Serenity - a question of fact or fiction

That is really gross, try to get your money back and see how it goes. It's not anywhere near worth $500

moonbus said:

I think you can. You are just getting the resin to soften a bit, but be careful. Then comes the hard part of holding it in the correct position until it cools. It looks like if you try local warming of the fiberglass and stretching it this would end up in distortion. As hard to control as it will be I think you are going to have to gently heat up the entire section. Maybe boiling water? Heat gun? Hair dryer?
Best of luck if you do.

Click to expand...

I'd considered heating and reforming it, but yes, the challenge would be not unintentionally deforming everything else around the area's being fixed.

Orbital Drydock said:

If you have any way to file a claim or return it, maybe give them a shot.
Here's what I went through with an RShanko 1/2 ss TOS Enterprise https://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=139508 A lot of the pics won't show. Transferring from photobucket to my server.
At best you can use the Serenity kit as a shell. Though redo ALL of the surface detail & massive corrections to the profile.

Click to expand...

I don't know much about the man's other work, but I can't say I'm very impressed with what I've seen. He got wind of the questions I'd been asking here and actually contacting me to sell me on the kits quality and authenticity, and to sort have me post a "get the last words in" sort of thing about his Serenity arguments .. which I'm not doing because I don't want rehash an old argument.

I really debated whether it was worth it as a base and what I would need to do to fixed. Not including all the surface details that needs to be removed and redone, a least half the main body needs to be reformed or replaced. When I considered how I was going to have to do it, and what I had left to work with, I realized I was probably going to have to put in as much time and effort fixing it as I would if I had scratch built it.

darthviper107 said:

That is really gross, try to get your money back and see how it goes. It's not anywhere near worth $500

Click to expand...

Your right, not at all worth the money... On top of the physical distortions, the thing is an eggshell and has a ton of cracks in the fiberglass. I filed a damaged return claim, and they finely relented and agreed, so back it goes.


Thanks ever so much for everyone's input!

-John-

Honestly I'd like to do a kit at some point, but it'd be a lot of work. Also, I'm not sure about the licensing thing, it'd be best to get a license just in case, but I'm not sure Universal would bother for a small run of kits.

darthviper107 said:

Honestly I'd like to do a kit at some point, but it'd be a lot of work. Also, I'm not sure about the licensing thing, it'd be best to get a license just in case, but I'm not sure Universal would bother for a small run of kits.

Click to expand...

That would be very cool, and yes it looks like it would be a major piece of work. Licensing is technically always the best way to go, but having encountered a gross ton of small run gray market/garage kits over the years, I guess it depends on how exposed you are and on how driven the franchisee or franchisor is to "protect" the rights... suppose you could just change the name like they did with the "23 Centry Pistol" phaser kits... call it the "26th Century Lampyridae Transport" Not sure how well that would work though


-John-

Questarian said:

...
I really debated whether it was worth it as a base and what I would need to do to fixed. Not including all the surface details that needs to be removed and redone, a least half the main body needs to be reformed or replaced. When I considered how I was going to have to do it, and what I had left to work with, I realized I was probably going to have to put in as much time and effort fixing it as I would if I had scratch built it.



Your right, not at all worth the money... On top of the physical distortions, the thing is an eggshell and has a ton of cracks in the fiberglass. I filed a damaged return claim, and they finely relented and agreed, so back it goes.


Thanks ever so much for everyone's input!

-John-

Click to expand...

I echo every point made there! I'm pretty sure I did almost a much work as a scratch build TOS E. For me it was a client provided kit & build. So I lost a lot of time & money on it.

Be wary folks it seems the re-casters & iffy models are starting to pop up again. It unfortunately happens every few years.

For the film, the cg model was reworked to resolve incongruities with the interior sets... they had the time and deemed it worth the effort. So in short, prior to that it was very much a work in progress.

Clerval said:

For the film, the cg model was reworked to resolve incongruities with the interior sets... they had the time and deemed it worth the effort. So in short, prior to that it was very much a work in progress.

Click to expand...

The CG model only had more detail vs the TV version, no major changes were made to fit the interior better. They did do some stuff to the set, but the necessary points that need to line up (the bridge and the mess hall, due to windows) don't line up still.

From Pierre Drolet Website
http://www.pierre-drolet-sci-fi-museum.com/serenity-original-updated

Here's how all that happened. Early in the Firefly production, I received a phone call from Emile Smith, Visual Effects supervisor, asking me to add details on their Serenity 3D model. Without going into technical detail but the 3D model had serious issues of all kinds. I did the best I could given the time and budget that they had to make the 3D model look descent and workable, but I was not happy at all with the end result. At that time they didn't have the budget to let me rebuild the whole spaceship from scratch, but I offered to Emile that I would do it in the future if they had the budget for it. A few months later Emile called me back and gave me the green light to rebuild the 3D model Serenity. He also sent me the original sketch design with the basic shape which made more sense to me.


First, I have to say I really enjoyed rebuilding and redesigning the Serenity. However, I got caught up in the moment enjoying serenity and went a bit too far out from the original 3D model they had. Don't get me wrong, Emile loved what I did with the new Serenity. After I was done with it, however, I learned that they did not have the time and budget to redo and re-render all the shots with the new Serenity. Since the new 3D Serenity was too different from the original one, they only used it for close up shots.


The New 3D Serenity model ended up not to be a waste after all. When the TV show got cancelled after only one season, Joss Whedon got the green light for the production of the movie entitled Serenity. The new 3D Serenity was back to life and was used for the movie. Emile called me again to work on it one more time with a few notes but mostly to add more details. He and I agreed that the side jet engines were too boring, so he gave me the approval to give them some extra love. I later got a good surprise when he asked me to transform the Serenity to a reavers ship.

Right, the big differences you see are the paneling that is fully modeled and the nicer more highly detailed engines and the nicer and more highly detailed landing gear.