Doctor Octoroc
Sr Member
It was cirens' idea!
More progress pictures on the paint job! Here are the main parts after heavy dry brushing the gold paint, along with the wires painted brass. They're not the perfect reddish brass color that they are on the prop but good enough for me. I may mix in some metallic red with the brass later on and reapply but I'll have to see how the whole thing looks all together before I make that call.
After the gold dried, I took a small Phillips head screwdriver to the surface, scratching off the paint as I saw fit to make it look weathered. I started with a reference picture that showed the markings on the tail section clearly, trying to match the wear and tear on the prop, then as I moved up I just got a feel for how the parts that weren't shown might look. By the time I got to the fin assembly, I just did whatever I wanted, scratching a corner here, and edge there, adding a small scratch to this surface and a large one to another.
Since my paint coats are flat black>metallic black>dark brass>gold the pressure I applied and the depth I scratched changed how it appeared. For light scratches, the dark brass showed through, while for deep scratches the black showed through. This varied the scratches to avoid redundancy and also provided a natural transition between the deeper scratches and the unscratched parts, so it blends together better.
I also scratched off paint around the circumference of the screws, inside details and around others to help define them better overall. I applied this same technique very subtly to the copper wires as well, with light scrapes around the main length of them and tracing the connecting ends with the corner of a small flat head screwdriver, to give them a little definition. I also lightly scratched the edges of the hex nuts to add a bit more visibility to the details.
Next, I added the patina effect. I mixed together some flat army green with a flat light blue until I got the right shade then applied it to nearly every recess, inside edge and feature where it would likely occur. Again, I outlined certain details that would otherwise be lost in a solid color, using only the tip of my brush as much as possible with a decent amount of paint on the end so it would bleed slightly into the details and inside corners of them. Once the paint was half dry, I blended portions into the surrounding area to make it a softer transition.
You can see the difference all that weathering makes, then again how much character the patina adds.
I had no brown that was a perfect match to the grips on the prop but I had a dark and light brown that fell on either side of the brightness of the real deal, so first I laid down a coat of the darker brown. Afterwards, I decided to try a similar scratching technique as I described above, using the corner of a small flat head screwdriver to run from one end of the sonic to the other, varying the pressure along the way and deviating from too straight of a line along the way. I repeated this until I had mimicked a decent looking wood grain pattern, then went over the surface again with much lighter scratches a bit more haphazardly. I did this on the front and sides, then did quick scratches at a slight angle for the top and bottom to simulate the end of the wood where it would be cut on the actual grips. You can see the before and after comparison here.
It doesn't look amazing but it gives the surface a more natural look. And once I took to it with the lighter paint, the details blended together nicely. It turned out that the lighter brown I used was a bit thinner in consistency than the darker brown, so what I did wasn't dry brushing as much as top to bottom, straight streeks with slightly 'watery' paint. After doing this to all of them, you can see some nice variation between grips so they don't all look the same - and there are also some details running side to side that while not as close to the look of actual wood, give the impression of a rushed staining job. This happened as a result of the orientation of the parts in the 3d printer - they must have been printed with the longer dimension top to bottom. If you're not a fan of that look then you can always sand down the surface to even it out and eliminate the appearance of it. For me, I just don't care for sanding much...I do it when necessary but for this build, being as worn and imperfect as it all is supposed to be, I decided not to bother.
If it weren't for the hollow insides being visible through the holes, you might not be able to tell they aren't real wood. It honestly turned out much better than I expected, and the semi-gloss appearance you see isn't the result of varnish, it just ended up looking that way.
So that's the progress for now! I got all of the painting done, I'm just going to give it a few days to dry thoroughly, and I'm waiting on the 3/16" acrylic rods to come in the mail so I can implement that for better lighting in the emitter. Unfortunately, there is some extra light bleed where I scratched deeper around the middle section of the fin assembly, but it's minor and between the redesign on the kits you'll receive to cut back on that and the extra clearance that you'll have around the core unit, you should have a number of options to help - be it painting the core itself around the sides to block the light or painting the inside of the fin assembly black, although that's the most tedious of the two methods, for sure.
Side note: it just occurred to me that before almost every photo I took, I changed the paper on account of there being paint on it I didn't want to risk placing the parts on top of, so from picture to picture, it just looks like I didn't make any mess haha.
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