Star Wars Darth Vader [Lower torso, belt, codpiece, appendages, feet & base]

Coming along nicely, the rest of Vader is. Well that's enough Yoda-ish grammar for one day. He is progressing well though and if all goes to plan he's then just a few days away from completion. 

Bandai 1/12 scale Darth Vader, work-in-progress on lower torso, etc

At this stage of the project, the only real challenge painting-wise was Vader's codpiece. Even then the issue was not in a complicated colour scheme but in getting clean painted lines on smallish details. Being used to working on a much smaller scale, I found the latter surprisingly easy to do. All that practice on 28-mm miniatures is paying off ... 1/12 scale is like a walk in the park in comparison.   

Every super villain must have his codpiece

Back of Vader's codpiece was painted a simple flat black

For Vader's appendages and feet, I've kept things simple either by applying just a flat black coat on the undergarments and feet, or by leaving the gloss plastic as it is on the shin armour. That leaves his inner cloak as the last black pieces with a non-black colour added to its highlights. I felt the other pieces were large enough to reflect natural highlights when shone with light from my IKEA lamps.

Vader's arms, legs and feet ... replacements for the Mustafar debacle

Vader's inner cloak (left) will be last black pieces with highlights painted on them while the base (right) is left as is

Below is a shot of Vader's back which will eventually be covered up by his main back cloak. Makes you wonder why I even bothered with the inner cloak highlights in the first place. Oh well, nothing is really wasted in our hobby. You can always tick that off as a much needed to do practice list. 

Back of the work-in-progress Bandai 1/12 scale Darth Vader model kit

There's nothing much left for me to do for Vader except his hands, light sabre handle and main cloak. Soon Vader will rise again and good old TK-421 will have some company at last. Soon.