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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

Okay so this is a project I've had in mind for quite some time, basically when I was very young me and my brother had the Spacebase 2000 book, which is a collection of stories but the only reason we used to look through it because it had some really fabulous art in it of all kinds of spaceships. I think flicking through the pages of that book is what first inspired my interest in all things sci fi, and one particular image always stood out as my favourite, and after doing some internet searches a while back the image popped up in the results and I just thought "that would make a great model" and then I started to think about sculpting one. So fast forward to now and thats what I'm going to have a go at, I'm not intending to copy it 100% (thus the "inspired") but I want to recreate it as best I can, although I want to change the helmet design so you can see the full face. Below is the image, after doing a bit of research managed to find out it was by an artist called Peter Elson. 2125678203_a68191d874 by Nick Frost, on Flickr My idea for it is to have the same mid air pose, but one of the arms will be grabbing the foot, which will allow me to support it. Its a pretty ambitious project for me, but thats one of the reasons I'm pretty excited about it, I always like to push myself into trying new techniques and things that scare me a little! And I haven't done that in my last few projects. I have done a bit of figure sculpting before, but nothing crazy, just a couple of space guys in a ma.k diorama I did last year - http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234979624-120-mak-fireball-split-suit-space-diorama/ So I started by making my armature, first thing I did was print out a picture of a skeleton that I sized at 30cm to get it at the 1/6 scale. And then cut a long piece of wire so I could get it done in one continuous piece so I dont have to muck about with joints in the wire. 20160127_132223 by Nick Frost, on Flickr 20160127_132807 by Nick Frost, on Flickr 20160127_133644 by Nick Frost, on Flickr I went a bit short on the arms, this is because I'll sculpt up to the wrists and then make separate hand armatures later, and lots of extra off both feet for now to give me plenty of freedom later when I'm locking down the pose. Thats where I'm at for now, I normally like to start topics with a bit more progress but I'm pretty pumped about this and just wanted to kick it off asap. Next up I've got to get some supplies to build my armature stand, then I can get the pose locked down and bend it into shape, then it will be a matter of blocking out the limbs and core with some foil. Thanks for looking, more soon

Hello. Recently, I've purchased some of Aves' Apoxie Clay after having watched Paul Budzik's excellent video about it. I started to play around with it just to get a feel for how it works. It's nice to use, plenty of working time and it sands beautifully. Best part about it is that it doesn't shrink. However, I did have one issue with it. While experimenting with it, I stuck it to a sheet of evergreen styrene and left it to cure overnight. I wanted to see how well it would adhere to the styrene. The answer was 'not very good'. It came off quite easily, even in the areas it was applied thin. Right now I don't have much confidence in using it on a model. I figure I must be doing something incorrectly as it seems to work well for Paul. Does anybody have any experience with it? Am I missing something? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Hi folks, We've been short on light here as the winter solstice is fast approaching, and short on time as we're in Vale Family Birthday Season until mid-July. I managed to set up my camera at lunchtime and get some pictures of poor Bemular, who's been waiting for a couple of weeks for the privilege. (click for bigger) He seems to be missing a chip from one of the spikes, I don't remember that happening but it's not entirely surprising! For those who missed the WIP thread, the little plane is Bandai's Mecha Colle kit of the Science Patrol VTOL from the original Ultraman series, and the atomic monster is Bemular, from the first episode of said series. I sculpted him from polymer clay (Super Sculpey) over a wire-and-tinfoil armature and fitted glass eyes and LEDs. The "beam" is a plastic tube covered in hot glue, Tamiya Clear Blue and gloss varnish. You can just about see the wires running up to the LED in the hot end, but it's not too obvious. White insulation would've been preferable to black! I really enjoyed this project and I'm itching to do some more sculpting when I can find the time. There are plenty of things that I could've done better so I'm hoping to fix some of that next time around - smoother surfacing and cleaner details would be good, and I need to figure out a better painting technique. Here's the episode where Bemular appears if you want to see what he's supposed to look like in the original bloke-in-a-suit format. Sadly I can't embed the video as the uploader turned that option off. https://youtu.be/4x7_DBzBetM and here's the build thread. Thanks to everyone who joined in there, it was all very useful. And thanks for looking! Cheers, Will