She’s Prepped, Primed, Loaded, Locked and Ready to Kick Some Ass

After more than a year of hard work, Whiplash has completed his exquisite Hellcat model! The finishing touches were a handful of authentic warning decals, yellow stripes and the Confed emblem on the wing tips. You can catch up on the step-by-step process it took to build the fighter here. We'll probably see a few more beauty shots of the ship in different poses soon, and then it'll be time to work on more models!

I've never been fond of endings, but this year-long project is rapidly nearing its conclusion. Without getting sentimental, let me just say I have had a fantastic time exercising my creative juices, and it's been a very rewarding experience sharing my progress with the Wing Commander community. Hopefully there will be more ships to follow!

On to the results of the decal painting! Much of the ship is covered in small red warning signs. These generally read "NO STEP" on a full-size aircraft, but I couldn't paint letters quite that small. I did however give the big warning signs a go. You can't really read what they say in the in-game screenshots, but "FUEL" and "INTAKE" seemed sensible choices.

The famous Confed star was great fun to paint. I made a cardboard template to help with the outline, and I think it came out pretty well. The yellow squadron markings complete the overall picture. I've been looking forward to painting them for months, and the result was very satisfying.

That's it for now. This won't be my last update: I want to do a short retrospective on the goals I set out to achieve, and maybe do a few comparison shots (then vs now). I would also like to pose my model to recreate some well-known Hellcat shots from the game to see how it compares to the source material.

Have a great week everyone!