WIP: TIE Advanced (Vader's TIE Fighter, Star Wars, Fine Molds)

A quick weekend project.


In my haste to choose a kit to finish, I've been prioritizing the largest box size, to make room on my shelf. However, I felt major indecision, and on a whim picked this one up.

It was an incredibly fast build. It took up an afternoon, but that's all. I spent the rest of the night masking off the window sections, then sprayed it with black primer.

At this point, the wings are just held together by the tight fit of the keying of the parts. I wanted to be able to do it in sub assemblies. Speaking of, a quick aside. Unlike the other Fine Molds TIE Fighters, this one came with the solar panels already attached, of which I was not a fan. It left for some odd fitting, which is unusual for Fine Molds, and a lot more work masking. Anyways. After waiting a night for the primer to dry, I sprayed the base with Tamiya's Black Metal rattle can paint, and sprayed white aluminum from Alclad on the body.

You can see the Fine Molds masks included in the background. I never use them, they're awful. You have to free hand cut them out. Instead, I use Tamiya tape and a new Xacto blade, lay the tape down, and cut it along the ridges, since they act as a straight edge to cut against. Speaking of masks, for the wings, I sprayed them with a Tamiya Flat Black, then cut the masks against the solar panels:

I did the same Alclad spray on those, then after drying, glued them on, and removed all of the masks.

I did some testing with using a wash in the panel lines before gluing them on, but originally was so-so on the outcome. This isn't meant to be a competition piece, just a quick project to knock a kit out, and with so many panel lines, and the wash not making a huge difference at that scale, thus far I've left it off. TIE Fighters are assembly line pieces meant to be used a few times and destroyed. Rarely would they last long enough to be weathered, even Vader's TIE. I might change my mind before taking shots with the big camera (seeing these pictures makes the lack of panel line enhancement stand out more than it seems in "real life," but for right now I'm calling it complete.

Thanks for stopping by!