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Hi everyone! Well I got kinda bored waiting for the decals and final parts for the Legioss to arrive, so I started working on a 1/5000 Ikazuchi carrier. A kind of scratchbuilding therapy, if there was such a thing! Captain's Log, stardate: Monday morning. The project begins as they all do: as an idea supported by a drive to create. While seemingly simple in design, the Mars expedition's Ikazuchi carrier, like most every other anime design from this era, suffers from a certain lack of consistency in the artwork. While certainly not impossible to overcome, it does make for an interesting challenge to harmonize all of the views and consolidate them with several different given dimensions for the ship. Once these little issues are resolved, I then proceed to draft my own diagrams for the various main structures of the ship and print them out along with a handful of artwork renderings. This way, I can refer to the reference drawings if ever I'm not sure about a particular detail or shape. In pic 1, we see some of the printed reference material along with a chunk of modelling board from which the Ikazuchi will spring. Pic 2: once the diagrams have been cut and placed on the modelling board, the real fun begins as I start to get my hands dirty. In this particular pic, I have to start by evening-out the master block to get the necessary plat planes. Pic 3: some back-and-forth between the mill and the band saw is quite common: the latter allows me to separate and chop off excess material quickly. Pic 4: Back to the mill yet again. This particular part will comprise the upper main hull, and is the single largest part of an otherwise small-scale ship. Pics 5 and 6: the main hull parts crudely assembled. There is obviously still a lot of work left to get it looking like the line-art, but it's progressing nicely and will take shape gradually. More to come in the following week