Painting my “Not-BMD”

It was with bated breath that I approached my Mars 2 Pro as the first of my “not-BMD” print runs lifted from the resin vat. Unsure as to the orientation I should use to minimize warping, I had laid out three vehicles worth of parts at various angles (~30, 60 and 90 degrees to the plate) in order to see what would work best.

Due to the significant post-processing involved, resin printing represents a larger potential time and resource wastage for failed prints than does FDM; you can’t just stop a failing print, clear the build plate and restart. If any resin is stuck to the FEP at the bottom of the vat, it must be cleared off before a new print can be started, lest you end up with a second failed print run. It can be a pain.

Luckily, the models came out (mostly) fine. The vehicle hull placed at ~60 degrees seemed to have fared best. Of course, I realized that I had forgotten to support some elements in Chitubox, so a few roadwheels were malformed anyway. Oops!

I made a new plate’s worth of parts in Chitubox and ran another set of three models off, this time with better placed supports.

Regardless of my efforts towards minimising warpage, there was still a bit on the gun barrel and “running boards” on the hull. I printed these in Elegoo’s water washable translucent blue, so that may have something to do with it. I’ll have a better idea when I print more using my bottle of grey resin.

Eager to see what my miniatures would look like with paint, I grabbed a random one from the lot and fired up the airbrush.

It was then I realised all I had was Vallejo’s Mech White primer. Have you ever tried to cover a blue model using white? Needless to say it wasn’t fun and I promptly ordered some more primer in black.

Once the black primer arrived, I did the whole lot using a sort of half-assed zenithal method.

I wanted to do a sort of Swedish M90 camo, but in a two-tone scheme for simplicity’s sake.

I basecoated the hulls and turrets in Vallejo 71006 Cam Light Green

I then laid out a strip of masking tape on my cutting mat and sliced ‘n’ diced out some random polygonal shapes. These were then applied to form a hard-edged pattern.

The second colour, Vallejo 71022 Cam Green, was then sprayed and tape removed.

It’s here that my photo coverage is pretty much non-existent, as I was engrossed in the process and forgot to take pics of each step. Here are the few pictures I did think to take:

I went a little too heavy on the acrylic mud and the enamel dust effects I attempted pretty much just washed out the paint job. As I found out, scaling down some of the standard plastic model weathering processes is not entirely straightforward.

Oh well! In the end this was a test mule to get the process sorted out. I now know better for the rest of them.

While I didn’t have the wherewithal to take pictures for each step, I did record the overall process and the paints used:

PRIME

1. black primer
2. detail/highlight upper and raised areas in white primer (zenithal technique)

BASE

1. basecoat Vallejo 71006 Cam Light Green
2. mask off polygonal shapes with painters tape
3. overpaint with vallejo 71022 Cam Green

TRACKS AND ROADWHEELS

1. Paint tracks and rubber portions of roadwheels in Vallejo 70862 Black Grey

CHIPPING

1. Brush and/or sponge chip using (~50/50) mix of Vallejo 71095 Pale Green and Vallejo 72034 Bonewhite
2. Fill in some chipped areas with Vallejo 70862 Black Grey to represent chips down to the metal

LENSES AND VISION BLOCKS

1. Paint sensor lenses, vision blocks and headlights with jewel effect

DETAILS

1. Paint tools and other small details

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GLOSS VARNISH

DECALS

1. Apply decals with softener and fixer
2. Touch up decals with gloss varnish using brush

PIN WASH

1. Apply AK NATO enamel wash to crevices and details
2. Clean up with white spirit

TRACK WASH

1. Apply AK enamel track wash to tracks
2. Clean up with white spirit

GRUNGE/STREAKS/GRIME

1. Apply AK enamel grime effects to fuel filler caps, leaky machinery, etc
2. Clean up with white spirit

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SATIN VARNISH

DUST

1. Apply AK enamel dust effect to running gear and other areas where dust will settle
2. Blend in with flat brush as required
3. Clean with white spirit

MUD

1. Apply Vallejo acrylic mud effects to running gear and lower hull

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MATTE VARNISH

TOUCH UP MUD AND LENSES

1. Apply gloss or satin varnish to areas that should be shiny, such as fresh oil stains, vision blocks, fresh mud, etc