Painting The Side Panels

Today I started painting the panels. I sadly ran out of primer with two panels left, so they'll have to wait for another day (probably tomorrow).

I cut out the windows for the lighting in the hero-panel with an exacto-knife and masked off the rest of the windows, keeping them the natural opaque color of the resin, as the backing on those windows on the hero-panel was that colour originally. Saves me from finding the right material to attach behind those windows. Then I sprayed it with Rustoleum Stainless Steel, taking my lead from MonCal who thought the panels were the same colour as the carbonite block just that they aren't weathered like the block is.

I used liquid masking in the little hole below the main window:

Put in the electronics kit I bought from modeljag to see that everything looked correct:

Drilled holes for the LEDs (by hand, going up 0,5 mm incrementally so not to crack the thin plastic):

Painted the perforated boards with acrylic paint from Citadel Miniature-paints (I have a whole box full of them that's been sitting there for 15 years now) and had two hues of blue that matched the original pretty well if I may say so:

Installed all the electronics again, and I must say that it is looking good:

I also sprayed five of the other panels with aluminum, will wait a few days till it has completely dried, mask out the windows, and spray the rest of the panels in stainless steel as well.

Then I'm just waiting for zenix to say when, and start selling 3D-printed greeblie-kits!