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.

So I’m near the final stages of the Snowspeeder painting and am waiting for oils to cure before my final flat coat and pigment applications. This is the perfect time to bust out the sculpey and start on some more Hoth diorama figures.  Next up is a 1/48 scale Tauntaun. I downloaded a bunch of reference pics and using the riders as a size reference figured out how big it’d be in 1/48 scale.  I was shocked to find out it would be smaller than I thought it’d be. That makes it a little more difficult to sculpt in details, but no matter… it needs done!

All of the pics show these guys with their tails on the ground when moving. That seems odd to me given what’s known about dinosaur movement these days. (probably a necessary evil on the part of the model makers to get it to move neatly) Since they have the same basic shape I decided I would modify the pose a bit to show it running a little harder than seen before in the film with the tail in the air.

I started out with a wire armature and bulked the chest area up with a small ball of foil and then covered that in some wire mesh. Over that I started applying sculpey to get the basic shape down. I started by sculpting and detailing the head since that would be the hardest part. I figured I could hold the body if necessary for extra support while sculpting. Glad I did! After that I started applying the rest of the shape and arms.

I think this is as far as I can go for now before I need to bake it to add more details and the other leg. The leg will need to be removable for casting. I’ll also sculpt the saddle and straps then. After another bake I’ll do the rider and it’ll be ready to go!

EDIT: Couldn’t resist so I added the saddle. You can also see the start of the left leg and where it will be cut off.

Here’s the latest on the build-up of the four Snowspeeders. First I airbrushed some German Gray onto the rear engine parts to darken them up as per the reference. Then I applied a clearcoat of Future and the decals. Those went on quite smoothly except that since I wasn’t using the kit-supplied stripe decals I needed to carefully cut out the orange boxes on the gray speeder on the sides of the air-breaks to remove the gray.Once the decals were done I applied a thin flat coat for the next steps.

I applied the paint chips using neutral gray with a very fine brush then afterwards added more with some sponge to get the finer masses of chips and scrapes.

After the chips I added an warm buff colored filter in order to warm up the cool gray of the initial painting. After that I applied the discoloration with oil paints. This is done by adding small dabs of oil paint (I use and love the 502 Abteilung brand… very fine and smooth!) then blending them and streaking them with clean odorless turpenoid. For this I used Dark Mud, Navy Blue, Buff, and Dark Rust colors. Below you can see the difference between the discolored speeder (left) and the one with just a filter applied (right). Notice that it gives you subtle variations in the surface color making it appear more worn.

Once that dried overnight I went back and added more Dark Mud oils to the gun crevasses and engine parts. I also applied slightly thicker filters of either Dark Rust or Snow White 502 oils to further accentuate panels.

Next I’ll use some thinned 502 oils and apply a thin wash to just the panel lines. No need to get sloppy with a thick wash covering all the color variations. After that I’ll apply another flat coat and then do the soot-streaks, rust, and grime with Mig pigment powders.

Someone had asked about there actually being a gray Snowspeeder in the Empire Strikes Back. Frankly I wasn’t 100% sure either so I loaded up the DVD and took some screen shots. Indeed there is a gray speeder and from what I could tell, the only one I saw flying about was Lukes. Here’s some shots of that and of the 1:1 set pieces:

Here you can see Luke’s speeder in gray and the standard orange model.

Look close and only one is gray. (hint: largest in foreground)

This I found interesting… looks like they used the same model a LOT. Were there more than one model used for the filming?

Here’s a shot of the large set pieces. Man these things were dirty!

And here’s more shots: