Like many Shatterpoint players, I happened to notice that there was a bit of a scale disparity with Director Krennic from the Deploy the Garrison Squad Pack. He’s a little on the large side, which makes him look a little silly when standing next to a much shorter Lord Vader, or even his own Death Trooper bodyguards . But rather than let this interfere with my enjoyment of the game, I thought it might be fun to paint Krennic up as a hologram, leading his Death Troopers from the comfort of his office.
This idea actually works from a game play perspective as well: none of Krennic’s in-game abilities require him to be in range of any other characters, so he could easily park his hologram at the edge of the board, or better yet, on an out of the way objective that no one else is trying for.
Assembly
I thought it would help sell the hologram idea if I used the standard base with the grating, reasoning that it could be an in-floor holo-projector. I took care to place the figure so that the grating goes straight across the front of the model. I then primed the model in Vallejo black surface primer.
Hologram Blues
I spent some time looking at the different ways holograms are depicted in Star Wars. The two most famous examples are, of course, the original, “Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope” Princess Leia from A New Hope, and arguably Darth Sidious from The Phantom Menace. Leia’s hologram is brighter but also much smaller and lacking in resolution, while Sidious shows a lot more detail, but is a more washed out blue tone.
It was also interesting to note that these two holograms aren’t actually monochromatic – they do show some faint color, most noticeable in Darth Maul’s face as he stands behind Darth Sidious. In spite of this, I decided to stick to different shades of blue. I’m going for an impression of what we see on screen, and I didn’t think doing the face and hair in color would add much of anything to that impression. It might even make it harder to tell that the model is supposed to be a hologram, so all blue it is.
Since I would be working entirely in blue, this was also be a great opportunity to really dig in to the triad color concept that paint manufacturers like Reaper and especially Army Painter have been leaning into so heavily as an organizational tool. In this case I decided on Reaper’s “pure blues” triad: Sapphire Blue, True Blue, and Sky Blue. In addition I used Reaper Pure Black and Pure White to mix some intermediate tones, and Army Painter Deep Grey as the base color for the metal floor. And finally I had some Army Painter Dark Blue Tone wash on hand in case I need to darken down any areas.
Not All One Color
A mistake a lot of the Star Wars toy manufacturers make is presenting holograms that are just a uniform transparent blue from head to toe. In fairness, this may be a limitation of the toy manufacturing process, but as a painter I don’t have that limitation. The best way to think of painting in monochrome is to look at black and white photos: even though it’s all shades of grey, there are still different tones, for example a person’s face and hair won’t always be the same tone. So the trick with painting a hologram will be to work with those different shades of blue, treating each as its own color.
I knew I would be doing a lot of drybrushing, which is very imprecise and messy. I started with the only part of the model that won’t be a shade of blue: the base, reasoning that any blue that splashes over onto the base later on will help sell the idea of a glowing hologram. Vallejo primer’s coverage over flat areas isn’t always the best, so I started with a quick coat of Pure Black. Once that had dried I drybrushed the whole base in Deep Grey. Then I painted in the inside parts of the grating in Sky Blue, followed by a second coat in Sky Blue mixed 50/50 with Pure White to get a lighter tone. Finally, I touched up the edges of the blue with Deep Grey mixed with a little Pure Black, and around the figure’s feet in Pure Black.
I started the figure itself with a heavy drybrush of Sapphire Blue, mainly to get a mid-tone for the pants, boots, gloves and holster. Obviously the tunic and cape need to be much lighter, so I brushed on a solid base coat of Reaper True Blue. I base coated his hair in Sapphire blue and his face in a mix of Sapphire and True Blue. This gave me four distinct blue tones for the hair, face, tunic, and pants, replacing the brown, pink, white and black that these areas would normally be.
With the base colors in place, I drybrushed the entire figure in Sky Blue (taking as much care as possible to avoid lightening the pants and boots too much), which started to add some needed highlights to the lighter areas. I followed that with another heavy drybrush in a mix of Sky Blue and Pure White, to get a lighter blue highlight. I used this same lighter tone to drybrush a “glow” around the floor grating, also hitting the rest of the base to give an overall impression that the hologram is glowing. Finally I did yet another layer of drybrushing, this time in Pure White and focusing on the tunic and cape areas.
The drybrushing lightened up the pants and especially the gloves a bit more than I wanted, so I darkened them down with a quick layer of Army Painter Dark Blue Tone wash.
With all this done, Krennic was looking very blue. I intentionally left all the tones a bit darker than I normally would have, knowing that I would be adding a final layer of highlights in the form of the horizontal resolution lines. These lines are the most distinctive feature of holograms across the whole Star Wars saga, so this would be the most critical ingredient in selling the hologram idea.
I decided to start with the dark pants and boots, reasoning that they would be the easiest to re-do if I couldn’t make this work. Using Sapphire Blue and my trusty Princeton Prestige 0 round brush, I started painting horizontal lines. The key strategy here was to use the resolution lines mainly as an extra layer of highlighting, so rather than painting lines across the entire model, I focused on areas that would have a highlight, such as the wrinkles in the pants. I worked my way down, narrowing the length of lines until they were little more than dots to emulate the shine on the leather boots.
I used Sky Blue to go back in and add just a touch of lighter tone to the lines at the highest areas of the pants and boots, much as I would add a lighter highlight. Then it was time to start on the biggest area of the model, the tunic and cape.
I mixed up a light blue tone using roughly 60% white and 40% Sky Blue, and painted in short horizontal lines, again focusing on areas that would normally receive a traditional highlight, and trying to make sure everything lined up to give the impression of a line going across the entire figure.
For the darker folds of the cape, as well as the face and hair, I used straight Sky Blue, following up with the blue/white mix where I wanted a lighter highlight.
The most challenging area of the model was the shoulders and the top of the head, where the horizontal lines across the front and back had to meet up with the lines coming up the sides, but luckily there was enough texture in those areas that I could get away with shorter lines and keep the illusion going.
More Holograms
Doing all that linework didn’t take nearly as long as I had expected (about two hours after the base colors and drybrushing were done). The resolution lines accomplished just what I had hoped they would, adding a bit of a glow over the darker blue tones and giving the look of a Star Wars hologram.
Of course, this technique could easily be used on any Shatterpoint miniature – I’m holding out hope that we’ll eventually get a Darth Sidious. It would probably work just about as well for Legion models, but at the smaller size you would want to focus more on the glowing blue tones, doing just enough rows of resolution lines in the right spots to get the point across.
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