Hey guys, I haven’t posted on this forum in quite a long time. I’ve been busy none the less, both with modeling and customizing action figures as well as building props. Prop commission drew me away from any scale model building for a while so I was happy to pick it back up by cracking open a bag of models I had been given a long time ago by a friend and look at doing some restoring. He had crudely built and painted a few of them, mostly with hot glue so they were easy to take apart, and I knew restoring some of them would be a challenge. For my first two projects I chose the A-Wing and B-Wing kits from AMT/ERTL which were made way back after Return of the Jedi came out. The A-Wing had some damage to the model that I had to incorporate as battle damage. Over all I was quite happy with them and looking forward to doing some more advanced customizing and scratch building on my next few restorations.
Great work, Crusader X!! Man, you sure made these old kits sing!! The battle damage on the A-Wing looks perfect…
Love the paint on the B-wing especially — that is one of the best paint jobs on this kit that I have EVER seen! What brand of paint and mix of colors did you use on the kit?
Really cool! Esp love the A-Wing, from the old computer game ‘X-Wing’ the A-Wing was my favorite Rebel fighter (and in the game written from the other side, ‘TiE Fighter’, the A-Wing was my most hated opposition.)
Thank you everyone for the feedback, I appreciate the compliments
I studied a lot of reference material from Return of the Jedi to get the paint schemes as close as possible. Most all of the paint that was used on these was Testors Model Master Acryl. However, for the A-Wing, the rust colored red was a custom mix because I could not find a good rust red to match what I saw in the movie. So I mixed a full bottle of Tamiya Hull Red with a full bottle of Tamiya Red to achieve the color I wanted and I think I got it real close. On the B-Wing, that was mostly Testors Model Master Acryl for the grays but I believe I used some Tamiya for the blue. If you want to know the exact colors I can dig through my paints and try to remember which ones I used.
Only if it is not a hassle,would indeed like to know what Testors MM Acryllic(s) that you used for the B-Wing base color.
And your fantastic work inspired me to pull my old ERTL B-Wing out of the stash… Hope to start building it as soon as I finish my Bandai AT-ST and a few other projects that are too close to completion to jump away from (trying to eliminate the bad habit of not finishing things!).
As a related side note, I was really hoping that we’d see the B-Wings in action for the Special Editon version of “Return of the Jedi”, but alas, that was not meant to be… 'tis another long shot, but maybe, like the X-Wing, we’ll see a newer version of the B-Wing in “The Force Awakens”…
Sorry for not getting back to you sooner, I went through my paint and had to pull out my models to try and remember what I used. I actually painted these a while ago but only recently posted them on Finescale so I had to jog my memory. I know on both the base color was Testors Acryl Flat Light Ghost Gray, which is so light it’s also an off white. The other grays I would have used for the darker panels on the A-Wing would be Testors Acryl Gray and Testors Acryl Dark Ghost Gray. And for the darker grays on the B-Wing on various areas it would have been either of those two previously mentioned and/or some Tamiya Acrylic Gray. Having started with a light base the tone of both, but especially the darker B-Wing, was achieved by darkening down with a thin black wash in multiple layers.
Hope that helps and let me know if you need any more information. Good luck on your builds, I’d be interested to see them when they’re finished.
I too hope the B-Wing shows up in future films as I love that ship.
I really appreciate you taking the time to find that paint and let us know your mix — again, it was perfect!
You’ve inspired me to dig out my ERTL B-Wing and build it… I’ve modified it into a special ops bird with additional weapons, sensors, and other details.
Have got to get some paint on it as soon as I get over the flu.
