Terran Marine showcase: giving Starcraft TMG’s clear plastic parts some real punch

I’ve finished painting my first test model for the Starcraft TMG: a Terran Marine in the blue of Raynor’s Raiders. I did take a few liberties with the box art blue, though, and gave the transparent orange effects parts a bit of extra paint to make them pop. I’ll walk you through how in this showcase post.

From unboxing to first paint job

Starcraft! After getting to unbox the Founder’s Edition starter box a while back (my review here), I wanted to try my hand at painting some of the models. My buddy whiskerpaints treated the Hydralisks to a fantastic paint job a while ago and snagged the Zerg from the box, so I took charge of the Terran Marines.

I went with the classic box art blue colour scheme, but wanted to crank the saturation up to 110%. The transparent effects parts really impressed me in my review, so I knew I had to work them in.

Building up the armour: airbrushing, panel lining, weathering

I sprayed the armour with a base coat of GSW Imperium Blue Air, then used the airbrush to add controlled highlights with GSW Summersea Blue Air and GSW Zima Blue Air. All these are from Green Stuff World’s new airbrush paint range, which is pretty good and identical to the equivalent Maxx Formula paints. I then sealed everything with gloss varnish and shaded the recesses with Tamiya Panel Liner Black. Once that was cleaned up, I sprayed on a matte varnish again and drybrushed the armour with VGC Black, using the same black for some sponge weathering too.

Making the effects parts glow

The transparent plastic effects parts already look pretty cool straight out of the box, but I wanted to push them further. I sprayed both the crystal and the muzzle flash with satin varnish, which keeps the plastic’s transparency whilst giving subsequent layers of paint much better grip than painting straight onto bare plastic would.

Using washes and Contrast paints, I first added some shading to the orange plastic, then glazed the centre of the muzzle flash with orange, warm yellow, and white, finishing with Fluo Orange for a little mini-explosion effect. I lightly drybrushed the crystal with a metallic paint, Vallejo TMM Ancient Copper Light, to give it a subtle shimmer. Then I carefully airbrushed an OSL effect onto the muzzle of the C-14 Impaler gauss rifle, the shoulder, and the base. Let me know here or on Discord if you’d be interested in a full tutorial.

For a “quick” paint job, I think my Terran Marine turned out pretty well, and it was fun practising OSL (object source lighting) effects with the airbrush, something I don’t get to do very often.

Have your Starcraft miniatures from the Kickstarter arrived yet? Would you like to see more Starcraft content here on Tale of Painters, like a tutorial for my Marine or more Zerg?

Feel free to drop a comment below, I’m also happy to answer any questions on our friendly hobby Discord server. Thanks a lot, and happy hobbying!