Whats Lying on your Workbench MK IV

[pengbuzz]

2 hours ago, MechTech said:

Thank you guys, I appreciate it!

Yes, decals are evil!!! That's why i try to avoid them too! My Dougram kits took almost as long to decal as to build! - MT

A lot of times, I'll just paint lines or other decals in myself. Complicated stuff requires me to use decals at times, but for most things, hand painting will do.

[joscasle]

ok, some updates!!  I think i NEED to tone down a little the darker areas in the thrusters, what you think?

[arbit]

4 minutes ago, joscasle said:

ok, some updates!!  I think i NEED to tone down a little the darker areas in the thrusters, what you think?

Looks okay at this stage. Will you be panel lining the entire ship? I would wait till you finish that step before deciding what to do with the engines.

[Chronocidal]

Honestly, I think that looks nearly perfect.  I would actually ramp up the shading toward the nozzles as well, maybe make the rear engine nacelles more uniformly dark.  While I'm not sure the movie models were painted with metallic shades, that might look good on the nozzles themselves.

I was going to suggest toning down the brightness of the yellow, but I can already see you're working on that with the upper nacelles, and weathering the rest of the ship like you have the back half should look great.

Edited April 6, 2020 by Chronocidal

[joscasle]

1 hour ago, arbit said:

Looks okay at this stage. Will you be panel lining the entire ship? I would wait till you finish that step before deciding what to do with the engines.

mmm... yes and no. I will use oleos to color some panels and give some color distortion, noting too big, just a little effect, then see if the panel lining is needed.

[joscasle]

54 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:

Honestly, I think that looks nearly perfect.  I would actually ramp up the shading toward the nozzles as well, maybe make the rear engine nacelles more uniformly dark.  While I'm not sure the movie models were painted with metallic shades, that might look good on the nozzles themselves.

I was going to suggest toning down the brightness of the yellow, but I can already see you're working on that with the upper nacelles, and weathering the rest of the ship like you have the back half should look great.

YEah the nozzels need work, I think the yellow will be tone down a little with the oleos.

[MechTech]

It wouldn't kill the Rebels if they used some soap and water on their spacecraft every now and then

I think the nozzles look good. How dirty do ion engines get? - MT

[joscasle]

37 minutes ago, MechTech said:

It wouldn't kill the Rebels if they used some soap and water on their spacecraft every now and then

I think the nozzles look good. How dirty do ion engines get? - MT

mmm... good question!!

[Chronocidal]

I usually just fall back on the idea that engines are hot, and the material is either going to be be a darker metallic, or even if it's some sort of ceramic, it's going to scorch.

I think this is a larger model that was used for close-ups in ROTJ.  Great photos of the original ANH Red 5 here as well.

http://www.modelermagic.com/?p=5942

The film models tended to just paint the nozzles like your typical jet engines.. which.. since they were literally the afterburner cans from J-79s kitbashed from an F-4 Phantom.. well..

Granted, it's science fiction, but part of what made the OT ships so realistic looking is cribbing details from real life.  If you wanted a factory-fresh look, some kind of burnished titanium tone would work well, but all of the Alliance x-wings were clearly far from factory condition.  

The fun question I always wind up asking myself though... "Am I making a model of what a real X-Wing would look like, or am I trying to duplicate the individual details of the film miniatures?" 

It's a more complicated quandry than you might think, since while many details on the ships can be excused as some sort of intentional feature, other things aren't so easy to ignore.  The molding flaws in the Saturn V stage sections used on the nacelles, the lack of nozzle details on the inner surface, and the odd circular hole between two vanes of both the fronts of the cannon housings and the exhaust details are harder to explain, and make me want to fix them to look "real."

Edited April 7, 2020 by Chronocidal

[Bolt]

Mm, ya. That's going down the rabbit hole. I guess , ultimately, as alway it's personal aesthetics. I like the "real" look, that's why i prefer my kits heavily weathered. It also adds to my own story behind the model. A very intense upper atmosphere sortie, for example. When working on my 1/72 Armored VF. I kept looking at the shoulders, thinking it needs maneuvering thrusters there. I thought it would look more "realistic " and i love to customize.lol. But I didn't want it looking too "Gundam" either. The tough choices we must make

[electric indigo]

On 4/6/2020 at 11:53 PM, joscasle said:

I think that bringing down the saturation of the colored areas would add to the realism of the paintjob, like what you did on the yellow stripes at the intakes. Alternatively, put it on a shelf for three years and the collecting dust will do that for you (that how I discovered the magic of scale-adjusted color contrast).

The engines on the studio models were pretty light on some versions, but my personal impulse would be to put some metal effects on them.

[Sanity is Optional]

Also, a matte topcoat will dull things down a bit across the whole model, so keep that in mind if you don't want it getting too muted.

[joscasle]

New update.  Hope you can see the difference jejeje. Thanks for all your advises. Still lot of work meed to be done.

 

[Kelsain]

Busted out my Hasegawa Battroid kit tonight and started piecing it together. After test fitting the arm, the elbow pin just sheared off.

Guess I’ll swap that one with my Gerwalk 1D...

 

Edited April 9, 2020 by Kelsain

[sketchley]

3 minutes ago, Kelsain said:

Busted out my Hasegawa Battroid kit tonight and started piecing it together. After test fitting the arm, the elbow pin just sheared off.

Guess I’ll swap that one with my Gerwalk 1D...

I had something similar happen to mine... with the shoulders.  >.<

The plastic in these kits hasn't aged well...

Edited April 9, 2020 by sketchley

[pengbuzz]

5 hours ago, Kelsain said:

Busted out my Hasegawa Battroid kit tonight and started piecing it together. After test fitting the arm, the elbow pin just sheared off.

Guess I’ll swap that one with my Gerwalk 1D...

 

I would try gluing in a piece of sprue that's the same size; that way, you can extend the sprue into the bicep and use epoxy or plastic welder to hold the end in place.

[Gabe Q]

@Kelsain That sucks that your battroid is having trouble! I have an armless Max to fix. Poor guy lost both of his arms. 

Working on something else right now. 

 

[sketchley]

7 hours ago, Gabe Q said:

@Kelsain That sucks that your battroid is having trouble! I have an armless Max to fix. Poor guy lost both of his arms. 

 

That's exactly what happened to mine!

I tried the fix that Pengbuzz recommended above years ago when it happened.  It more or less works.  The trouble was fishing the pegs out from inside the torso (I think I ended up just pushing them out, and they're somewhere in the torso still! )

[pengbuzz]

2 hours ago, sketchley said:

That's exactly what happened to mine!

I tried the fix that Pengbuzz recommended above years ago when it happened.  It more or less works.  The trouble was fishing the pegs out from inside the torso (I think I ended up just pushing them out, and they're somewhere in the torso still! )

Yeah, I've had that kind of thing happen as well! lol Really though, I tend to replace pegs on older models anyway as a force of habit: the way they are molded (half the pin is often unsupported), even reinforcing it doesn't seem to help.

For these kinds of joints, it's probably best to try ABS rod instead of styrene, as it can take the pressure and force better IMO.

[Bolt]

Some progress. More to do..

[Gabe Q]

@Bolt That ghost is looking really nice! 

Some more progress on my build. Decals next!

Edited April 12, 2020 by Gabe Q

[MechTech]

That's too bad Kelsain. Like Pengbuzz mentioned, that's one reason I keep some of my ABS sprues around after building a kit. They're good for fixing stuff and it machines better than styrene for some things. Superglue bonds it to styrene pretty well.

The Ghost is coming along great Bolt!

I'm glad to see you're building the male power armor Gabe! Looking for something different to watch, my son grabbed the Macross saga so we've been watching it (after many years). He asked me if there even was a male power armor. So now he'll get to see one being built! - MT

[derex3592]

D and now E are coming right along today! 

[joscasle]

Almost done

 

 

 

[wm cheng]

Started to get back into modeling again in this self isolation break.  Thought it might be good to get my feet wet again with a real world aircraft, the 2006 1/72 Hasegawa F-18F kit.  Main takeaway from this is that my eyes are certainly not what it used to be from the last time I built anything real, I'm constantly putting on my glasses, taking them off and wearing those magnifier lenses and armed loop - hate getting old!  I did decide to upgrade the kit with some photo-etched parts, resin seats and hacked away to replace the landing gear well with F-18A resin landing gear wells (unfortunately they don't have F-18F specific wells) so please excuse the inaccuracies to the plumbing ;P

[Chronocidal]

1 hour ago, wm cheng said:

Started to get back into modeling again in this self isolation break.  Thought it might be good to get my feet wet again with a real world aircraft, the 2006 1/72 Hasegawa F-18F kit.  Main takeaway from this is that my eyes are certainly not what it used to be from the last time I built anything real, I'm constantly putting on my glasses, taking them off and wearing those magnifier lenses and armed loop - hate getting old!  I did decide to upgrade the kit with some photo-etched parts, resin seats and hacked away to replace the landing gear well with F-18A resin landing gear wells (unfortunately they don't have F-18F specific wells) so please excuse the inaccuracies to the plumbing ;P

 

That all looks aamzing!  From what I understand, the front gear well should still be accurate, since I believe the entire forward fuselage assembly on the superhornet is identical to the original, so they could use the existing tooling.

Can't honestly tell the difference on the rear ones though, you did a great job extending the smaller bays to fit.

[derex3592]

Wow!  Incredible details @wm cheng!  I hear you on the magnifier glasses! I pretty much have to wear them now when I'm doing stuff at my indoor bench! Sucks to get old! 

[MechTech]

Looking good Derex! Your fleet is growing fast!

Joscasle, looks like you're getting ready to make the death star run soon!

William, I empathise with you. I did a bunch of scratch building in 1/350 scale stuff. Now I think my eyes would give me issues. Magnifiers suck on machinery. You're close enough to see the work, then you can't see the controls with them on. The F-18 is looking great! - MT

[pengbuzz]

5 hours ago, derex3592 said:

Wow!  Incredible details @wm cheng!  I hear you on the magnifier glasses! I pretty much have to wear them now when I'm doing stuff at my indoor bench! Sucks to get old! 

 

5 hours ago, MechTech said:

Looking good Derex! Your fleet is growing fast!

Joscasle, looks like you're getting ready to make the death star run soon!

William, I empathise with you. I did a bunch of scratch building in 1/350 scale stuff. Now I think my eyes would give me issues. Magnifiers suck on machinery. You're close enough to see the work, then you can't see the controls with them on. The F-18 is looking great! - MT

Agree with you both; whenever I have to use my rotary tool, I constantly have to shift back and forth. Royal pain in the...ahem.

[arbit]

wm cheng, nice to see you back on an aircraft. Don't worry you haven't lost the touch.

Bolt, your scheme is insane! Ready for your finishing touches.

joscasle, nice update with the yellows and weathering. Looks amazing and dirty as hell.

As for me, still no modelling until I can grip my tools without pain. The stress ball exercises seem to be working. But I have been learning how to make Napolitan pizza, does rising dough count as my Workbench?

[MechTech]

If your making pizza on your workbench (real or styrene), it counts!  - MT

[joscasle]

Still working on the Tamiya 1/48 F-14A VF-21 Freelancers, applying oleos 

[electric indigo]

The tonal variation on the panels looks really great.

I also think you just nailed the look on this one:

On 4/13/2020 at 4:57 AM, joscasle said:

 

[MechTech]

That Tomcat looks great Joscale. The color variations look realistic. - MT

[joscasle]

8 hours ago, electric indigo said:

The tonal variation on the panels looks really great.

I also think you just nailed the look on this one:

 

Thanks I tried to tone down a little the yellow and red

 

15 minutes ago, MechTech said:

That Tomcat looks great Joscasle. The color variations look realistic. - MT

Thanks!