Model Boat Mayhem
Mess Deck: General Section => Other Hobbies and Interests => Topic started by: unbuiltnautilus on December 12, 2016, 09:11:19 pm
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Welcome, fellow Terrible Seventies Sci Fi Fans :} .
I have been working on some sort of presentation stand for my Product Enterprise Space 1999 Eagle Transporter. Thoughts about a landing pad soon diminished, when I realised it would be about 42" in diameter! Flying over a moonscape, supported on a column of landing jets ( cotton wool ), soon went for a burton, when I saw some footage and it showed CO2 jets on the models, but no vapours, just kicking up moon dust. So, scuppered, I watched the opening titles again, and there it was, for a split second, Eagle with radioactive lightning bolts playing over its surface..that will do. Where could I buy lightning bolts??!
Yellow Pages let me down, so it was time for grey matter to get its annual exercise.
Many orbits around the sun ago, I built the Star Wars Episode 1 Pod Racer ( I apologise for bringing up the prequels on a civilised forum, they seemed okay at the time. Simon Pegg and Spaced put me right in the end :-)) ). To hold the big engines apart, I used piano wire, painted with a flourescent pink paint. Seemed like a plan.
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The base was 12mm plywood. On top of this I bonded a commercially available, vac formed moonscape. This looked 'vac formed', not moon like. So, I drowned it in an aerosol coat of matt varnish, then sprinkled very fine sand all over the base.
Following my 'do as I say, not as I do' philosophy, before the varnish had dried, I sprayed an automotive grey primer over the surface, followed by a Tamiya white primer, almost horizontally, over the car primer grey. This picked out all the highlights on the craters.
The edge of the plywood had oak strips bonded, sanded and stained. Then I drilled the lightning bolt supports. These are 2mm piano wire, suitably contorted to look like lightning. This was then surrounded with lengths of fine craft wire, about 0.5mm in diameter, also bent into random shapes. The lightning bolts were then sprayed white, and then pink.
Two support holes were drilled in the bottom of the model ( It's okay, I threw the box away years ago..and I know what a boxed one is worth. Still, I don't care, it looks better this way! ), and the Eagle was placed on its 'bolts'.
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I still have work to do. The red and white pod has to be resprayed white. The moon surface will be getting some airbrush work on the craters. Also, I have some ultra reflective safety paint coming, which I plan to airbrush over the lightning bolts.
Meanwhile, Photoshop beckoned....
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Really good that, I have one of those to build..
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All I can say is...
Dah... dah... dah... dum... dum! %% {-)
Stunning work, must get my Eagle looking up to standards!
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FINISHED :-))
Painted the stripes out on the utility pod, or whatever it is called. Also painted over the ultra reflective paint on the lightning bolts. Very effective, but only if you are the light source. Just like safety clothing. The only way it worked was with flash photographs, which work wonders on the lightning, but suck on the rest of the model.
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Weathering was done in two stages, first with an airbrush. Spraying slightly darker panels around random masking tape squares. Then a Humbrol Black wash, thinned, and chased into the little details. most of this being removed again with a broad brush, damp with white spirits.
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Back on the lightning bolts.
..and on to the next project :-))