1/72 Atreides Ornithopter build

[modelerdave]

This is a very well engineered kit. Bandai-like in its design and fit. So far it's been nothing but a pleasure to build.

I'm going to use AK Nato Brown as the main hull color. Nothing fancy, and I'm not going to stress about whether it's a perfect match for the filming set or CGI model. Close enough for me.

I started with the cockpit. The figures are very well defined for this scale. I painted the stillsuits with German Gray, though Dr. Kynes' stillsuit was done with Desert Khaki. Dry brushed some details followed by a wash. Here are Paul and Dr. Kynes.

The cockpit floor was done in Nato Brown and weathered with Vallejo's Desert Dust wash, AK Black Camouflage panel liner, and AK Sand and Desert Camouflage panel liner. I then dry-brushed some silver to show worn edges. The control panel and throttles were done in black and dry-brushed in silver.

The chairs were painted black, the cushions done in red leather, then weathered.

Here's the completed cockpit. You won't be able to see much when it's all buttoned up but I still like to work on all of the details. That's the fun part!

The fuselage does have some unavoidable seams that need to be addressed, but most are very easily take care of with a bit of putty.

That's it so far. I'm out of town all of next week and I won't have time to get too much more done before then, but overall this should not be a lengthy build. Assemble, fix some seams, paint, weather, and done!

 

[masterjedi322]

Love it! Look forward to seeing more!

Sean

 

[Analyzer]

Great work on the figures. I am starting this build as well

I think the Nato Brown is great place to start color wise. I am going with a similar color as well, but in Vallejo line (simply because I already have a bottle of it and never used the AK paints)

 

[modelerdave]

I got a little bit more done this week before I head off for vacation later today.

I added bits of photoetch to the underside headlight mount (or whatever it is), as well as to the upper inside length of the tail. That part will only be seen—barely—when the "landed" landing gear is used, but there's a huge seam in there that would have been nearly impossible to sand that the photoetch does a nice job of covering up.

I finished puttying and sanding the seam around the cockpit where it joins to the fuselage. It's a pretty good fit to start with so this wasn't a heavy lift.

Then it was time to get a primer coat on the thing. There's quite a bit of surface area with all of the wings and the different angles on the fuselage, as well as two sets of landing gear. My go-to for black primer is Mr. Surfacer 1500.

I didn't put in the windows before priming because I want the interior of the frames to be black. I'll get the windows in and masked before the base coat.

And that's it for now. No more updates until mid-month at the earliest.

 

[Analyzer]

Looking good

a word of caution, pay lots of attention to the orientation for the wings and which direction the "nub notch" needs to be facing. The bottom set of wings have a different facing than the top and connecting the wings to the pins that plug in, the bottom wings are flipped. On the sprue they actually had two different numbers, but I am not sure there is any real difference other the the leading edge being flipped which you can just do by turning it over

If you get it wrong it is very hard to correct once snapped together without damaging it trying to get it apart. I made that mistake on 1 of them. Luckily I was able to fix it, but it is looser than the others

You might be best inserting the pins first into the body and make sure they rotate in the correct orientation and then snap the wings onto the pins

I also found it caused fit issues getting paint on the end of the pins and the body sockets as well as cockpit glass. Due to it being a snap kit tolerances were already tight, and a layer of primer and paint would cause the pins to lock in place and not be able to rotate forward/backward
And the cockpit glass was a tough fit. I had to wind up scraping off the paint on the frames where the snap connectors were

Speaking of the frames, Other than seem lines in hard to fix spots, that is the most detracting area of the kit

If I was to do another build, or when I pick up the Harkonnen one, I might actually sand off those connectors circled in red, paint the inside frame edge of the glass where the red arrow is point and glue in with canopy glue.

Not sure how they would look painted opaque, but I just do not like that edge like that. Might paint it some like Taliya Smoke so it looks lie tinted glass at the edge. Maybe leave the inner edge unpainted but the out edge painted. If not remove them, maybe paint the snap tabs instead so they look like hinges

I might even try popping the glass out and do that fix since I have not glued on the frame. Problem is I really had to force some of those pieces in there and do not want to risk cracking forcing them back out

 

[modelerdave]

Looking good

a word of caution, pay lots of attention to the orientation for the wings and which direction the "nub notch" needs to be facing. The bottom set of wings have a different facing than the top and connecting the wings to the pins that plug in, the bottom wings are flipped. On the sprue they actually had two different numbers, but I am not sure there is any real difference other the the leading edge being flipped which you can just do by turning it over

If you get it wrong it is very hard to correct once snapped together without damaging it trying to get it apart. I made that mistake on 1 of them. Luckily I was able to fix it, but it is looser than the others

You might be best inserting the pins first into the body and make sure they rotate in the correct orientation and then snap the wings onto the pins

I also found it caused fit issues getting paint on the end of the pins and the body sockets as well as cockpit glass. Due to it being a snap kit tolerances were already tight, and a layer of primer and paint would cause the pins to lock in place and not be able to rotate forward/backward
And the cockpit glass was a tough fit. I had to wind up scraping off the paint on the frames where the snap connectors were

Speaking of the frames, Other than seem lines in hard to fix spots, that is the most detracting area of the kit

If I was to do another build, or when I pick up the Harkonnen one, I might actually sand off those connectors circled in red, paint the inside frame edge of the glass where the red arrow is point and glue in with canopy glue.

Not sure how they would look painted opaque, but I just do not like that edge like that. Might paint it some like Taliya Smoke so it looks lie tinted glass at the edge. Maybe leave the inner edge unpainted but the out edge painted. If not remove them, maybe paint the snap tabs instead so they look like hinges

I might even try popping the glass out and do that fix since I have not glued on the frame. Problem is I really had to force some of those pieces in there and do not want to risk cracking forcing them back out

View attachment 1857791

That's really good to know about the wings and putting the pins into the sockets first. I may have to scrape or sand because all of those connecting points are painted.

Also good to know about the cockpit. I'm going to dirty up the glass, and was considering doing a light dusting of Tamiya Smoke around the inner edges. I wasn't sure if those connectors would "disappear" or not, but I see what you mean and I think I'm going to have to do something about it. They really do sort of destroy the scale and look. I may test painting one of the connectors black to see if that makes it any less noticeable.

Again, thanks for the heads up!

 

[Analyzer]

That's really good to know about the wings and putting the pins into the sockets first. I may have to scrape or sand because all of those connecting points are painted.

Also good to know about the cockpit. I'm going to dirty up the glass, and was considering doing a light dusting of Tamiya Smoke around the inner edges. I wasn't sure if those connectors would "disappear" or not, but I see what you mean and I think I'm going to have to do something about it. They really do sort of destroy the scale and look. I may test painting one of the connectors black to see if that makes it any less noticeable.

Again, thanks for the heads up!

looking forward to the results

 

[Fett_Ish]

Those figures look amazing,I barely painted mine because they were so small and now feel shame! For the windows I did paint the frames black, but also went around the windows themselves with a black sharpie, a trick I learned on YT from an amazing military aircraft modeler. Can’t wait to see it finished up!

 

[Analyzer]

Those figures look amazing,I barely painted mine because they were so small and now feel shame! For the windows I did paint the frames black, but also went around the windows themselves with a black sharpie, a trick I learned on YT from an amazing military aircraft modeler. Can’t wait to see it finished up!

The sharpie trick is a good one as it will not add the thickness paint would. Only problem with the sharpie is over time it can actually fade, but that is mostly when exposed to UV/Sun

 

[Fett_Ish]

The sharpie trick is a good one as it will not add the thickness paint would. Only problem with the sharpie is over time it can actually fade, but that is mostly when exposed to UV/Sun

Interesting,I did not know this. Thankfully, all my junk is displayed in my theatre and office in my basement! Also how I keep my skin a silky translucent white!

 

[Analyzer]

Interesting,I did not know this. Thankfully, all my junk is displayed in my theatre and office in my basement! Also how I keep my skin a silky translucent white!

Now that I think about more, realistically there probably is no worry at all for something like this

the only reason I say that is I use Sharpies to write on our pool pump pipes so that my wife knows which pipes output to the hot tub and which to the pool. Every season I have to rewrite it because it fades to almost non-existent over the course of the summer. Of course it is exposed to the sun all day long, 365 days a year and it takes a few months to disappear. Might be the combo of it being PVC and the sun as well

 

[cloudborn]

I agree about the canopy frame tabs, definitely breaks the scale and looks bad. I haven't assembled mine yet but was thinking about painting a narrow black frame around the outside edge of all the glass to cover those tabs and edges.

 

[Fett_Ish]

Doing the black around the edges of the clear parts and the inner framing covers most of it,while yo can see them a little, I bet that painting them black up to the edge of the window would disappear them.

 

[Analyzer]

Doing the black around the edges of the clear parts and the inner framing covers most of it,while yo can see them a little, I bet that painting them black up to the edge of the window would disappear them.

much better looking that way

 

[modelerdave]

A short update now that I'm back from vacation.

I tried the black Sharpie method of darkening the frame around the clear window parts. I also snipped off the tabs to minimize their visibility. I'm not worried about fit since they're already pretty snug, but to be safe I added a few drops of PVA glue to the corners of the frame to hold them in place. Before I inserted them I cut masking tape to fit them as quick and dirty DIY masks.

I don't really know how these will look since the tape blocks the view, but if I don't like it the parts are easily removed for me to fiddle with further. This way at least the interior fuselage sections that the frame rest on will be black.

I did use Nato Brown as the overall base color but I've decided it's too brown for me, so I'll be going over that with several different shades of gray. More mottling than additional base coats, but we'll see. I'm figuring this out as I go and deciding what I like and don't like.

One of the clear parts with the tabs removed, edged with a black Sharpie, with masking tape cut to fit.

 

[Fett_Ish]

Looking great!

 

[Analyzer]

Looking forward to the rest

I wouldn't stress to much over color accuracy or choice as really any dark brown or black will work as a base for weathering as it is a very elusive color to nail down much like the true color of the Aliens dropship (can look olive drab green or brown depending on lighting conditions)

My best guess is they start out close to a "warm" black ( as opposed to a "cool" blue tinted black) and the more sandblasted and dust covered these things get, the more grey and brown they become, eventually appearing almost bare metal color eventually after enough paint has been sandblasted away

 

[modelerdave]

Looking forward to the rest

I wouldn't stress to much over color accuracy or choice as really any dark brown or black will work as a base for weathering as it is a very elusive color to nail down much like the true color of the Aliens dropship (can look olive drab green or brown depending on lighting conditions)

My best guess is they start out close to a "warm" black ( as opposed to a "cool" blue tinted black) and the more sandblasted and dust covered these things get, the more grey and brown they become, eventually appearing almost bare metal color eventually after enough paint has been sandblasted away

Well I pretty much repainted the entire thing with neutral gray as I really wasn't liking the Nato Brown after mulling it over for a few days. The wings still have some of the panel line accents showing through, and I didn't put it down super heavy so there are spots where the brown is slightly visible, which was the goal. I dunno, I may be doing a lot more weathering with oils than I was anticipating. It really is a hard color to pin down.

I also need to sand the seam on the upper tail a little more. It's still too visible for my liking. The bottom one is very hard to reach so I'm cutting a very thin piece of styrene to cover it.

 

[modelerdave]

Here's the NATO Brown base color that I have since decided to ditch in favor of neutral gray.

I did some post-shading that I'll have to redo over the neutral gray.

Post-shading on the NATO brown wings. I did follow this with a blending coat of the NATO brown but I apparently didn't take any photos.

Here are the wings repainted with neutral gray. I didn't go for a heavy coat so that some bits of the NATO brown and post-shading would still show through just a bit. Not sure if I'm going to keep this or not. I may go over it again with neutral gray to even it out and then start over with post-shading and weathering.

I also noticed that the lengthwise seam along the upper and lower sections of the tail were still too visible for my taste. The bottom is now impossible to sand because I have the side bars attached, so I added a thin strip of sheet styrene to cover it.

The top I was able to mostly fix with sanding except for the end of the tail, where because of the design you really can't get sandpaper or a sanding sponge in there to sand it flat. So I did what I could with a sanding sponge and then covered with it with a piece of photoetch. I also added a square piece of photoetch to the flat part of the tail, which was rather plain. Both the upper and lower sides still need primer and then the base coat. I like how this turned out.

 

[modelerdave]

And for those who might be interested, Norm from Tested just built and weathered the Harkonnen ornithopter. He did some nice work! And fast! I feel like it takes me forever to build something.