WIP: 1/12 BB-8, Part 2

"He just wants you for parts."

Since I had a little bit of free time this morning, I went ahead and primed all of the parts with Alclad II grey primer and let them dry for about an hour. Since it is a lacquer-based primer, the cure time is incredibly fast; the bottle says it's dry in 30 minutes, but I always like to get it a little extra time. However, after it dried I realized I hadn't decided what direction to take with the paintwork yet. Normally I would preshade everything and then apply the base coat, but I'm worried the preshade might throw off the "look" of the model. I'm also worried about how shallow some of the panel lines on the body sphere are so I'm trying to limit the amount of paint I apply to it.

Even though I'm not entirely sure how I want to go about painting the white and the orange, I knew for certain how I wanted to do the metallic parts. All of the metal parts were primed and then painted with Alclad II Aluminum (ALC 101), which is the most realistic finish possible for a model part. In the above picture, the hatch on the left is how it appears directly from the sprue while the one on the right has been sprayed with Alclad II Aluminum and it's a night and day difference (the bright lights of my painting desk help exaggerate it as well). It's also important to remember that Bandai's metallic-colored plastic is actually pretty good and would look decent enough straight from the box. 

So far this has been a fun build and I have the feeling that completing it will help me get my modeling mojo back so I can tackle all of the projects I have on deck!