Star Wars Millennium Falcon [WIP - Lower Gun Turret with Finn at 1/144 scale]

When I'm painting Bandai's Star Wars model kit parts, especially the ones that barely see the light of day, I've a recurring imaginary scene playing in my mind. It goes like this. There is a group of Bandai product designers huddled over a table giggling and high-fiving each other. One designer then says, let's see those modellers paint this detailed part that's going to be covered up by another part. And then the whole group erupts in uncontrolled laughter. Of course this scene exists only in my mind. But it still doesn't stop me imagining it as I paint yet another soon to be barely visible detailed part.

Bandai 1/144 scale Millennium Falcon work-in-progress: Finn inside the lower gun turret

Finn is seated rather awkwardly to his left as the seat wasn't build to accommodate the figure

Base colours comprised light pastels and shiny metallics to, hopefully, better reflect light

Let's get one thing out of the way. The way Bandai designers and engineers have lovingly reproduced vehicle details from the Star Wars universe demands they be painted. So paint the details I will. But this time around, I sought a compromise in order to reduce the amount of time I'm spending on my Star Wars projects. Based on the assumption that the farther back into the interior, the less visible the details - I painted the bare minimum base colours for the said areas. Most of the details I recreated through paint were located at the front end of the turret interior, nearest to the clear plastic viewport.

Scene that inspired my attempts to paint Finn and the Falcon's lower gun turret

This attempt at the Falcon's lower gun turret interior with Finn seated on the gunner's chair was inspired by The Force Awakens scene in which he flew in the modified Corellian YT-1300 light freighter for the first time. It complements the fact that Rey and Bee-Bee-Ate are in the cockpit.

Lower gun turret seat with 'lighted' controls and leather seating

Finn in all his 1/144 scale glory

The farther back in the lower gun turret interior, the less details painted

Gun turret interior had fairly sparse details as I don't think they were meant to be painted in detail

After all that hard work, the 'heartache process' soon began, i.e. the process of covering up all the hard work done painting the lower gun turret interior and Finn. First was the viewport which as expected obscured part of the view into the Millennium Falcon's lower gun turret interior. Luckily I had used a lot of light pastel as well as metallic colours to basecoat the interior. This meant enough light reflected off the interior to make gun turret retain visibility through the clear plastic viewport.

Structural spokes on the viewports were painted light grey based on ILM reference photos

Back view of the gun turret viewports - painted with black acrylic 'primer'

Finn and the interior is still visible, barely, at this stage of the process

Up next was was the turret's hull plating as well as the gun attachment. By the time everything was in place, Finn and most of the interior was no longer visible from afar. 'Heartache process' - concluded.

Lower gun turret's hull plating attached

Zoomed out view of the lower gun turret with its yet-to-be-weathered hull plating attached

On goes the guns and tadaaa ... Finn dissappears (the three holes are for the base attachment)

To give you an idea of just how big the lower gun turret interior was, I compared it - hull plating, gun and all - to my customary scale comparison tools i.e. paperclip and five sen coin (see below). 

Bandai Millennium Falcon lower gun turret scale comparison to a paperclip and a 5 sen coin

Could I have done a better job with the lower gun turret interior? Probably. Should I have done so. Not really. I did enough to placate my inner 'paint every detail' demons. And that's good enough for me. As you can see from the zoomed out photo above, not much of the painted details remain visible from afar. But it's there and that's the whole point, at least for me. Ohhh ... just one other thing before I sign off. If you happen to see any online ads below my blog posts I would appreciate it if you could click on it occasionally for sponsor messages. It helps generate some income via blogging. Every little bit helps in these tough times. Thanks in advance for your support, and have a good weekend!