So if you looked closely at the photos in my last post, you may have noticed... as I did... that after what I thought was a final primer coat for painting, I hadn't completely successfully filled and removed the join on the main body at the end where the engine modules connect.
Thus.... even more filling and sanding.... *sigh* This model was truly a test of patience...
Anyway... another 74,382 hours of sanding later, and I was FINALLY ready to really dive deep into the painting. I decided to do add a bit of pre-shading, to see whether or not I liked it....
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That was a first pass... I went back and hit the panel lines more.... but, really, it didn't matter... once I put the base coat on, I didn't really vibe with the pre-shading, so I wound up mostly covering it up anyway.
But that brings me to the Huge Decision I needed to make on this model.... WHAT COLOR IS IT?!?!???
Prior to starting this project, I went back and watched about half of the first season of the series. In a lot of the effects shots, the model seems to have a definite off-white, yellowish appearance. This seems to be supported by the fact that the full size sets were built with a sort of 1970's-early 80's beige.
Gross.
But was the model really a weird beige / off-white? Or was that just an artifact of the production standards of the time? I mean, we know a lot of the Star Wars models were mostly white, but appeared slightly off white and yellowish in the finished shots. Even the full size X-wing sets looked a bit yellowed....
Pretty much every image I found of both this model and other kits showed the builders had elected for whites and grays.
I did find a couple of really crappy resolution photos that appeared to show the actual model being filmed.... and it was white, with just a lot of dirt and grime applied.
So.... a white base it is....
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Awesome! Great! And now all I need to do is mask this thing for the gray panels....
It took me exactly 163 minutes to mask this, which was simultaneously faster than I expected, but still really tedious. How do I know it took exactly 163 minutes? Because that happens to be the run time of the film Troy, which I started on my iPad when I began masking and I applied the final piece of tape just as the end credits faded out...
(Those weird bright spots? Yeah, pay no attention to those. It's the sun shining through the pegboard backing of my work bench at that time of day...)
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Once masked, it was time to hit it with the gray. But after I pulled the tape off, I felt the gray I used was just too dark, so I dusted over the entire thing with the white base coat. Much better....
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Now it's starting to look like something....