Good eye. You're actually right. To achieve optimum effect on the body and head it wasn't necessary to primer over the whole thing. The more I studied referece pics, I discovered, much like Hot Toys AVP line, that they really weren't that far off from the original design. There were certain areas like the thighs and top of the head that required me to 'white out' was there in order to give the patterns a more correct shape, but most of the labor on this was making the spots look like an integrated system instead of a bunch of random dots all over the place. There is a lot of new paint on this, but it was't a 'from scratch' requirement.
As for the armor, the camoflauge went right over the metallic paint already there. Mixing in silver with my camo colors, I was able to leave a nice balance between the camo look and the silver look. The camo is clearly visible, but it reflects from the metal underneath.
Hot Toys did do a good job on this for a mass production piece, but to Reinhardt and me, good enough wasn't. There was room to improve.