I had a quick and hopefully easy question to throw out to folks.

I have been providing supplemental prize support to players in my LGS for each tournament in the form of extra r/vr and promo pieces. Unfortunately I'm running out of supplies. So my next idea was to take some of the common/uncommon's and custom mod them. Now just as a disclaimer I've never modded pieces before. I'm not looking at doing anything more complicated than maybe some basic repaints, battle damage, group markings on troopers that type of thing. My questions are as follows:

1. Do I need to strip the existing paint from the pieces and repaint them entirely or can I safely paint over top of the existing skupts?
2. If I need to strip them, what is the recommend method?
3. If I can repaint over them, what is the recommend type/make of paint that I should use on them?

Hopefully with people's help I should be able to replenish my stock with repaints...for now. I might be back later to ask for a little more advanced help but I think I'll have my hands full with just painting at this point.

from what ive done with making customs ive found it easy to just paint over the old paint, sometimes you will need more than one coat just so you dont see the old paint and i use a water based paint, it drys just about the same as most but when it drys its not as "sticky"

thats a good idea on prizes being customs post pics if poss. i would very much like to see them.

Water based paints are VERY thin though.

Most people use Acrylic paints. Just don't put the paint on too thick. Something to always remember when painting (similar to trimming things), you can always put on more paint, but it's hard to take it off once it's on there already. So thin layers are always best.

You can paint right over top of the existing paint if you want. One of the guys at GenCon used some acetone to strip the paint off a couple of Felucian Warriors, since they are made with clear plastic, and then repainted them new colors. That was a really neat technique. So, for clear plastic pieces, that could be something fun to try, but I wouldn't worry about stripping things in general, unless you're going for a specific look of some sort.

Indeed, stripping the paint off is not necessary. Like LoboStele said, acrylic paints usually work the best. I've also found that putting a layer of Sculpey gloss over the paint helps to keep the paint from scratching off.