Customs Corner

By Schlinge

Dust, Mud and the Ravages of Time

Be it the perils of a raging battle or the atmosphere of a hostile planet. An Imperial Stormtroopers armor is exposed to a variety of forces that leave their marks. In this article I’m going to show you how to customize your Star Wars Miniatures by painting dirt and scratch marks.

The idea of making my Stormtroopers look like experienced veterans has been on my mind for quite a time. When I looked through some still photographs from the movies I found this picture of Sandtroopers on Tatooine and I knew I had to give it a try. The results tuned out better than I had expected. For this article I also covered some other Stormtroopers in layers of dirt.

Scratch Marks
I started off with the scratch marks. They are a good way to make the armor look worn off.
At first I painted some black stains where I wanted the scratch marks to be.

When I paint damaged armor I always try to picture how that particular scratch mark could have happened. It’s very important to keep the “damage” to the more exposed areas of the armor. Obviously the knees and the tips of the boots are the most battered parts of the armor. But I also wanted to simulate that the Stormtrooper got hit by flying debris after a grenade explosion. So I added some more marks to the arms and legs.
Next I used some dark metallic paint and painted it on the areas that have already been given an undercoat of black. I kept a thin black line on the edges.

To finish the mini I added some highlights with a lighter metal color. This is not really necessary but it helps to achieve a more realistic look.

Mire Stains
The Scout Troopers mire stains were mainly inspired by the AT-ST from the Attack on Endor Scenario Pack. It has green and brown stains on it’s feet so I thought the troopers that operate together with it need to have those mud stains as well.
I used thinned down brown paint for the first layer of color. I tried to keep the color transparent on some areas.

Then I took some green color and added some drops of the brown from the first step. I painted the same areas again. This is something that should not be painted too exactly since the mire should have some color variations in it.

At last I used the undiluted green color and worked over all the stains one more time. The Speeder Bike you can see in the picture got the same treatment as the trooper but I also used the Scratch Marks technique I described above.

Mud
The Snowtroopers didn’t give me a choice as to where I should add the mud stains. It was clear that their coats would be the area where they would most likely get dirty.
I used watered down gray paint and just ran the brush randomly over the lower parts of their coats and their boots.

 It took my a number of tries to get the fluidity of the paint right but when I finally got it right it was a very easy to paint a number of troopers in a short time.

Dust
Now on to the dust that started it all. I used the same brown paint that I used for the mire stains but watered it down a lot more. I just painted it all over the mini until all the white areas hat a layer of brown paint on them. Then I used a tissue to wipe off some paint where I thought I overdid it.

Of course these techniques do not only work with Stormtrooper armor. In the last pictures you can see some miniatures that took part in the Clone Wars.

I have used the same techniques I described above to give them a more unique, more worn off appearance.
[Schlinge]