to the good Colonol: thank you kindly!
to Trashman: i used good old Gimp Shop to make the textures, Paint to make the simple little decals i didn't borrow, bits and pieces of borred textures from here and there, (Scooby Doo's and stock game maps mostly)
and i use Lithium to Poly map it. i hated that program at first until i sat down and made my self learn it. now its great...kinda tedious though. the model was born in truspace 3.2...i haven't grown out of that program yet...mostly because i love the interface on it and i dont have to convert from one format or another to COB to POF so it saves a few step at the cost of not being as powerful as like MAX. 3.2 is doing fine by me for now...that might change down the line.
here's some updated pics. details make a huge difference.