Hello again everyone. What a week of work..
Today I've finished up the hull's preliminary work; decaling and finishing of the tile coats. We've done the same paint job as described, but along the belly of the hull, I subbed the white base coat out for a grey coat, which will lead into the dish's grey and blue paint job.
You'll also notice that the pylons have been finished, and reinforced. For those of you who are about to glue these together: STOP... When complete, the nacelles will pull down the pylons, and over time, snap, crackle, pop. What I've done is lay two peices of hollow steel pipe from my hobby shop along THE TOP PYLON PEICE(parts 42 &41), glued them down, and THEN finished the pylons. This reinforce the top piece,while the bottom piece sits there and does it's job correctly(the stress test was done on my baby, and wow, R.I.P.) I've also run small poly rod into the pipe to feed future wiring, etc.
The painting was the same process I discussed on the pylons. As you look at the hull, note the sharp lines around panelling. This was acheived indirectly by the AztecDummy pattern. As much as I bad mouthed it, they are, again, very detailed. If you too have a problem with the stickyness, they make the greatest frisket pattern make you could have. I only needed one "hull side" frisket to do the entire hull pattern, with light hand painting for details sake (check out the top of the tail.) Decalling this thing is maddening, but worhtwhile, as you can see. A big warning, they are shiny, shiny, shiny.. Keep the flat coat paint handy before the final plate coats.
You'll also notice the display stand, which appears to be heavily detailed. What can I say i'm a genius...
Truthfully, I didn't do squat except figure out how not to waste Byran's AztecDummy patterns anymore than I had too. I layed down the vinyl squares, as well as a few panels of thin poly, then coppered the thing to death, adding in the guidewires that hold the lights on the side, and added the final frontier behind. The decals of the lights are white under all that detail, so cudos the the decal designer (it made me think about the shuttlebay florr decals for the moment). Upon close inspection, you'll catch that underneath, the kitmakers have the "lightsquares" ready to be masked, so that you can light this guy as well. Bryan hasn't decided on a lighting system, so work on the base will stop at this point until we both know where to drill.
Here is the arboretum, and it was pretty simple. You don't have to go into to much craft detail, as you can't see the floor clearly, but the trees make up for the lack of deatils.
So enjoy my model builng buddies... You keep veiwing, I'll keep painting.
Today I've finished up the hull's preliminary work; decaling and finishing of the tile coats. We've done the same paint job as described, but along the belly of the hull, I subbed the white base coat out for a grey coat, which will lead into the dish's grey and blue paint job.
You'll also notice that the pylons have been finished, and reinforced. For those of you who are about to glue these together: STOP... When complete, the nacelles will pull down the pylons, and over time, snap, crackle, pop. What I've done is lay two peices of hollow steel pipe from my hobby shop along THE TOP PYLON PEICE(parts 42 &41), glued them down, and THEN finished the pylons. This reinforce the top piece,while the bottom piece sits there and does it's job correctly(the stress test was done on my baby, and wow, R.I.P.) I've also run small poly rod into the pipe to feed future wiring, etc.
The painting was the same process I discussed on the pylons. As you look at the hull, note the sharp lines around panelling. This was acheived indirectly by the AztecDummy pattern. As much as I bad mouthed it, they are, again, very detailed. If you too have a problem with the stickyness, they make the greatest frisket pattern make you could have. I only needed one "hull side" frisket to do the entire hull pattern, with light hand painting for details sake (check out the top of the tail.) Decalling this thing is maddening, but worhtwhile, as you can see. A big warning, they are shiny, shiny, shiny.. Keep the flat coat paint handy before the final plate coats.
You'll also notice the display stand, which appears to be heavily detailed. What can I say i'm a genius...
Truthfully, I didn't do squat except figure out how not to waste Byran's AztecDummy patterns anymore than I had too. I layed down the vinyl squares, as well as a few panels of thin poly, then coppered the thing to death, adding in the guidewires that hold the lights on the side, and added the final frontier behind. The decals of the lights are white under all that detail, so cudos the the decal designer (it made me think about the shuttlebay florr decals for the moment). Upon close inspection, you'll catch that underneath, the kitmakers have the "lightsquares" ready to be masked, so that you can light this guy as well. Bryan hasn't decided on a lighting system, so work on the base will stop at this point until we both know where to drill.
Here is the arboretum, and it was pretty simple. You don't have to go into to much craft detail, as you can't see the floor clearly, but the trees make up for the lack of deatils.
So enjoy my model builng buddies... You keep veiwing, I'll keep painting.