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Ok, this probably won't be your typical Work In Progress thread. This started out as me trying out some pre-shading techniques which I've never really used before. I usually build 1/32 aircraft but thought the Falcon would be a great test subject for pre-shading and for me to see how it works (or not). The kit is the Force Awakens release of the Falcon. For AM, I've got Tyridium's lighting kit and the Green Strawberry PE. I started with the main hull sections. I used Tamiya NATO Black for the pre-shading on the bare plastic. Over this, I started to fill in the panels using Gunze H338 thinned down to about 70/30 thinner to paint. I went back and did the mandibles to match.

Just finished this Bandai box scale Millennium Falcon from Empire Strikes Back for the Film, Fiction and Speculative GB here. Short wee build thread for this very wee kit is here but to recap: Kit: Bandai 1/350 Millennium Falcon 015 Build: Out of the box! Paints: Black Acrylic primer, Revell Aqua colours with airbrush. Klear, Flory Models wash Extras: None Not my best (tried the pre-shading thingy but not great) and the wash didn't work out underneath - don't think the Klear coat had fully cured. But really loved the details in such a tiny kit and can't wait to build the 1/144 version soon. She may not look like much...but she's got it where it counts 😂 Bandai Millennium Falcon_015_Done.6 by Dermot Moriarty, on Flickr Bandai Millennium Falcon_1_015_Done.4 by Dermot Moriarty, on Flickr Bandai Millennium Falcon_015_Done.2 by Dermot Moriarty, on Flickr Bandai Millennium Falcon_015_Done.14 by Dermot Moriarty, on Flickr Bandai Millennium Falcon_015_Done.3 by Dermot Moriarty, on Flickr Bandai Millennium Falcon_015_Done.5 by Dermot Moriarty, on Flickr Thanks for looking and happy modelling. All the best, Dermot

So even though the workbench here at HQ is backing up with Group Builds, I've decided to throw my hat in with Bandai's mighty Millennium Falcon - someone had to, right??!!! How excited to see the postie finally delivering this one.....I really can't wait to get stuck in. Bandai Millennium Falcon_1 by Dermot Moriarty, on Flickr Wait...……..wha??????? Bandai Millennium Falcon_2 by Dermot Moriarty, on Flickr Why of course, it's the mighty small Bandai Millennium Falcon 🤣 - I'm still saving the cents and raiding the children's future college funds to save up for the Perfect Grade edition. Bandai Millennium Falcon_3 by Dermot Moriarty, on Flickr That's a regular-sized paint pot with it, not a five-litre tub! As the Captain himself says, she may not look like much kid, but she's got it where it counts.. 😎 Cheers and enjoy your builds. Dermot

After a significant period of no motivation here is my break out kit. Completed with Ginze Acrylics, artists acrylics. Happy Modelling Ian

Hello all, I have been wondering whether I should add a third build or not, unfortunately when the subject kit arrived I couldn't help myself and immediately started fettling, and dry fitting, and generally thinking about how I would do it and the next thing I know.... BANG! like a low yield nuclear missile I've gone and started on the cockpit. Anyway here I am with Bandai's 1/48ish S.H.A.D.O Interceptor, from Gerry Anderson's UFO...as if you didn't know. The Cockpit base and rear panel replacing the joke like kit effort being detailed. The pilot is an ex RAF (Airfix sqn.) harrier pilot who is living the service moto to the full, however he just can't be without his home comforts so has brought his comfy Harrier seat with him. He successfully completed the strenuous S.H.A.D.O selection process whilst his kite was in transit from the factory in Japan. I know with my current poor start/finish ratio, embarking on another build is not ideal but I've been wanting to do one of these for ages. Additionally I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of the DVD of the series (this is for research purposes only and has nothing at all to do with Gabrielle Drake in a silver catsuit!!) More later, Mark.

Bandai's newly released Super Star Destroyer in the slightly ridiculous scale of 1/100,000. Despite the tiny scale, the model is quite large for a release in the Vehicle Model range, measuring about 19cm long, althought the slender design makes it still feel quite small. The level of detail is almost as crazy as the scale - it's hard to believe injection moulding can achieve results like this. Painting was kept on the subtle side to avoid creating an out of scale appearence on something that's meant to be 19 km long. The build can be found here. Thanks for looking Andy

I'm curious, are there any specific designs from the Star Wars prequel that have NOT been committed to plastic before. Like the Consular or the Royal Naboo Starship

I've just noticed from the Revell release sheet for 2020 that the company is boxing the Bandai kit of the B-Wing. I hope that will be a lot lighter on the wallet! The Bandai Death Star II + Imperial Star Destroyer also get the Revell treatment, but in 1/14.5 Million and 1/2.7 Million

After just completing two Tamiya motorbike kits, here is something completely different. I was lucky enough to have been given two old Bandai kits by a friend. They are both 1/16 scale, one is a Mercer Raceabout car and the other is this Traction Engine. There are excellent builds of both of these kits elsewhere on the forum which I encourage you to have a look at. After quite of bit of research on the internet, I have found that the Pendle Princess kit has been released by other companies apart from Bandai, but I think the original was by Bandai. To the best of my knowledge my kit is a Bandai version. Before I go any further I want to apologise to any Traction Engine enthusiasts for the naming mistakes that I know I will make. I know nothing about Traction Engines so if this is a “Showman’s Engine” rather than a Traction Engine, that is my ignorance. After the Tamiya kits where everything fits well and detailed down to very minute information, this kit could be a nightmare. I’ve spent some time inspecting everything and there is a lack of locating lugs/pins and a wealth of flash, ejector pin marks and general sink holes. Also the colour is going to be a problem, similar to many males, I am partially colour blind, and although I can see as many colours as a normal sighted person, they don’t always register correctly in my brain. So with little help in the instructions, lots of pictures on the internet (often conflicting with each other) and my colour blindness, it could all be very interesting. So, no build so far, but I have washed everything and ready to go!! How regular I get to this build is uncertain as I have resurrected a wooden, plank on frame ship (HMB Endeavour) that I commenced a while back. So I’ll be swapping between the two as I can get bits done. Just to start with, here are two pictures, one of the box lid and one of the instructions front sheet, which has a brief history. Any help, particularly with the correct colours, comments and general conversation, will be gratefully received. Wish me luck ....

It's been a while since i last posted a completed build, you know how life gets in the way..lol So here's my Bandai 1/44 Scale Slave One from 'The Empire Strikes Back'. Your Thoughts are appreciated. .

Hello everyone well i finished the walker, my very first sci-fi build. Wont be my last one i can tell you that much. I built Bandai’s great little 1/48 AT-ST as a Rebellion captured walker. Its in a temperate camouflage for a moon/planet similar to Endor. I figured instead of a generic scout, it was modified as a Long Range Recon platform with extra sensors and commo antennas. I added a U.V. Searchlight under the chin guns & an anti-personnel Mg on the ring near the hatch. And grenade dischargers on the temples of the walker. There is a stowage rack on the rear of the head and a 3rd crew member - commander’s seat in the cockpit. I hope it meets everyone’s expectations ? Feel free to ask questions, leave comments, or jokes if you please. Dennis

Morning All, Decided I'd have a bash at getting an X-Wing built for this GB. I picked the kit up from my LMS earlier this year with the intentions of starting this sooner. But hey-ho I'll be building this in between a few other kits. Here's the obligatory sprue shot mixed in the chaos that is the kitchen table. Though I'd re-watch the latest episode of the Mandalorian while I was at it. Here's where I got too I have been pondering about how to paint the inner engines and recessed panels on the strike foils (a.k.a wings) For the recessed panels I'll being doing some sort of grey so they'll not match the rest of the foil. Thinking I might pre paint them all and then mask them off with Tamiya tape. Any thought or suggestions on the above more than welcome! Aaron

I'm just going to sneak this in here if I may.... Haven't done much painting in the past few months, but after finally finishing off a PR Mossie have been getting into the swing of things again. Decided to make a start on this in between tackling a Tamiya Corsair. As you'd expect, there's not many parts But with it being Bandai it's beautifully moulded and engineered. Although there's two in the box, I'll just be doing one of them to start with. Still toying with the paint scheme to go for, but I'm leaning towards something similar to the markings seen in Ralph McQuarries artwork Aaron

It is very rare I decide to share one of my builds online- just making them for my own fun mostly. This one I chose to make an exception on- it is still needing a couple of minor things such as adding the engine lights, a bit more weathering and decals, but when I put it on the stand last night it felt finished enough to share. It is the SDCC Edition B-Wing. I figure there were enough people building it to match the filming model so I gave mine two additional twists. The first is that I made it Red 7. There was some discussion a while back about how the wing stripes on the X-Wings could show numbers higher than the five the space allowed for, I thought gaping them would work so I used that on this fighter. I also though the long fuselage strip on the X-Wings would look nice on the main wing of this build so Red 7 was born. The Second was giving it a bit of history. The SDCC has a couple of missing panels at the bottom of the main wing with exposed greebly. the stock version of the kit has an exposed panel up at the top that the SDCC version has a plug for. I liked it open so I added some mechanical bits behind it. I then started thinking- why leave these two areas open. What I came up with was that this particular fighter was damaged in it's last battle. The mechanics did not have time to do a proper repair so the power feeds the blast tore apart and just ran a couple of bypasses along the outside instead. This to me gives a reason for those missing panels and sort of embraces the feel for the Rebels doing whatever it takes to get things battle ready without having the time or materials to do it in a fancy way. As mentioned there are still a couple of things I think still need to be done for this build but I am going to put in on the shelf for a while and just enjoy it a bit...

A few pics of my Unicorn, it really is a fantastic kit to build and looks good in both forms but I like it best like this in Unicorn mode. Comments wellcome. Cheers Brian.

Bandai's latest addition to the Vehicle Model range, the Super Star Destroyer, at the somewhat eye watering scale of 1/100,000. I'll probably make a start on the build later tonight, but for now I'll post some sprue shots to show off Bandai's exceptional injection moulding skills. There are only two sprues for the SSD, along with a third for the standard Bandai stand (back in black again, rather than the more recent clear), with only 20 parts to make up the ship. The surface detail (here on the lower hull) is even finer than on the previous Star Destroyer. Lower engine section and aft hull extension. Upper half of the aft hull extension. Detailing on the upper hull. Slide moulded engines. The absolutely miniscule (about 3mm wide) bridge. That's it for now. The build (not that there's much to it) should begin later. Andy

Still needs a matte coat...

I've had in my mind to do an X-Wing probably since the Star Wars films first came out, way back when I was a teenager! Finally I picked up the Bandai kit at a show a few months ago. For this one I just built the kit out the box to satisfy the itch 😉 Now to find a Y-Wing.......... Comments welcome Tim

I finished this model some months ago but I haven´t showed it in RFI yet. I waited for new camera equipment, but I am not sure if I am happy with it. The lighting looks a little bit off. The real colour lies between the first pictures and the 2 WIP pictures below, which I have taken before. I tried to recreate every tiny scratch and chip from the studio model. I hope you like it. Some pictures from the finished cockpit while it was in WIP:

Hi folks - I see there’s been a lot of A-wing related content on here recently so I hope you still like Rebel starfighters that have that particular designation😂 I’m building this Bandai kit in an effort to do something different. I’ve just built ww2 fighters since I got back into the hobby and wanted to do something that didn’t have camo on it. I’ve had this kit in my stash for months so this fit the bill... Instead of doing an A-wing with that colour scheme (you know the one) I wanted to do something that was abit different- as in not necessarily canon - so mine is going to be a blue a-wing - more in line with a war wary F 16 crossed with a P 47... if that makes sense... it will still be an A-Wing with those sweet sports car lines but just a bit funky. I saw this colour scheme displayed at a model show and thought that it looked amazing... so this will be my take on it... it's basically going to be blue and cream with a steel metal finish on the engine nacelles. So started ripping bits off the sprue: After a brief clean, they were ready for priming - gotta love Bandai 👍 I used tamiya fine primer for this - sprayed from an airbrush... After 20 minutes these guys are ready for paint. Constructed and painted the cockpit tub: Nowhere near as nice as other people’s efforts I’ve seen on here but it does the job... Forgot to take pictures of this next bit but basically I started with the main shell - upper and lower airframe and preshaded the panel lines with tamiya sea blue - which is a very dark green blue colour... then put down a very thinned cost of the base colour which was white with a tiny drop of tamiya medium blue - and a tiny drop of flat earth... for the blue parts I did the same process using a mix of tamiya medium blue and flat blue... I was really happy with the blue tone I got here - it’s a very nice colour - deep but vibrant. I was happy with the cream colour too - it came out more a grey blue but it works... The following night I masked some bits off and started on the metal finish parts. I used Vallejo metal colour for these - colour is steel. I tried to highlight the panel lines with dull aluminum- used tamiya x21a to thin it but it didn’t work particularly well... To judge how I was going I put the bird together- as it’s a snap fit, I can do that... Coming along but really I wasn’t happy with those engine nacelles- it was the colour I wanted but not the result. I wanted them to shine a bit more. So the next day, I hit them with some Alclad airframe aluminum... just focusing on the centre of the panels... Much better - really like how these turned out - pretty much exactly what I was after - which almost never happens so... result👍 That's it for now. Amazing how quickly you can advance these kits - basically no build time - just painting happiness 😀 More coming soon... Cheers John

AT-ST Walker Bandai 1/48 I've just received this in the post, fresh from Japan and although I've got other things on the go I wanted to get stuck in as soon as I'd opened the box and seen the contents. I have to admit when I first heard that the SW licence had switched to Bandai from Finemolds I was expecting a load of pre-painted toy-like models in the Revell mould (no pun intended) but having seen some of the builds others have done of the earlier releases, I think these are probably the best SW models yet produced. They also seem to be great value. This was around £10 + postage from HLJ. As I mentioned above, I've got other builds in progress so work on this one may be a little drawn out but to begin with I thought I'd upload some sprue shots to show what Bandai have managed with this release It all comes in a smallish box (12" x 7") and it's pretty packed with sprue's, 6 in total including one with what seems to be Bandai's trademark with these SW kits, multi-colour moulding The main cockpit is a nice one-piece slide moulding And there's some very fine detail for the interior walls and control panel The seats are moulded integrally with the cockpit floor and have a location block for the drivers which will need removing if you don't use the figures Back wall of the main 'head' Waist pivot section The base is a little basic but with some texture added should look OK The transparent red 'laser blasts' for the main guns You get three figures in the box, two identical pilots and this rather nice Chewie Though I've no idea what happened with the two pilots! The weird thing is, the moulding on them is actually very good, particularly the undercut on the helmet, so why they shaped them in such a bizarre way, only Bandai know. Maybe I'm just reading things into it that aren't there but it almost looks as if they were going for some kind of anime look to the figures. In any case I don't think I'll be using them. The decal sheets, waterslide and stickers And the instruction book which, in keeping with the fine traditions of Finemolds, is all in Japanese So, there you have it. I'll try to get some work started on it in the next day or two and I'll get some shots up when work commences Andy

I've already completed this, so it won't necessarily be a step-by-step build (I'm hopeless for doing them since I get ahead of myself before trying to take a pic :P), but I put up some WIP shots Thanks for looking Gaz

This is Bandai's little 1/144 Striker, from the U-Wing/TIE box set. It's designed along the same lines as their Vehicle Model series, with only a few parts and no clear moulding for the canopy, but it's still highly detailed, being essentially a scaled-down version of the 72nd kit. I finished this one in a scheme heavily influenced by the red TIE Interceptors used by the Royal Guard in various EU comics. Paint was my usual steel-over-black recipe for the panels, while the red was Gunze red over Gunze russet. Thanks for looking Andy

Ok, so yesterday I was at a toy collectors fayre at the Nec. I usually go for a look around, don't often buy anything but occasionally you can pick up a model or two. As it turns out I was two isles down and I saw this for £10: Not only was it a bargain and saved me three weeks wait while it made it's way from Japan it was also the next kit on my list so very happy days. I already have a project on the go and I fully intended to put this on a shelf until I had cleared the backlog but I got home from work today and opened the box to take a look and the next thing I knew; Damn you Bandai😡😡 I didn't get too deep in but I already had an idea to create a diorama of an X-Wing in a hangar looking like it's under maintenance so was dry fitting a few bits and seeing how that would work. I have never really tried anything like this before (opening panels that aren't supposed to be opened) but have always wanted to. I have followed many of @AndyRM101's builds and loved the x wing he did with the panels open. So, inspired by this I hope to show this X-Wing with maybe an engine off and some panels open with wires and internals showing. Maybe with a few droids and ground crew knocking about, as if it's booked in for it's MOT. Not sure how long this will take but hoping to get started soon. Will be in need of lots of advice as scratch building is something I really want to get into but have not really done in the past! Cheers Chris!

This is my special Ops Geara Doga. I made quite a few additions to this kit and really enjoyed the build. All comments welcome....