Bandai 1:72 X-wing

[PilotMM]

I finished my Porsche and am waiting to finish my Ford GT and am sitting at home alone bored. I fired up some of the Star Wars movies and thought, what the heck, let's build the X-wing.

I have no clue where I want to start or how I am going to prime this yet so I started with the pilot.
Paint down. Waiting for weathering and decals. by M M

Painting a miniature this small is some work! I have a ton of respect to the aircraft modelers who do this on the regular. I took my time, about 2 hours and then coated it in Future so I could give him a wash.

After the Future was dried I put on the decals and hit him with Tamiya Panel Line black. I thought he came out nice.
Decal and weathered. by M M

I am a little disappointed in the color of his chair. It looks a little too green too me but Mr. Hobby call's it "Field Grey." It's ok because it will offer a little contrast to the cockpit. I am thinking Tamiya Field Blue.

Thanks for stopping by,
-M

[Twokidsnosleep]

You are going to love this kit, it builds up extremely well
Luke looks good so far

[barryf1fan]

More please!! Off to a great start. [Sub'd]

[PilotMM]

More please!! Off to a great start. [Sub'd]

You are going to love this kit, it builds up extremely well
Luke looks good so far

Thanks guys! Today I made great headway. It wasn't without trials and tribulations but I am very happy with the progress.

Because I was unsure where to start I just started with step one, seemed logical. Right away I thought that I should leave the front of the motors off of the S Foils so I could paint the N1 blades; that's what I am calling them... N1 blades. Anyways if you look at this photo maybe you will notice the problem.
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I sent the S Foils to prime and found a great old can of Flat Aircraft Grey. I am going to have to pick up more of it because it's nice. Here is where I discovered my first problem.
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Oh well, I sent the offending piece to paint and started painting the N1 fan blades. It was a difficult job. Once that was finished I decided to mix up a custom color for the starship. Gloss white + light sky + a drop of flat black and a dash of Mr. Hobby Leveling Thinner. I think I had too much thinner because I did not like the way it was brushing on there. It was too light and patchy and I thought I am never going to make this look good.

Digging around my box of spray cans I found a flat white that would probably look good over the grey.
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I masked everything up and away I went. Well, my can of white was dead. Dee Eee Dee dead. Looking around the only thing I have left that was white was some surface primer. And HOLY COW I loved it! I laid it on pretty thin but I figure with the weathering I intend on doing it was a good thing.

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With that done it was time to do a little detail painting. This is my favorite part of any build. I take my time and really think about what I am trying to do.

I will go out and say this now but I think this genre of modeling is my favorite. I can paint it any color I want and if there is a blem, well guess what, this is an old starship! It supposes to have blemishes. Anyways I started on the burner section of the engines. I had seen some great examples of heat bluing at the LHS and asked the guy how he did it. He told me that he uses Tamiya Metalic blues to make it work. Well, I don't have any blue but I do have brown, gold, gun metal, chrome, and aluminum. Here is what I came up with.

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I touched them up a bit more before the end of the night and think they look great. From here I moved on to the engines within the S Foils. I know I want to dirty them up a bit but though they look *Meh* in flat grey. A coat of Gun Metal and I was loving the look!
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Here is a good example of the N1 Fan blades painted up. I just used a little flat white to touch up around the inlet. There will be a soot wash eventually.

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Just for grins, the rear of the burner can. If you notice by my thumb I was adding flat aluminum to different parts of the body. This thing looked like an actuator of some sort and looks good silver.
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Here is where the real fun began. This again is why I like the sci-fi genre. It's not exactly like the movie but who cares! It looks cool. This is the section behind the Astromech that gets covered but I thought it would be a good exercise in detail painting. I coated it with a few coats of Future and then added a little pin wash.
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I will say the photos show more detail then I can pick up with my eye but I didn't spend a lot of time going back over this part since it will be covered. Also I think this photo was before my wash.

Anyways here is the cockpit. This took some time but I love it.
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Before decals

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The yoke and the big red fire button!

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Glareshield before decals and further detail painting


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If you zoom in or go to Flickr you can see the side decals (pilots right in view)

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I am impressed with the Bandai decals. The right side of of the cockpit has decals that fold around. With some Micro Sol they folded fine. I also layered up the Micro Sol to get the raised detail behind to be pronounced a bit with the decals on them. You will never see it but its the thought that counts... right?


With that all finished I put a few coats of Future on the decals an on the areas I might want to try and add a little more Panel Line wash too.

Next up I plan on masking the cockpit and spraying the fuselage grey and white primer. I think all the red parts I will paint by hand red. I am trying to decide if I want to paint them grey, white, then red or just white and a coat of red. I dunno.

Thanks for following along!
-M

[barryf1fan]

This is looking great! I guess I didn't realize how small this thing was till the last set of pics you posted, it is small, huh?
The cockpit looks great, all the details you've added are spot-on. Looking forward to the R2 unit.

[I would need a magnifier for my magnifier to do this kit though. ]

[PilotMM]

Oh boy did time get away from me. I didn't do too much on the model during the day. Some minor detail work and then I took a break from it.
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Getting those tiny chrome lines was very difficult and not as great as I hoped. It's ok though because you can only really see the imperfections in the photos. With my visual acuity, I wasn't able to pick it up.
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After this was all finished it was time for clear coat. I really wanted to load up the clear so I could spend some time weathering and try doing a panel wash. Clear coat took a long time and after the second coat I realized I might be a little low. I ran out to the LHS and picked up an extra can of clear and matte coat. I also picked up an AK wash for whites but didn't like the results too much. I ended up sticking with the Tamiya Panel Line black for most of my weathering.

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You can see that the lower one is weathered. After I was finished weathering I thought "it's still early, I will lay up the decals and then put together R-too" I guess I should have looked at the clock.

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My red that I decided to paint up is a little dark for my taste. *shrugs* live an learn. I just didn't like how "bright" strait Tamiya red is and the plastic looked wrong to me too.


At this point, I looked up at the clock and went "OH CRAP it's after 2300!" I put the model down and will have to finish it tomorrow. I didn't realize how many decals it has.

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Here on the nose, I tried some chrome weathering. I used my silver paint pen and then wiped it down. Once all the decals are set I will be doing some more weathering; the nose in particular needs a little more black.

I also plan on trying to chip the decals a little using my hobby knife, wish me luck with that. The last photo here is where it is finished with the focus on the cockpit instead of the nose cone.

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Thanks for following along!
-M

[Twokidsnosleep]

Doing great
Look at you go!! and modifying/detailing along then way...AWESOME

[PilotMM]

Update time!

First let's start with Rtoo. MY GOD MAN! He is tiny!
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The decals for his head are very small too. In fact, the one that goes over his eye (blue) I totally destroyed before I could get it on right. So a big THANK YOU to Bandai for including a number of duplicate waterslide decals.

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Of course I tried to get to get fancy, this build was going so well. I put about 2 coats too many of Future on his head and noticed it started to grow. No worries I thought, just hit it with some window cleaner and I should be good to go. Wrong... It also stripped the paint. Luckily I was able to save the decals and using a very fine brush repaint him.

Just when I thought I was about finished I realized I still had MORE decals and MORE painting to go. I am actually quite happy they had decals for the red panels because I was not happy with the shade that mine came out. After putting the squad identifier decal on and noticing how different the color was I was ready to go back to the drawing board. In the end I used the decals over my red sections and weathered over them. I also added some chrome chipping in different areas because even though none of the photos I saw online from the movies showed that, I know from my line of work behind paint is metal and you always get chipping in high use areas. Around the engines, certain access panels, and the windscreen always have chipping unless they are show birds. I did put a light wash over the chrome chipping to tone down the brightness. I also used the hobby knife to chip some of the decals. I couldn't bring myself to chip the squad identifier but my reasoning is that if this was "real life" the pilot would probably make sure it looked tip-top most of the time.

I saved the cannons for last and while I was waiting for the paint to dry decided to put together the stand. Looking at old studio photos of the Death Star I noticed there were a number of color variations that are not modeled. Bruce Logan Special Effects Jedi Well I am really getting tired of hand painting and the base seemed like a lot of trouble to go buy a rattle can for, mask off, and lay down details for something I wasn't really thrilled about in the first time. I mean let's be honest, the Proton Torpedoes look like... Uh... Well... Let's say I have two very wonderful kids thanks to my successful "proton torpedoes."

With this in mind on a whim, I thought I would try the panel liner and DANG! I loved it
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So with the base finished I was left with waiting for paint to dry on the cannons. Yeah... I got impatient... I tried to get the decals down when the paint was just barely past tack dry. If you don't know what happens let me tell you, they stick and they are hard to manipulate. If you get them in the right spot on the first try consider yourself lucky. I literally FLOODED the cannon with Micro Set trying to get it to move and it wasn't going to budge. Luckily it wasn't far off. Anyways I finished the model today and am very pleased with how it turned out.

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I really need to lay down some matte coat to seal everything up but I have been enjoying looking at this model too much to put it back in the spray booth. I will get my proper digital camera out tomorrow and shoot some photos as I did with the Porsche.

Everyone told me that Bandai kits are great; they were not wrong. The detail, the ease of the build, the final product is amazing. I will be building more Bandai Star Wars kits in the future. I really wish they had the mold for the ARC-170 so I could do a museum diorama of the evolution of the X-wing, from Arc-170 to T-65 to the T-70. I think it would be fun. I know Revell has a snap model of the ARC but I think it is a smaller scale. If you are curious about building a Bandai kit just do it, you won't be disapointed.

Thanks for following along
-M

[Twokidsnosleep]

Yep that is some nice modelling
I think you need to add the pink ‘torpedoes’ into that reactor vent hole oh so suggestive

[Tourville]

Yep that is some nice probiotics for ibs suggetion and modelling
I think you need to add the pink ‘torpedoes’ into that reactor vent hole oh so suggestive

Just wow! Me wants! Kidding aside, it's impressive. I can almost hear the laser pew pew sounds. haha

[PilotMM]

Right well as the spam is being cleaned up here are a few photos from my digital camera. I didn't have a creative background to shoot it on but I will think of something. And Twokids I included the umm... "proton torpedoes" just for you buddy... LOL

_DSF5198 by M M

_DSF5212 by M M
You can just make out the extra detail I put on the engines. Chrome.

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It's almost like he is looking at us.

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This turned out cool and wasn't intentional. I just put on a very light coat of gunmetal and when I clear coated it, it turned out like this with the raised parts lighter than the recessed.

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I like this view the best. The bands around the engine look a little purple but that's because I pushed the exposure a bit to emphasize the contrast. I really should tone just those parts down but ehh... I am lazy.

Time to build something else!
-M

[Kevthemodeller]

Very nice

[JoaquinGM]

Great build!

[Twokidsnosleep]

Pew pew…yeeehawww!

[RangerNeil]

That looks amazing!! Congratulations

For your next challenge - the AMT 1/32 Tie Fighter?