Painting Boba Fett – Star Wars Legion

After building the model and adding some scenic rocks to the base, I primed him using a Kahki spray can from Halfords. 

This is currently my favourite paint for priming models and I use it for practically everything!

The first colour I used was Vallejo Light Grey for his boiler suit. I wanted to get some black into the visor but I decided to paint the surrounding area GW Mechrite Red first, to give me something to aim for! You can also see that I’ve painted the rocks and belt with Vallejo German Camo Pale Brown. 

Next I painted the helmet lense, sensor scope and E-11 blaster rifle GW Abaddon Black. The wooden rifle stock, Wookiee pelts and ammo belt were painted Vallejo Flat Brown. 

I tidied up around the visor with Mechrite Red again and painted the vambraces to match. The knee and shoulder pads were painted in GW Averland Sunset. I used Vallejo Green Grey for the boots with German Fieldgrey for the darker central stripe and panels on the sides. 

Onto the backpack. I don’t generally mix colours while painting an army as it can be hard to reproduce mixes consistently. 

However Boba is quite a unique character and I knew I wouldn’t have to replicate his look on other miniatures. I opted for a GW Macragge Blue and Vallejo Field Blue mix in order to get the tone I wanted.

The Red and Yellow are Mechrite Red and Averland Sunset again, to match the rest of the armour.

Onto the Green armour plates. These were given a coat of Vallejo Luftwaffe Camo Green. It’s also worth noting that between the red visor area and green cheek sections is a darker green triangle. This was painted with Vallejo German Camo Dark Green, as was the vent at the back of the helmet. 

Next I dry brushed GW Lead Belcher over the black sections of the E-11 before painting Lead Belcher onto the stem of the sensor scope, the rocket on his left wrist, the rocket on his pack, the jets (and a few other sections of the back pack), as well as his toe spikes and the little barrels on his knee pads!

The cape was painted with a 2:1 mix of the Luftwaffe Camo Green and Vallejo German Camo Beige.

At this point I painted the base with a good coat of GW’s Armageddon Dust from the texture paint range. 

After showing the previous nights work to my four year old son at breakfast, he pointed out that the Green “was too dark”!? The boy clearly has an eye for detail. As my intention was to wash down I knew I had to heed his sage advise and come up a shade. This was achieved by mixing a touch of GW Ogryn Camo with the Luftwaffe Green and applying it almost as a highlight to the top sections of the chest plates and helmet. 

The next step was weathering the armour plates. I used a small piece of torn sponge to lightly apply Rhinox Hide. It’s good to test the effect a couple of times on your palette or a pice of tissue before going on the model. I aimed for the most exposed areas of armour, such as the edges of knee pads and corners of shoulder plates. It’s best to start small as you can always add more. Inevitably there is some overspill so I touched in any unsightly blemishes as required. 

Turning my attention back to the cape I mixed the same green and beige that were used for the base coat but this time in the favour of the beige (approximately 5:1). Using an old GW dry-brush and with the paint fairly thinned out I stippled onto the cape to create a faded camo pattern. Where the pattern passes over the more prominent folds I built up further layers of the beige, creating a simple highlight effect. 

As a bit of an after thought I used the beige to colour the pouches that hang from Boba’s belt, the various straps that run around the back of his knee plates and shoulders and the one that runs thong-like betwixt his buttocks. 

With the hard work done it was time to wash the model, base and all, with the ever useful Agrax Earthshade from GW.

This simultaneously pulls all the elements of the model together, neutralises the colours and adds some nice shading. Once this was dry I used a little GW Nuln Oil on the helmet visor as well as the browns of the stock and belt pouches. I also ran a thin line of Nuln Oil along anywhere one of the silver components met another colour, such as on the boot spikes and rocket boosters. 

The next stage was to selectively add Lead Belcher chips to the sponged on weathering, especially the trade mark dent in his helmet. For this I used a very small brush. The idea being to leave a little of the Rhinox around the silver chip. 

The helmet itself seemed to have escaped the worst of the sponging so I carefully repeated the previous step, applying a little Rhinox Hide across his face plate with a small piece of sponge before adding some silver chipping. 

I didn’t want to spend too long on highlights but I did apply a fresh coat of the original colours to the red, yellow and green (using the earlier mix), wherever I felt a highlight was required. I also reapplied Light Grey around his torso and collar as the jacket that his armour is attached to tends to appear lighter than the boiler suit.

Finally the textured base was given a fairly strong dry brush with GW Screaming Skull.

Once all the paint had dried the entire model was given a coat of Vallejo Mat Varnish. This was applied with a large brush and worked well in to every area of the model. It pretty much looks as though you’ve dipped your miniature in milk by the time you’ve applied it. However once it’s dry it leaves a clean mat finish and will protect against the inevitable fingering that goes on during game play.

Once the varnish was completely dry I used GW Nuln Oil Gloss to add a slight sheen to the visor. 

My philosophy for basing is the rule of three. Three elements, textures or colours makes for an interesting base and helps to set the model off. 

I already had the red rocks and Sandy texture from the Agrellan Earth so the final touch was to add a few grassy tufts to the base. These are great as they are pre coloured and self adhesive so they take only seconds to apply. I used a large set of tweezers to position a couple of the smaller tufts and pressed them into place with the tweezer tips or the end of a brush. These ones were Middenland Tufts from GW but many other brands are available.