ROTJ SE Jet Pack Detailed Paint Up Process!

Hi all!

So I've spent the better half of a year putting together an ROTJ SE Fett, and I decided it was finally time to get the hardy task of painting the jet pack out of the way. I've been putting it off for so long because it can be quite an intimidating project to take on, but I wanted to share my progress to hopefully encouraged anyone else out there that they can tackle this task no problem!

That said I am a complete newbie in regards to this type of artwork, and although this is my first jet pack paint job it's been going well so far that I finally felt confident enough to share it with you all! Anyways, I started out with a Man of War jet pack (well worth the money, Christian was incredibly professional and an extreme pleasure to buy from), I don't have any pictures of the assembly process but after cleaning the parts a little super glue is all it takes to piece the beast together! The two threads that have served as my guides for this have been dolioshmolio's and darkartist81's, so give them a look to see some really amazing work!

So let us begin! The first step is the easiest: Prime the pack, sand the primer, put on an aluminum coat, then some clear matte sealer to dull and protect. I just use regular Rustoleum primer, aluminum, and sealer for this part, nothing too special yet! The sealer in the aluminum, as you may know, makes that pretty much the base layer so any detail scratches you put on later will got through the top paint on (hopefully) not the silver coat if you're gentle! (Also if I screw up the image attachments you'll have to forgive me, still working out the system!).

first.. Hello and thank you for the kind words.. second... great idea.. putting a sealer on the silver to protect the silver when you scratch back to it....i like that..I will try that next time.. also .. you'll be a pro at posting pictures by the end of this

Alright now's your time to choose your reference material! Luckily TDH has an amazing gallery with pretty much all you could ever need to make an accurate paint job, but just be certain the design your choosing! For example, the magic of the myth jet pack is a different paint job than that of the one in Art of Star Wars and Star Wars Celebration IV even though they're both technically ROTJ. I chose to model mine from the latter, since that is the pack that's seen in the Visual Dictionary (aka the one I grew up ogling at for so many years). Also it just looks like a grittier pack and, well, how could anyone resist that?

SO after choosing you pattern I suggest saving a bunch of the picture in the gallery to your computer for quick access. Go through the photos and try to get pictures from every which angle you can to have a full view of it, over time it adds up, but the more the merrier! You've got your vision, your source material, all the supplies necessary now let's do it! First up I started with the rocket (you'll notice I paint the colors on in the same order as dolioshmolio but use spray paint like darkartist81, so consider mine a hybrid method ). The top of the rocket will be getting Krylon Burgundy Satin and misted with Krylon Ivory Satin (note: these don't have to be satin since the final step will be dulling everything down with a matte sealer, so don't fret if you can only find colors in gloss!)

Study your reference pictures and use a pencil to stencil on damage. This will serve as an outline to guide where you will put you masking fluid. Not if you're super super new to this, masking fluid is essentially the greatest thing since sliced bread since it's great for giving things a battle-damaged look. You put it down, let it dry, paint over it, then peel it up for a really cool effect. I use Bob Dively Liquid Mask and it's work great for me! So once you're content with your drawn on damage time to apply the liquid mask, I simply use a toothpick since it can get's a perfect amount for how much i like to work with when applying, but this can be done with many other things. once the fluid's dry, make sure the rest of your jet pack is covered up so no excess paint falls on the rest of it, and then have at it with the burgundy! You'll notice the photos show the rocket to have a fade effect, so if you put too much burgundy on you can mist with the ivory to get it lighter again. When I mist I stand fairly far back and spray a little at a time towards the rocket, and gradually the white will build up until your happy with the look. Let it dry!



Thanks Dolio! Slowly gettin the hang of this have to give you a big thanks for your thread, I'll be lucky if mine ends up looking half as good as yours!

i'm willing to bet this will turn out great.. can't wait .. i'll be following this for sure

Thanks for the support! I have to head out for now but rest assured I'll be updating the thread with the rest of my progress so far when I get back!

Luckily uploading photos is a pain in the butt so until I can figure out why it automatically rotates them the photos are gonna be on their side, so a little head tilting may be required for proper viewing

Once everything's dry go ahead and begin to peel up all of your liquid mask. You can usually see where you put the mask but sometimes it can get covered up by the paint and hard to find, so I like to take a few pictures from every angle to see where all of it is. I simply use a pair of tweezers for this, just make sure to be gentle and not damage the silver underneath (if you do don't panic, you can always touch up with a brush!). After the top of the rocket is done, mask it as well as your whole pack leaving only the bottom section of the rocket exposed. Stencil in all damage for this section including the black ring around the base of the rocket. Let it dry and study the painting pattern of this part. You notice the rocket is gray with black starting heavy at the top of the section then fading out as you go down. First I coated this section with my Krylon ivory and then misted that with gray until I got the right color for the bottom part that doesn't have much black on it. (I used Rustoleum granite but pretty much any light gray will work fine). I did this over the whole section just to make sure I got a nice even coating.

Now for the black, Krylon flat black is the flavor of choice, and the convenient thing about Krylon cans is that their nozzle is shaped to give a flat-shaped spray which you can rotate to be either horizontal or vertical. In order to get the fade effect I switched the nozzle to spray vertically and held the can about to the middle of the rocket's TOP section (mind you it's masked so you can't hurt it) and by spraying there you should well coat the blackest part while getting a nice fade effect from the farther away parts. Or if you're using non-Krylon cans it's not too hard to control the fade you get, just be sure to go slowly and stick to the reference photos, and if you go a little too far no worries just reapply some gray to push the black back a bit I like the Celebration IV jet pack because the black comes a little farther down on the part viewing the front of the jet pack head on, and it really helps to make those silver details pop!

Once the correct fade effect is achieved let the whole thing dry. After the paints good to go then mask the section you painted so we can add in the little black ring at the bottom. It was a little bit of a pain getting blue masking tape into the right spot on a cramped and curved surface, but I thought it would give a much more clean and straight-edge effect. Just make sure everything is masked off except for that little ring section then have at it with your black paint. Once it's dry go ahead and remove all of your masking and take pride in your work! (More detailing to be included in next post)

And now for the extra detailing advice! You'll notice the jet pack on exhibit has a countless number of scratches in what seems like every square inch. Although liquid masking seems like a gift from the heavens you'll notice it's limited in the fact that it can't get THAT detailed. In each step after the painted section is dry and the liquid mask is remove, I go in with a trusty x-acto knife. It's the best at putting in those detailing scratches but be sure to do a scraping motion by moving the blade side to side, not a slicing motion back and forth. By going side ways you get a much smoother scratch that won't dig into the precious silver undercoat like a slicing motion would. When in doubt test your skills on a part that's not very visible until you get the hang of it, then have at it putting in all those scratch marks! Also the liquid mask forms rather rounded shapes in the paint, so I like to use the x-acto to give them mush sharper edges, because we all know that when our cars get scratched they're never neat splotches but jagged unpleasant shapes

But anywards onwards with the paint! Next section I focused on was the thrusters, the fuel tanks, and the white bars in the middle of the pack. (NOTE: In retrospect you should probably do the middle white parts separate to avoid ruining the paint job with accidental overspray, you'll see what I mean in a bit). See photos if you're unsure of the sections I'm talking about, but mask off everything not getting a coat of gray/white (including the burgundy stripes that will be going onto the fuel tanks). Masking this with tape was a pain in the but because straight tape to a curved surface never goes on easy -_- When I began painting I gave all sections in question a coat of ivory. The middle was definitely keeping it, but more studying of reference photos showed the fuel tanks and thrusters to have a much more gray tone than white, so I misted with gray but eventually went pretty much all gray because I felt it matched the photos better. Also the bottom parts of the fuel tanks I lightly misted with black to match the look of the photos. It was a little sketchy since I was painting dark colors next to my pristine white middle section (which is why I now suggest doing these separately) but I was able to hold up some paper to block most of the excess spray. After that I purposefully tainted the white with some of the gray in order to give it the worn look as seen in the photos (funny how it's only okay when I dirty it up with paint on purpose )

Tempting though it may be to unmask, leave it all on until your paint has dried. This is when I added the striped/symbols on the fuel tanks and put the black parts on the thrusters. (Be sure to now mask the middle white sections of the jet pack!) The black rectangles on the thrusters and just the stripes on the fuel tanks I did by masking everything but, then hitting them with black spray paint. Then I removed just those maskings and took some acrylic paint and painted on the fuel tank symbols by hand as well as the top black parts of the thrusters. Let dry, then remove allll masking from these parts and pat yourself on the back!

Luckily the pain in the butt that was masking off those pesky fuel tanks is over right? Ooh tough luck not done with those suckers yet! Next up we've got the red rings around the top and bottom of the fuel tanks, the red parts adjacent to the white in the middle of the pack, the piano key pieces, and the ring at the base of the rocket. Seems like a lot, and you realize it is once you've been masking it for over an hour :facepalm with the fuel tanks be sure to mask off the tops and bottom caps, because hopefully you gave those the same color of gray that you did the rest of the tank, and we're not looking to turn those red. After the tedious masking process and masking off all your damage, you'll be hitting all of this with a healthy coat of Krylon burgundy, then misted with your flat black to give it that weathered look. A couple tips: with the piano keys and the middle ring there are some tight spaces spray paint will have a tough time getting into. Although it's tempting to just get up and close with the paint DON'T, too much paint at a time will cause it to run under your masking tape affecting your hard work from before. After a few light coats if you still can get the paint in there I suggest going in with a brush and adding it in to avoid any risky maneuvers.

After all painting and unmasking I found that a lot of detail I added with the x-acto knife because many edges that need to be silver were just too small for the liquid mask to give a clean and accurate look, so don't be afraid to save some work for later if it means a more accurate paint job After all is well and dried remove your masking with tweezers, detail with the x-acto knife and take a breather, you're almost there.

Also in between the different colors I'm sure you've noticed that there are a few sections that you can put masking tape on early on and leave on through multiple coats since they'll be painted later, but I'm always to impatient and just want to look at how each section looks next to the others, ah well

And now I'm all caught up on my progress so far, next up will be the yellow sections! Hopefully I can get that done in the next few days, just got a few tests and projects to get out of the way first :angry

I have a question...

Why are you painting the jetpack after it's assembled?

it's really looking great foos. Keep it up!

if you open the photos in a new window most of them are clocked the right way.. not sure why they show up sideways sometimes on the post

Looking good so far! You definitely dont need to use that much blue tape though. Try using newspaper and tape, since the blue tape can be pricey and the newspaper is free. Keep up thegood work though!

MrDickJones said:

Looking good so far! You definitely dont need to use that much blue tape though. Try using newspaper and tape, since the blue tape can be pricey and the newspaper is free. Keep up thegood work though!

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^^^^^ that

Looking awesome!

TheCaptain said:

I have a question...

Why are you painting the jetpack after it's assembled?

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When I got the pack I knew it would be a while since I would get to painting and my impatience absolutely could not let it sit there in pieces
But yes in retrospect the easier route would be to paint the pieces separate to save a lot of masking time/effort, live and learn!

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MrDickJones said:

Looking good so far! You definitely dont need to use that much blue tape though. Try using newspaper and tape, since the blue tape can be pricey and the newspaper is free. Keep up thegood work though!

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Thanks for the tip! I kinda had a feeling I was going overboard but once I would lay down a piece to get a crisp and straight line in between paint layers I would usually get a little carried away XD But I'll attempt to utilize more newspaper as I go on, thanks!

Also Fett 4 Real and 22ssplt commenting on my thread? I am humbled by the presence of true Fetterans, thank you all for the support!

With my week's work done I got a chance to work on the yellow section of the pack! Went a little voerboard with the blue tape, liquid masked according to the reference material and let that dry overnight. Then I put down some Valspar Flat Caramel Honey. A few notes on this: the lighter color requires a couple coats to get everything fully covered well, so make sure you don't get too rushed in putting this one on, put down a coat, wait for it to dry then repeat until you have a nice even yellow. Rushing too fast can build up the paint and cause leaking underneath your masking tape and we sure don't want that!

After the coats of yellow were dry I used acrylic paint for the decals on the top part near the rocket. My brush felt too large and my hand too shaky so I went with a toothpick so I didn't have much room for error.

Anyways the yellow by itself I didn't feel had that perfect tint, so I brought in some Rustoleum Flat Brown. Now here is where you have to pay attention to your methods! Different companies of spray paint design their cans differently, and Rustoleum packs a lot more force behind its spray than Krylon, so I was standing fairly far back when misting with brown so as not to overdo it. The brown brought the tint to a level I liked, at which point I began misting with the flat black according to the reference material. I really love the yellow section because it just seems the dirtiest out of all of them, all the scorch marks and whatnot. The yellow is reeaally grimy so don't be afraid to weather away! If you feel like you go too dark then re-mist with some of the Caramel Honey to lighten it back up. Waiting for this to dry then I'll be doing the black ring around the rocket base!

Nice work! And good call on that Valspar paint, I used the same stuff and it is great paint... and pretty accurate to my eyes as well. Pack is looking good though man, looking forward to the home stretch!

darkartist81 said:

Nice work! And good call on that Valspar paint, I used the same stuff and it is great paint... and pretty accurate to my eyes as well. Pack is looking good though man, looking forward to the home stretch!

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Thanks dark! I've been using the colors you used and I'm loving the look of everything so far! Currently have the current coat drying in the garage, really looking forward to finishing this up with that beautiful blue hopefully soon!

Looks great !! I dont want to revisit my pacck paint any time soon. Keep it up !! Blue is nice !!

Stinkape fett said:

Looks great !! I dont want to revisit my pacck paint any time soon. Keep it up !! Blue is nice !!

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Thanks! I've actually enjoyed this process a lot more than I thought I would, that being said I'm in no hurry to do it again anytime soon