Whats Lying on your Workbench MK IV

[arbit]

And so I have a beautiful pastel falcon. These decals suck. I might try some oil weathering on them to darken the tones.

Edited September 19, 2018 by arbit

[joscasle]

48 minutes ago, arbit said:

And so I have a beautiful pastel falcon. These decals suck. I might try some oil weathering on them to darken the tones.

mmm... and if  you try to paint the panels over the decals? I don't like Bandai decals at all. I painted all the panels of my 1/144 MF

[derex3592]

Same here on my FineMolds 1:144.   Bandai's decals for color areas just don't work very well in my experience. Better to mask and paint. Lot more trouble, but better result in the end. 

 

It looks like you got them to conform pretty darn well to all the surface details though! Maybe darkening up the whole thing a bit with light coats of Tamiya Smoke would do something?  Careful though, I almost went overboard with that stuff once...LOL. And then add some dirty grimey looking weathering around it?  I mean it is supposed to be a very old beat up ship! 

 

Edited September 19, 2018 by derex3592

[arbit]

20 hours ago, derex3592 said:

Same here on my FineMolds 1:144.   Bandai's decals for color areas just don't work very well in my experience. Better to mask and paint. Lot more trouble, but better result in the end. 

 

It looks like you got them to conform pretty darn well to all the surface details though! Maybe darkening up the whole thing a bit with light coats of Tamiya Smoke would do something?  Careful though, I almost went overboard with that stuff once...LOL. And then add some dirty grimey looking weathering around it?  I mean it is supposed to be a very old beat up ship! 

 

The quality of the decals is good, a bit of softner and they go down well on the panel details. It is the colors that suck. Bandai was realy perfectionist on this 1/144, so I don't understand why they screwed up the decal colors. The sticker decals were the correct colors, but those would not conform well to the panel details.

It does need weathering, so I am planning it out with oil paints and brush.  I don't want to make a mess of it.  I need to mix oil streaks to match my coat.

22 hours ago, joscasle said:

mmm... and if  you try to paint the panels over the decals? I don't like Bandai decals at all. I painted all the panels of my 1/144 MF

I might end up painting them, but again mixing my own colors to mesh with my base coat requires a lot of artistic skill I don't have. That's what DECALS ARE FOR BANDAI!!!!!

On 9/17/2018 at 1:45 AM, electric indigo said:

I wouldn't say the decals need to be darkened. If anything, I'd give them even more light grey overspray to bring down the saturation a bit.

Are the tiny black stencils the are on the filming model part of the decal sheet? If not, you can make a simple stamp with a strip of cardboard and have a go at those plain armor panels.

Which black stensils? You mean the little decals for warning signs and such? Yes I still have those, planning to add them later.  But I forgot about them.

Any advice now after I have completed the overspray to get the right tones for the decals?

Here's a sneak peak of what I'm up to next

 

Edited September 20, 2018 by arbit

[F18LEGIOSS]

Working on my f18 hornet ( 1/32 ) : I've added a metal rod and some optic fibers to the landing gear

[electric indigo]

On 19. September 2018 at 6:59 PM, arbit said:

Any advice now after I have completed the overspray to get the right tones for the decals?

Go at them with oil and charcoal and judge again when you have completed the weathering on the whole kit.

_

I love this little guy. AGE had some great designs.

I also got this off my late-90s backlog (spoilered for resin semi-nudity)[

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 21, 2018 by electric indigo

[derex3592]

2 weekends on the Tie.. Almost finished. Went the extra mile on this one and did pretty good weathering, panel lines and all the insanely tiny marking decals. 

[derex3592]

I've gotta rework the display stand later this week, it didn't come out well, model is complete though, painted with Tamiya TS spray cans Haze Grey and Flat Black for the solar panels.  Tamiya TS Gloss coat, then Tamiya panel line wash, some Flory's Dark Dirt, then gone over again with very light coats of Model Master Light Grey out of the airbrush to kind of blend everything together.  Gloss coat with Tamiya TS Gloss for decals and then sealed with Tamiya TS Flat Coat.  Next up -- Luke's X-Wing! 

Edited September 24, 2018 by derex3592

[Grayson72]

Taking a breather from the stagecoach build to do something a bit more relaxing. 

The giant Sulaco 1/430 scale in paper. 

[Thom]

 

4 hours ago, Grayson72 said:

Taking a breather from the stagecoach build to do something a bit more relaxing. 

The giant Sulaco 1/430 scale in paper. 

I see you chose the one from Aliens 3, 'the movie that never happened...' Had thoughts of doing that. Good luck and show plenty of pics!

As for me, no longer on the bench and no longer under it either, it the UNCF Murasame 707. She was started as the Yunagi, but my color blue of choice was too light to match the box art, so decals from the Kirishima boxing were used to name her after a heavy cruiser lost during the First Battle of Pluto.

Edited September 24, 2018 by Thom

[arbit]

I think we will call it Night Version! Better than Pastel MLP Version anyway...  On to the oils finally.

Derex, I have a new found respect for Star Wars models. Getting the movie accurate shades right and painting among all those greeblies is a lot more challenging than it looks.

Grayson72,  you've gone from metal to paper. I look forward to updates on both.

Thom, nice to see you're Yamato fleet is growing. The more Yamato the better!

Notice how the Bandia version is more saucerish. Look how much more humped the rear and sides are! Despite the great accurate details, I finally figured out why it just doesnt look like a Falcon to me. Needs to be flatter.

Edited September 24, 2018 by arbit

[joscasle]

5 hours ago, arbit said:

 

Notice how the Bandia version is more saucerish. Look how much more humped the rear and sides are! Despite the great accurate details, I finally figured out why it just doesnt look like a Falcon to me. Needs to be flatter.

The Bandai version is totally accurate for the EP7 and EP8 Millennium Falcon. ILM used the original A New Hope schematics for the "digital" falcon for the sequels. The 5 foot ANH version  is more saucerish as you said. The 32 inches MF created for the ESB is flatter.  They only use that flatter version to film the asteroid sequence, so the original MF is the ANH version, the same version ILM used for the EP7 and EP8.  Bandai is accurate!!!

[arbit]

Thanks. Interesting.

But what about eps 4-6? Saucerish or flat?

I'm old school.

Edited September 25, 2018 by arbit

[joscasle]

5 hours ago, arbit said:

Thanks. Interesting.

But what about eps 4-6? Saucerish or flat?

I'm old school.

Ep4, Ep5 and EP6 all use the Saucerish Falcon (5 foot). The 32 inches falcon (flat one) only was use for the asteroid sequence in EP5 and the reshoots of the falcon in A New Hope Special Edition. 

These is the original Millennium Falcon  used for Ep4 and mos of the screen time for Ep5 and 6:

 

 

 

Edited September 25, 2018 by joscasle

[Urashiman]

Yeah - that is the problem with most Star Wars models. There is alot of tech trivia on sizes and shapes due to inconsistency in the models that where created by the special effects guys..

Try searching for a scale Tie-Fighter. It is impossible due to sizes variing from 6 meters to 10 meters and stuff like this... The modelbuilders used 1/24 scale puppets in the tie-fighters in episode 4, but in the movies the tie-fighters compare to the x-wings to be huge, so (especially in the HD versions of Star Wars) tie-fighters are visibily piloted by giants (Macross Style - yeah )

The bulkier Falcon is concidered canon by most fans. Many prefer the slim version as it looks really neat and agile.

[electric indigo]

Painting the Draken: After a first layer of custom mixed olive green, I follow with a thinned down mix with gloss white added. This provides nice weathering effects and specular highlights. With the application, I make up some pattern of the presumed internal structure of the airframe.

 

 

The last shot is with the second camo color

[Chronocidal]

On ‎9‎/‎25‎/‎2018 at 10:30 AM, Urashiman said:

Yeah - that is the problem with most Star Wars models. There is alot of tech trivia on sizes and shapes due to inconsistency in the models that where created by the special effects guys..

The really annoying part is that the studio models are not even consistent with how big the ships are portrayed in the movies, and all the popular technical specs given by the EU don't even reference either of those sources!

Sadly, Bandai's fallen prey to that issue in a big way as well, because despite their non-sensicality, they're adhering to the old published sizes for the ships.  That's why we now have 1/72 X-Wings and Y-Wings, 1/48 A-Wings, and 1/100 B-Wings all labeled as 1/72.  The only reason the X and Y-wings are consistent is because they have the externally visible R2 units to scale them by.  And, unlike the A and B-wings, they existed as life-sized props for filming.  ROTJ only used matte paintings of the other two.

You can absolutely reverse engineer the scales of the filming models based on the components used to build them, but even that gives some wacky scaling for the A-wing, because they used a severely oversized pilot figure for that model.  

Otherwise though, beautiful work all around!  I've got a nice little fleet of Bandai kits ready to begin now, so I hope to start painting and detailing them soon.

 

Edited September 26, 2018 by Chronocidal

[GMK]

Made some progress on my Tamiya 1/16 Abrams that I’m building as an Australian vehicle. Used a custom masking service to get vinyl masks made. Results so far have been promising. 

Still some cleaning up to do. 

[Grayson72]

That looks awesome! I have a cutter machine that does stencils really well. 

[Kelsain]

18 hours ago, GMK said:

Made some progress on my Tamiya 1/16 Abrams that I’m building as an Australian vehicle. Used a custom masking service to get vinyl masks made. Results so far have been promising. 

 

Do you keep your house key in there?

[arbit]

Getting dirty! Now it feels like a Falcon.

[Urashiman]

9 hours ago, arbit said:

Getting dirty! Now it feels like a Falcon.

Nice washing and weathering!

[Thom]

That MilF is looking good.

[Urashiman]

12 hours ago, Thom said:

That MilF is looking good.

MilF - LOL! Thats a good one

[MechTech]

Looking good guys! I've been so busy building, I haven't been posting pictures or getting on my PC much at home. On the computer all day drawing at work, don't wanna come home and get back on the PC. - MT

[arbit]

Soot and rust is on. I think painting is done. This is the dirtiest thing I've ever painted. I don't do much weathering because I prefer a toy look. But with the Falcon it's really a requirement.

And it's with my daughter's $2 oil set.

 

Edited October 4, 2018 by arbit

[derex3592]

Looks great to me!!! 

[slide]

9 hours ago, arbit said:

"What a piece of JUNK!"

 

She looks Wonderful @arbit!

[Thom]

I like it. Thank your daughter for the 'dirt.'

[arbit]

Thanks guys. The difficulty with the Falcon is that it is so iconic. With other models like a VF-1 or a Gundam or a fighter jet, you can make any scheme you like... You could make it hot pink if you want,  and it will still be cool.  But the Falcon has to look like the Falcon, and that's tough to pull off.

[joscasle]

On 10/4/2018 at 12:30 AM, arbit said:

Soot and rust is on. I think painting is done. This is the dirtiest thing I've ever painted. I don't do much weathering because I prefer a toy look. But with the Falcon it's really a requirement.

And it's with my daughter's $2 oil set.

 

Looks really nice!!! Great work

[arbit]

Wrapping up the electronics now. This is my first Bluetooth controlled project (with the HC-06 board), so it took some time to learn. It was pretty easy actually. Otherwise its the same setup I always use with the Mini Arduino, LiPo, SD Card, amplifier, and speaker for the sound effects.

It has 25x RBG Neopixels and 3x normal leds (for the lasers and pulsar cannons). They are all separately controlled by Bluetooth, with the Ardudroid app, for the landing gears, stairs, cockpit, gun pit, engine, and 14 spotlights with fiber optics. 

It's my first completely wireless project that doesn't need a base, because all the electronics fit in the body. Although at this scale it was a tight fit, especially the fiber,  It has an external power switch under the engine, and removable side access for charging and programming.

Now I'm trying to figure out how to shoot this little guy. I'm hoping to do a Picture in Picture video to show the Bluetooth control in action. 

Edited October 10, 2018 by arbit

[mickyg]

That looks incredible!  Love seeing these projects of yours come to life.

[arbit]

10 minutes ago, mickyg said:

That looks incredible!  Love seeing these projects of yours come to life.

Thanks mickyg. This is rushed, but I couldn't resist 

 

[arbit]

Exactly 250 grams. But I dont trust this levitating display. It comes crashing down with a bang from imbalance. Anyone experienced one that doesn't do that?

I made this for my kids because this is exactly what I would have wanted. My 7-yr old gave it a 10/10. But my 13-yr old only gave it a 9... Tough customer... Too preoccupied with Fortnite. I'm beginning to really hate that game...

Edited October 10, 2018 by arbit