Re-do everything

First of all I cut the extra sprue remains off the wings and then I reprimed the whole set (not the window parts). The wings had to be primed over two sessions, because of the drying issue.

[15]

My work order in theory

I decided that I'd work thusly: first I'd paint the cockpit completely, assuming a couple of sessions. One thing that I was really interested in was to see if I could replicate the TIE Fighter's (one of the best games ever made by LucasArts) cockpit view, I'd be a *happy* *camper*. Potentially customizing the Pilot figure was included in this step.

After the inner painting got done I'd build the model completely. Then I could easily find out any gaps and physical issues and get them fixed before doing the real painting. At that point I'd mask the transparent parts for the painting.

After that I'd prime any newly opened bare-plastic areas, if any. Then I'd paint the whole frame with some sort of darkish grey, trying to steer clear of the solar collector panels. The panels would then be carefully masked and simply painted flat black. As a nice detail I'd then add red stripes on the outside upper and lower inward-bent parts of the wings.

Because I've now started fooling around with the laquers, as a new convert (not really), I guess I'd apply a clearcoat on the panels and a dullcoat on everything else. Nothing more would be needed, as there were no decals or anything else.

That's what I've been planning on doing. For a refreshing change I'm pretty confident in my ideas being good ones.

And in practice

As planned, I started by airbrushing all the cockpit's parts with grey black (VMA 71056). The result looked as if I had actually done nothing since I opened the package. But who cares?

[20]

The next afternoon/evening I drybrushed these pieces with a semi-obscure grey (VGC 72050 Cold Grey), not too carefully. My aim was to bring up the surfaces, but trying not to overdo it. I concentrated on the parts that one could actually see when the model was finished.

Finally I drybrushed all of them with a noticeably lighter touch, using a lighter grey (VGC 72049 Stonewall Grey). I was only working on to save my own sanity, but maybe you could see something through the windows, maybe.

[30]

There was no way to get this one movie accurate - not with my customizing skills at least. The MFD or radar displays I talked about earlier were looking like a very unlikely prospect, the cockpit was so very ascetic. For some reason no one has ever used the Star Wars games as a source for these...