captain america

Captain's log, Friday, May 7th. Also referred to as pizza day. While I've been able to progress on the Kaa 'Tsai, the progress has admittedly been a bit slower than I would have liked. Probably because unlike, say, a Destroid, which is mostly a series of blocky, geometric shapes, this project has a lot of subtle, compound curves that require lots of hand-sanding. More fun for me, but also more time-consuming. Pic 1: here is the leading-edge intake of the engine nacelle. This is a particularly tricky area, as the intake tunnel will need to go from a square with rounded corners to a cylindrical/circular shape at the compressor face. I started by boring the channel on the mill, and will follow-up with some homemade sanding tools to get the desired square taper. Pic 2: here is yet another part that has “complex procedures” written all over it: the LEX/wing/main gear bay. I really had to plan-out the sequence of work on these pieces or risk fouling them up. Being the LEX/inner part of the wing, it has a normal air foil cross-section that, just like on any plane, tapers off in width, height, but it also has to be partially hollow to accept the main dual-bogey main gear, and then it has to have a conventional flap/aft control surface (yes, these will be separate and positionable—it's me afterall!) Pic 3: this is the belly of the main fuselage. The smaller opening will become the front gear well, while the larger hole in the aft fuselage was simply milled to reduce weight on the structure and will have an appropriate cover. Pic 4: the same part, as seen from above. I've overlaid yet another paper template so as guide me as I mill the vertical sides.

Wings yes, canopies no. Canopies are clear (invisible) so I don't need to make them; just imagine the canopy being there Oh, and the drum sander works great, but be warned though: only use a high quality bit/stone and be as gentle as possible, or risk having the stone de-laminate and/or spontaneously explode from heat and pressure. Happened to me just a few months ago. Not fun.

Pic 7: here is part of an engine nacelle. The milling allowed me to remove much of the excess, but as you can see, it's still not conformal to the paper template, so... Pic 8: I use an improvised grinding device, which consists of my drill press set on high speed, and a harsh grinding stone to smooth-out the rough spots and reproduce all of those subtle, organic curves. Pic 9: here we see the main fuselage, which is back on the mill in order to create the cockpit openings. Pic 10: here are all the parts I have to date, crudely mocked-up. It has the rough shape of the plane but will benefit from much more sculpting before it achieves its full potential. More to come next week, as usual. Stay tuned!

Pic 4: after a few hours of cutting and milling, the printed diagrams are then cut out and pasted on the appropriate blocks. This cookie-cutter method might seem crude, but it works surprisingly well. There is still quite a bit of excess modelling board, so that will be trimmed with the band saw. Pic 5: after a bit of trimming, the parts go back under the mill to remove yet more material and get all the flats and angles just right. This particular piece will eventually become the wing root/main gear bays. Pic 6: as I'm sure some of you already suspected, I use an assortment of milling shanks, so as to allow me the greatest amount of flexibility and precision in my cutting.

Guess what day is today? Update day!! Captain's log. Stardate: April 30 2010 Well folks, here it is, the start of the infamous KAA'Tsai Lecon Prane. As per my usual routine, step one involves getting a hold of all the available animation style sheets, and if necessary, viewing the episode(s) in which the particular mecha made its appearance. This is my way of “taking it all in” so as to have a good idea of what the craft is all about so that I can hopefully do it justice in three dimensions. With that, I then commit myself to drafting the in-scale plans. I have an odd way of doing this, since I don't go for every chamfered corner radius and rivet; in stead, I go for overall shapes and alignment points, which is just enough to give me the precision I want and still allow my spontaneous creativity to shine. After the diagrams are done, then comes the fun part. Pic 1: the diagrams I made are now printed and joined by the usual suspects: my trusty calipers, ruler, and of course, chunks of modelling board. Pic 2: the next step involves cutting the modelling board down to more manageable-sized chunks on the table saw. Gotta watch those fingers! Pic 3: while the cuts from the table saw are relatively smooth, they still aren't smooth and flat enough to allow for really precise work, so the freshly-cut piece is then milled to more acceptable tolerances.

That's not Pixie Dust, they're cookie crumbs. Chocolate chip cookie crumbs, to be exact!

Of course. I feel that showing the sculpting process is important in the grand scheme of things.

I've already started carving

Bingo! It keeps me off the predators' radar for one. Second, "Kaa-'Tsai" is completely separate and legally-distinct from "Cat's Eye" and so a claimant would have no standing to bring legal action (or threats of legal action) based on alleged copyright infringement.

Not yet.

The plastic Bandai kit is the TV version, and it's absolutely nasty; the film version was made by Yellow Submarine in resin, but it's still 1/144 and therefore small.

33 thus far.

Hmm, looks like interest has fizzled. Any other takers?

I won't be pan-handling until early June or so; essentially, you'll only be asked to part with your digits once the master is done I've already started doing some drafting and double-checking the line-art. Based on the original reference material, it seems like Tanmen's interpretation differs slightly with what I see in terms of the fuselage shape, which may not necessarily be wrong, because the artwork leaves things rather ambiguous.

40 is the minimum threshold that will make the project viable, so I need at least that many to give it the green light. If I have the opportunity to make more than that, great

The sculpt won't be ready 'til mid-June or roundabouts, so hopefully plenty of time st save-up

This.

Hi everyone! Well OK, here it is, my proposal for the 1/72 Kaa-'Tsai in 1/72 scale. I was hoping that it would be a less expensive project, but after checking the actual size of the plane, it turns out that it's a pretty big little bugger, and so the price reflects that. Here are the features that the kit would have: -detailed cockpits with vac-formed canopies -may be built with deployed, reinforced landing gear, or gear up -incorporated sto-wing would allow kit to be built with wings folded or not -projected price of $185 plus shipping/transfer fees I would need a minimum of 40 requests in order to get this project going, so if you want it, now's the time to stand up and be counted. As always, if you have any questions, just ask

I've mastered all of the above.

Good news! All orders paid by March 5th have shipped

Agreed. In fact, they should market the darn thing by placing all the parts inside a chocolate egg, now THAT I'd buy!

I was under the impression that the Tommy was to be a standard, build-it-yerself kit, but I could be wrong.

The reason that this ship was made in both scales was that we felt that 1/5000 would be the "completist" scale, meaning that it was the most realistic scale in which to do all of the Zentradi ships (should we decide to walk down that road) whereas 1/2500 would be better suited to some of the smaller but more popular and iconic ships, like this scout, Kamjin's ship, or even the Macloss itself. As for hollowing, I didn't feel that it was necessary for this particular ship, since it lacks the "corn-nibblets-in-a-turd" glowing orbs that are present on the larger vessels.

No kidding! Especially for a mass-produced plastic kit with mega-wide berthing hips!

Yes! I wanted to put the seam lines in places that could allow them to be more easily repaired or camouflaged. It will essentially be a resin dildo :lol: