So I sent my turret off to a caster a few weeks ago. He decided to purchase the master and to produce it which is great because I got a bunch of copies for my use plus some trades which is nice.

I got my copies on Saturday morning and that night threw one into some ‘Purple Power’ to clean the mold release. They look great and with three parts, paint-up should be easy so I decided to see how quick I could paint one up. Here’s the process:

Saturday 9-27-2009:

Received the kits and threw them onto a bath of Purple Power. You can get it at Walmart. It’s an engine cleaner/degreaser and great for removing the mold release agent from resin parts.

Sunday 9-28-2009:

I removed the parts from the cleaner and scrubbed them down with an old toothbrush. I then did the minimal clean-up needed. A few small mold lines on the turret/gun and on the base of the base was all there was. Gave the turret two coats of primer. First was green Duplicolor Self-Etching then a coat of light gray Duplicolor filler primer. After that dried I buffed them with very fine steel wool to smooth out the filler primer.

After that I started on the base coat. This will be a multi-stage, multi-layered process so bear with me. I first sprayed it with Tamiya Light Sea Gray then I mottled some Deck Tan over that. Finally I did a post-shade of panel lines and shadow areas/damage with Tamiya Dark Gray. This was all later sealed with Future Floor Acrylic. It looks like an odd jungle camo, but this base coat will be mostly hidden by the next steps and serve to give a layered and used look.

Once the Future cured I gave the parts a few coats of hairspray and a sprinkling of crushed kosher salt over the still-wet hairspray. This will make for some interesting chipping effects through the whitewash when wet-down and chipped with small soft brushes and toothpicks.

Over the dried hairspray and salt I sprayed on thin coats of Tamiya Flat White. Allow some of the base-coat to show through. Make the top of the turret and other parts lighter to get a sunlight highlighted effect. Spray under the turret thinner to make false shadows.

Once the paint cures a bit… (I only waited about 20 minutes) take and dunk it in some water and use various brushes and such to remove the salt and to add more chipped paint. The hairspray loosens the top layer of paint with water allowing fo easy and realistic chips ranging from small faint scratches to huge blasted away areas.

At this point the contrast between the white and the base coat is pretty stark. I expected this and this allows for yet another layer to be added. All of these layers make for random variations leading to a more realistic end result. Over this spray another layer of white to blend in the chips until you’re satisfied with the look. Vary your obacity as usual to get a mottled realistic look.

At this point we’re ready for the actual weathering. While some might call this done, a few extra steps will really bring out the look and make something that’s plain white to be something that’s far more visually interesting. First I applied a Sin Industries filter (gray for white) then after a few hours of that drying I added some discoloration with oil paint. I used white, blue, dark rust and dark mud colors. After that I added more white oils over that to bring back the lightness that the discoloration and wash took away. Finally I added some rust streaks with oil paint. Here it is all done.

Dagobah is done, so now onto the next Star Wars commission and one of my favorite scenes… HOTH! While the scenery of the ice planet shouldn’t pose as many problems as Dagobah did, it has it’s own unique challenges. I need to make a barren and mostly flat snowscape interesting, but also very very large. I estimate the base of this 1/48 scale diorama will be about 2 x 5 feet when complete. This will be covered in snow, a trench, some boulders, and of course models!

Added to the scene will be the following:

• Two 1/48 Fine Molds Snowspeeders
• One Resin AT-AT (close enough to 1/48 to not make much difference)
• One AMT AT-ST heavily modified. (the possibility exists of having to mostly scratchbuild this part)
• Two Golan Arms DF.9 Anti Infantry Batterys (Scratchbuild)
  
• 1.4 FD P-Tower laser cannon (maybe) (Scratchbuild)
• 6 or so Rebel Soldiers in Hoth Gear (Scratchbuild)
• 1 Tauntaun with Rider (Scratchbuild)
• Misc. Boxes, conduit, etc… (Scratchbuild)
• And if I feel ambitions, a couple Snow Stormtroopers (Scratchbuild)

First up on the list is the DF.9 Anti Infantry Battery. Yeah… WTF is that you might ask? It’s that mushroom-shaped turret. Pretty common all over Echo Base.

When I started this I was using my Star Wars “Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology”, but it really didn’t match up with the stills I took from the movie. So I ended up mostly using the movie stills for reference, but a print-out of the Guide images for scale.

Here’s where I’m at so far. I’m *almost* done but just need to fill in some seams and whatnot. I need a few of these so will have to look into getting casts made. It’s made using a lot of styrene and a lot of bondo.

Here’s the rest of the images.