MichaelSLH70

Does this make anyone feel like saving up for a trip to Cape Town, drinks not included for a period of twenty-four hours? PS: My regards- In the form of a high-pressure stream of duck's urine- aimed right at the CAA. We're taxpayers-You work for us.

That's an answer packed full of info. Downloading the video as we, er, type- Thanks! - Which I've now watched ('repeat dose as required' )- And it answers more questions than could be asked in an evening. Nothing beats seeing a technique performed. That most certainly helps-Thanks again.

Absolutely right- The only miniatures in the original film to have cockpit glass were the X-wings; not just because of the bluescreen process, but the issue of reflections being 'out of scale'. The X-wing cockpits had flat facets for windows, glazed with very thin glass for microscope slides (for both reasons). That also explains the disappearance of 'Blue Squadron' from the script and the dull ultra-flat finish of all the hardware. Only a couple of vehicles in the later films (Boba Fett's ship and the rebel B-Wings) have cockpits that aren't made up of flat facets and framing, by then they had techniques to film these. All of this comes from a book I'm hesitant to recommend- Sculpting A Galaxy: Inside The Star Wars Model Shop, by Lorne Peterson (one of ILM's model makers). I hesitate to sing its praises since it's more of a coffee-table tome (albeit one with great pictures) than one containing real 'meat'. To be fair , there is quite a lot of interesting stuff in it, if you dig through the book. However, I'm not digging any more for now since there are enough heavy, bulky things to be shifted around here as it is... Industry or art? Food for thought.

... But that goes with the idiot. I've always painted with a brush- Fine with small bits, hopeless with a whole model- Always leaving the paint to dry for a day or so, irrespective of the paint type. However, starting afresh means spraying, which (I gather) means building up each colour in thin coats. The question being- particularly with regard to acrylics, specifically Tamiya and Gunze- How long between coats? There are plenty of magazine articles that refer to how fast these acrylics dry when they've been thinned for spraying, but they imply you don't need to wait for, say twenty-four hours between thin coats. Mmph. Maybe that sounds confusing. What I mean is, can you spray on another coat when paint looks dry, or leave it a full day (or longer) for the paint to finish curing? Oh, and is there any difference in the consistency between a rattle can and paint you've thinned for airbrushing in this regard? My apologies if this is excessively silly, or has been erm.. Covered before.