#kitsandbits tie

[kitsandbits]

TIE Completed

Well that’s the TIE complete. For all its simplicity it’s a nice looking kit once its built up, gave it a light weathering with some dark grey pigment but nothing too strong. I am actually quite pleased with the way it looks, might even get my proper camera out and take some better photos at some point, but in the mean time here’s the ones taken with my phone!

[kitsandbits]

The Glazing

Not much to say really, it's an iconic TIE Fighter window, painted the wrong colour according to the instructions colour call out. It should be a darker grey than the hull apparently but I didn't notice this fact until after I had removed the masking, and considering the amount of time it took me to mask the window up ... it's staying the wrong colour. Can you just sense the rage from the StarWars community, the horror!

[kitsandbits]

Cockpit Constructed

Well here’s the completed cockpit for the TIE. There really isn’t much to it, I tried to pick out some of the details in red and black as they are the presiding colours I remember from the films, or at least they’re the colours I associate with the inside of the TIE in my mind; regardless it has busied the office up a bit but I am unsure as to how much of this is actualy going to be visible anyway once its all buttoned up.  

[kitsandbits]

More Masking & A Hull

Heres the final paint going on the last of the TIE Fighter Solar panel framework and we can finally move on to something else, in this case it was just the two halves of the tiny hull which also needed a coat of blue/grey. There isn’t actually much else to this kit, just the cockpit and stand to paint up!

[kitsandbits]

Solar Panel Saga

Why do I get hung up so much on silly little things, so the saga of the solar panel colour is starting to drag on a bit now, I started by putting down a base of Bronze, then put a clear blue over the top and toned this down using Tamiya Smoke. I’m still not entirely happy with it and am kind of regretting not just painting them Gloss Black but it is what it is and I spent too much time messing about on this so it’s time to get a coat of Klear down and mask them panels up once dry.

[kitsandbits]

TIE Pilot and Solar Panels

Unlike my aircraft builds I feel the need to use the included pilots on these Star Wars kits, the TIE Pilot is adequately represented in this kit, it’s not a great figure but at this scale and with how much of him will be visible he doesn’t exactly need to be.

The colour call out for the solar panels is matt black, and I am sure this is what the fantastic studio models were painted, however when I put a coat of this on I found the detail on the panels themselves of each cell tended to fade away compared to a gloss finish, but then this got me thinking too... and thinking’s never good 

When you see the on screen TIE Fighters the panels have a blue hue to them, this, much like the grey shade debate is often put down to a “blue bleed” from the special effects screens. Then I remembered a recent trip to the National Museum of Scotland where I had seen solar panels up close and they’re not black, the ones I was looking at either had metallic blue or bronze almost like flakes in the make up of the panel. I know realism doesn’t really come in to it with Sci-Fi but I decided this was enough to ignore the colour call out here and try something a little different, so here I go probably offending all those hardcore Star Wars fans/builders out there.

[kitsandbits]

TIE Fighter

Returning to the theme of quick and easy builds I decided to get another of the small Revell Star Wars kits out of the stash, this time I plugged for the iconic TIE Fighter with this kit being 1:110 scale. I have to admit I find the lack of consistency with the scales on these small Star Wars kits a tad annoying. I would much prefer if they were all done to one scale, whatever that may be, but thats just my own personal hangup and it I am sure this doesn’t bother most of the builders of these kits  and I suppose this would maybe cause a few issues when it comes to displaying them alongside one another. I did toy with the idea of lighting this one up with some LEDs/Fibre optics but looking at the internals there probably isn't a lot a room in this one to embark on my first lighting project so I’ll leave that for another build.