Made an airfix kit for someone else. What stood out was, non of the techniques I had learned for painting fantasy miniature's really helped me at all. Also the kit was very hard to put together in comparison. The plastic was all covered in flash, and it didn't even seem to fit together right. Anybody have any advice on shading or highlighting? I felt like if I used my normal techniques, it would look really unrealistic. Other models I would like to try painting. The mig 29 is still a truly awesome looking plane, that fills with you with a sense of exotic mystery just looking at it.
Looks like a good start. Great job on the camo pattern and decals. Especially on the fuselage and wings. The dorsal decal has some small wrinkling, but it looks like that was due to the texture build up of the paint. You should consider using a tint on the canopy and do some weathering on the body. Using panel liner(I like Tamiya's dark grey) would help to bring out the details across the model. You could also try your hand at doing some soot/heat scoring on the exhaust and nearby panels. On future kits: Pay close attention to sprue chads. It looks like there a few model clean ups you missed. Don't be afraid to cut things away to make them fit. My guess is the internals of the model were to large and that is why you have a slight gap down the length of the plane. I has been too long since I did any scale models. You have inspired me.
Yes, the gaps were very frustrating. Your right about the decals as well, i had a hard time putting them on. I should have probably painted this with the airbrush to get the smooth finish, the paint with the brush built up quite quickly. Also it seemed the paint works differently over the Air Fix plastic compared to the Citadel plastic. I have just ordered loads of mintitures for my seraphon and Khorne armies. But I have put them to the side while I work on these kits. It will probably take me a year to do them anyway, with the other models I still have to paint. So my next kit is the Bismark ship. I want to find out, how they do the shading before I start that. At the moment the person I saw doing it, was under painting with an airbrush, black lines around the details. And then when he applied the top paint the black showed through. Shame you can't just slap on a wash really.