Superjedi's GMH--Pre-Pro 2

Dahone,
I have a Hobbytown USA store not far from me, so I get a lot of my hobby supplies there.

JUNE 13, 2011

Smallish update for now. As I mentioned in my previous post, I was not happy with the color saturation of the green once I finished spraying and demasking the gray.
Just one of those hmmmm moments. So I used a Scotchbrite pad over the panels to smooth them out, then reapplied my masking fluid to all the gray areas and reshot the CNW Green.
Much better results! Not sure what happened the first time, but shooting another couple of layers over the original green base coat seems to have helped immensely.
Here are 2 shots of the back panels in indirect natural light.

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I also redid the gray overspray patterns. They're subtle, but visible, in the above shots.
I started doing some small touch ups already, and will continue to work in some smaller details and the silver areas over the next few days.
 
Thanks. :)

JUNE 13,2011: PART 2

Had a little extra time before my class tonight so I did some detailing. I used a lighter shade of gray and a tiny liner brush to add some of the small scratches and chips.
This is my favorite detail paint brush; a Model Master size 000. It's what I use to do most of my very small detailing.

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Here's the left panel. Not too much detailing on this side.

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The right panel has some more tiny scratches.

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For the detailing in the keyslot area, I was thinking about the debate between silver and bare white gelcoat. I agree that logically, there shouldn't be any white showing through, but there's just too much delicious detail in this area to not do something in there. :lol:
I split the difference and added some pale gray damage. I like the way this came out contrast-wise.

IMG_0626.jpg


I still have to do all the silver that appears on the back panels, then I'll see if any of the CNW green needs to be touched up. (y)
 
JUNE 14, 2011

I had some time to do a little work on the helmet this afternoon so I added the silver to the rear panels. :)
I think (for now) this section is pretty much done. Some minor touch ups here and there to tweak the smaller areas, but that's about it.
The silver is just the usual Floquil Bright Silver, applied with a small detail brush. These pics were taken in fairly bright indirect sunlight.

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I have to give a big thank you to Rafal Fett for doing so much work on the PP2 templates! Using those in combination with the reference pictures is really a big help. (y)

I won't have much time to do any more until at least Friday, but it'll give me a chance to plan the next stages of the paint job.
 
Perfectionist until the end! I love how you did the back plates. The green looks a little bit bright (?), but this might be because of the white areas.
Amazing paint job so far!
 
The green looks bright because of the sun pouring in through my living room window. :lol: See the shadow on the floor?
I really need to set up a "photography area" somewhere in my house.
 
JUNE 18, 2011

Free time!! Finally.
This update will show a couple of steps together. I got the base green on the dome and cheek areas, being careful to mask off the other portions of the helmet.
When I mask large areas, I use a thin strip of blue painters tape to get a good seal along the edge, then go back and tape a double layer of Glad cling wrap to the tape border. I know that some people mask with newspaper, but I don't want to take any chances of paint seeping through paper. I've used plastic wrap on every helmet I've ever painted and nothing's gotten through so far!

After the base green was dry, I misted on a very thin coat of an olive green in some places. This was just to act as a toner to muddy up the base coat in certain areas, to match the reference pics as much as possible. I mixed the olive very thin, about 50/50 paint to water and airbrushed it with fairly low pressure.
This helmet has a lot going on in these green areas! Much more weathering and color blending than I'm used to with the ESB paint job.
Here's the base green with the olive misting.

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After that stage had dried overnight, I began working with Rafal's cheek templates. I tweaked the size until they were a good fit for the lower cheek panels. I just stretched the height by a couple of percent.
I used my standard tracing paper method to plot out the silver damage areas and painted the silver with a size 0 brush.
Here's the right cheek.

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A bit closer. You can see just a couple of small spots where I added some dark gray.

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Left side.

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Closer again.

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Of course, all of the above work will be masked when I paint the upper cheek panels.

As I mentioned, there's a lot of overlapping damage and misting layers on the green areas. Now that the cheeks are complete, the next step will be to paint most of the silver damage on the dome. When that's done, the cheeks and dome will receive another misting of gray. After that, I'll complete the remaining silver areas.
*WHEW!* That's a lot of steps. If this was ESB, I'd be almost done by now. :lol:

Stay tuned!
 
Fantastic! Your paint job is nearly perfect in comparison with my stencils. And I think this is the goal: using the stencils is 10% and the rest of 90% is pure knowledge and talent.
 
Thanks guys. Rafal, your templates are a huge time saver!

KaanE, remember it's "layeropical." :lol: There will be masking and airbrushing and more detail painting involved. This is just the first layer of silver.
 
JUNE 19, 2011

Hiya, folks!
As the weekend draws to a close, I thought I'd put up a last batch of pics.
I've been working my way around the dome, blocking in the "major" silver areas. There will be lots of masking to come, and even I'm not quite sure how I'll be pulling all this off. As a famous archeologist once said, "I don't know. . . I'm making this up as I go." :lol:

Here are some shots of the dome. All the silver is painted on with my trusty size 0 detail brush.

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Going counterclockwise.

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Closer on the above area.

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Finally, I painted the internal area of the dent to give me a good reference for size when I match it to the templates.

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Each of those sections was stenciled individually, using Rafal's templates as a basis. I usually begin with a tracing of the stencil, then tweak it based on the reference pics. I always paint the damage areas with a ref pic up on my computer screen so I can check how I'm doing.

I think I'm subconsciously saving the back of the dome for last cuz it's so complex! Eeeek! :eek:
 
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The rear panels are straight Floquil CNW green. The color changes a lot depending on the lighting.
Just look at some of the pics further up the thread to see what I mean.
 
The rear panels are straight Floquil CNW green. The color changes a lot depending on the lighting.
Just look at some of the pics further up the thread to see what I mean.

I would have to agree, the lighting really does change the color... once you get the weathering on and the Caboose red color... it should start to look more right.

I have noticed that the CNW Green acrylic does have a different over all hue when compared to the Floquil enamel version.

Looking good!(y)

What's the dome color you're using?
 
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