Hi gang, I have a whole slew of updates to post, so it should be a fun week or so! First up, I have been "building" some things out of model kit parts - these are modular, and will be joined to the main body soon (not shown).
The twin-boom shapes will have much more detailing done to them, once they are affixed to their armature!
What a busy couple of weeks it has been! I still need to finish that last pendant deelie, but have had to put everything on hold as I "bang out" a model for a Japanese contest, and help out as much as I can around the house as Lisa finishes her latest Grad school class. One more week and the model will be in the contest and Lisa will be done with the semester!
The model is a little space suit that I have heavily modified, "opening it up" and adding a pilot figure. I'll post pics when it's finished, as I use the same kinds of techniques as I do on the pendants.
Tom and Jane came back from their Portland trip - Jane's book is now officially in stores!!! Go to your local bookstore and demand it!
So what is a "kitbash" you may be wondering? The traditional way that filming studios built these models was a varied process, as you woudl imagine. The model shop received detailed conceptual artwork and an armature was constructed from blueprints. They would usually make the inner armature from wood that mounted to a metal pipe system with multiple mounting points, so that the model could be filmed from different directions. This was then "skinned" with acrylic or styrene. Sometimes the armature was made solely from the acrylic as it does not sag or warp the way styrene can. Once they had the armature made, the detailing was added with bits of sheet and rod styrene stock and many many pieces from model kits (tanks, planes, trucks, etc). This was the process known as "kitbashing" - taking many kits and breaking them up for their parts.
Kitbashing wasn't haphazard though. A process emerged that has been called "Boilerplate technology" - it's basically a method to the madness, where the parts are arranged in a way to suggest functionality. If you have an engine-looking area, add venting and cooling hoses. If there is a section of detail isolated along a plane, run some piping to the cluster - and suggest that the piping runs power to a diifferent location. Add armor plating to break up the flat surfaces. suggest panel lines (like you see on aircraft). These are the things I try to keep in mind when I make something of my own. Like this:
It's a work-in-progress that will look like a furnace (boiler! haha). It's a small base housing batteries and a circuit board that fires two yellow LEDs in a random "flicker", with a housing I made from various bits, topped by a B-29 nose. Directly behind the nose is a tank drivewheel that I have hollowed out and modified with miniature domed rivet heads. I took an X-Acto and hollowed out the recessed areas, and backed them from behind with small plastic lenses I purchased in Tokyo last year. These are glued into place with a clear acrylic material.
So, the end effect is a flickering warm light that gets bounced by the lenses from above, and spills out between the sprocket teeth from below/sides. The lenses prevent you from being able to identify the location of either LED specifically, which is pretty cool. I also shot the B-29 nose with gloss laquer varnish, which gives it a "shower door" effect, mottling the light even more. I plan to add more detailing to the sides, and will paint the entire thing to look rusty with a slight patina - the "glass" will remain glossy, but the black spars will be matte/colored.
Here it is, all done - my first pendant ever (shown on Lisa, so you can see where it hangs).
Hello everybody. I have started this blog at the urging of my friend Jane, as a way to get some of the things that have been recently rattling around out of my head. My background is an artistic one, which started out in the fine arts, moving into digital design, with a physical model building thread that has existed since about the age of five or so. My earliest memory of model building is of my parents and I, crowded around our dining room table, constructing the Millennium Falcon and a Visible Woman. They did most of the heavy lifting as I was far too young to do anything that precise, but the seeds were planted. I learned about human anatomy and grain of wheat bulbs in a mash of enamel color and Testors glue!
Over the past eight years, I have been recreating my favorite models and props from my favorite films. I have had the most fun in retracing the footsteps of the artists that brought about the golden age of "kitbashing" at ILM, Apogee, and Universal Hartland, in the late 1970s and early 1980s - before computers took over. With the internet, like-minded people have banded together and have identified hundreds upon hundreds of commercial model kits that were utilized in the spaceships I loved so much, growing up. Recently I have been experiencing a nagging compulsion to do something that I can call my own with these skill sets and tools. This compulsion has slowly grown into an idea I will share here, as they evolve.
First up, a necklace. This is made from two inexpensive armor kits from Hasegawa.
I'll post finished photos tomorrow!
