Bandai Star Wars 1/144 Fleet

[salshred]

This is great! I love that you are doing your own color schemes!

[monsterpartyhat]

Continuing on with more tiny fighters....

 

After mostly finishing (it still needs weathering) a Poe Dameron T70....

 

 

Photos of the whole thing to follow, but I wanted to highlight how amazing these little Bandai kits are. I was able to easily paint all the detailing by brush, without any masking except for the main body and wing panels and squadron markings. The inner wing engine detailing, with the orange vane in the middle, and the pinstriping on the engine nacelles, can all be very cleanly freehanded, taking advantage of the natural edges of the pieces. It's really a joy to paint. 

 

Anyway...while nearly done with that T-70, I started another one. One of my first "a-ha!" moment inspirations after starting to take this hobby up again was AndyRM101's McQuarrie Concept T-70 X-Wing. I almost immediately knew I wanted one in the 1:144th scale, and that was the first ship I attempted to brush-paint (aside from the rattle-can base coat). It turned out OK (you can see the somewhat sloppy results here), but they've been getting since, so I started another one which is turning out much cleaner so far. I've gotten a lot better at masking and handling the paints. 

 

 

 

 

Obviously, I'm deviating from Andy's version and from the original painting, but in small ways. I had to throw some of the Medium Blue in there... I think it goes very nicely with the Tamiya yellow and Deck Tan. 

Edited June 8, 2017 by monsterpartyhat

[monsterpartyhat]

I didn't make any progress for a while because I went to Iceland for 2 1/2 weeks, but I hit the ground running once I got back (well....once I got over the crazy jet lag from Iceland to California). 

 

The McQuarrie V2 and Poe Dameron T-70 X-Wings are done except for weathering:

P7033774

 

And before I left I'd put primer on a couple more T-65 kits, for a Rogue One Blue Leader, and an ANH Red Five (sort-of). 

 

Blue Leader is coming along quickly, although I neglected to take many WIP photos:

 

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I'm still loving adding detail to the rear engine panel, even through it's not canon:

 

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[Andy Moore]

Excellent work. The Blue Leader T-65 is looking very nice.

 

Andy

[monsterpartyhat]

8 hours ago, AndyRM101 said:

Excellent work. The Blue Leader T-65 is looking very nice.

 

Andy

 

Thank you!

 

I had a bit of a "patience problem" with the blue wing markings - as in I didn't have enough of it, and had some paint start to run when I applied the clear coat too soon. Fortunately I was able to clean it up and redo the edges, and the remaining blemishes just fade into the weathering. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out, overall - and now I have representatives of all the major canonical X-wing color schemes in 1:144th. Time for more customs!

[monsterpartyhat]

Masking progress steps on Red Five (or as I'm calling it, "Red Five-ish". It's not a perfect Red Five because, frankly, I eventually did run out of patience for masking off body panels

 

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Masking off the first pass of red, for the main fuselage stripes and the squadron markings, minus the number pips. 

 

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With red applied:

 

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And with some metallic detailing of the access panels and engines (Vallejo Metal Color acrylics and Nuln Oil again):

 

P7043781

 

And then the really fiddly bit - those wing pips. 

 

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Those didn't turn out nearly as cleanly as I'd like - I'm sure they'd have less bleed if I were airbrushing them instead of brush painting. With such tiny pieces of tape, getting a perfect seal is difficult. However, once weathered they look fine. 

[monsterpartyhat]

And here's a few nearly-finished shots. First Blue Leader:

 

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And Red Five-ish:

 

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While I didn't use the stickers for anything else, I did use them for the barber pole markings on the laser cannons. You can't really tell its a sticker versus a decal, because the edges of the sticker line up with the edges of the part, so they don't leave a distinct raised edge. 

 

One interesting observation about the ANH-era markings and the Rogue One markings - the OT X-wings all have the body panels immediately surrounding the cockpit canopy painted to match the canopy. The Rogue One x-wings don't. I find it makes a surprisingly large difference in the overall feel of the proportions of the bird. It wasn't until I finished the Red Five that I felt like "Ah, that's what I remember from 1978". I wasn't planning on building the entire ANH Red Squadron, but now I'm starting to think about it....

[monsterpartyhat]

And then I spent an hour this morning painting and weathering U-Wing cockpit details that no-one will ever see, because Bandai molded them. Sigh. 

[Will Vale]

Love what you're doing with these - all the picked-out details look great and they totally belie the small scale. You should do some group shots with Death Star surface or other scenery, I think they'd look amazing

 

I have just acquired the U-Wing, it's rather nice isn't it?

 

Cheers,

 

Will

[monsterpartyhat]

I actually took some group shots just this morning - I'll probably post an RFI gallery for the fleet of fighters soon. I'm ready to take a break from building fighters to work on the U-wing and some small dioramas (and eventually the other larger 1:144th ships. I keep looking at that Millenium Falcon box.....).

 

And yes, I love the U-Wing. I love the design of it - I feel like they really, really nailed the difficult problem of designing a new ship into an existing universe and making it fit. It really feels like it rolled out of the same ship yard during the same era as a T-65 X-Wing. And the kit is surprisingly simple to build - Bandai's molding capabilities are really bonkers. 

 

Here's the cockpit details. There's more detail on the upper fuselage as well - there's one bit in there with some small detail on the ceiling that will never, ever be seen once the kit is assembled, but I had to paint anyway

 

 

 

 

I painted the tabs on the back of Cassian & K2SO red to represent the safety netting in the main body of the U-wing, which is red. There's none of that in this model, and there was none on the back of the pilot's chairs, but it's a nice splash of color and a stand-in for part of the interior they didn't include. 

 

I gave Cassian a green jacket because I don't yet have any dark-enough brown, and was feeling too lazy to mix some up in a palette for such a tiny area. Although I think I'll go back and try adding the stripes on the sleeves. I picked up some proper 20/0 fine detailing brushes, and they make the tiny figures much easier to deal with. 

 

 

Edited July 7, 2017 by monsterpartyhat

[monsterpartyhat]

Some group shots. First up, my representatives of the four canonical T-65 designs (the original Red Squadron from the OT, and the slightly different Red Squadron from Rogue One, along with Blue Squadron and the Partisan paint schema from R1). 

 

 

All the X-Wings:

 

 

All the F-Toys A-Wings:

 

 

Size comparison of the Bandai X-Wing and F-Toys A-Wing. I'm looking forward to re-doing this with the Bandai A-Wing when it's released next month. 

 

 

X-Wing, Y-Wing, and Snowspeeder for size comparison:

 

 

Starship knolling!

 

[Andy Moore]

Amazing collection

 

Andy

[monsterpartyhat]

I may have gone a bit nuts

[monsterpartyhat]

U-Wing Preview

 

Not going with Blue Squadron for the U-Wing this time. 

[BubbaFett]

As much as I'd like to eventually have a same-scale Star Wars fleet of my own, the 1/144 is so intimidating to me. I feel like my eyesight may not be good enough for the 1/72 scale, and these are so much smaller!

 

That said, yours look great! Looking forward to seeing the U-wing completed.

[monsterpartyhat]

ooh, I should update this thread. I have so many more now  I actually posted a finished gallery of the U-wing: 

As for the scale -- I do use a magnifier with swappable lenses that gives up to 3X magnification. That's *incredibly* helpful. I also recently discovered Aizu Micron masking tape, which comes in 0.4mm and 0.7mm widths, which is incredibly helpful for things like wing squadron markings. I feel like I want to re-do a couple of the older builds now, as each one is a little cleaner than the last...

 

[Gimme Shelter]

these Bandai kits really are quite smashing and were definitely overdue onto the market place given the model demand for accurate Star Wars kits

 

your collection is quite fantastic

 

so will you be investing in their new B I G millennium falcon?

[monsterpartyhat]

I'm not (currently) planning to get the 1:72 Falcon, despite how amazing it is. It's expensive, and much bigger than I have any room to display. I've got the 1:144 Falcon to finish first, anyway

[monsterpartyhat]

I started a companion for my Blue Leader yesterday - Blue Two. This time, instead of masking and painting absolutely everything, I'm using Nicholas Sagan's excellent Blue Squadron decal set for most of it. There's very little solid reference for the members of Blue Squadron* aside from Blue Leader, so it's a bit improvisatory. 

 

 

As with most of my X-Wings, I'm detailing the engines as much as I can. No just-weather-the-base-coat detailing for me. I got new magnifying lenses and good 20/0 brushes which help with this immensely. 

 

 

 

 

* - by my count, Blue Two died twice in the space battle *AND* once down on Scarif at the end of Rogue One. I think the editing process made the final battle very inconsistent as to what ship was where, and as it's all digital, no reference models exist for us to use. Oh well. 

Edited August 24, 2017 by monsterpartyhat

[monsterpartyhat]

I've really neglected this thread - the fleet is a bit nuts now. I re-arranged the storage/display cabinet today:

 

The loose ships shelf (including my lone 1:72 model):

 

 

And the micro-dioramas shelf:

 

 

It will all have to be re-arranged again when I finish the 1:144 Falcon, of course...

[monsterpartyhat]

I started a project to make a poster of all my completed models against a black background. The "cattle call" of models waiting to be photographed was amusing to me. 

 

 

And the pileup on the other side of the booth once I was done, as I moved them from one side to the other to keep track of which was done. 

 

[monsterpartyhat]

And here's the result, inspired by the model size comparison composites that Andy Moore made. What I lack in measuring up to the quality of those models, I make up in quantity, heh. :).  This is most of the standalone models I built in 2017, along with a couple of unmodified F-Toys 1:144 ships that fit in nicely.  Everything here is Bandai, F-Toys, or scratch built. 

 

Edited January 21, 2018 by monsterpartyhat

[The Chief Smeg]

That looks awesome. My favourite is still your scratchbuilt t-16

[rockpopandchips]

Now that is genius!

 

Fantastic work displayed in a fantafantastic way.

[Andy Moore]

Fantastic collection and the presentation is first class. I love that black/red stripe TIE x1

 

Andy