#sci-fi model

[livinbythewayside98]

1984 Dune Spice Scout

This was my very quick scratchbuild of one of the barely seen vehicles in the 1984 film Dune.  A small ribbed plastic tree ornament, some scrap plastic shapes, and a plastic clothing hanger trimmed to length.

[zetxune]

Howdy I'm not dead, just relaxing after a chaotic end to my final semester as a game design student, here are some handguns that I did after faffing around learning Substance Painter months ago

[kitsandbits]

TIE Completed

Well that’s the TIE complete. For all its simplicity it’s a nice looking kit once its built up, gave it a light weathering with some dark grey pigment but nothing too strong. I am actually quite pleased with the way it looks, might even get my proper camera out and take some better photos at some point, but in the mean time here’s the ones taken with my phone!

[oldschoolfrp]

QT Models Star Force 300, ad in White Dwarf 22, Dec/Jan 1980/81.  I believe the tanker was a plastic ball with 4 cast metal pieces fore, aft, dorsal, and ventral.  I always got the name of this line confused with Valiant’s Stardate 3000.

[kitsandbits]

Engine Test!

So following on from my first YouTube video showing the main instrument panel all lit up I thought that now the engine LEDs were all soldered up and the engines glued up I had better test the LED’s were still working! 

As you can see they’re all running fine, the one on the bottom right is sitting a little further back in the engine that the others but I don’t think that it is worth trying to pull apart the engines now the glue is set to adjust, other than that there is still some light bleed where either I didn’t get an even coat of the metallics inside the engines or I have thinned the wall too much. What ever the cause I am hoping a couple coats of my new AK Primer with Microfillers will solve the issue.

[kitsandbits]

A Tiny X-Wing

Ok so I am kind of determined to get a model kit lit up with some LED's but I don't really want to build any of my larger scale stuff at the moment so off the back of the relatively quick building TIE Fighter I thought I might try my hand at Revell's 1:112 (what kind of scale is that?) X-Wing Fighter and I am going to try chucking a few LED's and some Fibre Optics at this one to see what great disaster I can conjure up with a soldering iron and model kit!

Its's a cheap kit, very simple to build but if I can pull the idea in my head off it should look reasonably good I think. Anyway I forgot to take a sprue and box shot before I starting cutting parts off the sprues so heres a much prettier picture of the box than I would have ever managed.

[kitsandbits]

Preventing light bleed

So I tested an LED in situ and there was significant amounts of light bleeding through the bare plastic so I have painted the insides of the engines with a couple of coats of metallic paint to try and reduce this effect, I still have some spots that I am concerned about due to the wall thickness but I am hoping using a primer on the outside that contains micro fillers should sort that out... fingers crossed!

[kitsandbits]

Still The TIE Solar Panels

Well I am still working on the solar panels for the TIE, not surprising though as they’re the biggest part of the kit! Here are the first sides of the TIE’s solar panels now the framework has been painted and the masking removed, they’re still not how I hoped but at least the fine moulded details aren’t lost in the flatness of the paint anymore! They look all the better for having the grey framework around them to be honest, surprising how much of a difference this has made to the way they look.