My FineMolds 1/72 Millennium Falcon

JMChladek

Sr Member
from the 1/144 Finemolds Falcon thread

Show it off!

Ask and you shall receive :cool :

finfalcon2.jpg


finfalcon6.jpg


topturret1.jpg


falcondetail1.jpg


bottomscrape3.jpg


falconbottom6.jpg


Paint used was a combination of Testors Model Master shades and Tamiya ones. My base coat shade was a straight 50/50 mixture of Model Master Light Gray and Camouflage Gray. A Dremel mini mite cordless tool with #105 and 108 engraving tips was used to add the battle damage and the paint scrapes in spots. The model was pre-shaded in black and covered with a very light wash of Tamiya smoke tint to pop out some of the details in spots. Pastel earth tone chalks were applied with Microbrush applicators instead of Q-tips to get much tighter coverage that looked more in scale. I was attempting to duplicate the appearance of the ESB 32" studio model as close as I could using references from various Lucasfilm publications and what I found of the Phoxim German space modeling website as it has the most EXTENSIVE photo coverage of the 32" Falcon that I have ever seen.

You can find more photos of my model here:
http://s92.photobucket.com/albums/l31/JMChladek/FineMolds Falcon/
 
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Very, very nice! I'll try to post some pics of mine, too!

from the 1/144 Finemolds Falcon thread



Ask and you shall receive :cool :

finfalcon2.jpg


finfalcon6.jpg


topturret1.jpg


falcondetail1.jpg


bottomscrape3.jpg


falconbottom6.jpg


Paint used was a combination of Testors Model Master shades and Tamiya ones. My base coat shade was a straight 50/50 mixture of Model Master Light Gray and Camouflage Gray. A Dremel mini mite cordless tool with #105 and 108 engraving tips was used to add the battle damage and the paint scrapes in spots. The model was pre-shaded in black and covered with a very light wash of Tamiya smoke tint to pop out some of the details in spots. Pastel earth tone chalks were applied with Microbrush applicators instead of Q-tips to get much tighter coverage that looked more in scale. I was attempting to duplicate the appearance of the ESB 32" studio model as close as I could using references from various Lucasfilm publications and what I found of the Phoxim German space modeling website as it has the most EXTENSIVE photo coverage of the 32" Falcon that I have ever seen.

You can find more photos of my model here:
http://s92.photobucket.com/albums/l31/JMChladek/FineMolds Falcon/
 
Great build, I love the paint job :thumbsup The mandibles, not so much :lol


Yeah the FM Falcon does have some "baked in" issues. Most are correctible without rebuilding the thing from scratch. On mine, I rebuilt the cockpit/canopy, tapered the turrent walls, and tapered the escape pod walls.

But first and last its all about the paint job. The finish on JMC's is "top shelf"!
 
Beautiful Job dude!

If I didn't know any better I thought I would be looking at the real deal.

If mine comes out looking half as good as yours, I will be pleased.
 
Thanks guys, it is certainly an honor. I built this one in mid-2008, but ran out of time to start the paint work before Wonderfest and tabled it. I resumed work on it in December of 2008 and got the paint finish done in the early spring of 2009. I suppose part of the delay was working up the nerve to carve into an expensive kit to give it the proper battle damage, but seeing as how at the time I didn't have a budget to get another one, I just went for it. Pity it only got a bronze at Wonderfest, but I think it was let down by the stock display stand (I could have done better with that element). It still holds the honor spot in my current collection of built models and to date, everyone who has seen it in person has been knocked out by it. My goal was to do up the Fine Molds Millennium Falcon with a paint and weathering job that could practically double for a studio model. I think I accomplished that goal.

Anyway, here's some work in progress shots showing how I did the battle damage. For starters, here are the "soldering iron" dents near the dish. After photo analysis, I drew the pattern on with a frisket template and applied it to the model, then drilled the dents in with the Dremel and the engraving bits.

soldermarks1.jpg


Then I did a quickie wash with black to give depth to the holes (I wasn't going to punch completely through the plastic)

soldermarks2.jpg


I followed that up with the pastel weathering. In these shots you can also see the damage done to the red oxide panel near the dish. That was also done with a Dremel engraving tip where I just scratched the paint. One cheat I found was if I went to deep and exposed the plastic (I only wanted to get to the black pre-shade), a black pigment ink pen such as a Sakura Pigma Micron pen with a .005 tip comes in really handy to "paint" the black back in.

Falconpastel5.jpg


I did the same scrape technique with the bottom scrapes behind the loading ramp. I used a piece couple pieces of tape as a guides to make sure my carved lines were nice and straight. Again the Dremel tip did the carving and the scratching, a wash was used on the deep recesses while the black pigment pen colored in the shallower scrapes (the finished scrapes are in the first post of this thread).

bottomscrape1.jpg


bottomscrape2.jpg


And here we have one more shot showing the paint chipping and pastel chalk work in action.

Falconpastel1.jpg
 
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Thanks for the picture posts. I don't remember seeing your build-up pictures before. Nice to see close-ups of your Dremel technique, I used to think it wouldn't work at this scale, but I'm wrong, it looks great. You really did your research, got the ESB look down cold.
 
Very nice work! The lights are an inspiration (although the 3P0 eyes scare me a little, crazy man! :lol ). In my own case it will likely be awhile before I attempt a second FMMF due to lack of funds and considering it is currently not in production (meaning it is more expensive these days then it was when it was available). But I figure if I do a second one, it will likely be lit as I now know of all the places where I could stick a switch and/or a power source.
 
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