Pt IV Nose Painting

So now it's time to move on to the nose of the Y-Wing.  I'll be painting and assembling this kit a little differently.  because of the cockpit and lighting, I'm going to paint the nose before assembly and then add the lighting and put it together.  I will probably do additional weathering after fully assembled, but the majority of the nose will be painted before.

One of the other things I'm going to try and do is add laser fire to the front laser canons.  Using the Trinket arduino board that I'm using to light the engines, I'm going to try to add buttons to activate and fire the lasers.  My plan is when the button is pressed, to have 3 quick flashes accompanied with laser fire sound.


So to do the laser fire, the first thing I'm going to need to do is drill out a hole through the entire length of each of the laser canons.  I do this with a pin vise and a .5mm drill bit.

Now that I have my holes drilled, it's time to prime all of the nose pieces.  I will be priming the inside as well as the outside for additional light blocking.

Now that they're primed, time to do a coat of flat black paint over all the nose pieces.  And again, black is painted on the inside of the nose pieces as well for light blocking from my LEDs.

Next I'm going to try something new that I've never done before.  The Y-Wing has a lot of paint chipping on it.  So I got a bottle of liquid white mask, which is a liquid latex used in modeling to mask areas you don't want painted.  Then once painted, the latex just wipes off.

So using some photos of the real model used in filming Star Wars as a reference for where the chipping goes...

I begin with using a very fine tipped brush, and I apply little patchy areas where I want the paint chipping to occur.

You can see a little here where it's been applied due to the reflection.  It dries clear, so it's a little tricky to deal with.

I then pop out the area of the nose that will be painted yellow...

And then paint the nose with my base body color.   And you can see in this next photo the bubbled area where the liquid mask was applied.

So then I gently rub over the masked areas with a latex gloved finger and the liquid mask wipes away, leaving the black paint underneath.

I'm very pleased with how this technique worked.  It's a very nice effect. It leaves just a touch of curled paint around the edge, because it is, in reality, chipped away.  I really like how it gives it a 3 dimensional paint look.


 

Next it's painting the yellow sections of the nose, using the liquid latex again.

It's then time to mask off with tape, the blue/gray stripe to be airbrushed down the side of the nose.

As with the nose of the ship, I use the liquid mask on the stripes to add spots where the paint will appear chipped.

Then airbrush with my custom blue/gray paint mix I made to match the filming miniature as close as possible

And upon peeling off the yellow masking tape, it removed the liquid masking as well, and most of it was over the yellow tape.  I'm very pleased with how this look has turned out.

If you followed me during my Millennium Falcon build, I had talked about how there were hash marks on the model, which I put on mine as well.  The Y-wing has those hash marks as well as you can see here.

So I did the hash marks around my nose cone using a fine tip sharpie.

I then airbrushed with a medium gray dirt areas and blast marks.

So the model kit came with a plastic cockpit canopy that's a single piece.  The photo etch I got also has a cockpit.

After building the photo etch, and examining reference photos of the filming miniature, I've decided that the plastic canopy is actually more screen accurate.  However, because I want to be able to see inside the cockpit, I want to be able to remove the middle section of the canopy, which the photo etch has separate. 

So I very carefully cut the plastic canopy into 3 sections using a 11 size exacto blade.

I then primed and painted the canopy the base white color of the ship.  As with the nose cone, I then applied some liquid mask to areas where the paint will be chipped on the canopy.  However, in this instance, the canopy is a blue gray with the white body color underneath the chipping.

So here it is painted with my own blue gray paint mix that was used for the stripe down the side of the nose cone.  Again, you can see bubbled areas where the latex was applied.

So like the nose cone, I carefully rub the latex away...

 Revealing the canopy all chipped up.

Also, as with the nose cone, I did some marking with a sharpie of some little hash marks and black marks inside the chipped areas.

And here is the canopy on the nose cone.

So it's time for some more detailing.  I go around the nose cone with a rust wash and color areas that match the filming miniature.

There is also a small area on the rear starboard side of the nose cone that has a green tint to it.  So I'm using a clear green paint over that area, then rubbing away excess to make a faded green area.

Some rust wash and medium gray airbrush also applied to the cockpit canopy.

 And the complete painted nose cone and canopy.

Some other detailing the photo etch has with it is some underside to the canopy.  So these pieces were removed and assembled.  First, the detailing for the rear section of the canopy.

Then details for the mid section of the canopy.

 Both were then primed and painted gray.

And test fit to the underside of the canopy.

 Then a black wash...

 Some white and yellow buttons...

 A darker gray wash over other details...

 And we have both pieces painted and ready to be attached to the canopy.

Then on to the gun turret on the top of the cockpit canopy.

 Again, a black wash...

 Some rust pastel...

 And we have a finished, painted gun turret.

Then attached to the top of the cockpit canopy.

A black wash and some paint detailing was then done to the rear panel of the nose cone.

 And attached to the nose cone.

So the cockpit is them placed into the top of the nose cone...

So at this point I can finish the inside of the nose cone lighting.  I've cut a small piece of paper for either side of the cockpit and glued them to the underside to diffuse the LED light shining through the cockpit walls.

I then built little light boxes out of styren which I glued in place over my LEDs, to reflect and contain the LED light within the cockpit.

They were then painted black for light blocking purposes.

I then applied some regular Elmer's glue to some .5mm fiber optic to place inside the lasers which I had earlier drilled out.

 They were then inserted into the lasers, where the Elmers will hold them in place.

Then fiber optic was then cut at the end of the lasers so my red LEDs could be put in place just behind them.

I held the LEDs in place by using Elmer's glue on the wires.

I then cut some small pieces of wire shrink tube, slit it down the middle and round one end.  The purpose is to place these over the LED for light blocking and to contain and direct the LED light through the fiber optic.

 You can see them glued in place here.

So it's now time to put it all together....

And do a lighting test....

And the lasers work perfectly.  When pressing down my activation button, they continue to fire in rapid succession as long as the button is held.

In these next couple of photos, you can see the photo etch detail through the window on the underside of the canopy where the gun turret is attached.

And there we have it.  The completed nose cone of my Y-Wing starfighter.  

Now it's on to the engine section for me.

Stay tuned.  Much more to come...