Fine Molds 1/72 TIE Interceptor x2, TIE Fighter x2, Darth Vader's TIE Fighter x1

SeismicA

New Member
My stash needs more room, so time to build some of it on the side of my larger slowmoving projects! I'm going to do Vader and the two TIEs formation flying in the trench, though the trench itself will be a later addition. The two Interceptors will be flying together and will be a separate display with nothing special added.

Started yesterday evening, batching the build steps 5 at a time with some special extra steps for Vader's TIE which is a completely separate tooling from the others that only differ in solar panel shape.
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I thought I'd experiment with a pre-shading wash for the cockpits. Black Tamiya "Panel Line Accent Color", an enamel wash.
Application:
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Cleanup, just a cotton bud with very very little white spirit on it:
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Spray of Vallejo RAF Barley Grey
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I think it turned out pretty satisfactory but in the end I went over it with a bit more wash since I wanted very high contrast if the detail is to show at all through the small windows. Which I forgot to photograph in my hurry :facepalm I think the wash pre-shade would be a very good choice for 70s jets in bright highvis schemes.

Vallejo Panzer Grey basecoat for the little dudes. I brushed on black for the helmets, cloak and details afterwards, decaled them up and did a gloss coat over the black parts. Forgot to photograph that too of course!
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Cockpit sidewall decaling went on without a hitch, here they're drying under an application of decal fix.
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This morning I put it all together and am preparing to close the cockpit balls. While very fiddly, the insignia decals really did put that little bit of detail needed on the pilots, I was afraid they'd just be completely black shapes.
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Closed up the balls...
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This is where the build pulled the handbrake hard! The masks supplied have to be cut out by hand. I found the ones for the main window have to be cut with a wee bit of extra white around the black shapes or they end up too small. The ones on the hatch windows however, match perfectly when you trace the shape closely. Fine Molds supplies two of each mask so between these 5 TIEs I had masks for 10 total. In the end I botched about one TIE's worth of masks when cutting so it was good they included so many (or at all really, manually cutting masks from tape on these would've been hell).

The masks themselves are decidedly low tack and have problems staying down on the curved shapes properly, most notably on the hatches. I'll have to press down on them an extra time just before I paint. I imagine they'll stay put once the first basecoat is on though.
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Friend asked for size comparison so here it is next to a Fine Molds 1/48 TIE ball and a soda can.
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They seem to be pre-cut copies of the FM masks going by the layout. I assume scanned and then cut. Do they have the same dimensional problems then? I'm so lazy that I'd probably have gotten them had I known about them :lol
 
Careful with those masks, mine leaked underneath and left a tacky mess. Long story short, I cut out the "glass" and had just frames like in the studio models.
You could try spraying/painting clear (Future, etc) first to try to seal them before the colour coats.
 
That is sort of my idea I had in my post but instead of using a clear coat to do it, I just go balls to the wall and use the primer for hopefully the same effect! :lol If I do press them down firmly with cloth they will stay down for a short enough while to properly fix them with the spray I think. That tacky mess you mention, I did notice them leaving behind glue on the surface but that should be a minor problem to clean up if everything else goes sort of like planned. I'm currently fiddling with the mounts and the base before I spray, will get back with pictures later.
 
The masks in the link are laid out following the FM layout for ease of reference, but they were designed completely from scratch. The fit is exact. There was no scanning of the originals involved - I ought to know, I'm the one who designed them.
 
I'll have to get some of those if it goes ****-up when I'm painting the TIE Interceptors!

I've been partly lazy and partly busy with family and stuff, but here goes:

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Doing the panels separately so I get "automasking" of the solar panels, lazy as I am.

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My initial plan was to do the second Deathstar surface but upon looking at references I saw how really tedious it'd be to replicate that so I instead went with something of my own design, some kind of refinery or whatever.
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Mainly styrenesheets and remnants from a Tamiya 1/35 King Tiger that never got finished years and years ago. In addition, a resin replacement for the Tamiya 1/35 Jagdtiger gun mantlet that never got used because it was not really an upgrade of any kind, just the same. Then some Eduard photoetch for the 1/48 Revell He 111 and leftover pieces for the 1/32 Tamiya Mustang that never got used.

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What's left now is cleanup of blemishes exposed by the basecoat and then dusting with white over this. And then actually finishing the TIE Interceptors ofc when I'm less dizzy from sniffing glue :popcorn
 
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White dusting n' stuff
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TIE Interceptor goes Panzer Grey primer
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TIE Interceptor goes all salty
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And this is where I forgot to photograph. In the end I painted over the chipping too many times and it's a bit too faint, I hope to bring it back a tad with later washes as it's actual height difference where the chipping is. I got inspired by the build by Diego Quijano: http://dqscaleworks.blogspot.se/2010/11/tie-fighter-work-fine-molds-172.html

I'm no fan of the glass solar panels, and am not taking it as far in the bright gray direction as he did, but I am copying his beautiful color scheme in terms of the dark gray as it really makes it look agressive!
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A bit of cleanup of my brushwork and then washes and filters n' stuff to go, the masks came off fine and had protected the clear parts perfectly, much to my surprise, not even a smidge of dusting on it.:love

Once I get around to my studio scale Interceptor lurking in it's box I'll make it screen accurate though. Probably. :popcorn
 
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