Astroboy: I'm curious... do you have a list of the specific paints you used for primer, undercoat, topcoat, and brushed oils?
Okay, here are the steps I took.
Here's my process:
1. Battle damage with fine tipped dremil, teeth and with blade
2. Flat black rattlecan
(assemble model)
3. As-20 base coat (however I vented it from the rattle can so that I could use it in my airbrush. That way it was irregular. )
4. Taping and airbrushing panels. Obviously there were a few parts I couldn't put on before doing this) As far as panel colours go, I made them up by looking at studio ref.s. Don't paint them too solidly. Also, practice your maskol technique for the paint chipping. Look at the studio model pics to decide what is peeled paint and what is battle damage. You can tell the difference.
5. Flat clear topcoat.
6. oils. (blues, greys, starship filth, whites) Fairly light coat. Not so much a wash is little dabs that get washed in. (Watch fitchenfoo vids for his technique) The lighter you keep all of this, the better it will look in the end.
7. Flat clear topcoat
8. oils. (rust)
9.Flat clear topcoat
10. Streaking using pigments and VERY fine q-tip. (make sure that you use tape to keep them straight and in the right direction I also only did about half of the ones from the real model. I didn't want it too busy)
11. Flat clear topcoat
12. Spatter. (three colours. Light grey, grey, and yellow/beige) Using airbrush. VERY thin and from 3 feet away. You want it to appear like small rain drops)
13. Flat clear topcoat
14. Engine exhaust using pigments and q-tip. (note that exhaust on 5 footer goes straight back
15. Final top coat.
Note that when I do those topcoats, It's just a misting. Since I did this falcon I have read that you should do a gloss coat in between layers and then stick with a flat coat at the end. It helps keep the layers separate. But I've also heard that it can make things cloudy
The oils I used were:
Abteilung starship filth
Abteilung faded navy blue
abtalung faded U.N. white (this is pretty much insignia whit, so it helps to bring dark areas "back")
abteilung dark rust
abteilung german grey highlight
abteilung dark rust.
yellow ochre
indian red.
I think that in a way, the UN white is crucial. It brings it back from being too dark. I even used it in the final spatter as a contrast to the greys and browns.
As for the tamiya colours, I couldn't tell you. I have a bunch of deck tan, german grey, sky grey, light grey, flat white, insignia white brown, yellow, and red. I mix to whatever works. The one thing I made sure I did here was to only look at pictures of the studio model. Don't refer to someone else's model. Don't look at the TFA digital version (unless that's the one you're doing) and don't look at that awful TFA model that they did for disneyworld.
Trust your eyes from the source.
I am by no means an expert on this stuff. (There are SO many great painters out there. Frankly, I don't think I could ever paint realistic miniatures. Those guys are insane. And I'm so afraid of scratchbuilding) and I've really only done a couple of models. But my back ground is in theatre scenic art. So I've spent a lot of time doing washes and spatter on big drops and floors. And I think that's where I learned about the scale of things. It's really helped.