Putting off painting: Bandai X-Wing 1/72

Something slightly different - even considering my getting distracted and working on this and that. A couple of weeks back I received a Bandai Millenium Falcon 1/144 kit as a belated birthday present from my wife. I'm intending to paint, detail and light the kit so my son was a bit disappointed that we couldn't just dive into an "out of the box" build; he and I have built a few Bandai Gundams in past.

I decided to pick up another kit from the same same range and build it with him just as it came, not painting, using the vinyl stickers rather than waterslide transfers, and so on. A local supplier was having a bit of a sale and I bought a Bandai X-Wing Red Squadron box.

The kit comes with two X-Wings, one at 1/72 which we planned to build, and one at 1/144 which I'm holding on to and will paint up to accompany the Falcon. Like all of the Bandai kits I've seen the engineering and detailing is superb, and the kit goes together without requiring glue. In many ways they're more 3D puzzles than traditional military kitsets.

The kit is branded as "Rogue One" and the supplied stickers have squadron markings for Red 1 through 5 (by adding additional red flashes to the wings). The pilot was supplied in white plastic, with some helmet stickers, and the astromech came with gold stickers.

My son however was keen on Luke's "A New Hope" Red 5, which is where a little painting came in. He was happy with the vehicle markings as supplied, but wanted the pilot to be more like Luke and the astromech as R2D2.

So, orange jumpsuit with white harness, chest panel, etc., and a blue and silver droid. I also decided to paint the cockpit too in a very basic scheme as I'd some problems with the cockpit stickers. The large stickers are fine, and nicely detailed, but the the small stickers don't have much surface area for adhesion, and when you're trying to affix them to complex shapes it can be a little frustrating.

The paint-job was fairly basic, after priming the jumpsuit was painted with Reaper MSP Lava Orange and shaded with Army Painter Jumpsuit shader. I had intended to use AP Prison Jumpsuit (from an AP Zombicide paint set I'd picked up) but the AP orange was watery and useless. All of the other AP paints I've used have been great; I don't know if this is just an isolated case, or if the Zombicide sub-brand are different. The shader was fine, I'll have to try out the other paints in the set. The rest of the painting was mostly Vallejo this and that, and the helmet got the supplied waterslide red rebel symbols.

One warning for kit builders: the pilot cannot be fitted into the assembled cockpit. While the pilot and droid were being painted the build continued. The droid can be put in by removing a single part and sliding another (no glue remember), but after the pilot was ready we discovered that a large proportion of the fuselage had to be carefully disassembled to get his feet under the dashboard.