When a thin film of wet paint or coating containing polymer and submicron sized colloidal particles is dried on a substrate, evaporation of the solvent concentrates the solute. The drying and consolidation process leads to the formation of space filling particle and polymer networks and in many cases gives rise to tensile stresses in the network. The built up stresses in the colloidal packing nucleate cracks from packing flaws such as voids and dislocations. An understanding of the fluid-solid phase transition for varying particle size, shape and chemistry (inter-particle interaction), along with prediction of the stresses as a function of the said parameters is critical to achieving crack-free films.