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FM 1:48 TIE Fighter


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Ever since my Japan trip and subsequent build of the Bandai 1:144 Millennium Falcon, I have been bitten with the Star Wars bug for modern-tooled Japanese kit from Bandai and Fine Molds.

I found the Revel boxing's of the Fine Molds TIE and X-Wing and started gettin' busy in the cool basement during the summer heat.

First, Dug up some reference materials from the web and the excellent book, Star Wars Cronicles. I decided to capture that look from Episode 4 during the Death Star battle. The TIE fighters from ANH had a lighter grey color than the blue-ish grey color seen in ESB or ROTJ.

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I did a LOT of research on the color, looking for that right shade of grey from ANH. Filmed models from the original trilogy also can exhibit lighter colors due to older filming techniques (remember this was the late 70s, early 80s, everything was analog!) As such there is some debate of the ANH TIE were a white or very light grey or even a different color at all from the other films. Many of us who grew up with the old Kenner toys had white TIEs and that can influence how we see things decades later.

Several online sources agree that ESB and ROTJ TIE fighters are the blue-grey color and that Tamiya TS-32 haze grey is a near perfect match to studio models as seen in several exhibits.

I got to see these origional studio

models at the Smithsonian traveling exhibit in Chicago back around 98' myself but lost all my old photos!

After some trial and error, I decided on Tamiya XF-19, light grey. This was further justified on my mind after seeing the early Rouge One trailer with TIE filling the screen.

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I used Tamiya neutral grey for some contrasting trim, I like how it turned out. The camera flash can make the light grey almost white.

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Edited by toadwbg
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The black solar panels (or heat exchangers depending on your source) are molded separately from the grey frames, seemingly making painting without any masking required. Great idea! This was almost true, I had to do some masking for touching up the outer perimeter of that black center panel. You could try brush painting this without masking.

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A real gem is the cockpit, which can get hidden behind those solar panels and transparencies. The original studio models actually left out the transparencies for filming to reduce glare and blue-screen reflections, so I left them off too.

A very nice pilot figure and standing officer are included. They even include Imperial insignia for the helmet and shoulders, a nice touch. Hard too see inside the canopy.

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You can barely make it out in the above photo, bUT I added a spec of green glitter to the laser cannons. You can just catch them under the light light reflections and adds that extra something. I did similar red specs on the engine exhausts.

The cockpit also includes sidewalls with decals for instrumentation/displays. I even addedicated a little reflective red tape inside for the occasional glint of light inside.

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This was a great kit and I'd highly recommend it, hopefully it will look great next to its X-Wing adversary.

Hope Bandai makes more Origional Trilogy time-frame, new-tool kits with the new Rouge One movie comming out this December. I want a Y-Wing in 1/48th!

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  • 1 month later...

Great build - it looks great!.  And it looks like you painted the solar panels (that's what they were called back when the first movie came out, so that's what they'll always be to me) with more of a gloss color.  I had thought about doing that myself, so it's nice to see how it looks - thanks!

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10 hours ago, Ken Cartwright said:

Great build - it looks great!.  And it looks like you painted the solar panels (that's what they were called back when the first movie came out, so that's what they'll always be to me) with more of a gloss color.  I had thought about doing that myself, so it's nice to see how it looks - thanks!

I used a satin black on the solar panels, I like the contrast to the grey main color.

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