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Well its time for a new project! This is one I've had in mind for a while, I'm an ex biker and love motorbikes so have always wanted to do a sci fi build based around a motorbike model. The motorbike kit I'm playing about with is a 1/12 Tamiya ducati 888 and I want it to look pretty sleek so I'm going to go with a very glossy race bike finish. Plan is to keep it looking pretty much how it does, obviously its going to have no front wheel/forks and no swingarm on the back, I dont want to muck about with the fairing much to make it easier to get it all smooth and nice for high gloss finish. So where the swingarm was there will be an engine sticking out and at the back on the parts where the exhausts attach I'll put some small fins on. For the rider she is going to be mostly sculpted, but I'm going for an android so it will be along the lines of her face will be a panel on her head with a lot of metal at the back. Want to use plenty of tubing and spring tubes so she'll be leaning a bit more towards the robot side of things, and she'll be a punk so bright pink mohawk and an attitude! The pose I'm going for is to help aid the jet bike bike look by not giving it any support, it will be held up by her leg to give the impression of hovering. I was going to have her sitting on it with one leg down, but thats no fun, so instead she will be in the middle of a hard 180 turn with one foot on the ground as it skids round. To help with the sense of motion there will be a puddle on the floor with a small bow wave coming from her foot to look as though she has slid through it. Also as she looks back as the bike turns she will also have one arm up firing a gun behind her because I basically want it to seem as though she is being chased but has turned the tables on the people chasing. Its all a bit hard to explain but it will all become clear as I go (hopefully!) so without further a do the first think I'm tackling is the jet bike so I pulled out the kit and started cutting out the fairing, frame and engine bits to get them together and tidy IMG_20221006_132327390 by Nick Frost, on Flickr IMG_20221006_132432654 by Nick Frost, on Flickr IMG_20221006_135200870 by Nick Frost, on Flickr Your really not going to see much of the engine at all, especially as the open end where I'll be putting engines of some description, so I got it all together to paint in one piece for speed, oh and only mod to the frame so far is I've cut off the two small exhaust brackets from the end as they're not needed, exhausts are being left off too. IMG_20221007_141617964 by Nick Frost, on Flickr So got those bits primed IMG_20221007_142327200 by Nick Frost, on Flickr Sprayed the engine with alclad airframe aluminium as a base coat and used some tamiya acrylic white on the frame bits. IMG_20221008_161100012 by Nick Frost, on Flickr IMG_20221008_161112170 by Nick Frost, on Flickr Whilst that was drying I turned to the fairing to start getting that together and filled. IMG_20221008_161918357 by Nick Frost, on Flickr IMG_20221008_162426157 by Nick Frost, on Flickr IMG_20221009_154652644 by Nick Frost, on Flickr IMG_20221011_155035375 by Nick Frost, on Flickr This was primed and then of course more sanding! IMG_20221014_163209549 by Nick Frost, on Flickr Switched back to the engine and used some enamels to get some detail on it. IMG_20221017_191129379 by Nick Frost, on Flickr Got the frame together and realised I missed a bit, the rear suspension is not needed as there's no swingarm but I do want the top part that holds the spring in place, just because its another detail to have in there and it also helps connect/stabilise the two frame halves, which suits me fine because as you can see below I really wasn't happy with how the white looked so it would have needed more painting anyway. IMG_20221017_193444434 by Nick Frost, on Flickr And speaking of paint just want to take a second to explain how I'm approaching the paint work. Now I'm not a glossy finish guy, I'm a matt paint heavy weathering guy, so this is all a bit new to me; so I looked up how car modellers approach a nice realistic glossy finish on cars. So what I'll be doing is after priming I'll give it a rub down with a 4000 grit micromesh pad to get it smooth, and I have also switched to Mr Color laquer paints to get a smooth glossy finish (and more vibrant colours) which will then be given a couple of clear coats and finally will be polished to a high sheen with tamiyas polishing compounds. Oh and for the colour scheme I'm going for a light blue with yellow striping, so I'll spray the whole thing yellow so I can mask off the stripes then spray it a light blue. The rear fairing and petrol tank are molded in one piece, and this had some fine mould marks so I rubbed it all over with a 3600 micromesh pad then hit it with primer which as I stated above was rubbed down with a 4000 grit pad. IMG_20221017_194151823 by Nick Frost, on Flickr IMG_20221017_194657370 by Nick Frost, on Flickr The below has had 2 coats of the yellow gloss Mr Color paint. IMG_20221019_195311014 by Nick Frost, on Flickr I have to say, I am completely in love with Mr Color paints. They go down like a dream, the colour is so bright and wow over the rubbed down primer it has already achieved a crazy smooth finish. So I primed and did the same thing for the main fairing part. IMG_20221019_195304642 by Nick Frost, on Flickr IMG_20221019_195854672 by Nick Frost, on Flickr Then I reprimed the frame, and sprayed it this time with Mr Color white and man it came out so much stronger white in just one spray session. IMG_20221019_195902546 by Nick Frost, on Flickr IMG_20221020_200436636 by Nick Frost, on Flickr And whilst I was spraying white I decided I want a white detail at the bottom of the fairing so I masked off and sprayed that too, IMG_20221020_194645033 by Nick Frost, on Flickr IMG_20221020_200445464 by Nick Frost, on Flickr And now its completely up to date with where I am. Next Up I'll remove the masking tape when dry and start to plan out how I want my stripe details to look so I can mask it off and spray the blue. Thanks for looking, more soon

Airfix Launch New App – Airfix Tanks We got this by email this morning, and thought you good people might like to know. Available on iOS and Android, it should appeal for those mobile gamers amongst us