McQuarrie A-Wing

My initial thought on this was: Great, they almost look identical, I don't have to change anything! Yeah... well...
First I'll cover the landing gear because why would you not display this flying. I also close the slit on the front as the concept didn't have this.
In my infinite wisdom I cast some backup pieces of the top exhausts (?) and also the lasers as they are hollow on the underside. This will turn out to be a complete waste of time and materials later on 😛 

So, this is the concept I'm trying to get close to. Looks similar at first, but nope... absolutely not. And to be clear I'm not going for total accuracy. Just tryin to get a little closer. So far, I've never filled panel lines let alone rescribe them. From a single image reference at a weird angle no less. So what could go wrong? 😛
First step it to cut off the exhausts and those bumps on the front. Revell actually made them hollow so I'll have to fill the holes I created. 

After a very loose and quick overpaint I notice how irritating the existing panel lines are when painting so I begin filling them up, too. 

I quickly paint the pilot with my humongously large .4 airbrush because somehow my .2 doesn't spray right anymore. Very little of the pilot can actually be seen so this will have to do. As you can see, I'm no figure painter 😛 

I'm beginning to suspect it's calle re-scribing cause you never get it right the first time around xD
 

the pre-existing panellines aren't making things easier. You have the hard plastic, but also spots that are filled with Miliput or Plasto, which is even softer and making the knife jump like a broken record. I've made some new exhausts out of a plastic straw and Miliput. Still need to thin the front part, but it hasn't cured yet. I think I'll do a couple more panels and then throw down some test paint to see how it looks.
 

yeah I don't think I'll destroy it further... Bit more sanding tomorrow and then hopefully the paint will hide all that xD
 

So after putting on some color I noticed a lot of mistakes I made and decided to basically redo ALL the panel lines, meaning another round of filling, sanding and scribing. Only got one wing rescribed so far but it's much more like the concept now. I also noticed the triangle is too large but I'll have to repaint a couple of times anyway. Next, I filled up the bottom of the cannons (see previous pic for before) and changed the circular rudders to straight ones by cutting a bit of styrene to shape and filling it up with milliput. All in all...'Mistakes were made' sums up this project nicely xD 

I've spent way too much time on this already and it's not particularly going well. Decided to start painting and see if I can salvage some of it. Not shown in the picture: I decided to light the cockpit and put some fibre optics in, but at this point I don't know if I'll even go through with it.