Thursday, August 24, 2006

Every little boy's dream.

After about 6 months of cold storage, my models have finally been broken out.
Spent today finishing a tiny model plane that was given to me as a gift. Here are some pictures =)








Yes, yes, I know what u're thinking. Don't that plane seem to be suspended in midair like magic? Well, it is =). The model is the French jet Rafale from german model company Revell. Its secret is 3 strings (seen in 3rd picture), an inbuilt magnet and a huge repelling magnet in its base =) This was given to me as a gift.

Incidentally, this is also only the second plane I've built seriously, with paint and all. I've made many more when I was younger, but all were paint-less and dull. With this, I experimented with a few new modelling techniques and processes.. esp with simulating weathering and mastering the many tiny decals. The plane's only 9cm long! and all those colourful words n symbols are individual decals that had to be applied!

Aand I made a huge mistake on this one. But of course, every mistake is a lesson learnt. As you can see, the cockpit canopy is painted white. Its supposed to be transparent, but i ruined it after trying to clean off paint with a thinner-like chemical. It ended up dissolving the plastic and clouding the whole cockpit a sickly white. So I had to add paint on to attempt to save the situation.

But the experience gained here prepares me for greater things: I have three other unbuilt planes at home... One of which is under construction... the Sukhoi S-37 Berkut.



And here is the unpainted plastic body compared with a 20cm ruler.



My 2nd other plane is of roughly the same size, the SV-51R from the Macross Zero anime series.. BUT

My ultimate plane is this!:



This huge F-16's (the same 20cm ruler is shown) from Tamiya, is the wet dream of many plane modellers, and cost me a huge bomb. So I'm not gonna touch it until I know what im doing. Don't want it to look like a friggin mangled mess of grey plastic.

But oTher than planes, I have another behemoth lying mothballed in a box, that same plastic ruler beside it!!:



Yes, a 1/350 Yamato from Tamiya.. Been under construction since I was sec 4 (2004), and also cost me a bomb. My second serious battleship (I made 2 ships before.. including Tirpitz and Scharnhorst.. both dull, messy and unpainted.. still have em =)) to be made, other than a cheapo, averagely-painted 1/350 Missouri thats now gathering dust on my shelf.. I have another 1/400 scale model not made, and its called the Titanic =)

BUT OTHER than ships and planes, I still have these models: Nissan 350Z Xanavi Nismo, M110 artillery gun, german Tiger and King Tigers, M26 recovery vehicle from Tamiya, JGDSF all-terrain car from Tamiya, a Kiowa helicopter, and a small Jap WWII seaplane.

Too much plastic, too little time -_-

jOhn thought at 12:46 PM