Darkmessiah got one of the other pre-production kits and painted it in a fantastic digicam: . I decided however that I wanted to paint mine more in line with Don's 3D render: more like a modern US tank in a sand colour and with lots of worn paint. I figured it would be a perfect opportunity to use the advanced "hairspray chipping" technique. In stead of hairspray though I'm using the Mig Productions "Absolute Chipping".
First up, some assembly shots

Bagged and unbagged:
I skipped pics during cleanup and assembly because it was kind of boring. So straight to the temporarily assembled model (it gets broken back down into sub-assemblies for painting):
I prime with my favourite primer: Tamiya Surface Primer (grey).
Next up all of the parts got a coat of Tamiya XF-63 German Grey, followed by two coats of Pascoes Floor Polish (a clear coat). Note that I use Tamiya thinner too, as I find it works really well.
From here on I'm in uncharted territory (for me anyway) so I proceeded just with the pelvis piece to experiment. I sprayed on two coats of the Mig Absolute Chipping and let it dry:
Next I did some pre-shading for the main coat. I sprayed XF-1 Flat Black onto the bottom surface of the pelvis to shade the underside. Then XF-2 Flat White was painted roughly into the centre of each of the panels (except for the bottom panels).
Over this I sprayed a coat of XF-60 Dark Yellow. At this stage it's hard to see the effect of the pre-shading but in the past I've found that once the paint receives a clear coat it become much more defined. That's just how flat the Tamiya colours are!
Immediately after cleaning the airbrush I set upon the part with some water, old, stiff brushes, a toothpick and a toothbrush. The idea is that the water causes the chipping fluid layer to dissolve in a controlled manner, causing the outer layers of paint to chip off. Unfortunately it didn't work fantastically - I think either the chipping fluid needed more coats or the coats needed to be thicker. In the demo video for Absolute Chipping they brush it on so I might try that on the next part tomorrow night...
Still after a bit of perseverance I got some decent chipping effects. Unfortunately it did wear through to the actual primer (rather than the dark grey "fake primer") in a couple of spots, but that will be easy enough to fix with a brush. I'm determined to perfect this technique, since all of the armour modellers make it look so simple!
Stay tuned for more progress - I'm hoping to knock this project over pretty quickly!