That's simply stunning . You must be well chuffed with what you've accomplished mate !
Could you tell us what type of paints you used ie enamel , acrylic , lacquers etc ? , and was it applied directly over the black primer ? . Hoping to see her all lit up on your display/diorama soon . Thanks for sharing .
Cheers Ged :thumbsup
Thanks Ged, mighty kind of you! The short answer is yes, I use all of the above LOL I used a car primer with adhesion promoter to start off with because I didn't know how well paint would bond to the ABS. It was probably an overkill, but I wasn't taking any chances after spending all the money and time building this thing. I went with the Tamiya AS-20 as suggested, but I've always used that color for my x-wings and y-wings. I was bummed when Deogastini started promoting it because I thought it was my little secret. :devil
My theory has always been start off lighter rather than darker with a your base color because you will end up having better contrast of shades and colors in the end. I also feel the color of the Falcon was lighter in the beginning before age and dust has yellowed the paint. At least all early production shots of it appear lighter to me. For me to get the look of an ILM ship it's all about the layers. Layer upon layers of paint.
My technique is pretty much the same as what you see on the other threads from ktaylor or darkview. they have done a good job on the step by step of it all. I start with painting my panels, the greys and reds using Tamiya flat acrylics. I'm sorry I can't quote colors, I just mix until I like it. I mask for some of the chipping effects. At this point when I look at the ship it reminds nothing of the Falcon and in fact looks wrong to me. Some of the panels that others use a concrete color, I just mask off and spray a really thinned black paint to achieve looks the same to me.
I then start hitting it hard with washes. For these I use oils. I have always liked the control. The downside is the dry time, but I combat that with a clear acrylic matte coat. Seals it right in. For colors I mix a combo of blacks and browns. I tend to get mine pretty thin and will apply in multiple passes (3 or 4 times) over a couple of days. I brush it on with a large brush, let it sit for about 15 minutes then wipe off the excess. I try to leave more discoloration in strategic panels and crevasses. At this point I've changed the base color quite a bit. In fact, sometimes I have to repaint a panel after a mistake and find that after the washes it's quite a bit different than the base coat in contrast.
At this point I start adding the ILM fake panel technique with my airbrush and a piece of painters tape. I think I remember Steve Dymszo demonstrating this pretty well on one of his paint tutorials. They are all over the Falcon and represent false panel lines and are used for oil streaks.
I'm now starting to beat it up with a combination of sanding, dremmel, and scraping. I will constantly tinker with some of the panels by adding a slight variation of another color to give me the desired effect. All my oil streaks and battle damage are done with a combination of oils, pastels, Sharpie, and Tamiya Weathering Masters. It's whatever I feel like will achieve what I'm going for in that particular moment. I like using multiple shades of rusts starting from dark to light. I'll use washes or the weather Masters for the rust.
Overall, don't be afraid to use color. I think the Tamiya weather Masters are great for adding some subtle color to your piping, rusted areas, or access bays. You can get some cool effects by miking various colors into each other. Oh and if you screw up with the Weather Masters, you can totally use a pencil eraser to remove it, as long as it's not too big.
The biggest mistakes I see with replicating ILM paint jobs is trying to paint it all in one go which makes it lose the depth and ends up looking muddy. The other is over emphasizing every gap between all the armor plates. Be strategic, about where you darken those in. There is not a real life situation where they would all be darkened in equally. Well, I hope that ansswered your questions. Have fun with it and practice on something until you like how it looks then go at your Falcon.