Bandai Snowspeeder

[Hockeyboy76]

This is fantastic. Thanks for sharing your knowledge & skills Andy.

[Pete in Lincs]

Damn! (Meant as a compliment, BTW)

I've had success in the past just using a hard lead pencil

and various shaped stencils for metal panels and drains

on baseboards. It would add that 'hard' element you want.

[Andy Moore]

Exactly what I was thinking Pete. I've added some pencil outlines to some of the panels and done some basic weathering with the airbrush and an oil wash. When it's all dry it'll have a matt coat, then I'll paint the frame and add the rest of the details

And I've finally managed to get some paint on the speeder. It's only the back panel, but at least it's a start. I had to paint this first to avoid having to mask the rest of the fuselage if it was already attached. The detail on this is beautifully done which is a shame as it's then all covered by the big fins at the back. It had a base coat of dark grey followed by a light dry brush of dark silver then an overall coat of Citadel Agrax Earthshade to give it a bit of richness. The grill's yet to have the Agrax wash which is why it's got a slightly different tone in the photo. Before it's attached to the fuselage it'll get some more discolouration with pigments

Andy

[Hunter Rose]

That base is stunning! The tiled effect is really great, and weathering is all top notch

[ScanmanDan]

So cool looking Andy. I hope you are having fun because I sure am watching your progress.

I had to laugh as this morning I got up and saw your progress and thought, "Hmmmm, when you get home tonight you might suggest Andy add some white stripes to the base. Cause, there is a bit of a dead zone down front…" I'm just going to shut the #$%^ up and sit here drooling in the corner :D

Keep up the great work you are an inspiration!

Dan

[Nigel Heath]

That base is looking absolutely stunning.

[Madhatter]

you know, with your painting skills, you should make a "How To" video series so beginners like me can really learn how you achieve the finishes you do. It's one thing to look at stills, but it misses so much like how and where you apply your different colours and washes etc. I get the general gist of what you do though.

You are undoubtedly one of the best painters I have seen and your work on this should be enough to get you into ILM

I saw about 9 of these snow speeders in my LHS today and yours almost tipped me into buying one, but I refrained because my wallet has already taken a severe beating this year.

Looking forward to your next installment

MH

[Andy Moore]

Thanks for the kind words everyone. I'm not really set up for doing videos and to be honest, when I'm painting, 90% of the time I've got no real idea what I'm going to do. I just mix the paint and go in what ever direction inspiration takes me. Sometimes it works, sometimes not but I'll try to give a better break down of the painting steps in the text and photos.

The seatbelts finally turned up in the post today

I'd ordered the fabric version with the separate etched buckles (Eduard do them as single piece fabric ones with printed buckles too) because I thought the PE buckles would look more realistic, which they do, but they are seriously hard to put together. The belts need to be passed through the buckles then the ends of the belts need to be folded back on themselves and glued down. Fine in theory but these things are, in technical parlance, "bleedin' small"

Anyhow, I managed to get them done, some more messily than others, the worst ones going on the back seat where they won't be seen as much. Since Eduard include various ejection handles and such, I added one to the side of the pilots seat (the guy in the back'll have to take his chances)

So the cockpit's pretty much done now. I'll give it a matt coat before finally installing it, then I can carry on with the rest of the build

Andy

[Mike]

Cockpit looks good. Those Eduard belts are great, aren't they? Well worth the effort and possible foul language

[Andy Moore]

They are Mike. Despite the fiddlyness I'll definitely be using them again

Andy

[hope4sun]

Awesome work on that trolley Andy, looking forward to seeing this come together, thanks for the great informative posts and inspiration!!

[Andy Moore]

Thanks hope4sun, glad it's been useful

Andy

[Jim Kiker]

Hi Andy,

If anyone asks what that striped handle in the front pit is, just tell them it's the canopy jettison handle; I can't see either seat actually being ejection capable given the front to back arrangement, but that may be too "real world" for sci fi. Take a bad hit? Climb up to perhaps 1,000 ft, unfasten your harness, jettison the canopy, and step over the side (much like the Mustang/Spitfire drivers used to do). You could even add the same style handle in the back and give the GIB (guy in back) the same capability!

I really like the maintenance cradle, but for those musing over the landing gear, I had thought at one time that you could have pads/skids on the ends of the wings, but the bottom of the rear end looks like it would scrape. I think that putting fixed skids under the outside front edge of the radiator piece and then having a single short retractable strut at the front end would be the simplest combination. Since the vehicle has repulsor lift, setting down vertically should be handled automatically so there is no problem with scraping the wingtips. This is all made up, but absent any hard data one could fake this. If it were me, I'd add a centerline hump in the front cockpit as well and pretend it provides clearance for the nose gear strut. Just sayin'.

Looking forward to more!

Cheers, Jim

Edited October 7, 2015 by Jim Kiker

[Will Vale]

I'm a fan of Eduard's etched belts but I can see myself being tempted to go the floppy route - those look brilliant!

W

[Andy Moore]

Thanks Jim, they're good ideas regarding the landing gear. The problem with a central nose gear is there isn't really anywhere for it to go. The cockpit floor is essentially the fuselage floor and it extends right into the nose. That's why I'd originally intended to go with twin nose struts, one either side of the cockpit section. There are a few panels on the underside which look as if they could, in theory, be the base of a pad. It's a bit complex when you have to start making fantasy subjects work in the real world which is why I steered clear of it all and went with the cradle.

Thanks Will, I've always found the printed PE ones a bit too stiff, especially in 1/48. These are much better, albeit harder to put together. Still slaving over a hot sewing machine? A man of many talents, you are!

I'd intended the cockpit work to be it for tonight but, on a whim, I decided to have at the speeder with a red hot poker, like you do of a Wednesday evening.

One of the studio models has some battle damage on the wings which would appear to have been done by essentially melting the model with something hot

So I heated a pointed metal rod with a tealight, and attacked the kit with it. It's hard to see the damage because of the blackening but I think, once painted and weathered, it should look reasonable. I'm not trying to recreate that particular studio model, just something in the same vein

It should look like two blaster marks that have hit at an angle, catching the front of the wing then the engine cowling. Thinking about the scene as a whole, I suppose this could be set post Hoth battle, if the Rebels retrieved any salvageable speeders and were repairing them on a Mon Cal cruiser.

Andy

[Hunter Rose]

The interior paint job is really stunning, and I really like the added battle damage

[Will Vale]

I love the battle damage, especially that chipped bit on the leading edge. I wonder if drilling a couple of holes inside the mark and adding short lengths of bent wire (for broken framing) would look good, but perhaps the holes aren't big enough for that to make sense?

And yes, been sewing away again this morning - back to work on Monday so I ought to try and get the big bits done before then. I'm not sure if talent is involved, more pig-headedness

Cheers,

Will

[Gimme Shelter]

May the Force be with you Andy

Amazing work once more from you there. I do love the diorama base and thanks for sharing your methods stage by stage there.

This is going to be a real gem once completed - It is such a shame that these superb new Bandai / FineMolds Star Wars kits weren't around back in the 70's and 80's when I first started making the range of kits from the films. The old MPC kits certainly weren't bad and I enjoyed having a crack at them 30 odd years back, but now modelling just seems so much more demanding and both these manufacturers tick the boxes - made even better when modellers like you bring them to life so well.

I am looking forward to seeing more from you and this build. Lets hope Bandai will release a star Destroyer and AT-AT one day

Keep up the great work as always ...

John

[su27rules]

[Andy Moore]

Thanks guys

I love the battle damage, especially that chipped bit on the leading edge. I wonder if drilling a couple of holes inside the mark and adding short lengths of bent wire (for broken framing) would look good, but perhaps the holes aren't big enough for that to make sense?

Thanks Will. It had occurred to me to do something of that sort, but I was a bit hesitant about going in too heavy handedly with the battle damage. As it is, it's just superficial so probably not deep enough to show any underlying structure. I did think about drilling into the grill part on the front of the engine cowling, not sure how far to go with it yet.

This is going to be a real gem once completed - It is such a shame that these superb new Bandai / FineMolds Star Wars kits weren't around back in the 70's and 80's when I first started making the range of kits from the films. The old MPC kits certainly weren't bad and I enjoyed having a crack at them 30 odd years back, but now modelling just seems so much more demanding and both these manufacturers tick the boxes - made even better when modellers like you bring them to life so well.

Thanks John. Yes it would have been good if they were around then although I'll always have a soft spot for the MPC kits. My earliest modelling memory is building the original MPC R2 and 3PO with my dad when I was about 7. I wonder what Star Wars kits we'll see in another 30 years, although we'll probably all be too creaky to build any by then.

Andy

[theanorak73]

....once painted and weathered, it should look reasonable.

Andy

reasonable is not a word i would use here.

without gushing too much I just want to say what a pleasure it is to watch your builds. you make it all look so easy and your weathering skills are a work of art.

[Tango 1]

Really enjoying this Andy, great work!

[Andy Moore]

Thanks guys

Not got much done over the last couple of days. Just getting everything ready for paint, including the long winded job of masking the canopy which was made harder by having to do both the outside and inside since the canopy will be open and the inside will be fully visible and will need painting.

The last bit of work was on the cowling for the gun mount. I'd originally though of leaving it off all together but that would have meant filling the attachment slots on the main piece

I'm not entirely sure what the slot at the bottom of the gun mount is for as the cowling doesn't have a corresponding tab and it only just covers it. In the end I decided to just open up the circular panel in the middle of the cowling to show the round bit underneath. Since I'll be leaving the gun off on this side, it would make sense that they'd have an access panel for the gun removed. I drilled the inside of the panel, then removed the rest with a round file

The mount for the gun was given some basic detailing by adding a length of styrene tube and drilling some mounting holes where the barrel would be attached

So everything's nearly ready for paint now. The engine blocks will be painted separately as will the top and bottom of the fuselage. Hopefully I'll get a base coat on tomorrow.

Andy

Edited October 10, 2015 by AndyRM101

[Bennygman]

Wonderful stuff Andy. I'm taking it all in for when mine arrives. I saw a a vid the other day where a guy weathered a space marine by applying a hot needle to a finished model! One for someone with bigger 'nads than mine, but the scorch marks looked very realistic, because they were. probably the result of too many of those ales and thinking " I know what..."

Steve.

[Andy Moore]

I've begun to get some paint on the speeder and, as a few people had asked about a bit more info regarding my painting style, I'll try to go into a bit more depth with it. Apologies if it's a bit too pretentious. I'm certainly not trying to suggest I know what I'm doing or that my way is better than anyone else's. Most of the time I make it up as I'm going when I'm painting and I have as many results I'm unhappy with as I do things that work.

Everything here was painted with an Iwata Neo gravity feed airbrush. Not a fancy model by any means, but it gives a good result, although it's a pig to clean. Before any painting happened, the whole model was wiped over with IPA to remove any grease and dust. I normally do this with a cotton bud, but you then have to go over the model to remove any stray cotton lint left behind.

I normally avoid priming if I can, as I like to have as few layers of paint as possible. My usual first step is to get a dark base coat down. I use either Tamiya or Gunze thinned with Gunze leveling thinner for this as it gives a tough finish and will bite into the plastic and will act as a substitute primer and base coat in one. I don't usually bother with any pre-shading as I normally make a mess of it and I find it easier to build up the main coats over a solid base leaving some of the darker coat in the shadows. In this case I used Extra Dark Sea Grey from Gunze for the base coat. I didn't use black as the final colour is a very pale grey and black would have taken too much covering. If I'd been using Tamiya for this, I'd have added some X-22 Clear to smooth out the paint but, since the Gunze has got a satin finish and goes on very smooth, I didn't bother.

The paint is quite patchy on the main fuselage which is fine as this will mostly be covered. The main thing is to get a smooth coat over the whole thing. I was spraying about 1-1½" from the surface and the needle was only open a millimeter or two. The paint's pretty thin so any more and it would flood the surface.

When the base coat was dry, I moved on to the grey. Rather than go with the final pale grey in one step, I sprayed an intermediate mid-grey coat first. Since this was done with Tamiya, I added some X-22. It makes the paint spray better and leaves a smoother surface than the paint would on it's own. This was sprayed at about 1" in small circular patterns, slowly building up the colour density while leaving some of the dark grey showing in recessed areas and around details and panel lines, although the effect was kept as random as possible. It's a lot easier to do this with a solid base coat rather than traditional panel line shading.

Now the final grey tone was sprayed. Since this used a lot more white, I switched to Gunze white which sprays much better the Tamiya's. This mix was thinned more than the previous ones and was sprayed from a slightly greater distance, probably about 2-3". This was more of a mist coat over everything, although some areas had a denser coat. The needle was barely open for this as the paint would pool very easily, being so thin.

That's the main paint done but I'll mask off some individual panels and spray then in a slightly different tone, after which I'll be adding the stripes. Hopefully I should get some more done over the next few days.

Andy