Building The Death Star - PRODUCTION

Saved as a 'Favorite', Marcus; thanks for the link. Feek, Bare-Metal is a solid brand too. Is the Micro-Sol the setting solution?

And I may have to go this route - here's the results from the overnight "bench test": More bubbling... Not major, but clearly more pulling away and bubbling than when I left it last evening. Enough that it would not be workable.

But...

Today, I removed the first piece, and wet-sanded the surface to 1,000 grit. Then I've applied a piece that is the same heighht, but about half as narrow. And it laid down beautifully; noticeably better than the first piece. So I'm encouraged.
 
DRILLING TEST:

I bought a set of micro drills today. Each drill is identified with a whole number, 60 through 80, with 80 being the smallest. The 60 - 70 range is all clearly too big. I went with 75...

The drill went through the vellum with no problem. But I can't test the light emitting until after day - a couple more hours.

BTW - Brad, if you're out there tonight, drop me an email PHarchivist@aol.com
 
Today's test piece

061009001.jpg


061009002.jpg


061009003.jpg
 
PHArchivist said:
Is the Micro-Sol the setting solution?
Click to expand...

Exactly. I've had great success with both Micro-Sol and Micro-Set. You can read up on them here: www.microscale.com

However, I haven't used these solutions on home-printed decals.

Microscale has all sorts of cool stuff, including liquid masking and the liquid you can make small windows with (again, for your Enterprise!).

You should be able to find all this stuff at a good hobby shop like Kit Kraft in Studio City (a favorite!) or Ultimate Hobbies in Orange.

Marcus
 
Be careful with micro sol - it's harsh and can eat decals. It's used to make decals conform to compound surfaces better. Micro set is much friendlier.
 
A treat for you all...

These were done with a #75 micro-drill bit. I have five more that get sequentially smaller. In the image it looks a tad big, like I should be going with a #78 or so. Unless it is a bit of flare in the image.

061009014.jpg
 
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I am really digging where this decal idea is going! Since looking at how nicely the decals for that new Polar Lights Enterprise work out, I had started to think that might be an interesting direction for the DS.

As a pro digital artist, currently enjoying some nice break time between jobs, I would be happy to help out with the digital images for this.

Depending upon how far you wanted to go with it, you could potentially do the whole surface with decals, light and dark areas, pencil lines, silver bits and all. Accuracy is only limited by reference, and all the intricate patterns would be much easier to replicate digitally.

Hell, if you are already accepting a certain level of deviation from how the original prop was crafted, you could go so far as to add detail this way, introducing subtle patterns coming from the table models used for close-ups rather than random paint spatter.

There's a lot of potential here, anyway...
 
That's looking sweet. I agree, smaller diameter bit on at least most of the light pinholes. Of course, It would probably look far different if you backed off and shot the entire DS showing that section. I'll bet the holes don't look nearly so oversized if you could view it all at once. :)
 
SpyderDan said:
As a pro digital artist, currently enjoying some nice break time between jobs, I would be happy to help out with the digital images for this.

Depending upon how far you wanted to go with it, you could potentially do the whole surface with decals, light and dark areas, pencil lines, silver bits and all. Accuracy is only limited by reference, and all the intricate patterns would be much easier to replicate digitally.
Click to expand...

Feel free to drop me an email, as I can certainly use help in this area. I'm NOT a good digital artist, and don't even have Photoshop.

The challenge I have is ensuring the physical, printed version of the image retains the characteristics I need (color values, size/granularity of the speckles/resolution).

Regarding the lines, silver, and other elements, I still want to do these by hand. That process, I think, will be fun and easy. And doing it in the machine would slow down and complicate that process (maybe not a lot, but it would to some degree).
 
Would you have to worry about the pieces of paper shrinkning ever so slightly? Kind of like when you put up wallpaper it looks great, then as the environment changes the edges slowly shrink leaving a visible separation between the two sheets?
 
vaderdarth said:
Well worst case scenario, 6 months down the road, if a bubble appears, you can always remove it and mask and paint that section. :)
Click to expand...

I actually considered that while playing out all the "What ifs" and yes, one advantage with this model is that it would be easy to fix just a single section. :thumbsup
 
Looking at the section it looks good but maybe a tad too dark... time will tell as you cover more of the surface then compare to the original. Maybe a dusting of the base coat after decal application might be just the trick... You'll need to experiement a bit. but it certainly looks good. As for the lighting the only way we can really tell if its the right size holes is from long shots... since thats how we have seen them but it certainly looks promising!

Jedi Dade
 
Jedi Dade said:
Looking at the section it looks good but maybe a tad too dark...
Click to expand...

Yes, definitely...

This is more of a test of the application process itself. The hard part is that since it is on clear vellum, the base coat color gets added to whatever I print out. And the print starts on white backing paper. So the print out, prior to application to the surface, looks a lot lighter. So for the final product, I'll have to adjust the lightness of the print accordingly.

Since base-coating the model with white sort of defeats the purpose (remember one major advantage with the applique method is saving time masking out all the sections), I've thought of either spraying the clear vellum label sheet white before running it through the printer, or seeing if I can manage to use the white inks in the printer to print out a solid sheet of white first, then running it through again with the actual speckle image.

Also, using label paper that is already white is not an option, since that product is actual fibrous paper, which introduces a whole new set of problems. Also, its adhesion properties are notably different. The vellum (at least to me) seems to have polymer characteristics; sort of "plasticky" (to make up a word), and it adheres much, much better.
 
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Are you considering these as decals or just paint masks?

Please, please, just mask and paint the monster.

Yes, masking it will be a bear, but the end result will be exactly how it was done.
 
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This picture suggests there may be a layer of weathering on the lower edge of the equitorial trench. (or it's just dusty from age) That might be what is making your 'clean' trench seem to wide.

PHArchivist said:
Teaser:

This represents about 1/12 of the entire image
052809001.jpg
Click to expand...
 
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