So with not too much effort, here is the Nebulon-B from the core set repainted. I tried to make it look a little more abused. Happy with the overall look.

Awesome dude! Great paint job, love the paneling and the engine glow!

You do good work my broda. This is what I think people have in mind when they complain of the quality of their out of box figs.

Making me want to touch mine now..

Malev

Thanks guys. I admit the quality out of the box could be better. But it would also cost more, so I am willing to bend my wrist a bit to clean up the model.

Any chance you could share your process? That looks great

All painted right over the factory paint. Remember not all factory paintwork is the same shade so you may need to mod the colors to best suit.

Nuln oil the areas of the ship you want darker in layers until you are happy with the shade. Using a light grey (Administratum) drybrush or highlight the dark grey areas. Using white drybrush the entire ship very lightly to help with that final highlight. If you need to clean up the dark grey Vallejo Green Grey works well, or Dark Sea Green.

Next use stone grey (Vallejo) to touch up the lighter panels that got too white or too black with the wash leaving the white edge highlight alone. I painted over the red stripes at this stage. I also made sure to clean up the edges of the light panels since the darker hull grey was almost to the edge of it all the time. Retouch up my panel lines with nuln oil and a fine synthetic hair liner. Allows control without mess on the surrounding panels. To finish the dirty look, just use some Agrax Earthshade applied in random spots around the ship to make thinks look old/dirty/rusty. Works for all 3. Don't go nuts with too much of this.

Finally, the engines are painted with Florescent blue mixed with white 1/3, and painted internally. Finally add a little more blue to the mix and drybrush over the engine nozzles and rear of ship until you are happy with the effect. The idea is to make inside the engine seem brighter then outside. Once again if you have to touch up some of the rear lighter panel from drybrush mishap break out your stone grey.

Done.