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459 TK to TD conversion


TK-459
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Now that I got my armor build thread done, I wanted to post up my progress towards a Sandtrooper. I've been working on this steadily for awhile now.

The first thing I did was strip down the details that I didn't need. This was pretty simple because I knew I was going to go TD and made them all removable. The ab buttons and shoulder ribs were velcroed, the helmet stripes were pinstripped with decals, the dropboxes were snapped, the detonator was clipped, and the knee was riveted. The knee was the only part that would need a little repair from the two small holes.

My AP armor was originally unpainted and I was on the ropes about painting it until I did a few tests and talked to Seth and Mike about it. Here is an image of my unpainted AP on the left, and a swatch of 1536's awesome work on the right ( ) .

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The slightly blueish hue of my unpainted armor looks good clean, but it just greys everything out a bit when weathered and didn't match well with the Woodland Scenics paints. It's not bad, just not was I was looking for. Apparently the AP armor is using a different ABS now that is more of a pure white. Still, the weathering also didn't take to the unpainted armor as well as it did the painted surface.

So....I decided to paint all of my armor Krylon Fusion Gloss White. The Krylon Fusion Gloss White is a much closer match to the SDS Stunt, which has my favorite white-hue (milky, slightly yellow).

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Thanks. Am I getting too brown? It's certainly tricky to control the paint and dust, not to mention taking decent photos of the weathering.

By the way, all the weathering is following Brak's Tutorial (Woodland Scenics and Fuller Earth).

I am applying the paint with a sea sponge and removing with a cloth. I am blowing the Fullers off of a brush and softening/removing with paper towels as the hairspray dries.

Here is everything else I have weathered so far...

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Weathered sections versus unweathered chest and abplate.

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Lookin' good. I find the more you look at it, the more you'll want to change it... especially after an event and you look at new pictures. Based on what I see above, I'd probably add a little more contrast or areas of dirt concentration. But for the most part, it's great!

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Cool, thanks for the feedback and constructive criticism. I'll revisit the contrast. I'm really curious to see some of your armor in person. I'm gonna keep a closer eye out at CIV.

One more thing to post so far....no I do not work at super-human speeds, I've just had a lot of images sitting in my camera for awhile.

Here is the up-to-today progress on the bucket. Again, I've taken what I have learned here and decided to do all the layers. Tons of thanks to everyone.

I started with this..my pristine baby.

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And stripped it back down to this...YIKES!

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Setting if up for chips with a khaki base

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Then applying a chip mask using ripped pieces of masking tape

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Hitting it with Fusion Gloss White

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Some of the results

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And remember those perfectly edged helmet details?

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They sure were pretty, but they are gone for these fugly-sweet handpainted ones

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Freaking sweet job on that AP suit. I've been wanting to paint my AP, but haven't had the guts to. Did you use Humbrol paints for the details and are you going to try to hand-paint the tube stripes or go with decals? Awesome job with the paint chips!

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Thanks for the compliments.

Did you use Humbrol paints for the details and are you going to try to hand-paint the tube stripes or go with decals?

My greys are wetsanded primer. As for the tube stripes...I set up a mask but I'm not sure about it and I am worried about bleeding. I may just grab some more decals. What do you think?

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I think this is looking really good. It reminds me of my first weathering... but executed better than mine. The sandtroopers do seem to have a overall base coat of diret/grime but I think it is important to go back and add a little more to give some distinctly dirtier places. Take a good look at Davin's armor to get a good example of that. Can't wait to see the final and I LOVE the very purposefully poor job on the helmet details!!!

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Lol, well since I have been spending a good deal of time at both the dented helmet and here, I ought to be fairly detail crazy by now .

I am going to go back through screenshots and try some of the heavier weathering sections that you guys are suggesting today. I was worried about over-weathering. I'll post something up as soon as I update some parts.

First, I wanted to post the good, the bad, and the ugly of the results with the vents.

The good...it came out pretty good. Even though I pressed the mask down with the edge of a knife, there was still a bit of bleeding in the corners. I used a waterbased acrylic, so I was able to fix it with a wet q-tip before it fully dried.

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The bad...I was worried about the permanence of the acrylic going into weathering.

The ugly...I not so brilliantly decided to seal the vent stripes with a little Krylon Acrylic Satin Finish. The Krylon Fusion didn't agree.

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This was probably one of those times that I should have just went to sleep for the night, but I couldn't rest on this mess. I sanded much of it down and salvaged what I could.

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Then I hit it with some fresh Fusion white, wetsanded, etc etc. In the end I ended up with this. I think I'll be chalking it up as some actual battle damage. {SMILIES_PATH}/icon_confused.gif

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