The Unofficial Airfix Modellers' Forum

This has been impatiently hanging around my shed since I bought it waiting to get build. It's meant to be one of those this quick and easy, get a completion under your belt type jobs.



Two main sprues shiny hard white for the body armour and standard black plastic for in the armature and undersuit. The black sprue includes a small insert for a couple of white parts and the green tinted helmet lenses. A vinyl sprue for polycaps and a generic third sprue, for the standard figure base. Decals as both stickers and waterslide, the stickers lack carrier film which make them better with the decals need to be inserted into a cut-out, they also have a better metallic finish.



This is not going to be massively detailed build as there are dozens of others already out there on the interweb. I'll just make note of were I erred and veered from the instructions. It'll be OOB and parade ground clean.

Don't even think of painting the white it is spot on for the final finish.

I found that the white plastic is hard and quite brittle when cut with snips. After leaving some little dints on the back of the helmet took to using a PE saw to remove tabs that would be visible later. Fine sandpaper and nail buff will bring remove the plastic and restore the shine.

Nose grill and chin do-da's were painted silver. I tried the decals on the inserts in the top of helmet as they had some grill detail but the colour was poor and I overpainted them. The nubbins on the side of the head were similarly painted.

Buttons on the abdomen were painted silver and metallic blue.

This will be fun to watch I have heard they make up into nice figures.

Cheers Alan, here's part 2 or should that be "Episode II".

Reviews of modern Bandai kits would have you believe that every attachment point is hidden behind another piece or on an inner surface. This is not strictly true with this figure at least. Most of the attachment points for the body armour are on the edges of the outer surface, albeit small they need careful removing and cleaning up. There are only two parts where the attachments are on an inner edge, Trumpeter style, these being the shoulder guards. It appears that Bandai has chosen fit over finish.



However I think some people who criticize kits (though not in often in this case) don't think about the philosophy behind the engineering. These kits are evidently designed to be put together by SW fans who may be not frequent model builders, so the parts will fit well with minimal clean up and will look good without painting. Regular modellers should have the skills to get the best finish out of the kit.

Today I've complete a leg and wing arm. I've gone out so sequence as I fancied doing an arm rather than the other leg ( and it makes a more interesting post ).

The knee pouches(?) are deep enough than it needed to sit in each half of the mould and hence had an ugly seam running around the mid line. This required some time to clean up satisfactorily.

There is also a seam line along the raised strip to the front and rear of each leg and arm armoured section. These were scraped smooth and polished back to a gloss finish.



The arms are trouble free. I've not added the shield to the back of the hand yet as the multiple hand options will get painted a very dark matt grey for contrast.

I wonder if my wife would spot one of these if I did one and hid it in her 1/12 scale dolls house?

There's only one way to find out!

splash wrote:I wonder if my wife would spot one of these if I did one and hid it in her 1/12 scale dolls house?

These are not the dolls you're looking for!.

Nice work so far James; I love the quality of the engineering in these Bandai Star Wars kits

Cheers, I'm resisting putting all the sub assemblies together until I've finished them all. I've got the weapons together, superb detail, ready for painting.

Here's the result of painting the hands. This was primarily to get some different texture from the black plastic. The kit built for the instructions I noticed and also painted hands. The kits supplied 3 left and 2 right hands for various poses, one of each come in two parts to close around a gun grip. All were sprayed very dark matt grey, This looked rather flat but I decided to simple buff them with a piece of cloth, this imparted a satisfactory sheen on the raised areas a looks pretty good.



I've also almost finish the left appendages, which just leaves belt and weapons.

With the help of my daughter I've finished the arms a legs and have put together the utility belt. No issues here other than be aware that there are two optional part for the front left and right halves so as to accommodate the holster on the left or right sides. I appeared to be made mine a lefty.



I have also finished the detailing of the armour. In the end I used the stickers for the silver helmet inserts as this had some vent detail that couldn't be replaced by painting. I looked the decals for the cheek grills but these looks terrible in place and I elected to paint the fine depressions with a thin mix of silver and dark blue acrylic paint. Once dry tidying up was simply achieved by rub the area with a piece of tissue.



The only other markings I used from the sheets were the silver stickers for the canister at his lower back as this looked trickier to paint sharply. The decals and stickers for the tiny buttons on the abdomen are pointless, though are there so people don't have to paint I am sure they would cause disproportionate amount of frustration. I've highlighted those I used.



I wasn't going to weather but a small number of sharp details cried out for a pin wash. Small amounts of a black/brown wash were applied and the excess removed with tissue. I also found that Medea Airbrush cleaner makes a excellent flow enhancer for acrylic paint by breaking the surface tension, even over bare plastic.



All I need to do now is get this guys some guns!

It's taken a couple a sessions longer than it should have to have painted the weapons. Looking at photo's they all appear to have a dull satin gun metal finish. I added some silver to Hu Satin Black which when sprayed had a really rough matt finished. I gave then a heavy wash of gloss black to smooth things out then use a graphite pencil the highlight the details. Finally a soft flat coat using Xtracrylic's Flat varnish sealed the graphite and achieved the correct look. I should have just applied graphite over Satin Black and the job would have been done! The only variation was to leave the stock on the big gun unpainted apart from the varnish which contrast slightly with the gun's body. The blaster's shell ejector was also paint metal, this being the only detail painting.



All done now just awaiting some studio shots.

That's very neatly done James, the various finishes look just right. Is he fully poseable when finished?

Migrant wrote:That's very neatly done James, the various finishes look just right. Is he fully poseable when finished?

Thanks Mike, yes he is. The shoulder rotate forwards and backwards as well as around. Elbows and knees are double hinged to achieve greater articulation. I'll do some different poses when I take the final shots.

Too try something different, I've added a video of the finished build too.

He looks great! I like that he can be posed in so many ways, all of which look extremely lifelike.