X-Wing paint scheme

Flat Gull Gray as a base always worked for me on sci-fi kits.

I'm actually in the middle of buildig Fine Molds x-wing right now, and thought I'd stick with a nice coat of lght grey, then add some weathering.

Most of the non-Imperial ships are a warm off-white. To simulate the layers for weathering, use a black primer under Krylon Platinum, then if you want to get correct, match up a few Floquil colors or an acrylic equivalent to be about a 10% warm grey. Most of the panel work was accented in highlights, not in darks, so that's an area to play with as well.

If you want a screen appearance look, then use that same warm grey, but lightly dust it with a coat of a radome white (or reefer white if you use the Floquil stuff) or such. Be sure that in your weathering your panels that you simply weather with predominantly cooler greys, and you should off-set the temperature enough to shift it to looking like they did on screen.

Stripe colors are up to you to choose of course... a slightly desaturated warmer red works well for most, but for some it's too bright if you don't tone the red down quite a bit... so it's a pickle. I like Caboose Red. Almost all of the streaks and fun stuff are dab and wipe, and it's a process you can really get carried away with, and uh.... you know, if you find yourself making little 'whoosh' noises when you do it, nothing wrong with that. Perfectly normal. Ahem.

Have a blast with the fighter.

Hahaha...What If....'46.

2246...

Yeah Thunder, it is. Just thought it would be a little different, and it was a lot of fun to do.

QUOTE: Originally posted by Hoser Didn't have any white, so I had to use what I had on hand ...

Niiice.. Is that the Estes Model Rocket?

Now that I've seen the DVD it seems to me that the model ships are more whitish
and the CG ones are more greyish. So I say screw all that and do what you want

I painted mine with enamel flat white then streaked the entire thing with 3 to 5 shades of pastel chalk dust, so it's overall more like 12 streaked shades of light gray. I sealed all of that with a flat gloss coat (Testors airbrush lacquer). It turned out to be exactly what I had in mind based on movie frames.

Wow! That's a, twisted, good looking bird.

Didn't have any white, so I had to use what I had on hand ...

Hrrmm... Reminds me of way back when I painted my Incom T-65 as a 'Test' bird, much the way aircraft manufacturer's do these days. It was a long ti... nevermind.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the Rebel Alliance probably wasn't spending a lot of effort on color matching while dodging the Empire. Something else to consider too is that there are other paint schemes described in the Rogue Squadron books (ie Ooryl's all-white/ultraviolet, Corran Horn's green and white, etc. ) that have no photo graphic evidence to screw you up and would allow you a good deal more freedom. On the far off day that I finally build a T-65 I'm hoping to do it as Corran Horn's bird from his time in CorSec.

I very much like that idea, but he's right about sandpaper being a little
difficult to control, especially around curves and sharp corner's.
You could try #0000 steel wool as it's a bit softer and more forgiving

If I remenber right, the base color they used is no longer produced. I think it
was a Krylon color but please don't quote me. I may have that confused with another ship
Alot of people have used MM Camo Grey for the base. It is very close in
my opinion, but for me, I feel its got a little bit too much brownish tint to it for the
x-wing.
You may however find it perfect. Ya never know

Hmm, I just thought of something I remembered I saw from from Cody's Coop a while back. If you shot a base coat of dingy/dirty white, then lightly covered the base coat with a light coat of clean white. After it dries, take some fine sandpaper and draw it against the paint beginning at the edge of certain panels, it will leave streaks of the dirty color behind... let me get a link up...
http://www.codyscoop.com/ht-rain.html

Hmm, my method is reversed but should give you the same results.... what do you think?

ILM used everything from auto lacquer to auto grease in detailing and painting the studio models. They would probably have a hard time rembering what they did. Hmmm...White over black might just work.

Matt

I usually watch the movies and focus on the scenes that have close-in shots of the studio prop vehicles to try to get a good idea on what color the vehicles really are. Basically you'll interpret the colors and spray what looks close to you. I've never seen any information on an exact color (we don't have any luck with colors, like RLM colors like the Aircraft guys have) but a lot of intepretations of each craft are out there. I think the general consensus is a heavily weathered white, or very light gray.

Paint it whatever color you like, I'm sure if you weather it correctly it wouldn't matter if the base color was pink!