It IS the Millennium Falcon, all the work that went into it....all the details, super fine details,....but the model was BIG & heavy and hard to get those agile & active shots. Personally I wouldn't brush paint until there are finer details. And with all my builds I try and use as less of the decals as possible and any panels I airbrush on.....it's a pain with all the masking but you get a more realistic finish. Plus you can pre-shade, weather, chip effect and add damage much better than you can with a decal. The nice thing about the kit you have is the panel decals already have the look of chips and scratches etc so will still look decent. Nothing wrong with using the decals. WIth regards to paint, acrylic or lacquer paints seem to be ok. Not sure on enamels. With washes, be careful using anything enamel based as the plastic has a habit of reacting adversely to the thinners used to wipe them off. The precisely recreated quad laser cannons are mounted onto the detailed turret seats and triggers.

Millennium Falcon Model 1/72 Scale Kit Star Wars: A New Hope PG Millennium Falcon Model 1/72 Scale Kit

I use the clear part. It's important to me to see the light reflections that the glass casts. There was no glass in the film, otherwise you wouldn't have been able to see the actors properly. The kit lighting set is a bit limited in scope and some folks add an AM one to improve on it. Tyridium Models makes lighting kits as do a number of other companies.The right side. I use the upturned ramp of the falcon to conceal the slit in the two diorama halves It is widely thought that light from the Millennium Falcon?s sublight engines is blue. However, the light shown when Star Wars: A New Hope was released was white. For the PG 1/72 Scale Millennium Falcon, white lights were chosen as a sign of respect toward the first movie. I shouldn't be replying as I've not built mine yet but I have built the 1/144 scale version. Most of the Millennium Falcon is the same colour so it is easier to paint mostly built....or at least in large sections. The unique curved engine consists of light guiding parts that recreate the way the engine would light up in the movie.

Bandai Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens Millennium Falcon 1/

So now all these years later DeAgostini is letting us build up a part-work Falcon,....studio scale...again of the 32" After priming and pre-shading, the first base coat is on. I chose Vallejo White Gray. Pure white would have been too cold for me. Bandai really went all out here. There has never been such an accurate and detailed model of the falcon. The complex details on the top of the Millennium Falcon are precisely crafted. This level of detail is impossible to recreate in anything smaller than this 1/72 scale model. https://bandai-hobby.net/sw/jp/special/millenniumfalcon_building_guide.html?fbclid=IwAR3FzdTXI4UEUYcfD3IxbkDKoANu3Jf6DzSzXzBheXAZ6tspg6pbncpS-nA

The Last Jedi

The first three panels are painted red. It was quite complicated because I hadn’t thought about installing the flap control later. In the original kit, only very few LEDs are provided for the drive, which has already been criticized by some model builders. Also, all the other panels painted in the original color of the falcon seem to have almost no scratch marks at all. However, if paint were to flake off the red replacement part, the original color of the falcon should not appear underneath, but rather the primer of the spaceship from which this plate originally came.

Bandai Star Wars Perfect Grade 1/72 Scale Millennium Falcon Bandai Star Wars Perfect Grade 1/72 Scale Millennium Falcon

When Master Replicas were releasing their studio scale model of course they made a 'Replica' of the 32"....they were allowed complete access to it and successfully duplicated it,.....but the 32" didn't really deserve this superstardom,....it wasn't meant to have all this attention & people scrutinising it's every detail,....it wasn't the REAL Falcon If you wanted to really push the boat out in terms of paint you could go the route of "screen accurate" paints by Archive X enamel based paints ( Pretty expensive, I have some and will be using these with Tamiya and Gunze Sangyo). Do people use the waterslide decals or do they paint instead? Why? Really is optional, depends on your painting skill for the panels I can experiment on the underside without fear of messing up the model. You don’t see much of that in the Dio anyway. You had to use a lot of force to snap the component into place. With all the color, however no wonder.

Bandai | No. 0225754 | 1:144

What is of no use at all from the original kit are the LEDs. They’re way too weak. Disappointing for a 400 euro kit. Especially since there are very bright lights for a mere 8 cents apiece. One of the first releases of kits from EP7 would/should be a lovely 1/72 Millennium Falcon....which would be of the REAL Millennium Falcon Ironically, ANH is the odd man out without the extra hull boxes. Actually, even though the ANH set Falcon didn’t have the extra hull boxes, it DID have one of the “landing legs” in the guise of the pipe-looking utility in the exact location of where the landing leg would protrude (from beneath the hull box) in the next film. Since it was a half Falcon, only the right side support “leg” was there. But it was necessary to include it even in ANH for stability/safety reasons. After it was decided to make a full set Falcon for ESB, rather than having to disguise TWO safety supports as two such “utility pipes” appearing no mater where the Falcon landed, someone finally figured out to “celebrate” these additional supports as actual landing legs. The new hull boxes were added for consistency. The next reason is that the chippings taken from the film and adopted by Bandai in the decals are way too coarse for this scale in my opinion. That fits more in 1:35. The art of these surfaces, which consist of many individual panels, is to emphasize them differently. This creates a sense of depth.

Perfect Grade Millennium Falcon 1/72 Scale Plastic Star Wars Perfect Grade Millennium Falcon 1/72 Scale Plastic

There are dedicated groups on FB for the PG falcon and the Archive X paints, some helpful people and links there also. After all, what are we model builders for, close the gap. I only had to score a new board seam with a mini chisel afterwards. Everything I've seen suggests that no-one paints this with brushes, it's all sprayed. Is this right? Use both, You can't replicate all the weathering with an airbrush.

(Lando Calrissian Ver.)

There's no right or wrong way to do it. You just have to do it your way but always push yourself a tiny bit to do something that takes your builds to the next level.