DEFCON 0 - Process walkthrough

Hey guys! I got a ton of questions when i posted DEFCON 0 yesterday, the main one was asking how I paint the scratches and metal to match the photo. The secret brush is..

There's absolutely no secrets or shortcuts unfortunately, at least for me, I just take my time and enjoy the process. But i dont usually do this on commercial works, the extra time is not really worth it

So today I went back to the painting, deleted some layers and recorded a footage of me repainting some parts, that's why the exo-skeleton isn't really the same as the final piece, but the point is to show how i paint the metals from nothing, add scratches, decals, water drops, light snow/rain and finishing touches. 

VIDEO: www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q8k3_…

Drop me any questions if you have any and i'll definitely answer them! But here are some answers to some:
1. The visor was the original from the rough stage to near final, but i decided to take it off since I like the expression of the original guy, so I left the visor on for this version

2. I dont have secret brushes, you can see that i have a brush set that seems like i have a lot of fancy brushes, but when it comes to painting i only use a default soft and hard brush. And i got those custom brushes from great artists like Leventep, Dan Luvisi etc. 

3. Video is sped up 7x, real time 1 hour to repaint the parts, and the song is Halo 3 Ost, I didnt know what song to put.. any recommendations? LOL

4. I used a wacom intuos pro, with photoshop cs5. Which doesn't really matter that much :/

5. You can hit the download button to download this version if you want to see the outcome, but you can also check out the final and details below:
 

6. I usually zoom out for a full view every few minutes or when i finish a part, it helps to see if the part you're painting matches the whole thing.

7. This is not the final piece, this is just a repaint of some parts to record the video. 

8. I dont think I'll be able to do a gumroad tutorial because my english vocab and voice sucks

9. To those who keep flaming on artists that "photobash" is a cheat, i'm sure a lot of professional artists has mentioned, it's definitely not. You still gotta have a solid amount of knowledge for lighting, material, shapes, forms, painting techniques, etc to come up with a believable one, accusing that photobashers are cheating is rude. I'm still not very skilled in this but I'm still learning everyday when I paint, it's really not as easy as you think it is. 

Thanks guys!