Buck Rogers Starfighter

[Attirex]

Looking at that pic of the double-cockpit version, I wouldn't be surprised if the canopy is paper for some kind of rapid prototyping (?). The windows look printed and/or drawn on....

Regardless, also loved this ship when I watched the series as a kid and wish someone could produce a kit.

 

[Riceball]

As far as color goes, to me it looks like it's a warmish off white color. You could try giving it a black wash that has a bit of brown mixed in to it, or a black wash and then a light brown wash, or vice versa. That might give it a nice dirtied look while tinting the base white to a slightly off white shade as well.

 

[Zuiun]

Well, let's wrap this thing up....

So base coat on, it was time for a gloss coat and then DECALS...

Oh, those decals. Those damn 9000 year old decals. I might have nightmares for awhile...

The emblems on the sides went on with no problems, but those "rainbow" stripes... well, they basically tried to disintegrate on me. And both in exactly the same place. The "yellow" ends were fine, but as each got toward the "pink" ends, that's where the problems cropped up. Although difficult to really see in the photo below, the inner "pink" ends wound up so rough that I resigned myself to some necessary additional weathering over top of those ends to hide how bad they are.

And now, decals out of the way, it was time to dirty things thing up.

I started out with a sludge wash of a mix of black and brown (yep, had that same idea, Riceball). I was pretty heavy-handed with it, knowing I was going to remove most of it later anyway. Here it is most of the way toward being "cleaned" up...

So the next thing I had to decide was exactly how much to weather this thing...

While a debate of exactly what color the base model really was could probably go on and on, one things that seems pretty clear is that the actual weathering didn't appear to include a lot of "damage." That is to say, paint chipping. It seems as though most of it was airbrushed/drybrushed/pastel (not sure which, maybe a little of all?) streaking and smudging.

But... the thing is, I like chipping up a model like this. Also, as probably everyone here knows, this design was an original concept for the Colonial Viper from Battlestar Galactica, a show for which the finish on the models was heavily inspired by Star Wars... So why not make the weathering on this a bit of an homage to the ship's origins?

Besides, I feel like battle and environment damage help to tell a story.

So I added some paint chipping around the model. I also used some very fine grit sandpaper and sanded over the decals to make them a little faded and weathered. Most of the rest of the weathering was done with pastel chalk.

So here we are, about 90% done...

Following the above image, I added a bit more here and there, toned down a bit here and there, and finally got to an end point I'm mostly satisfied with. More on that in a minute, but first, some beauty shots of the "finished" model...

All in all, I'm pretty happy with how this turned out. To be honest, this kit intimidated me. I can't tell you the number of times I took it off the shelf, looked at it, then sighed and put it back on the shelf -- rinse and repeat. The biggest sticking point for me was just how poorly the two body halves fit together. I anticipated a nightmare of things not lining up properly. Turns out that once I used clamps to force things to go where they needed to go, the fit wasn't terrible other than some gap filling.

How accurate is this kit? I am not the person to ask... but all assembled and painted, I think it looks pretty good.

Now about that "finished" thing. So I'm not sure why, but when I applied the finishing dull coat to protect the model, it all but eliminated most of the dusty appearance I had put on the engines to better match the photos I've seen of the actual model.

We'll see if it winds up bugging me enough to fix it..

 

[Analyzer]

Excellent!

 

[Hunk a Junk]

Looks great!

 

[TazMan2000]

You did a really nice job.

TazMan2000

 

[Zuiun]

Thanks, guys! This was a fun project. Now do I go back to my endless stash of Star Wars kits? Or my endless stash of "other" stuff...? Hmmm.....

 

[Hunk a Junk]

Now do I go back to my endless stash of Star Wars kits? Or my endless stash of "other" stuff...?

Yes.

 

[cobusp]

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....

View attachment 1327155

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....

View attachment 1327156

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...)

View attachment 1327157

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....

View attachment 1327158


Now it's starting to look like something....

Looks really nice. But I see nothing left of the pre-shading?

 

[Zuiun]

Looks really nice. But I see nothing left of the pre-shading?

Yes, you'll notice that right after the photo of the preshading, I made the following comment: "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."

 

[cobusp]

Yes, you'll notice that right after the photo of the preshading, I made the following comment: "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."

Oh - I missed that! I will be building my starfighter in the near future and have been wondering if I should pre-shade or not.