voozet

I think it could be done, especially since it's an Epson ecotank, which has ink tanks instead of cartridges. But I'm not sure it's worth the fuss. I care more about printing good quality photos than about decals.

This is what it looked like in still water. When removing it from the bowl, the ink drained almost completely 😉

Lots of work, little progress. This is the shortest way to summarize what I've been doing lately. Painting is the part of work I like the least, so I try to do as little of it as possible. That's why I usually choose the primer so that it is also the first layer of the base color (or pre-shade at least). Here I just lightened the dark gray primer partly with Voodoo Gray and Traffic White paints from the Hataka Orange series. But with this size and complexity of the model, even simply lightening the color takes hours. However, as you can see, I managed to dispel my doubts about the painting scheme. In fact, the doubts disappeared by themselves. The brutal truth about my modeling is that I spend most of my energy covering up my own mistakes 😉 As I suspected, I wasn't able to lay down the layers of paint smoothly. My mistakes can be seen in their extreme form on the engines: microporosity resulting from poor paint dilution combined with poor sanding. It's polyethylene, so I didn't want to paint it without sanding, because then the paint tends to peel off. But unfortunately this type of plastic tends to 'fluff' after sanding (it looks like tiny hairs are forming on it). After painting it looks really bad though maybe not as much as in counter light and in macro photo below. I'm lazy, so I don't want to paint it a second time. It's easier to choose heavy dirt. So the color scheme will be Filthy Star Wars or 50 Dirty Shades of Grey... Unfortunately, there were more failures. Tests have shown that printing decals on an inkjet printer is not a good idea, contrary to the assurances of the paper manufacturer. Even a few coats of varnish for sealing didn't help. Fortunately, I have a large collection of leftover model decals that I bought or received from friends. I used this to improve the hangar bay. But as I mentioned, not much of it will be clearly visible. Here, the hangar bay was not covered by the upper section of the ship, so the interior is quite bright. After assembling the ship, light will only enter through the gate. While working in the hangar, I also painted the elements underneath it. I have no idea what role they serve in my ship, but they look pretty good. The paint is silver from the AK Metal Extreme series. That's all for today. I hope that I have already reached the limit of serious mistakes in this project and it will be easier now. Thanks for watching. Wiesiek.

Amazing work, especially considering that this vehicle was born from a piece drainpipe and wood. I definitely like it.

My goal wasn't to make everyone depressed 😉.

Gentlemen it was a great pleasure to be part of this GB. I hasten to thank you fo co-op before this part of the forum is closed and begins to be covered with a layer of dust, mold and cobwebs, becoming a part of entropy empire. Like everything in our reality. Wiesiek.

Definitely. A single mudgard looks great, IMO better than separate ones for each wheel.

This is my compilation of free decal designs available on Artstation. I made it for the larger scale at which I usually work (approx. 1:35), so I can only use part of it here: ideograms maybe and hazard stripes. But if this works, I can have whatever I want on the ship 😁 There are many of them. Maybe even too much. 1. Star Wars'ish classic, as in the photo of the Falcon that I posted. White, gray and dirty plus a few spots of red. Boring but easy for me to achieve. 2. Colors as above, but clean and shiny. This is a more difficult option for me because I have trouble painting smooth layers of color. I always notice micro-grains, cat hair or other dirt. 3. Yellow, Yellow, Yellow. Like snow near the pub. This is the version where the ship is a freighter. I wanted to add a large logo of one of the Polish courier companies. Clean or dirty version depending on how smooth the base color layer is. But now that I've armed the ship, it's a less desirable scheme. Hawaiian, judging by the mess on the surface 😝

There is a chance for this, unless at some stage I lose interest in this construction, which happened to me several times before, as you know (sad evidence of this can be found on this forum). 😉 The deadline for this group is December 3, and that's the time I'm aiming for. The maximum plan is to also make the lower part (fin), which will be quite simple. The minimum plan is to recognize that what I have done so far is the entire model. The ship looks so that even now it can be considered a complete whole. It's all in the plan. I don't think I can paint this cleanly and smoothly, skill-wise so the model will be weathered in the style of the Millennium Falcon. The inspiration will be the work of a modeler Luftraum 72 found on the Internet. Of course, there will also be decals. I have a lot of leftover from military models, as well as a stash of paper for printing decals on my inkjet printer. However, I haven't tested this second solution yet. That is: I made a test print a few months ago and sealed it with varnish but I haven't checked if it works.

Primed. At last. I had some problems with it, because first it turned out that the 0.3 mm nozzle in my airbrush was completely damaged, and later - that the primer I bought was too light. I used a 0.2 mm nozzle, which makes painting a bit more complicated because the model is large. And I added black paint to the primer to darken it. First, a few photos before painting to show the final version. As you can see, it is an out of the box model (in this case: a pizza box). 😝 Painting with primer already showed that it would be a nightmare, as Pete in Links wrote. I divided the model into two parts to make it easier, but there are still many hard-to-reach places where the paint cannot reach. But no one said it would be easy, did they? Thanks for watching and positive reakctions so far. Wiesiek.

Thans for the info. We use our home printer to print photos, that's why we have an inkjet. In theory, you can also print waterslide decals with this, but it requires a special paper and a lot of varnish to seal. Some time ago I even created a test sheet of Sci-fi markings, but I haven't checked whether it works yet.

It looks great (the whole thing, not just the decals). Do you use a laser or inkjet printer? And if the latter option, how do you secure the printout?

Well, it's time to start the arms race. First, I decided to focus on rocket launchers. But not only. This is the starting set of production materials (from left to right): A badly damaged Lego brick found on the street. I cut it in half and cut off the protruding round parts (I glued five of them together, these are the "Olympic rings" that I will use for the next launcher. I will use a drilled black piece of styrene above the rings). Seven pieces of 5 mm diameter clear styrene pipe glued together and filled with putty. Some kind of launcher from an airplane kit, which I decided to cover with a styrene turret (also using part of some German WWII tank cover). A few trinkets of unknown origin. I installed the Lego brick in a styrene structure. Two of the holes that are supposed to be barrels (? I don't know what this part of a launcher is called) had damage. That's why I decided to cover them. Next two of the barrels will be open and that's why I needed the missiles. I found some resin warheads in the spare parts box. Launcher no. 1 looks after installation. This is launcher no. 2. Made of transparent tubes, styrene and putty. I also made a laser cannon from a piece of plastic spoon and styrene (3mm and 1mm). Finished cannon next to the rocket launcher turret. Thanks for watching. Wiesiek.

No doubt: it looks great. This model is superb. The combination of a submarine and an aircraft carrier gives great effect and you painted it brilliantly.

I'm also curious what it will look like painted. But I have bad news: we all have to wait a little longer. Recently I've had a strong feeling that I've forgotten something. Well, I just realized what's missing here. This ship is completely unarmed 🤣. Probably because it was initially supposed to be a civilian freighter. But once I added fighters, the Navy took over. And it could use some rockets and lasers, what do you think?

I had a break of several weeks because the call of duty took me away from the workbench. And when I returned, I spent some time exploring various havens with my wife (it was mainly me who explored the bottled one 😉). But now it's time to go back to the shipyard. Unfortunately, this is the more boring part of the job: paneling. It's not easy to get it right unless you're Adam Savage. I'm not, so it won't be better 😝 The next step will be painting (I think), so from time to time I look at the whole thing, checking what needs to be improved. And I add the parts I made earlier. For example, the main radar. I also made a smaller radar which I placed above the hangar gate. It's a few pieces of leftovers put together. I was too lazy to wash the olive paint off the cubic base, which turned out to be a mistake. The glue has wrinkled the paint and it looks a bit like it was welded in a Soviet factory. As I wrote earlier: now it's probably time to paint the middle and upper sections. Thanks for looking. Wiesiek.

Nobody will guess this. Especially me. Improvisation is strong in this one 😉 That's still about 1/3 of the ship. But the largest component (the lower "wing") will be relatively simple, so once I finish the main deck it will go faster.

Thanks gentlemen. Definitely. Sometimes it's hard to choose the moment to stop so as not to overdo it. But at the same time I have a strong desire to save spare parts. I am looking for a balance between contradictions. I am aware of this. I try to build it to make it a little easier by breaking it down into smaller structures, which I will paint separately. 50 shades of gray 😝 or more seriously: dark gray, light gray plus some strong color: yellow or red.

That's great! I really like the way you combine the greebles. Watching your SF construction logs is like ordering pizza of the day without looking at the menu at a good restaurant. You never know what will come out on top, but you know it will taste delicious 😉

This is the time to start putting together all the small parts that make up the main deck and upper section. In my case, this means a lot of extra work with fitting parts wich sometimes require reworking. As I mentioned in my last post this was the case with the covers over the engines. There were holes where it connected to the hull that needed to be covered (1.). I found two semi-circular components of some aircraft in a spare parts box that seemed to fit perfectly (2.). And they fit... but only for holes. It turned out that they interfered with the engine covers, which I forgot about at this stage. This mistake meant I had to cut off a piece of the covers and add a complicated wall to make it look good. Doing them was a possible but not necessary option. Eventually I managed to find the motivation, but I only had enough perseverance to make two Here's the second one: Building the fighters reminded me that I still haven't finished the hangar bay, especially: the gate/ramp/airlock. The piece of plastic left after cutting out the gate opening will be the extension of the runway. Upper surface: Bottom surface: Now that the covers over the engines are in place, I also could refine the connections between the various components. (In the background you can see the remnants of the supernova that exploded over my workshop, leaving tons of debris there 😝) This is what it looks like after adding the top section. I also finished the interior of the hangar bay, adding few details to the side walls in places that would be visible through the open gate. The inner hangar deck and the hatch, which is not in this photo but which I made at the very beginning, will be painted separately, and installed at the end. The bow of the ship was very poorly constructed. I improved it by adding a cutted torpedo piece. I also glued something I had made earlier as a sensor/radar and a lot of styrene squares. The bow sides still need some work/details/greebles. Thanks for watching. Wiesiek.

Great visualization of the creative process (the creative process itself is also great). Usually, people who combine the words "NASA cheated" and "flat" in one sentence make me distrust them 😉 Wiesiek

The covers already look pretty good, but I will have to modify them. It turned out that they no longer fit the hull I had modified earlier 🤣. It happens to me sometimes. My modeling is mainly about managing chaos. @Pete in Lincs I'm not sure if I'm a good source of inspiration/ideas stealing 😝 Now I have to figure out how to adjust them with a little work. To take a mental break from this, I started making the fighters for the hangar bay. A bit of 0.5mm thick styrene and a 0.25mm rod plus half of a plane bomb and this is the first one. Thanks for looking. Wiesiek

I envy your persistence, which has already been mentioned here. I belong to that genre for which even tank's individual track links are too much of a challenge 😉 But you're certainly right: it's worth it because your model looks great.

The pace of work has slowed down a bit because I had less free time. I'm still working on the "upper wing". Especially the top part of this structure did not look like part of a starship, and had far too few details. So I decided to add smaller, horizontal structures, let's call them shelves. This is what one of these shelves looks like in its place. I also made several antennas (or radars or sensors). These are modified spare parts, mainly for aircraft models. This is a part of sprue, cut off from the tank fender visible next to it. I wanted to throw it in the trash but I noticed that it had a nice shape. It looks like some kind of sensor, so that's what it will be. After all, this ship is supposed to be a phoenix rising from garbage 🤣 Part of the machine gun also pretends to be an antenna or something like that. Slightly modified internet cable (?) connector. Unfortunately, at this stage of work, manipulating the model becomes a problem. I often break protruding elements. For example, the short gray antenna sticking out from the beige wheel just above the Tiger's exhaust cover was much longer until recently Therefore, I will attach the rest of the antennas/radars just before painting. Unless I lose them or forget about them, which has happened to me before. I also continued working on the plates covering the part of the deck just above the engines. They definitely needed a modification of shapes. I decided to add trapezoidal convex elements to them. On my first attempt, I made a mistake and glued the side walls on the wrong side on one of them. As a result, I created two identical elements. I don't like doing the same thing twice, so in the next try I did it completely differently. I extended the trapezoids and added holes into which I glued wheels from a Soviet tank. Below the trapezoids are probably some aircraft bombs. Thanks for looking. Wiesiek.

The sketch looks great and promises a cool project. Additionally, builds from scratch always arouses my interest. I'm also a big fan of this series and to be honest, I don't remember any APC in it. However, I think that there were a lot of them riding outside the frame, and they looked exactly like in this sketch 😉 Fortunately, it's an activity that doesn't require thinking, so you can listen to podcasts, audiobooks, etc. To pass the time, I think about the next steps. It works both ways: sometimes when I come across a big problem and I think hard about it, I find myself starting to sanding something pointlessly 😝