Okay, some pics of the work from last night.
Here's the spine and pods all assembled and painted up. I think it came out pretty well.
Here's a close up of the painted pods and the couplings that hold the cargo assemblies together (they don't really, they're just part of the model as they appeared in the film).
Here are the bottoms of the pods that aren't attached yet. I cleaned the paint off of the points where the epoxy will go for better adhesion, I did the same on the points on the spine where they will connect. You can see the dish assembly in this photo in progress. I had better luck brushing the paint onto it than using the airbrush, because it absorbed so much of the paint...so that will end up taking a little while as I have to do only little bits at a time.
Here is a not so great picture of the assembled collar piece. This piece is basically done...I won't be doing any more painting to it, other than POSSIBLY a dark wash, but I'm not sure yet.
Tonight I have some more stuff to do...I'll be getting the rest of the pods onto the spine...well, all of them except for the two "side" pieces of the dish assembly pod assembly, those will be put on separately so that they don't "slide" due to gravity while the epoxy cures. I also have to do yet another coat to the control module. There are a few spots on the control module that still seem like they aren't getting painted that well, so I'll be focusing on just those spots to try to get the paint evened out.
I've ordered some black paint, which I forgot to do before, so that I can paint the thruster portions of the drive unit, and then mix it with a little bit of gray in order to get a slightly lighter black that I will use for the windshield on the front of the ship.
I'm going to be ordering some wash to use on the cargo pods and the drive unit in particular...I understand that since I'm using acrylic paint, my wash should be an enamel based wash so I'm going with that. I'm not sure how much wash I'll use on OTHER portions of the ship, as they are more smooth and don't seem like they would require the "shadows" that the wash is so good at emulating.
It's coming along, slowly but surely.