Weathering tutorial - COMMENTS AND CRITIQUES WELCOME

augh! So many things I'm trying to get done now... I know, I know, excuses, excuses. One thing led to another and I forgot to work on this (which is, sadly, a habit of mine) I've opened the file, though, and I will NOT close it until I finish the darn thing! PROMISE!
 
This is an extremely wonderul way of doing things.

How hard would it be for me to dirty up an already finished helmet with visor and all the other parts?
 
Not too difficult, I imagine. I did all my paint misting without the hardware and visor in place, but there's no reason you couldn't do it after masking off those parts.

All the rest of the weathering is small-scale (with a small paintbrush and a towel), and you shouldn't even need to mask anything.

And yes-- I only have two sections left to write!
 
Depending on how your visor is installed you should be able to remove it and replace it easily.

I know I can take my visor out with ease and then just rescrew it in.
 
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Yeah, it seems like it's more common to just tack the visor in and leave it. The set up is a bit of a deluxe model :lol:

Well, I think I'll give it a shot. My armor is weathered already, but I could use some dirt. It's scratched, but still too shiny.
 
Misted my armor with some dirt and grime spray. Looks great! I'm happy so far, but nowhere near finished!
i'm going to be testing out some rustoleum metallic charcoal in the near future. it'll be dirty looking but with little glints of shiny. at least i'm hoping for that affect. i'll have to find my crappy old set of mando armor and practice on that.
 
I tried doing the water spot damage. It took me forever to get the paint mix right. Eventually I settled to putting some watercolor paint in the bottom of a cup and squirting a few drops of water into it making it nice and thin. The spots looks good so far.

What kind of sealer should I use over this?
 
The watercolor drips dissapeared after using dullcote. I should have guessed.

Cutelucca, I cannot for the life of me figure out how to do the spraypaint water mixture. Help?
 
Invaluable information! Thank you for sharing. I envision my character washing his suit sometimes, but the armor would never come completely clean, would it. Again, thanks.
 
A note on using shoe polish on cloth.,s hoe polish will permanently stain cloth, at least whatever is used in Marine Corps issue PT sweats. In boot camp we used shoe polish to 'paint' our platoon number on our sweatshirts and no matter how many times it's been washed it's never come out. So if you use shoe polish and some other more permanent methods of weathering your soft costume parts you shouldn't need to worry all that much about washing your costume.

Another method for weathering fabrics which I'm not sure was mentioned is the wear it around and be a slob with it on method. By this I mean wear it while eating messy foods, especially foods with earth toned sauces/gravies (soy sauce would work well), and don't be afraid to let it drip and once it does let it sit a bit and/or rub it in so that it creates a nice stain that will withstand all but the best detergents. Also wear it to work on your car, motorcycle, lawnmower, etc. anything that has grease on it and let it get on and stain the costume.

For hard parts and using the subtractive method I recommend 0000 (extra fine) steel wool to lightly sand the edges of weapons and your armor and anywhere else you want to simulate where the paint has worn/rubbed off over time. Just lightly sand at an area until the undercoat of silver or primer is exposed and it creates a pretty realistic look of worn off paint. The 0000 steel wool is fine enough that it won't leave a lot of heavy scratches but coarse enough that you won't have to spend hours sanding before enough wears away for the undercoat to show. I've used this method on a resin season 1 BSG pistol that I painted and the results (to me) look a lot better and more realistic than what I could accomplish by dry brushing. It
 
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