BMW project pics

Not long ago I posted the final pictures of the wrecked BMW model.  I was downloading pictures off of a camera and found some photographs from the process and decided to share them.  Look out for more projects to be posted soon.

 To get the effect of shattered auto glass I took an X-Acto knife and slashed the inside into a fractal pattern.  Then I lightly sanded the outside with rough grit sandpaper to cap off the effect.

 The windshield would not fit into the cock-eyed frame anymore so instead I took a Dremel tool with a grinding attachment.  The effect worked better than I thought it would.  Here you can also see the rubbed paint effect.

 To make the base I used foam core board cut to fit into the picture frame then cut cardboard to elevate the asphalt portion.  A band of cardboard was left just under the frame to keep a good fit.

 I got the picture frame from Goodwill for 99 cents and used it as is.

 I spread Elmers glue over the grass area and shook Woodland Scenics blended turf onto the glue.  After that dried I airbrushed the bare spots brown then shaded the grass with varying shades of green.

The finished display base waiting for a car.  The asphalt for the road was made in a similar manner as the grass except I used sand instead.  It was then painted black with a simple white stripe.  In order to secure the car to the base I punched two holes in the foam core and ran a twist tie over the axle then through the holes.  And there is a simple way to make a great display base for your next car model.

Finished map

It has been a while but I had posted a couple of times about a map I had been drawing about some fictional location.  I have only uploaded a few teaser photos so far but the project is done (except for maybe a few touch-ups).  I drew most all of the lines freehand and then scanned it into the computer.  There I used Photoshop to copy some trees and hills around to fill in some empty spaces.

 Next up I added color to the ocean and land masses, this happened on two separate layers.

 Next came the shading of individual portions of geography.  Each of the different types of trees got its own shade of green and I shaded the mountains grey as well as tan deserts/fields.  Rivers got a blue treatment as well but the lakes received a shading effect to simulate depth change.  This all happened on the same layer; the ocean and grass has changed shade because of a 50% transparency layer above them.

 Next I added city and geography names.  Because I didn't want to spend a lot of time coming up with lame names I got online and looked up Welsh, Irish, Gaelic, Icelandic, and Greenlandic names for the five areas (notice the border drawn on the largest island).  Because they are real names and words I know the translation of them all and placed them accordingly, like Fionghuala being the name of the massive glacier to the north because it is Gaelic for white shoulder.  To keep this all straight and to make organizing easier I made a folder for each family of languages.  I also placed dots for each city at this stage.

 Finally I put an image of faded paper over the whole thing at 50% to create the old map feel as well as blend all of the shading together.  Sure it is a somewhat pointless project and it took a lot of time but I had fun drawing and inking it and it was a good exercise in different techniques.

Wrecked BMW model

Not too long ago I bought a box of model cars off of Ebay for about $4 apiece.  Most of the kits are in good shape with two still in the shrink wrap but one of them was this BMW sedan.  Apparently the box had been under something heavy because the roof was smashed over.  I thought it looked like a car that had rolled over and decided to build it as if it had indeed crashed.  This was a good chance to do a fun and carefree build and to experiment with some weathering techniques.  I first over-sprayed it with a black base coat, then a layer of hairspray, then the blue top coat.  I then used a wet cotton swab to rub the top coat down to the hairspray which revealed the base coat as if the paint had been scraped off by the pavement.  I used a Dremel tool to cut the windshield out which also rough it up like it had been shattered, dust from this was then sprinkled over a little hairspray on the hood and dash like glass pieces.  The bent side trim was an experiment, I cut the piece off and boiled it for a quick moment; when I pulled it out I held it in a twist until it cooled and hardened like this.  There are lots of other little tidbits here and there that make for a believable scene.  I am a big fan of the British Top Gear and the road is roughly based on Gambon Corner so I printed out the small plaque.  This is my first display base in a while and it was a fun project.

Finished Horten

The Horten has finally been completed.  I have actually been done for a while but I finished right when summer got busy and I have been very distracted since.  All the decals are on and the base looks good.  Four of the decals were locators for fuel fillers so I used some of my old, nasty paint thinner to make fuel stains.  Somewhere in the process the radio areal flew from my tweezers and disappeared so I ended up replacing it with bent wire, it looks much better anyway.  As a final touch I took my airbrush and sprayed on some exhaust stains.  Here are the final pics.

Senior design project

Since I am devoting so much of my time to finishing my architecture project for school I decided to get double mileage out of one of my renderings and put it on here.  This is my senior design project, a 1,000 seat church in downtown Charlotte North Carolina.  I decided to ditch my usual realistic rendering style and went for a hipster-style abstract rendering instead.  This project is for a national steel design competition.

Return to the Horten

Hi again, congrats to all the graduates out there.  I still have 2 weeks left till I get my diploma and I am excited.  Although I am swamped with final exams and projects I still found time to pull the Horten flying wing back out.  Since my last post about the Horten I decided to try pre-shading the model.  This is an easy technique where all of the panel lines and joints are sprayed black before the top coat goes on.  While spraying on the top coat the dark lines are tempered down but still show through.  This not only gives depth to the paint job but also makes it more dynamic.  Since I din't take process pictures I won't give a full tutorial on pre-shading but there are dozens of good ones online.

Once pre-shading was finished I mixed a German aviation blue by guesswork, it turned out pretty good, and sprayed the lower fuselage.  I then mixed a suitable grey to over-spray the fuselage top.

Once all of the elements were glued together I masked off the camoflage pattern following the drawing on the box.  Once again the internet provided a mix formula for a late war Luftwaffe camouflage green (R-5, G-5, B-3) and it was sprayed on.  It looked too red until the tape came off but with the whole ensemble the result was great.

I am in the process of decaling it right now (and there are tons of decals, 53 on the exterior) and so far the decals are a disappointment.  They don't adhere well and the clear surround glistens in the light.  If you have the money and incentive swing for an aftermarket decal set, I wish I had.  Since I decided to build the plane with the gear up I took a moment to build a display base which consisted of a piece of scavenged wood that I cut into an octagonal shape and some wire.  I debated the swastika for a while but in the end I went for it.  This model is progressing quickly so keep an eye open for a final installment soon.

Lotus 25 Coventry Climax

I see a trend of having trouble with the paint job on my formula 1 cars.  Even though I got to a rough start with the exact color green for the Lotus I eventually got it sorted out and I am very happy with the result.  This is actually the first time I cared this much about the exact tone of the body color.

On the whole this is a wonderful kit, the suspension is well detailed and strong enough to hold the cars body weight (and this is a great place to extol the virtues of scraping chrome plating off of parts before cementing them).  The body fits together well and seems to be scaled properly (not that I measured).  The engine has a few fitment problems, some of the parts don't line up right and there are large gaps in places.  Also the complex dual 4-to-1 junctions in the exhaust pipes don't fit well either, there was some cutting to ensure they all matched up.  The decals are sublime, some of the best I have worked with; that sounds familiar, oh yes, the Ferrari F2001, Tamiya must be doing something right.  If you want to detail the engine be warned, there is a scaling issue with the engine and exhaust pipes.  On the real car there is a gap and heat shield between them and according to reference photos the spark plug leads run into that gap.  In the model the pipes and engine abut one another, not much room for wires, I made do but it doesn't technically work.  Detailing is a great thing too, with all of the removable body panels it's not all wasted.

That brings me to point 3, I used to struggle to get good reference photos but I made a discovery.  Visit http://www.ultimatecarpage.com/ there you will find photos and info on tons of cars.  I went back and looked up the most obscure cars I have built and they had info on them, I was surprised, it is now book marked on my laptop.

Progress report on the Lotus

Progress report on the Lotus.  The monocoque chassis has been assembled and the front suspension and most of the rear suspension has been as well.  I finally got the paint mix right too, the internet came through once again.  I found a formula for British racing green; R1  G60 B30 so I put 1 drop of red, 10 drops of blue and 20 drops of green in my airbrush and it went on perfectly.  I am still having trouble getting a smooth finish out of my air brush but I'll keep practicing.  The beauty of this model is it is very simple so it leaves lots of opportunities for modification.  So far I have wrapped Kleenex around the radiator return pipe and painted it red for insulation; ran wires for front brake lines and gauge faces and added a reservoir bottle that wasn't included in the model.  The chassis has been set aside for now and I will focus on building and detailing the engine.  I have also discovered a wonderful resource at http://www.ultimatecarpage.com/ it has tons of pictures of lots of different cars.  I looked up some of the most obscure cars I have ever built and found them there.  It has been an invaluable resource on this project and I have bookmarked it for future use.

New day, new car

Well, after a long absence I am back with a new model.  Fresh out of the box (shipped from Japan) is a Tamiya Lotus 25 Formula 1 car.  This is the other bookend to my F1 car timeline, the Lotus started its racing career in 1962.  In 1963, with Jim Clark at the wheel, the Lotus 25 won 7 of the 10 Grand Prix races. Of course, since it is a great British racing car I have to get the British racing green correct.  So far this has been a trial and error process of mixing and re-mixing green, black and yellow as I have yet to find a mixing formula to help.  This is where I am as of now, it looks too dark so another pass is needed. The pursuit of perfection.

Long absence, tall reason

You may be wondering about why it has been so long since I posted anything, simply put: school.  Immediately after our return from winter break my architecture professors handed us another assignment, design a tower for down town San Francisco.  It was to hold 80 young professional loft apartments, 60 apartments for transitional homeless to aid them in reintegrating with society, street front retail shops and at least one other "financial" program of my choice, for this I chose a 5-star restaurant and 18 high class hotel rooms.  To design this building we were given 20 days, that is now half past.  We have an intermediate peer review session tomorrow and I decided to take advantage of the work I have done so far and put it on here.  My apartments are 280 square feet each and alternate between lofts and transitional apartments in the middle floors, I didn't want to separate the programs to much to avoid a dominant hierarchy between them.  Attached is my 3D sketch model made in Rhino and the hotel and apartment floor plans.  Floor plans for the first three floors are in the works but aren't complete yet.  As of this moment the tower stands at 330 feet but that is without a roof or mechanical systems.  The project is located on an empty lot on Mission St adjacent to the new transport hub.

The Ferrari F2001 Formula 1 car is finally finished

The Ferrari F2001 Formula 1 car is finally finished. This project took much longer than it should have because of the Ferrari red paint dying half way through. A replacement bottle was purchased from Amazon and took a few days to get in; by then finals had arrived and the holidays soon after. I got a chance right after Christmas to finish it up and have a quick photo session. The final parts count was 129 including the rubber tires. Overall there were no fitment issues, even the most curved and warped body panels fit as they were intended and I didn't find any mis-shapen pieces. The suspension pieces are quite delicate but the model has two clear discs that attach underneath the solid under-tray. The weight of the car rests on these instead of the tires, thus saving the suspension from sagging. The decals were a bit finicky, they were some of the most delicate I have ever used. Some of the decals have to be done in a certain order, such as the FedEx logos which are placed on top of a white box included in another decal. I didn't catch this the first time and the main FedEx logos are out of place by a little. Two of the larger decals, white blocks for the spoiler, broke apart before I got the hang of it and I had to paint instead. On the whole I am very pleased with the detail of this kit but it is a Tamiya model so I had high expectations. I plan to continue with the history of Formula 1 series and build the Tamiya Lotus 25 Coventry Climax next, Stay posted for the start of that project soon. Other updates are that I re-started work on the map I was drawing and I have almost finished pulling everything together to set up a knife forge. Expect some exciting updates for the new year along with a few look backs to old projects.