Pt. 8 Finishing Cockpit Interior Lighting

Well, after drilling into the sides of rear instrument panel and adding fibers, here's how the rear of the cockpit looks.  Again, I have not received the power pack yet to operate the rear wall LED's, so I'm using an LED flashlight to illuminate it temporarily.

I also received my flashing LED's I had ordered.  So now I'm able to send various fiber optics to those rather than the solid lit LED.   So I've added 3 flashing LEDs so that not all flashing lights will flash at the same time.  Gives it some randomness.  So here it is in all it's glory SO FAR.  This is not a final finished product, but VERY close.  Sorry for the video not being the greatest, but I shot it with my phone because of being able to get so close to the model.

MORE TO COME.....

Pt. 7 Additional Cockpit and new parts

So my next shipment of parts arrived this week.

So it's time to start working on finishing up the cockpit.

 Started out by priming the side console pieces.

 

I did a 2 tone paint job on the sides.  A dark gray on the lower half and flat black on the top.

Then on to painting and detailing.

 Now a test fit of the center and side consoles together.

There is a gap under the console where the inside of the front cone will be seen.  Gonna need to paint the inside of the cone to match.

 

 And here we go.  A test fit the of the cockpit front. 

ME LIKEY

It's a tight fit of the fibers and LED under the floorboard, but it works.

Now to put the rear instrument panel together.

So now that ALL pieces of the cockpit are painted, my next step is to add additional fiber optics to the side consoles, rear instrument panel, and a few blinking lights on the back cockpit wall.

MORE TO COME.....

Pt. 6 Console Lighting and more painting

Now it's finally time do do some fiber optics for the cockpit front console.  With a .25mm drill bit for my Dremel, I'll drill the holes where I want lights placed.

 

Next is putting the colored fiber optics through the holes.  I don't want to make the front console too busy with lights, so I've chosen to do 10 lights in all, plus the console monitor.  At least 2 of these lights will be attached to a blinking LED, the rest remaining constantly lit.

Due to the nature of the fibers, I don't want to use a solvent type of glue, so I'm using regular Elmer's glue to hold the fibers in place.  Using super glue may result in damaging the fibers.  Once the cockpit is built, there should be no tugging on the fibers and the Elmer's should hold just fine.

There we go.  All fibers run.

And now a test lighting of the front console.

This is the LED which I will be using for the front cosole monitor backlight.

The light to backlight the console monitor is a little big to fit behind the console.  Having to grind away a groove for the light to fit in.

That should do it.

Drilling a hole which will be under the floor of the Falcon to run the fiber lighting through.

Another little test of the console lighting.  Lookin' good.

Time to put the quad laser cannon together.

 The quad laser canon is actually diecast metal. 

Primed and ready to paint.

Notice, there are no holes where the lasers would come from.  Gotta fix this.

Nothing a very little Dremel bit can't fix.

Better. With a little black in the center, they should look like barrels of the gun.

Time to airbrush and then weather with black wash.

Looking pretty good here as well.

This is the turret top as it came from the box.  The model comes "pre-painted" for beginning modelers who want to take a shot.  But by no means is it good enough or realistic looking enough.

I did a light dusting with the airbrush over the colored ares to tone them down.  With the blade I'm scraping away bits for the top to look damaged and chipped.

Much better looking.

And with the quad laser cannon attached.

While I do like how it's turning out so far, until (way later down the road) I get the majority of the Falcon built, I won't really know how much more weathering to add.  I'm sure there will be more that I'll be doing once fully assembled.

My next set of parts have shipped and should be here in the next few days.  Just in time, since I've pretty much finished up these parts that I already have.

Pt. 5 Painting the Cockpit

So today is a pretty big update.  It's the first actual real work I've done on the model so far.  Up until now it's been examining and prepping pieces. So this weekend I started painting the cockpit pieces I have so far and planning for my additional lighting. This post is the culmination of about 9 hours worth of work.

The back of the Falcon has cutouts for the model LED's to shine through.

While I don't have the LED lighting for the back yet, by placing it in front of a light source you can see it illuminate, but much of the color is washed away and it all looks very white or pale blue.

So here I've decided to paint the back side of the console with clear colored paints.

Once finished I have blue, green and some orange to increase the saturation of color once illuminated.

Again, holding the back in front of a light source, you can see much more color now.

So next up is painting the back door, which came painted, but just very nice clean gray.  I'm starting off with a tan base coat.

After this base coat, I've applied a wash of brown for texture and grime.

After the brown wash, I did a black wash over it to add yet another layer or dirt and grime.  I'm pretty pleased with how the doorway has turned out.

And now I can finally secure it to the back of the cockpit.

Like the back of the cockpit, the front console came with a sticker to place on it.  While it's nice looking, there is no lighting and it's very clean looking.  The holes seen in the piece are where control shafts will be placed once I receive them.

I plan to drill little holes to run fiber optics into the front console for lights.  But the sticker also has an area of a monitor.  I want this to be illuminated for realism.  So I'm drilling a hole through the plastic in the same area the screen appears on the sticker.

However, this is just a round hole and the monitor is square.

So with a blade, I'm trying to make the hole as square as possible to match the monitor.

Pretty good square shape.

So I've now affixed the sticker to the console and placed the console over a light source to see how the screen will look illuminated.  Looks pretty good, but like the back of the cockpit, it's a little under saturated, as the sticker is actually a blue monitor.

So as with the back of the cockpit, I'm painting the back side of the sticker with some clear blue paint.

Much better now.  Actually looks like a monitor in the console.  My next step in the future will be to drill holes where the white lights are and actually have them illuminate.

Time to paint the cockpit.  Seats and cockpit base primed and ready to go.

I've done a coat of aluminum on the back seats and then sealed them with, believe it or not, hairspray, for reasons you'll see later. I've painted a brown color on the pilot seats.

I then  painted black over the aluminum and hairspray of the back seats.  I did a little sponge painting of tan onto the pilot seats.  This I will need to lighten up with another airbrush spray of the brown.

So here's the reason for the hairspray.  I am now scraping away the black paint to make the seats appear worn and chipped.  By spraying hairspray over the aluminum, it's protecting that paint so that it does not get scraped away as well.

Seats after scraping away.

Now it's time to paint the back and seat cushions.  This was done with a light tan color, then I applied a wash of brown over them.  Because of paint not being completely dried when doing this, it creates kind of a cool looking texture of cracks in the cushions.

 The pilot seats I applied a darker brown wash over them to highlight the cushioned area and did a light dry brush of tan for more worn look and scraping.

 The floor and center console of the cockpit I'm airbrushing a dark gray color.

I then applied a black wash for some shading in corners. I also applied weathering pastels using a sponge to create a dirty, oily been around the galaxy quite a few times look.

You can see a little heavier mud look down the center and in front of the seats where there would be the most foot traffic.

One last step for now is painting the little control wheels for the pilot's seats.

Just did some black for the back portion, and a black wash over the metal to look aged and worn.

This last piece is the front of the cockpit which I painted black, then did an aluminum dry brush over the parts to highlight them.  Also a bit of rust and mud weathering as well.

So here we have the cockpit so far with the pieces I have.  My next shipment of parts should include the rest of the cockpit so that I can finish it off and figure out where I'm going to be placing my fiber optic lighting. So far I'm very happy with how this is turning out. 

MUCH MORE TO COME