Since the last update I’ve gotten through almost all of the weathering steps. Here’s a breakdown of what I did.

First I applied a few tan filters then a gray-brown one. This warmed the color tones and gave it a nice dirty worn start to the finish.

Once the filters had dried I used various oil paint colors in order to highlight panels, alter tones and add the greasy grimy weathered look around panels and the engines. This enhances the worn look.

For some reason the lights look blue-ish in the images where in person they look yellowed. Not sure why this is, but I’ll try to adjust the camera settings for the final images. No matter though as in different movie sceens the engines appeared either yellow or purple.

Once it dried overnight I sprayed on a flat coat of FFA. Tomorrow I’ll finish it up with some pigment powders. I still need to finish the canopy once the new one arrives, but this gives you an idea what the final will look like.

I got this little gem a few days ago from rb26 at SSM. The size of the A-Wing (from Return of the Jedi) as you can see is small at this scale, but the amount of crisp details packed into this thing are fantastic. It looks like an injection plastic Fine Molds kit rather than a resin GK which is awesome. I have to wonder if it was made on a computer and 3D printed, that’s how nice the details are. (UPDATE: Nope, all done by hand. Amazing!)

Anyway, as awesome as it is there’s a few VERY minor things worth noting. The first is that the mold likes on the sides of the hull (at least on my copy) are not as flush as one would like resulting in some rescribing of a couple panel lines in the area. Using a scribing saw and a pin to recreate the rivet holes makes quick work of it however with only a small amount of putty required. The other issue is a few air bubbles in the clear resin used for the canopy. (UPDATE: rb26 saw this and is sending me a replacement canopy. Yay! Thanks man!) Like I said though, those issues are minor considering how fantastic a kit this is otherwise. I would definitely buy another SW kit from him if he were to do one. Here’s some great studio model pics for reference.

Since this build will be for a later diorama I needed to light it up. This part was not too difficult as the sculptor had this aspect in mine with the addition of clear parts to go inside the thrusters as well as a clear dash. I drilled out the holes to place 2 clear white LEDs in the two large thrusters then drilled a hole through the hull to connect the wires and finally a hole in the bottom to mount the craft using a hollow brass rod in which the wires will run through. A little clear golden oxide paint on the LEDs makes them appear more incandescent and yellow as seen in the film.

Painting is a simple affair as long as you’ve plenty of masking tape for all the little discolored panels. My colors are a little cool and bright for the moment, but some filters and weathering will bring it more in line with the reference colors. The pilot included is modeled from the A-Wing pilot costume rather than the studio model fig so it’s got much better detail and accuracy IMO.

Next up is more chipping then the weathering begins.

Finally I’ve gotten the hull to a point where I can begin to add detail. First up is the heat radiators and the plate-armor. The armor is .020″ styrene sheet. One of the first items I ever purchased when modeling was a pack of frisket film. It turned out to be pretty much useless for modeling, at least for me, until today. I was trying to figure out how I would get all of the wedge-shaped armor plates to be cut correctly and all line up over the curved surface. Turns out that frisket was the key. I laid some frisket down over the ship and using some wire to make the lines and circles then lightly cut the frisket enough to cut it and not the plastic underneath. Then I peeled the frisket off and placed on the styrene as a guide for cutting. Then it was all glued into place after adding the notches and doing some minor clean-up.

For the radiators I used a metal circular watch-part and some plastruct tread-place. I made a mold then cast myself 4 of them.

Here’s my completed Pumpkin Girl fig for the 31 Days contest. I finished her with a few days to spare which was nice. I could had completed her quicker, but I realized that I don’t really care for painting these anime girl figures. Deunan and Gally were fun since I really like the characters and they didn’t have to be so clean.  This one though… meh… It was a struggle to pay attention to it and not shelf it throughout the whole build. But it’s done and now I can focus on bigger and better things.

The base is a simple wooden box from Michaels filled with plaster for weight. The soil is made from celluclay covered in sand then painted with Raw Umber for the soil. Thread-wrapped wire and thin wire was used for the pumpkin vines. The leaves were cut-out by hand and then airbrushed along with the vines.

Yesterday I began laminating the outside of the bondo with styrene sheet. I also forgot to mention WHY I did the balls/bondo thing and didn’t just add the styrene over the ribs. Simply enough I’m clumsy and heavy-handed and would had crushed the shell without the underneath support. Plus it gives something solid in which to mount things. Mostly my accidental destructiveness though. Once the .020″ styrene wedges were epoxied into place I trimmed the edges took my sander to it all to blend it all together. Then I cut out the groove for the cabin tube and glued that into place and added a little styrene on the right-hand side to blend that in.

Cutting the slot wasn’t as easy as I thought it’d be due to the balls. They acted as bearings with my various cutting tools and the blades just rolled over them. So I ended up slicing, snapping and breaking the slot out a little at a time. And whatever balls fell out were saved for future use. Why throw them out? Markings were added to other cuts I’ll need to make like for the escape pod notch and the engine area. After doing my next cuts I’ll apply some putty to fill in any gaps between the laminated sheets and add some styrene strip to the edges to close off that unsightly mess.