For those of you who follow me on Facebook, you’ll know I got a bunch of the new Bandai Star Wars kits from Japan and have been building them.

I started with the Stormtrooper, which turned out to be a really nice kit. I painted the black pieces, leaving the nice gloss-injected white plastic armour pieces as is.

Next I moved onto C-3PO, which again was a very nice kit. Mostly under-gated, but there’s a couple of areas, especially on the shoulders where the nubs show, and that’s annoying. I used a black oil wash over it to try and give it that authentic look. I really liked the middle section where all the wires are showing. They got the layered look here really nice on the kit.

Up next was Darth Vader. Again, I left the gloss-injected plastic as-is and focussed on painting the other pieces, using Tamiya gunmetal as an undercoat, black acrylic on top, and black oil wash into the crevices. Finishing with the Alclad flat coat made for reasonable “fabric” looking paintwork. The decals are terrible and would never stick to the bumpy areas they’re designed for so I hand painted the details.

Onwards, I’m now onto Boba Fett, who is going to take some time while I track down some good image references and go to town weathering up the paint work.

Hopefully I’ll be able to post pictures soon to show you, but the main point of this post is to let you know I’m still here and still finding a little bit of time for making and painting models.