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Lamenting my loss of innocence....


Bozothenutter

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Woe be unto me....

As a kid I could build a kit out of the box in a weekend, enjoy the hell out of it and be proud.

Now, I research bulges, rivets, buttons and other minutiae.....

I enjoy the research, and the 'puzzling' on how to recreate said detail.

Having ADHD and 'high functioning' autism doesn't help, sometimes it feels like work and I'm my own boss.....

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Every now and again, I just do a kit out of the box, just to recreate the 8-year-old me (even occasionally right down to the gluey fingerprint). It is quite therapeutic, and then I enjoy going back to adding a few bits and pieces to various kits.

 

Ray

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18 hours ago, Bozothenutter said:

Woe be unto me....

As a kid I could build a kit out of the box in a weekend, enjoy the hell out of it and be proud.

Now, I research bulges, rivets, buttons and other minutiae.....

I enjoy the research, and the 'puzzling' on how to recreate said detail.

Having ADHD and 'high functioning' autism doesn't help, sometimes it feels like work and I'm my own boss.....

I think I can empathise with your situation Bozo...

 

I recall the excitement and enjoyment related to just 'building' a kit, especially during my younger days. I remember just being happy knocking together kits from the Airfix 1/72 'blister pack' range and slapping on paint just because.

 

Detail and specifics only really started to feature as I hit my late tens/early teens, with my interest gradually drifting from just making a model to making it look more like the 'real thing', though I wasn't quite sure why. I never got as far as indulging in PE, WM and certainly not resin before my interests shifted to girls, clubs, flying et al, as much from lack of awareness of such things as lack of funds.

 

But my inexplicable (at the time) desire to increasingly get my kits to resemble a particular look slowed my build rate right down and shifted my perspective on what I found to be satisfying, with the year 87-88 (my last before the 'long-gap') producing just two models. One of those was driven by a near obsession to replicate a master build that was on display at a local model shop, down to each and every detail - from the detailed cockpit, to the very same decal scheme to the way they blended in as if painted on, to the same subtle weathering and strokes of rust - and that alone took up most of that year. The outcome was a diorama that 'would' have been a competition winner at the time had the size not fallen too short by a few centimeters of what the 'regulations' stipulated :rofl:

 

But when I returned to model making I was king of haunted by that build and the need for my new models to meet that 'standard' or better has been hard to shake, while the difference in my disposable income coupled with the sheer range of better and better kits and then the myriad of after market options that just keep adding more, has caused my brain to pinball into a state of almost build-paralysis.

 

I've since been diagnosed with Dyslexia, ADHD and Autism, with the 'high-functioning' aspects of my particular cocktail being off the scale but which also presented some challenges around expectation management in relation to my own works at least. But the more I've learned, the more I've started to adapt and develop new ways with being happy with what I am doing and how I am doing it - all in very small and graduated steps. One of the approaches I've taken is to balance my 'detail' WIP's with a simple kit on the side - a 'just for fun rather than display' - to just let me indulge myself a little. It's helped me to feel ok about the WIP's in boxes that are being modified to display a high range of detail - to take the time needed and to put some focus and perspective back to them. It's still all very experimental for me (as are all of the other aspects of my life that are adjusting to my new reality) but it helps.

 

My HKM 1/48 Lancaster arrived this week and while it will sit there in the stash awaiting the inevitable myriad of AM - the 'Big Ed's', the 'Brassin', and much more besides I imagine - I'll be picking up a NOVO Lancaster and just 'build it' as it is. Maybe I'll paint it, maybe I won't. But I know it'll make me feel good and far better about what I'll invest in the HKM kit. 🙂

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4 hours ago, Bozothenutter said:

@Nocoolnamethanks for that!

I try to do the oob thing.....really I do 😒

Maybe I should not even start research, 'ignorance is bliss' and all that 🤔

I think it took me a while to get some kind of balance TBH. And I think the most important thing, for me at least, was to agree with 'myself' what good enough looked like. It's not just the sheer amount of choice available these days but also the level of 'noise' around the internet on the rights and wrongs of kits and builds. I'm building for me, not for a museum or exhibition, and so I'm using that principle to help dial back to a level of detail I'm comfortable with. For me its a hobby now, not a mission or a day job, and I'm just about to start an 'almost' OOB 1/24 Hurricane. Almost in that I'm just replacing the decals. And I'm just going to keep trying along those lines. If I get it wrong, for how 'I' feel, I'll try something else.

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I thought this thread was going to be about Santa Claus!

 

... whom I ceased to believe in the same Christmas morning I got my very first batch of kits, all 7 of which I built in less than two days!

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In the space of about a year I went from just building a kit and making it look accurate and have the more obvious bits right (on Vulcans that would be the tail cap style, the smooth nose or TFR nose, one ECM plate or two) but not really looking at the finer points like most of the various smaller aerials and blisters to now, where I'll know if there's a single one out of place or missing on a Vulcan model, or if an aerial is the wrong type for X time period. I even started printing my own anti flash decals in part because the colours and sizes of all available options are wrong, wrong and wrong again.

It's slowly driving me crazy spending more time looking at old photos and checking spreadsheets than actually building, but for Vulcans I do enjoy it. 

XH562 is probably my favourite Vulcan model to date, aside from the poor intake shape and incorrect gear height and slightly off panel lines and oversized pitots and off canopy profile and off nose profile and incorrectly angled tail.... but those are all flaws with the kit that I can't really do too much about without going to a lot more effort. There's also a couple of missing blisters 😬

 

IMG_20210223_015544442_HDR~2

 

Not quite as well made as it was in a blitzbuild is this one, XM575, which there is not as far as I know a single incorrect blister or aerial on after I finished the kit.

7c0226b768fe2b91f3fbf4bf9225af7c.jpg

c0ce33cc8c3279228bb04a399130ef2c.jpg

 

And on this one I chopped it up to make a Vulcan B1a, it's actually the same kit as XM575. I had to make a few compromises but it's pretty good I think. The sheer number if differences between the Vulcan B1/B1a and B2 has taken me over a year to get right with various conversions each with mistakes of their own.

 

IMG_20210408_005541425~2

 

 

It was actually quite refreshing building an aircraft I know very little about, such as the Blenheim and Whitley I have recently done.

IMG_20210504_153451569~2

 

IMG_20210330_102507854_HDR~2

 

 

 

 

 

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Adam,

 

I sympathize. I can too easily get lost down bunny holes. The more I research the fussier I get. Analysis paralysis.

 

In the end it is all good as long as you learn to control and not let it control you.

 

cheers, Graham

 

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1 hour ago, GrahamCC said:

Adam,

 

I sympathize. I can too easily get lost down bunny holes. The more I research the fussier I get. Analysis paralysis.

 

In the end it is all good as long as you learn to control and not let it control you.

 

cheers, Graham

 

Yeah the rabbit holes are never ending 😂

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  • 3 weeks later...

I reach a point, sometimes, when building what I call a fussy kit, where all I want to do is finish it and from that point the goal is to make it look good from two feet away. I'm sometimes surprised to find they look doggone good from two feet away! A lesson I've learned recently is that the model looks really rough during the build stage but really begins to look like an airplane at the painting stage and for me the excitement of the build returns.

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I enjoy the research as much as the building, if not more so.  I'm not so bothered about the right number and type of rivets, and reproducing every last switch in the cockpit, but I do try to get my models in an authentic configuration.  That may sometimes mean intake covers and safety flags ("RBF tags"); it means never showing panels off (as for deep maintenance) with a full load of live ordnance; weathering appropriate for the type, location, role, etc; and if I ever do a Spitfire on the ground with the flaps down, I will certainly include figures of the Flight Sergeant asking the pilot, "Flap lever a bit sticky was it, Sir?"

 

I've occasionally tried just building a cheap kit quickly without bothering about research, as we all did as youngsters: I can't do it.  I start looking at cockpit colours, I find things that are not acceptable (to me, before anyone jumps in and tells me it's my model, I can do what I like with it 🙂) and generally it's gone in the bin before I even finish it so I can get on with my "proper modelling", as I think of it.

 

Perhaps I'm wrong, but there seems to be a school of thought that people can build kits as we used to back in the day and have a blast; or do all the research and thus suck all the joy from the process.  Well you can do both.  I get as much if not more joy from doing the research, and finding a really unusual subject with an interesting back-story.  I'm sure I'm not alone. 

 

Perhaps it's time to invoke the late Al Superczynski, who famously said: "Build what YOU want, the way YOU want to, and above all, have fun."

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I realised I was contracting AMS when a few years back now I was wondering how exactly to replicate the right colour on the internal cockpit canopy framing. Since then masks have appeared but back then it wasn’t done as far as I could see. 
 

I ended up with build paralysis spending months and even years looking for solutions to problems on kits that were not even started. A number of times I was a few years of collecting solutions to issues when a manufacturer made a new tool version and it was back to square one. 
 

I then got some good perspective advice which I offer here for what it’s worth. I and we for the most part are not model making for a profession. It’s a hobby. If it was golf, tennis, racing driving or football would we be striving to be a Arnold Palmer, Borg or Federer, Lewis Hamilton or Messi?  Nope. We would be happy with a good round though not perfect, a few ace serves but not a Wimbledon final performance, for once scoring against your sons team. We do it for fun-supposedly so please just build OOB or with as much scratching or converting and improving as takes your fancy and enjoy yourself. 
 

And remember. After every Fonderie Minatures or Starfix kit there is nothing  that can’t be cured with enough expensive counselling or beer. Cheers chaps

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Maybe what we need is a GB where participants get two hours in which to build and paint a kit, like we used to when we were nippers.  We could prohibit the use of filler, abrasives, masks, airbrushes, washes, pigments, varnish coats and liquid cement.  I'd give it a go.

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32 minutes ago, jackroadkill said:

Maybe what we need is a GB where participants get two hours in which to build and paint a kit, like we used to when we were nippers.  We could prohibit the use of filler, abrasives, masks, airbrushes, washes, pigments, varnish coats and liquid cement.  I'd give it a go.

I really like this!

webcams on and full audio and video for chat mode....🤔

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49 minutes ago, jackroadkill said:

Maybe what we need is a GB where participants get two hours in which to build and paint a kit, like we used to when we were nippers.  We could prohibit the use of filler, abrasives, masks, airbrushes, washes, pigments, varnish coats and liquid cement.  I'd give it a go.

 

Extra marks for too much glue and runny seams ?  

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2 hours ago, jackroadkill said:

Maybe what we need is a GB where participants get two hours in which to build and paint a kit, like we used to when we were nippers.  We could prohibit the use of filler, abrasives, masks, airbrushes, washes, pigments, varnish coats and liquid cement.  I'd give it a go.

 

 

Can I do the old Revell 1/72 P-51d in the infamous red paint scheme please :D

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On 5/1/2021 at 2:24 PM, Ray S said:

Every now and again, I just do a kit out of the box, just to recreate the 8-year-old me (even occasionally right down to the gluey fingerprint). It is quite therapeutic, and then I enjoy going back to adding a few bits and pieces to various kits.

 

Ray

Be it noted that Ray's idea of "adding a few bits and pieces to various kits." is to add exquisitely fine detail, that would give any sane money spider a headache just thinking about it, to tiny scale warships that most of us have trouble actually spotting on the table. 

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16 hours ago, jackroadkill said:

Maybe what we need is a GB where participants get two hours in which to build and paint a kit, like we used to when we were nippers.  We could prohibit the use of filler, abrasives, masks, airbrushes, washes, pigments, varnish coats and liquid cement.  I'd give it a go.

I couldn't do it. I’m not a rivet counter by any means but my OCD just wouldn't allow me to do that. One of the reasons I never do the blitzbuilds here. 

Edited by Corsairfoxfouruncle
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