Another rainy and cold weekend which meant great time spent in the shop working on the Ian McQue inspired crane. The next step was to decide what to make the tower out of of. As it will stand fairly high and thus requires some stability, I really didn't feel like burning through a lot of .040 styrene, so ended up going with foam core instead. Super cheap and easy to work with. After a couple of hours of work, I had a base upon which to put the crane.
Some .020 styrene window frames helped finish off the cutouts for those windows. At this point I had also started to add the mixed assortment of deck rails apparent in the McQue painting, a black and white print of which is in the background, along with many of my sketches.
The McQue aesthetic is so similar to the Star Wars feel - everything is worn, well-used, slightly bent, with replacement parts and patches, and frequently asymmetrical - the kicker is whether I can pull this off in a scratch built model from the small detail on painting.
At this point, I needed to add a lot of the greeblie details that McQue adorns his own contraptions with. Again, I only have a single view of the crane in his painting to work from, so this is definitely an improvisation and interpretation versus a completely faithful recreation. I reached for a lot of the kits I've been collecting from which to kit bash and have to say, for a newly purchased kit from Amazon - man, this kit has a lot of bang for the buck as far as greeblie potential:
I think I paid $15 for this and it is just chock full of greeblie goodness.
I really should have taught myself how to make molds before tapping into this bad boy, because so many of the best pieces are singular and I can definitely see wanting to use them in the future. But, I was too impatient and just dove in - working on these large transformer looking devices that project forward from the deck.
And after a day and a half, ended up with this.
And to look at it side by side with the crane detail of the McQue painting.
Seeing this side-by-side composite is actually a little discouraging as all I can see is all of the flaws. I'm hoping it will come together better once primed and possessing more of the classic McQue detail.