>>5441599I honestly just tried some new ideas and put planning into it, that was the biggest thing. I looked at the busted up mocks in the last battle of the original build fighters to get the ideas for the armor cracks etc. Then I thought about what kind of damage a test bot would suffer.
I also spent a lot of time making the damage look as nice as I could, like I smoothed out dents etc. That was surprisingly hard, I think it is something I will experiment more with in the future.
As for technique stuff, I wanted the damage to look fresh so I did a lot of bare metal, so I did the entire suit with alclad silver base first. The rest of the paint is just model masters enamel, which let me wear through edges really easily with thinner and cotton swabs. It was a lot of work but something I had wanted to try out, and I i think I can use it nicely on something like an MG where you want really subtle edge wear that looks worn through rather than painted on top. The cracks are just free hand scribed on with a carbide tip scriber, which isn't directional so it's good for that. I wanted him to look like had been doing some fist fighting so I tore the tops of his hands up a lot too.
I think the rest of it is pretty basic, I used black powders and oil paints, light dust for the boots, just typical military weathering items. I think the real key is plan how much you are going to do and then stick to it (I didn't stick to it...) and then spend a long time on it. I made sure there were no file marks or anything else that said "I'm just attacking my kit with tools"
