A little bit of a jump in progress. I got a few nice days in a row and decided to take full advantage of the weather and paint as much as possible in the small window of time I know I'd have before the rain started up again.
I could post a LOT of pics detailing what I did over the past week or so, but I'll just summarize.
First, everything got a coat of silver. This is actually Krylon Chrome paint, with a layer of Krylon Dull Aluminum dusted over top of it. I sprayed the topcoat at a distance which lets the paint particles in the air dry slightly before hitting the surface. This results in a pitted, cast metal texture. The slightly darker shade of the second coat helped this.
Then the basecoat went on. The green is Testors Olive Drab Matte. You have to be careful when spraying this stuff. Its a LOT thinner than your standard rattle-can paint and loves to run if you put it on too thick. Yellow parts were hand-painted with Testors model paint. This shot also shows the stippled texture of the silver a little better than the one above.
After that, everything got a nice coat of matte clear to protect the finish during the weathering process.
A note about the decals: The ones on the MF cell are laserjet water-slide decal paper, and the ones on the barrel are inkjet 5-mil vinyl paper. For the barrel ones, I scanned the side of the gun for the correct color and texture, then laid out the decals in Photoshop. All of the "weathering" on the decals was also done in Photoshop prior to printing them out. You can see a small seam next to them, but only if you're inspecting the gun very closely. The inkjet prints can be damaged by water and sunlight, hence the clearcoat to protect them at this stage.
After that, assembly!
I worked pretty late yesterday on the first couple stages of weathering. Still needs some more color (and better photography) but its looking pretty good so far!
