Richard Baker

Very impressive build= the weathering is perfect to help with scale and makes all the wonderful detail shine!

Thanks! I like giving models a bit of history so when you look at them you get the feeling of seeing a snapshot from that history.

I am trying to remember the brand of a particular paint that I used for props when I was involved in stage magic in the seventies (Ring 35, International Brotherhood of Magicians). It was such a dead black that even with harsh stage lighting it was invisible to the audience. A lot of flat blacks were so so, this one was like painting a hole in space. Having the correct ratio (1:4:9) the the Monolith to me is more important to matching the film prop- it is such a wonderful set of numbers to signify universal mathematics from an alien culture!

Love it!- looks very practical and engineered with real world technology!

Spent a while finishing up the weathering on the B-Wing- I had already taken some photos to show last week but when I was uploading them I noticed some spots which needed more work.. Changes are subtle- added a few more blast marks on the other wings, added silver to the damaged areas and inside some of the chipped red paint, some scorching on leading edges, that sort of thing. I am calling this one done except for the engine bell insides- I haven't gotten batteries for the lighting yet and I am not sure which color might look best on the inside of those things yet. BTW- photos taken on my scale board- 1" grid for reference

Very nice build!- the coloring does remind me of the classic Chris Foss as well (getting weary of light gray ships all the time) Unfamiliar with this subject but you managed to make an outlandish design look real!

Very nice build! I have only seen some of the shows so far but I really enjoy the series

Thanks!- I try to give my builds a bit of history and make them look like a snapshot of a larger story. I figured that the B-Wing took heavy damage but was still flyable but the main guns were put out of operation. Nice to have a week to fix but they had to get it ready for battle overnight instead. I have been working on this kit a bit more, mostly weathering. I will try to finish it up this weekend and post more images Mondat

I never heard of this one before- quite an interesting program they had. I think your build looks spot on t the references I have just seen- well done! Do you have any other builds in a similar vein?

Thanks for your kind words! I haven't had time to do much else with this build but here is a shot from the starboard side showing the burn through from the damage on the other side

It is very rare I decide to share one of my builds online- just making them for my own fun mostly. This one I chose to make an exception on- it is still needing a couple of minor things such as adding the engine lights, a bit more weathering and decals, but when I put it on the stand last night it felt finished enough to share. It is the SDCC Edition B-Wing. I figure there were enough people building it to match the filming model so I gave mine two additional twists. The first is that I made it Red 7. There was some discussion a while back about how the wing stripes on the X-Wings could show numbers higher than the five the space allowed for, I thought gaping them would work so I used that on this fighter. I also though the long fuselage strip on the X-Wings would look nice on the main wing of this build so Red 7 was born. The Second was giving it a bit of history. The SDCC has a couple of missing panels at the bottom of the main wing with exposed greebly. the stock version of the kit has an exposed panel up at the top that the SDCC version has a plug for. I liked it open so I added some mechanical bits behind it. I then started thinking- why leave these two areas open. What I came up with was that this particular fighter was damaged in it's last battle. The mechanics did not have time to do a proper repair so the power feeds the blast tore apart and just ran a couple of bypasses along the outside instead. This to me gives a reason for those missing panels and sort of embraces the feel for the Rebels doing whatever it takes to get things battle ready without having the time or materials to do it in a fancy way. As mentioned there are still a couple of things I think still need to be done for this build but I am going to put in on the shelf for a while and just enjoy it a bit...

Nothing ruins a good model than parts you can spot the source of easily- there are parts of the Falcon and the 1999 Eagle I really have to avoid looking at. Tank and ship model kits are good sources if you take a razor saw and cut up the pieces a bit. Doug Trumbull used a lot of Railroad engine parts on the CE3K models- good technical greebly which is not very recognizable. Out local hobby shop has model kits of locomotives in HO scale which are wonderful for detailing.

I will take some pictures this weekend!

Arrived Wednesday- the Pegasus Terminator 2 Hunter-Killer Tank! A big box full of great detailed parts, I was not expecting rubber tracks. This is not the chromed version, I will paint mine more of a worn silver. Arrived Yesterday- The Moebius 1:32 Proteus from Fantastic Voyage. This has been a grail kit for me. I have the Sgt. Wilco 1:48 in the closet of doom but this new kit is styrene, my material of choice. Anybody want he Wilco kit for $30?

Round 2 did have the license to produce kits from the Alien franchise at one time. It was announced with great fanfare- a 1:1000 Sulaco illustration was shown at one convention. They did not really do much with it and IIRC it has lapsed now. The only kit R2 produced was a super expensive resin kit of Kane peering into the Alien Egg. I would love to see some vehicle models from the Alien realm, but unless R2 has renewed the license and gets really focused I doubt I will see on eon my shelf...

Hoping for 'The Orville' - not likely though since I think Jamie's hint predated the shows broadcast start

Moebius has the license for the NuTrek movie ships- the Franklin is first to release early nest year. They have also the Kelvin and the Enterprise in production, but which version of the Enterprise is not known. AFAIK nobody has announced any kits from the new Discovery series yet.

There is also some question that the Standard Grade Falcon may not have waterslide decals but stickers instead.

Now that is some impressive work! The Thunderbirds are some difficult shapes to get right- they look simple to a casual glance but when you get right down to the compound curves and proportions they are very hard to match. Aoshima is the first mass production company to get TB-3 correct- and I have seen a lot of kits over the years. The UNCL kit I have is pretty much dead on- so much so that Product Enterprise(AKA Sixteen/12) recast for their uber-expensive replica with launch silo (IIRC about 3K worth of display) Ben's Model Woreld editions are wonderful and appear perfect- I want to see your buildup when you get that Thunderbird rolling!

? - i haven't heard about this one yet. I have the 18" UNCL kit- (her are the primary pieces- red grid is 1"x 1" for scale)

Resistance Set has a 1:144 T-70 Blue Squadron, a 1:144 Poe's Boosted T-70 and a 1:350 Falcon

Really looking forward to seeing how the test comes out! I have been building computers since the old 486DX2 days- one thing I have sadly learned is that technology fails, you just do not know when. I have kept my library files on a separate drive, should be no loss. I just need to save up for a new Motherboard/CPU/RAM to get things going again...

Sadly my main computer at home blew a motherboard so my library of images is not available for a while. I did use the computer at work to search out stills from the show (not relying on painted replicas right now. I did some sampling for the more evenly parts of the hull and got a number of RGB values- Best equivalent to Pantone seems to be either PMS #1788c or 'Warm Red c' One limitation to the Pantone system is that it does not cover every color- it steps through a range instead. It was originally designs for mixing printer's inks and was the standard for printing color communication for years. I am taking further samples and will post the raw data (R/G/B) values here next week

I will try and get a good PMS value determined before the weekend

I will be glad to share the info! Most paint stores here can match to a sample with their scanner or to a PMS spec, then load the paint into a rattle can if you wish. Due to pixel variations in the samples, I will grab about a dozen and average. Right now I am in the early stages of the Zvezda ISD build, but if the TB-3 color information is needed soon I can get that determined earlier, just let me know.