Codename : GERBERA part1

 Ok this is a weird one. It's based on this drawing by Jan Buragay. 

The head started with a pink styrene tube that came from a pocket lint roller. The central eye was a polystyrene craft bead that I sanded to the contour of the tube by wrapping it with sandpaper. I made a counterbore and inset a polystyrene half sphere for the lens. This assembly was glued on and blended in with a little epoxy putty.  The four pods on either side of the tube were from a 1:72 helicopter kit, topped with the same counterbored bead / half sphere combo. The white, rear portion was 3D printed with polystyrene filament. I blended this with 2 part epoxy putty (Aves brand). The side ribs were cut from .5mm PS sheet.

I made a removable insert for the bottom of the head, decked out with some choice bits from the greeble patch. 

For the rocket legs, I had a couple of fuel tanks from a junky Lindberg snap-together Space Shuttle kit. They're ribbed, unlike the smooth ones from the illustration. More places for crud to collect during the weathering stage can't be a bad thing, right? These will need a fair amount of work to hide the seams.

I printed this part to hold the legs at 14° from each other, which looks about right judging from the drawing. The flange on the Lindberg tanks press in and are a nice snug fit.

For the torso, I started with a backpack from a 1/44 Gundam kit and glued a couple fishing floats for the shoulders (polystyrene is everywhere). This was busied up with some 1:72 model bits, courtesy of Revell of Germany.

Front

Back

Here's the torso and legs temporarily assembled. The 3mm rod helps locate everything and will register some additional detail behind the head. I know it look suspect at the moment...

The shoulder armour was printed in resign. These were a bit tricky for me to make in the CAD program.

Here's everything mocked up so far. 

Thanks for tuning in. update coming soon...

Hitachi Construction Mech [part 2]

 Next up, painting. I base coated the mechanical parts with German grey and the rest with a dark brown steel color, followed by a light mist of hairspray, then finally a custom orange red mix.

 As usual with orange, it took several coats to build any kind of opacity. Having the dark undercoat didn't help. When chipping, the water seemed to reactivate the orange acrylic paint making it smear around and also resulting in chips that were larger and less subtle than I wanted. 

I also painted and weathered the inside of the cab, since it would be inaccessible once I glued in the windscreen.

Everything was assembled and I applied the decals.

I added some mud to the feet and legs, trying to simulate the effect of the mud drying out as it gets further from the feet.

Finally, I made a simple base from a wooden craft store plaque. I created some ground cover from plaster and paper pulp and then painted it to match the muddy feet.

Hitachi Construction Mech

This is based on a model I saw on Twitter by a Japanese modeler called "Surume0407". I really liked it and wanted to try to build my own version, but while the use of the Hasegawa excavator kit was obvious, I wasn't so sure about the robot parts. I'm a bit of a Gundumb in that department. The excavator kit was snagged locally on sale, figuring it would be a fun build regardless if I attempted the kitbash or not. 

Sometime later, while looking at pictures of other peoples models (a hobby in itself) , I recognized some of the major bits in a photo of a Gundam 'Graze' kit. and with that I was off to the races.

The chassis was 3D printed in polystyrene. It took a few tries to get proportions that I liked. This shows the underside, the white tubes are the attachment points for the rear legs.

The feet are 1:35 tank wheels and some styrene tube. 5/32" was close enough to 4mm that it worked ok with the Gundam polycaps. I had to add some Tamiya putty in some cases to fine tune the fit.

I squared off the armour with epoxy putty to tone down some the obvious Bandai styling.

The extension for the rear counter weight was modeled in Fusion 360 and printed with PS filament.

I also scratch built a new piece for the shear to match the size of the one on the claw and to make room for the Gundam ball attachment.

The manipulators were made from a combination of the 1/144 scale leg and arm parts.

The main Gundam torso was glued to a printed styrene bar that fit into a channel in the chassis. This is what the manipulator arms attach to.

Here are most of the parts laid out. Ready to be primed and assembled.

primer...

A lot of the original Hitachi parts are not glued to make painting easier, so everything is a bit precarious at this stage. All of the Gundam points of articulation are still functional, making posing this thing rather difficult. (Much respect to Mr. Ray Harryhausen)

To be continued....

Spaceship Crash Site part 2

I never did finish this. I was really liking how it was turning out, but I never was able to find HO scale backpacker figures that I was satisfied with. Also, for some reason, I painted the ship green.  I grew to hate it as I continued working on it, but since I had started the ground work, it would have been difficult to change easily. In any case, here's where we last left off...

I thought the ship hull looked a bit stark, so I decided to have a go making some panels. In order to get them to conform to the compound curves of the hull, I vacuum formed them. I printed three instances of this portion of the ship and then arranged them with a triangular plywood spacer, so the plastic wouldn’t have to be drawn as deep, preserving a bit of material thickness in the final parts. 

                               

                                         Movie:

The deep undercuts weren't a concern, since that portion was to be cut away. This was my first attempt at scribing panel lines. I must say, scribing an ellipse wasn't the best idea for a first try. That said, it turned out mostly ok.

For the terrain, I used a mix of paper pulp and plaster. The paper pulp is an entire roll of toilet paper that I shredded with an immersion blender (in water to keep the dust down). Then I spread it on an old window screen and let the water evaporate. I just add it to the plaster mix by eye, as needed. The right consistency is similar to loose porridge. I applied it in stages, letting it fully dry in between. This process took a while, since drying times were a bit slow. I really like the texture that the paper pulp brings and hope to use it again soon. 

After the plaster work was done, I left it alone for a week or so, to be sure that was it completely dry. Then I applied some fine dirt. This was just dirt from pile at a job site near where I work. I grabbed a couple yogurt cups full and then later sifted it through a wire screen to get rid of rocks and plant debris. I applied some glue with a brush (Mod Podge matte) to the plaster. A nylon stocking was stretched over the yogurt cup and shook over the model, salt shaker style. Only the finest powder made it through the stocking, so it looks reasonably in-scale. 

I added some grass and some mud and weathering and this is where it was left. I'd say its 95% finished, but I'm not sure if I'll return to it. I had a great time making it and learned quite a bit. I hope to make more dioramas in the future.

It's been a while....

 It's been about four years since I've posted anything here. The truth is, people don't really seem to look at blogs anymore and this one never got any traffic as it was. So it started to feel like the time I was spending writing about my work here would better spent on actual model making.

However, recently I've decided to resume documenting my projects here, if for no other purpose than to be resource for me. I'll try to post about what I've been working on in as much detail as I can remember. If anyone happens to notice, that's great. If not, that's fine too.

Spaceship Crash Site

 After obsessively watching Luke Towan's diorama videos on Youtube for the past few years, I decided to finally try my hand at some scenery. The inspiration for this vignette came from this sketch by concept artist Guy Warley:

I originally planned to have the figures be backpackers or maybe having a picnic, unaware they were sitting upon the site of an ancient extraterrestrial ruin. Then I could call it "The Picnic at the Ruins of ARK Polaris", or some such. I also thought it would be funny to have one of the figures have a metal detector, but I've been unable, as yet, to find a HO scale detectorist figure. 

The ship hull was printed in polystyrene. I made the ship a bit more organic than the one in the drawing, as I thought it would look cool if the engines were nestled in the recesses. After some minor body work with sandpaper and Tamiya putty:

The engines themselves were designed in Fusion 360 and printed. I also added some throwaway kit details between the engines, but it's unlikely they'll be visible in the final piece. 

Here's a shot to get a feel for the size. 

Here are things mocked up. I bulked the ship out with some styrene insulation. I think the overall base needs to be a little bigger, but overall I'm pleased with how its turning out. I'd like to add some more mechanical detail to the hull, perhaps some panels.

That's all for now. Thanks for looking