joints etc definitely go acrylic. I've used citadel countless times for customs and it looks great, however it will rub off if you handle your toys a lot, use a good transparent sealer if you want to get good use out of your paintwork.