A Long Time in the Making
For the past several years, I’ve been interested in learning how to do hard-edge model making. However, it was something that I never really pursued until now. But with the past year being one of stasis, upheaval, and uncertainty, I thought I’d finally bite the proverbial bullet on the hobby and learn some new skills to add to my creative tool belt.
It Started with a Design
Before embarking on the project, I started work on creating a design from which to base my model on. I wanted to start with something approachable and that could be done in a reasonable amount of time, without getting burnt out part way though.
I eventually settled on taking one of the vehicles found in the worldbuilding I have been doing for Elysian Eclipse writing project. The idea of the ‘Portal Verification Vehicle (PV2)’ was for it to be a maintenance and testing platform for an interplanetary portal-transportation system. The envisioned form of it wasn’t that big and was fairly geometric in nature, which made me think that it would be a good starter project.
From there, I started laying out the design the general design of it. Working on the schematics of it took about a few hours in a day.
After that, I focused on sourcing the materials and started building the first components.
Making the First Parts
The first part made was the propulsion module. All the pieces were made using styrene plastic and plastic cement. Conveniently, a hobby store recently opened near me and offered plenty of stock to let me work on my model. The styrene sheets are from Tamiya’s Pla Plate line of styrene sheets. Angular rods and other pieces came from Evergreen Plastic and Tamiya. Turning the model from a planar form into a three-dimensional shape was a largely easy procedure of scoring the plastic, snapping it, and then gluing it together with a solvent.
This process was mostly repeated for every other component on the model. However, since this was my first time tackling a model in plastic, my cuts were not that precise and I had to account for the slop in my building process.
I followed up the propulsion section with the building of the fuel tank parts. This involved a different form factor. It was a cylindrical part nestled within a lattice box. Creating the rounded part was more difficult than I anticipated but after I applied the gold foiling, I was able to cover up the mistakes I made. I finished the part with piping running along the side.
With time, I felt more comfortable with the construction process and went further along with the build. But I knew another obstacle loomed in front of me, that I was not completely ready for – Painting.
Time to Paint… I Think.
Over the winter holidays, a friend of mine, graciously got me a whole airbrushing kit. This bushed me off the fence and got me into the next step of the model making process - Actually painting the model.
I was excited to try it out, but it definitely was something I was afraid of. But as the saying goes: when the going gets tough, the tough gets going.
To start, I painted some of the first parts I built so see how far I could get with them.
I did some tests first before making my first passes. For these modules, I went with a black and grey base coat and then made a pass with silver. The paints were all from the Mr.Hobby line up.
I tried refining my process and approach with each subsequent part. I also found some nice looking gold foil based wrapping paper that used to wrap certain areas of the model. This would give the model a more realistic feel by emulating the gold and silver Mylar that is common on spacecraft. To achieve the effect, I cut the pieces out, crumpled them and then glued them to the surface.
In retrospect, the utilization of gold and silver present wrapping paper could have been better executed. There were some draw backs in the use of the material that I discovered while building. Some of these issues were remedied in another build which I will talk about in the future.
Regardless, the final product ended up in a passible state when under the lens of a camera, so I was not as disappointed by the results.
A Matter of Continuing the Process
Continuing on from the propulsion module, I began work on other components and modules of the spacecraft. Next up was the upper module that would make up the ‘head’ of the vehicle.
Besides the module components, the next thing I wanted to build were the solar arrays for the spacecraft. These were intended to be large single-piece panels. The experimentation came with how to color the components and make them look like the real deal.
The construction of the solar arrays was relatively straight forward. It was just pieces of styrene sandwiched between each other. To achieve the glossy blue look, a metallic blue paint was applied to one sheet. Next, a clear piece of styrene was layered on top and secured on the sides with cement.
Next up was the robotic arms.
The robotic arms were a fun build and predominantly was made from "Model Support Goods'“ purchased from Kotobukiya. Additional odds and ends were then adhered to the main body of the arms. The arms were then painted and glued to the forward module.
At that point, I as well began putting all the pieces together.
The spacecraft was now definitely starting to come together nicely. Superglue was used to attach the pieces together.
Lately, all of the other pieces were attached to create nearly the final product. I as well manufactured a pair of stands to hold the model up.
Where I’m at Now
There is still some work left to do on the model. I have some decals I’d like to incorporate onto the model and I have already sourced wet transfer decals from a couple hobby shops. After that, the plan is to give it a weathering pass, and give a more aged look.
For now though, I’ve reached a good breathing point with this project and have set the model aside while I work on some other modeling related projects. I do plan on returning back to this in the near future though.