Well, technically, I'm done. I finished painting over the weekend and added just a few hand-painted windows. But for now, I'm showing off some pics of the progress right before the finish line. Firstly, here's a pic of the primed model with some more styrene rectangles added to cover the cracks and splits. Then, I routered out some road wheels from an AMX-13/90 to create new engine rings. Not only did these cover the broken ends, but they really helped the overall look.
Finally, I have a few in-progress shots of the forward hull. You can see all of the modulating colors that I used, mostly MRP lacquer paints and a few Tamiya paints. The trick here is having a few index cards with sections or little rectangles cut out. Then, I can simply place the index cards on the model, lightly spray, and you get some neat effects. One other trick is spraying along the edge of an index card (or tape), which creates a subtle streak. ILM used this trick with a lot of their models. It may seem fast and dirty, but it looks effective if you are careful when airbrushing. However, I did use tape for the red lines to make them sharp. After, I sprayed some light grey over the red markings to soften them. Note, the contrast went way up for those pics, so the colors are much more muted on the real thing.