A madman's support structure subproject

As the model itself was finished per se, I was bothered by the fact that it didn't have a place to stand. The planes have their landing gear, tanks their tracks, but having a TIE on its wings just didn't sound right. Therefore...

To the bitsbox!

I rummaged around my thousand-box and dry-fitted the TIE on various pieces. Then a Panzer's track sprue caught my eye. Its central ring-shape that actually fit under the pod like a chainsaw in my enemy's soft belly. I cut one off and kept fiddling with it.

Rather unsurprisingly a track shoe from the same sprue fit nicely into the injector residue part sticking out from the thin donut. Then I tried to sandwich that between two track shoes to make a "leg" of sorts. It felt like it could work. To play the part of the base I had found a part from the battery-operated Panther but attaching the track shoes straight on didn't quite look sturdy enough. So I cut off another donut-shaped ring from another sprue and decided to proceed with them.

Before I glued anything on anything, I cut off all but two of the guiding fins from the track shoes. Those or via them I could add some random greebles. This wasn't going to be anything like the Fine Model kits but something that'd be better than nothing at all. [155]

Greebles

All that was left was to fill the thing up with random pieces. I had picked up some parts that looked like they'd work well for the theme and a roll of flower-binding wire for cables.

The jack's bottom plate would be a handy screen

I drilled holes into two parts (half an idler wheel and a random Panzer part) for the cables. Through those I inserted half a dozen pieces of wire each and superglued them in place. As a random spur of the moment decision I decreed that instead of individual power wires they'd be two major cable bunches. Things could've been fine the other way, but right now I was aiming for some sort of a docking station or something to that effect.

The hem

At this point I had to fill the bothersome openings on the plate, so I cut two pieces of polystyrene that fit decently. Below them I had glued on two strips for support (see third pic below) so that they'd rest on those and had more contact to the whole setup than just along the thin, irregularly shaped, edges.
I also cut four rectangular pieces to make a hem for the base. This way it'd look sturdier and have a proper shape to it. Of course it wasn't a perfect fit but that'd be fixed a tiny bit later.

All the insane gaps and dents I filled with Tamiya's putty that started drying in the final stages. Not that it was a problem, as I was going to sand the roughnesses away in any case.

Finishing touches

I added some more greebles to fill up the freshly filled holes and the newly liberated surface area. On the other "leg" of the support structure I attached some of the tool holding "hooks" and periscope shields from the Panzer kits. And on the other one I added in a moment of madness a part of the Panther's suspension, playing the part of a hydraulic piston-thing. Will this end up looking anything decent? We'll see when it's all painted up. [190]

The most comical part of all this is that this has taken an insane amount of time. Especially if you compared it to the time spent on the Interceptor. And I hadn't even planned on doing anything like this!

Painting

At this point I took a shortcut by skipping a 24h of waiting by first priming  (VSP 73601 Grey Primer) and pretty quickly after that I airbrushed the whole setup grey (VMA 71120 USAF Medium Grey). That shade just happened to be the exact same that I had used on the Interceptor, so the weathering was expected to bring a noticeable difference. [200]

Because time has been in short supply lately, mildly put, I got to finish this piece nearly two weeks after I had painted it. I applied the wash (the same VMW I used on the Interceptor itself) pretty heavily. After letting it dry I matt-varnished the stand and decided that it was done. [203]

I had been thinking of detailing for a long time and I had thought of doing some lamp-like effects and turning some things into screens and so on. Finally I reached a conclusion: they'd only served to steer the attention away from the model itself and that wasn't the point of the stand. Sometimes you just have to know when to quit ;)

Elite markings and the final assembly

Bloodstriping

I thought I'd do the red stripes low-tech, as in cutting a few stripes of masking tape and set them up nicely. There were no clear uniform ways to do this so I did what looked good to me.

Because I've never (because of my own stupidity, methinks) bought the VMA red, I used what I had: the basic red (VMC 70926 Red).  Of course I could've thinned it down enough to get it through my airbrush, but I just didn't feel like it. Instead I dabbed the parts with a sponge quite roughly with the full knowledge that I'd have to fix something later on. [115]

While I was cleaning up my own mess I remembered my previous mumblings regarding the main viewport. I decided that these frames should be the same colour with the rest of the pod, so I carefully painted them with the same paint (VMA 71120 USAF Medium Grey). It ended up looking good to me. [118]

Setting up the package

To finish that session up I glued the wings on at long last and while I was at it I also tore off the last strips of the masking tape from the ingress/egress hatch. None of them had leaked so that half-worry was proved pointless. [120]

The space weather

Because my collection of washes contained the grey one (VMW 76516 Grey), I used it on all the grey parts. Most of my attention was concentrated on the pod and the center parts of the wings, as they had the most visible greebles. [130]

I thought it looked a bit different from the previous step's model. If nothing else, the panel lines and such were darker than before. At least I felt the whole model had some more depth in it, but I could be slightly partial and saw what I wanted to.

Then I drybrushed (VMA 71121 USAF Light Grey) the Interceptor quickly and somewhat roughly. Again I concentrated mostly on the pod's highlights and the edges of the wings. I guess you could see something even in these photos, seen live the effect was noticeable. The main thing was that it didn't jump out annoyingly. [140]

Solar collector panels

The original factory-painted solar panels were matt black. To  me they didn't look right that way, so I finished mine up with a layer of Vallejo's gloss varnish. I was slightly concerned about the results, thanks to the odd look one of the previous project's steps, where the plane looked wet. My fear was unfounded, as these ones looked just the way they should be, seen live and after they had got cured. [145]

The coin is there to provide some recognizable scale

Rapid painting

Greyness

Again I spent a few moments pondering on which of the different greys I would be using this time. I believe that any of them would've worked, but I was a bit boring and airbrushed the pod and the outer wing surfaces with USAF Medium Grey (VMA 71120). Maybe I'd drybrush them  with a bit lighter grey before washing anything, but that'd be decided on later.

At this point the model looked like someone's half-excited reversely preshaded panel-work. The next afternoon I painted the other halves and left them drying for a good while until I could sit down and work on the masking. At this point you could already tell that no, you couldn't really see into the cockpit.

Half an hour later

One Wednesday I finally sat down with a roll of Tamiya masking tape. In advance I had thought that "this'll be done in the blink of an eye" and as usual, I had been wrong. What slowed me down then? Well, the areas to be protected were considerably narrower than the tape so I had to to quite a bit of slicing and fitting. [105]

I was pretty confident in that I had been careful (and paranoid) enough and that nothing would leak through. Even though it was getting a bit late after all this work on the masks, I estimated that the painting itself would only take a few minutes. Why postpone something that quick to the next day?

Airbrushing the solar collector panels black (VMA 71057) took three minutes, tops [108]. But as everyone knows, waiting sucks...

Early next morning

Like a kid celebrating a birthday, I tore off the taping before leaving to work the next morning, because I just had to see how I had succeeded. To me it looked pretty great.

Wonderful, wonderful! Next I'd get on to the bloodstripes that are the main decoration of this model. After that I think I should finally paint the main viewport's frame and then apply a wash over everything grey. Then to top that I'd drybrush the greyness and finish up with the varnishing and we'd be finished.

Constructing the egg shell

The workspace

Now that I had finished with the Pilot, I assembled the cockpit. The silly fork-control pad setup went in to the seat and the seat on the floor piece. Before I did anything more dramatic than this I went through the remaining pieces and painted some random components red (VMC 70926 Red) both on the walls and the control panel pane.

The front pane wasn't anything special. All in all setting this up was a bit bothersome, thanks to the immensely wobbly side pieces, which were swinging like drunkards on a Friday night's disco. Only attaching them both to the front and rear units got them settled.

Lastly I glued this setup on the lower hull part. I did try before the gluing, if the front viewport was insertable even with the cockpit unit installed. I just wanted to leave it off to make masking that much easier.

Hadn't I been building this OOP, I'd built some sort of a controller for the Pilot to hold on to. Right now the figure's pose looked ridiculous, at least before I sealed him/her inside, and you could see the silliness easily.

[60]

Transparisteel viewports

On first glance the masking looked like it went just wonderfully. But then I found out that the main viewport's outer ring's panes didn't want to obey me and the masking attempt failed on them.

At least the ingress/egress hatch worked acceptably, so this wasn't that much of a disaster. If someone's now wondering why didn't I apply the famous bits and pieces approach on the main viewport, my reply is: that never works for me at all.

Sealing it

As always with the transparent pieces I whiteglued the main viewport on the lower hull and then glued the upper hull half on its place. When that gluing had had some time to cure I whiteglued the top hatch on, even though it too was supposed to stay well put with the flimsy hooks. For some reason I didn't trust those bits for anything.

I had decided that I'd paint the main window's frames by hand when everything else was done. That wasn't going to be a mentionable problem and the result would be less risky than the time consuming "kazillion flecks of tape"-mask.

Ultimately I finished up the wings, known as gluing the last three tiny bits on. I didn't attach them to the hull because I felt this'd make painting quite a lot easier and that it would guarantee a better-looking result. [75]

My educated guess regarding the continuation was that the main paintjob would be done over three sessions. First one half of the wings and most of the hull. In the second session I'd do the second halves and the remaining hull part(s). And in the third I'd do the solar collector panels all in one go and then I'd glue the wings on the hull. That way I'd get the model to stand on its already dry edges while the black areas were drying.

Everything else, like the bloodstripes and touching up would be done later. I guess I'll use a few sessions with them, the clear/dullcoats and whatnot. All this would maybe consume little real time, but easily a full work-week on the calendar.