I have a 1/6 scale Boba Fett by Screamin’. I have re-done him a few times and I am very happy with the way he looks, except for his armor. I can’t seem to get the little specks of silver to look right. These silver spots on his armor are supposed to be bits of bare armor showing through where the green armor paint has been chipped off. I tried painting silver dirctly onto the green armor, but it doesn’t look all that good. I even applied some liquid latex to the green armor and then painted on the silver, so it would have sharper edges and a more irregular shape. Even this didn’t give me the results I wanted. At one point I painted the armor all silver, then after that dried, applied the green paint…and then I scraped away some of the green paint letting the silver show through. Nothing has worked too well.
Any suggestions on a new technique or different paint?
I’ve seen someone on here use a salt technique. The base coat is sprayed on and allowed to dry. Then areas where the paint chips are going to be are wet with water. Salt is sprinkled on those areas, the water is soaked up and holds the salt in place. The overcoat is sprayed on, and the salt is scraped off after the paint dries.
You can also use a liquid mask. The basecoat is applied and allowed to dry. The liquid mask is applied where chips are going to be. The overcoat is sprayed on and allowed to dry. You then rub off the masking film to expose the silver.
There was a good article in FSM a few months ago about using rock salt to create worn-off paint. You paint the undercoat, then you wet the area and sprinkle on the rocksalt, wait for it to dry thoroughly, then you spray on the overcoat. Once that’s dry too, you buff off the rocksalt. It literally wears off the paint.
Check out the backissues of FSM for more on this. There may even be something on the website about this. I haven’t tried it but it looks like a great idea.
The rock salt idea sounds pretty cool. I might do a little playing around on some scrap pieces of styrene.
I’m also thinking of just going ahead and painting the armor all silver, then applying some latex where the armor chips will be, then putting on the green paint, peeling off the latex and revealing the silver paint chips.
I have the jet pack to repaint, so I might try a few things out before stripping the model back down. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to try both techniques…
About these Boba Fett kits; if you do the whole model up perfectly and the armor chips are not realistic, the whole model suffers.
Did FineScale Modeler have an issue a few years back with the Screamin’/ Kaiyodo boba Fett on the cover, or was that a different model magazine?
I found the mag that did the Boba build…it was called Kitbuilders and it was issue #22. they did a good job it looks like, I wonder if this back issue is still around…