Faking Lead – painting that playworn patina on plastic

Scar Wars? Battle Scar Galactica?

Working on my latest 54mm Space Figures for future Close Little Space Wars Games, one of the challenges is creating sets or groups or units of characters based around an interesting chief or original figure.

This is the usual ImagiNations challenge of painting an non-existent historical colour scheme. Where is the uniform book? What colour do I paint them?

Even made-up worlds like Star Wars have their own “canon” of details regarding characters, races and uniforms, which may attract intergalactic rivet counters, tutting that those figures must be painted so or it’s “not canon” (in an imaginary world, albeit an interplanetary ImagiNations by George Lucas).

What I enjoy about the the envelope of the Star Wars universe franchise being pushed further and further by new prequels, sequels, films, books and TV is the introduction of new characters, job roles, troops and races – especially as I no longer spend all my hard-earned pocket money on one Star Wars action figure a month as I did when I was a child.

Black armoured stormtroopers? Surely not.

Yet these my Dark or Darke Troopers (led by one Dark Saber) are not that different from the black shiny stormtroopers or dark shadow troopers lurking behind Imperial ISB Officer Dedra Meero in the recent Star Wars – Andor prequel to the first 1977 Star Wars film and the recent prequel Rogue One.

The clothes in the Star Wars universe were partly designed or invented by concept artist Bruce McQuarrie and also by military uniform historian John Mollo. Some of the robots and other character designs were loosely based on science fiction films from the 1930s such as Metropolis.

Plastic 54mm toy soldiers of Star Wars weren’t around when I was a child, although there had long before been colourful hollowcast space figures such as Flash Gordon and Dan Dare in the 1930s and 1950s.

Coming up with new paint schemes for familiar Star Wars character to defamiliarise them is quite fun, something recently jokily through AI as a trailer for a Wes (Grand Budapest Hotel) Anderson style version Star Wars called The Galactic Menagerie.

https://manoftinblogtwo.wordpress.com/2023/06/09/the-galactic-menagerie-reimagining-star-wars-the-wes-anderson-way/

Pastel shaded stormtroopers, anyone?

I bought these playworn 1990s Star Wars 54mm metal figures years ago and it’s interesting to look at the patterns of wear and paint loss.

If you were trying to mimic this patina on plastic figures, where does the paint rub off to expose the original metal?

Mimicking the 1930s inspired design of the original broken ARP figure with gas mask c. 1938 is not such a strange thing when you look at original 1930s SciFi (Flash Gordon, Things To Come, Metropolis).

The uniforms of present and past wars give people an idea how to dress for the ‘Next War’.

Other randomly chosen 1920s through to 1950s figures show interesting patterns of playworn wear and original lead showing through. L to R. Arctic explorer, pilot in white flying suit, repainted airforce officer with baton and our original 1938 ARP figure with arm repair.

Looking at the worn patches of missing paint, you can see variously any extremity or protruding edge such as the edge of bases, noses, the rim of hats, hands or gloves, weapon points or running feet is liable to have partial or heavy paint loss.

Usually I am working how to repair, replace, restore or retouch such battered paintwork.

This time I am trying to work out how to age, reproduce or mimic such battered paintwork and exposed metal on modern plastic figures.

How would this work on plastic figures?

Battle scarred Galacticans …

If I get this ageing play-worn patina technique right on plastic figures, it could also work simultaneously in dual use –

in our world of tabletop or garden games, they are old lead play-worn toy soldiers

whilst in their own Star Wars SciFi universe, they are battle scarred and damaged veterans of many galactic battles.

I hope it works. It works for me, although going against what or how standard Star Wars figures should look was also enjoyable. Someone out there might be crying that I have painted these perfectly good plastic figures all the wrong colours. They are very welcome to think this and entitled to their opinion and to game and paint how they choose!

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In a future blog post, I will use this battered and broken 1950s Cherilea space figure (below) to help me create a battered metal figure colour scheme for some Airfix 1981 Space Warrior plastic figures.

Blog posted by Mark Man Of TIN, 18 July 2023