Thanks for those images! Really great to see!
At risk of hijacking this discussion, you wouldn’t happen to have any shots showing the interiors of the lower two pits, would you? I haven’t seen any shots that show all the insides clearly.
And tying this loosely back to the original topic of painting, for some reason some folks seem to paint all their Falcon pits black or dark grey, which looks very weird since the original models didn’t look like that at all.
There is no risk of hijacking here, post and ask for what you need!
Regarding the pits, it's the same issue I had with around the engine fans. Your brain is telling you/ remembering how something looks.
Interestingly on that subject I did notice how white they actually are on the 5ft model. On the 32" they seem to have painted shadows and around the circular gun turret, down the edges of the engine lid, and in those pits have been painted black but then pushed back with some white. It adds a significant amount of depth to the pits that way I suppose as it is somewhat black all the way down inside but then the more external components are a white shade although still more grimy looking than on the 5ft model.
Then you look at a photo like the one Jaitea posted of the front and back of the 32 model. The circular pits on the front are very dark. Studying those pics the last 2 days I realised that whatever editing or printing process those went through, it has made the darker elements of the photograph very dark and the highlights much brighter. If that photo was your only reference or memory, you're going to have a falcon with dark pits.
The purpose of this thread was to help me improve my Falcon but also reference for others to have some points in mind before even starting their paint jobs and you made a perfect point , the Falcon pits are not overly dark.
Just going into this with that information in your brain is a big advantage to your outcome.
I do not know about others, but despite using the same base color as the hull in the pits once, it is "weathered" with grime and stuff it comes out grey, then add in angle of the shadows and can often look black?
For example close up on mine it is just the hull color, but for the most part lots of grime through oil washes and pastels. I figure if dirt is going to settle anywhere it would be in those pits and I wanted that "dirty engine" look
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For me personally, while I am aiming for the 5ft studio model look, but I also am willing to make some changes to incorporate some of what I like on the 32" and some of what I like on the full size sets
For example, I like to copy the look of the side walls here
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and in the Galaxy's edge one
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In addition, I prefer a little more visual interest in some of those pits by making it look like different materials/replaced parts instead of one uniform paint color
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or I figure this part here would probably be more metallic look like some engine parts
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Unfortunately, a lot of the detail painting gets lost in pics, or when viewed from a distance just reads as a uniform color
I think this is a good place to remember RULE 1, it's your model and you paint it however you want.
If your Falcon cockpit is going to have a P40 flying tigers teeth and eyes, I say you go for it.
You have done a brilliant job detailing there Analyzer, and you're stating what I wanted to achieve in the beginning. I wanted my model to feel and look like the Falcon, and incorporating all those elements from the different models and sets helps achieve that.
And to add, I look at the studio models as a snapshot in time. In the world of the Millenium Falcon, the week after ROTJ perhaps a tie fighter destroyed a panel and it needed replacing, 6 months later an engine part failed, needed a nice shiny new one. So some variation from the studio model is perfectly acceptable if you want it to look like The Falcon (obviously a different story if you want a replica of the studio model).
As part of the more recent canon, that freighter started off as a clean white ship and we're supposed to believe that once it came to the models we see in the original trilogy, it never really changed again minus a rectangular radar dish (which is actually a really cool design but meh, I like a round radar dish, thanks Disney).
Cheers,
Josh
