Hey - I just replied to your Reddit post.
Glad you posted here since there's so much more we can do here like links and photos.
Check youtube for tutorials on "chipping effect", "weathering armor" and so on. There's a bunch.
But mostly it comes down to 2 common techniques:
Plan the scratching in advance and use "chipping" effects. You paint silver first, mask that with masking fluid/liquid latex. Do the rest of your painting. Then peel the masking fluid to create true layered chips.
The other is called "dry brushing" and like the name implies, you take a little silver on a brush, wipe off most of it so its nearly dry, then lightly brush the high edges to simulate a scratch. It doesn't require as much pre-planning and can be thought about near last. But it doesn't have the dimensionality of real layered chipping and edges of paint that flaked off. People will also use silver sharpie or silver paint markers to do something similar instead of a brush.
My suggestion is devour all the YouTubes you can from armor cosplayers and model diarama builders, as well as the countless build threads and tutorials here on the 405th site.
Oh - and welcome to the 405th!
