Bandai Y-wing

I have wanted, for years and years, to build some good quality Star Wars model kits.  I have build a pretty good cut-away Millennium Falcon when I was younger and a passable 1/48 X-wing and un-scaled AT-AT.  But they all left something to be desired, then I discovered the Bandai Star Wars series.  They absolutely blow me away with their accuracy and attention to detail and the precision with which they go together.  They are amazing!  I built this Y-wing and put my heart and soul into it.  I weathered each piece as I put it together and even filled in some detail here and there.  The canopy mounted ion cannon didn't seem to be tied into anything so I coiled wire and bridged that gap.  Another error is the model came with "studio correct" (ie. no glass in the canopy for filming purposes) and "real-life correct" (with glass) options, but there was no glass piece for behind the drivers head.  I took a brake-light lens from an old tuck kit and carved it down to fill that hole.  One thing that bugs me about Star Wars as a fandom is once something exists no other example of it can also exist.  For example, almost everybody that builds a Y-wing builds one from the movie.  I built my Y-wing to represent some ship out there somewhere, just not one that appeared on the screen.  So there are quirks like a silver dome, some stripped paint (which was covering an accident), and yellow trim.  The end result is I won second place for sci-fi models in a heavily contested category at River-con 2016 in Bossier City.  Here is the finished product:

 From the rear.  Not much clearance from the landing gear.  Requires flat ground to land.

The silver dome can be seen here as well as some serious damage to the starboard dome.

The tail-light lens and coiled wire can be seen here

Bicentennial currency display

So I had this pile of money from 1976 and most of it had some sort of commemorative engraving on it.  I wanted to have some way of displaying it so I made up this little framed plaque.  I designed it in Photoshop and used to-scale scans of the coins to lay it all out.  I found two different versions of the American Seal, and old one and a contemporary one, and included them on the plaque. 

Here's the original file, it was modified before final printing

I then printed it out on photo paper and stuck it to matte-board and used an Xacto knife to cut out slots for the coins.  I put it in a weathered frame with museum glass from Hobby Lobby (it reduces glare).  That's all there is to it, it now hangs beside my framed constitution.

Next time I would like to try laser-cutting the holes and possibly using a larger frame to give me some more leeway, it looks too tight.

Pontiac GTO garage project

I went to a small auction once and they had a single model kit for sale, which I won for $5.  I've discovered that the less I pay for a model the more likely I am to enjoy it.  I feel free to just muck about with it and experiment with various ideas.  If I spend a lot on a model I feel pressed to do a good job and I'm less likely to try fun stuff.  This kit was no exception.  I'm not sure where I got the idea but I decided to make a diorama of the car being restored in a house garage.  This necessitated quite a bit of modifying and scratch building engine parts and furniture.

I made several decisions that would require cutting, such as open doors and trunk, so that came first.  I then closed the opening in the assembled door with matte board.

I knew that I wanted the car to be early in the restoration process and I wanted it to be quickly apparent that it was not just being serviced.  Subsequently, there are 4 body colors seen on the car.  Most of the car is a horridly home-painted blue with nicks and dings showing the "original" red underneath.  The left quarter panel and front bumper are from another car, a green one with a beauty stripe and some Bondo work, as well as the back bumper and right door which are from a black car.  

Here you can see the green and black parts.  The idea is this car was maintained in order to stay on the road, not win a beauty contest.  This whole project took me a while to finish (over a year) and I came up with some wonderful little details like chips and cracks in the windshield and holes in the trunk where the spoiler used to be (not pictured).  I made the windshield damage by very carefully scratching and scoring with a dull X-acto blade.

But since I was chopping things apart that shouldn't be apart I was exposing lots of detail not shown in the model.  Since I had to show some sort of detail here but didn't want to devote too much time to it I fell onto the box diorama excuse.  Ie. I bluff my way through the detail and point it away from the viewing window.  Examples of this are the transmission and cylinder holes.

I also made a shop table and Craftsman toolchest out of bass wood.

These got covered in goodies.  The table received all of the extracted engine parts from the model kit and tools from another kit.  Of note here: the tappets on the far left, also made of matte board.  There are absolutely no store bought aftermarket extras used.  Everything was either fabricated or kit-bashed.

The tool box has two tiny magazines on it that I cut out of an ad from a hot-rod magazine.  They had originally been used in another diorama (where they were about 20" tall in scale) but got re-purposed here.

Now all this cool stuff needs a place to live.  To make the actual garage I used 1/8" (I think) plywood which I glued and nailed together and held in place with corner vices.

Then, using flat wood, square dowel, and some tiny plastic bits I crafted a door and frame complete with hinges and a knob.  I left the door unpainted because the wood grain and knot appear to be in scale, even though they are natural.  I think this is one of the most convincing elements.

Here we see the finished room.  I added baseboard to close the gab between the walls and floor and dripped thinned black and pink paint to simulate oil and transmission fluid dripping under where the engine/transmission bay and rear differential would be as well as the eventual location of the extracted engine and transmission.  You really can't see the stains under the car but I know they are there, and if anybody ever looks for them then they will be found.

So fast forward a bit and here are all of the elements in place.  Neat bits to notice here: the magazine on the roof of the car is actually a manual for this exact model of GTO, both this and the calendar on the wall were downloaded from the interwebs and printed out to scale on my home printer (2014 is when I finished this project), the paper draped over the front bumper is an exploded diagram of a Pontiac V8.  Along the back wall you see the old hood with some poorly done racing stripes, the new aftermarket bumper (which came with the kit), and new tires with stickers still on.  (you can also notice here that I sanded the tires bald and weathered the rims to look rusty.)  On the left wall is a clock made from a hubcap, an old license plate and a picture of a dude with this year GTO when it was new.  The story I like to tell is that the guy in the picture tracked down his first ever car, bought it back and is now restoring it.

I finally finished it all off with a picture frame that was cut down to fit and filled with a piece of plexi-glass.  I also added a tiny light bulb powered by a wall plug to illuminate the tiny garage.

A pair of punny posters

Short post this week, it's a busy time at work.

I love puns, they are my primary source of humor, and occasionally I come up with one I'm proud enough to immortalize in a retro poster.

The first is rather self-explanatory, the Wright Brothers owned a bike shop before making their leap into history and I made a promotional poster for them featuring a penny-farthing. I don't know if they sold them but it's a neat addition to the poster.

The second poster isn't as connected to the reference as the first but when I thought of the pun I was watching a documentary series on baseball (which I highly recommend) and they mentioned Flatbush where the original Brooklyn Dodgers Stadium was located.

The Journey of the Integra

So back to models this week.  The interesting thing about my subject this time is really more about the journey than the result, although I'm proud of the results too.  Not long after I discovered The Fast and the Furious, Need for Speed: Underground, and the world of tuner cars I bought an Acura Integra type R model kit with "customization options".  These options were limited to a couple of different bumpers, spoilers, and rims; not exactly the outrageous machines you see in the games and movies.  So before I even finished it I started messing with the components, with mostly poor results.

Here you see the cobbled together body kit, pasted on hood and roof scoops and stacked stock spoilers.  Oh, and the wavy paint and misaligned vinyl.  Nothing to be proud of and I knew it, so not long after this I took some of it apart and put on some different bits.

You can see the scratch-built, boxy spoiler, gaping mouth of a front bumper (two versions, actually), my attempt to mold in the hood addition, and some engine tweaks.  But on the whole, not much improvement.  So another round of modifying followed.

This was almost it.  I was getting the look I wanted but quality was still an issue.  New spoiler, new rims, lots of engine upgrades after having pulled the whole thing out, new interior.  But several years later I decided to put it to rest with one final overhaul.

Here it is.  I ended up disassembling it entirely and stripping the paint off down to the plastic.  I kept most of the body kit intact with faux air scoops and the spoiler.  The hood got cut out to accommodate the major engine components I put in and a hood piece from a '68 Corvette sealed it off.  The paint was put on properly this time and the decal from a second Integra kit was applied niece.  The sponsor stickers that were all over the place are now lined up neatly on the hood.  The rear seat got tossed in favor of a multi-bottle nitrous system and the seat out of a Ferrari F-40 kit took it's place up front next to an engine management computer console.  The interior is decorated with a full roll cage made from sprue.  The headlights and tail lights were whited-out and the whole thing got lowered significantly thanks to being properly assembled.  Is it a show piece? No.  But this is one of my favorite models because of the journey.

Japan poster

One of my early architecture school projects was to make a travel poster featuring one of the mid-century Case Study Houses.  I chose Japan for my CSH poster (don't remember why, they're all in the States I think) and ended up with this little gem with a nod to the Japanese flag and a poor attempt at making a generic Japanese castle.

It was probably done at the last minute and I can see a lot of mistakes but I liked the overall idea of the composition.  Much later, after graduation when I had more free time, I decided to revisit it.  I dropped the whole house bit and went with a more cohesive color palette.  I chose a square format and spent a lot more time on the castle (based on the Matsumoto Castle) and tried to get the shapes right.  What I ended up with was a neat design with "welcome to Japan" written in Japanese on one of the mountains.  It's not perfect, but it's better; and I like it.

Scratch built battle-mech

So this week we see an example of how I turn "goofing around" into a finished product.  When I was still in school I was working on a sketch model for a building and made a thing out of a few scraps of matte board and thought to myself "that looks like a mechs' toe".  And indeed it did.  So much so that I made another one, then a foot, then a whole leg.  Then I tried to copy the leg, and make a body for the legs to hold up.  Eventually I had a cool shape and painted it grey and set it up on my desk to show off.

Later on I had more time and pulled it back out to update it.  I opened the canopy up and put windows in it and built a cockpit for the pilots.  I used the grey as a base coat and pre-shaded the panel lines before over coating it and adding mud-splatter to the legs.  I topped it off with some decals on the body and a painted Head Up Display on the canopy glass.

It's not gorgeous nor is it well build (it's prone to toppling easily) but it was a fun build and is now a neat story of how one toe became a whole mech.

Canopy removed and ready for paint

 Pre-shading done

 Not a lot of detail in the cockpit but the windows are small

 Here you can see the heat sinc and rocket pods

 Masked off and ready for the razzle-dazzle paint job

 Painted and decaled.  the canopy is near the feet

 Mud splattering on the feet.  There's that pesky toe that kicked it all off

The finished product

Here you can just see the painted head up display