I had seen the following custom painted Micro Machine TIE Interceptor years ago and when I started to customize the miniatures from the X-Wing Miniatures game by Fantasy Flight Games, I knew I eventually had to make my own take on it.

http://www.angelfire.com/scifi/swfigs2/tiedag.html

I made a point to not make the forward solar panels pure silver, but rather made them look like they have a silver tint.