Easy Three Colors and a Daily Pic: Jan 27

I feel dirty doing this.  I normally carefully clip, trim, clean and assemble each model before I prime it.  Usually I will leave parts separated for easier painting, but every piece is free of flash, mold lines and sprue nubbins.  

However, I wanted to play my new Skitarii in a tournament that requires three colors.  So how do you get three color models as fast as possible?  You paint it on the sprues.  Here's how I put together my three color Skitarii Vanguard.  

First, trim out everything you don't need.  No use painting something you aren't going to use.  This is a little trickier than it sounds because Vanguard have many unique pieces that only work with their specific pair.  Consult the assembly instructions, and eventually you'll notice GW has grouped all the pieces somewhat close together on the sprue.  Heads are off to the side, but they're interchangeable.

Then primer everything.  The nice part about this technique is that you use a lot less primer.  I was able to get very good coverage, and since I'm spraying a bunch of pieces close together, there's not much overspray that went to waste.

Now just go to town: starting with the metallics.  You can just slop it on and spread it around.  I'll be using the old GW Foundation colors later that will easily cover metallics.

It was quite a bit easier to paint the inside of the robes with them not yet assembled.  Although, in retrospect, you can never really see the inside of the back part of the robe, so you could skip those to save even more time.

Then just throw down some red on the outside of the robes and on the arms.

Once you're done, here's what you get.  Start trimming things out and gluing them together.  I did a bit of touch up on the red once I cut them out of the sprues, just to avoid any grey areas on the outer coats.

Here's what they look like completed.  This guy is getting an arm swap.  I added a bit of blue on the visors and weapons once assembled and a different highlight color on the helps to identify the two squads I made.

They're ugly, but they're three color and the whole process was very fast.  I've never put twenty infantry together so fast, but it just didn't feel right.