Thursday, January 9, 2014

tiny tweaks

I'm starting this pet project of mine even if I still don't have the decals. I just couldn't resist.

And Shin's Tiger II goes first. I'd feel better about it if I was working on the F-20 Tigershark, but from what I've checked, there's only one maker of that in 1/144 scale in recent years and I need to do some hobby shop hunting to track it down. Strangely I had no intention of starting right away, actually all I wanted to do last night was carve some pilots from the dragon model kit parts.





And this is what I actually started with. I was bothered that on Dragon 1/144 kits, the pilots looked like Cactuars.



That didn't sit too well with me so I started carving. Around an hour later, I ended up with something roughly looking like a human being decked out in a pilot suit. I felt that was good enough and left it at that. After entertaining the thought of painting the 2-seat version of the pilot figures as actual cactuars and having them pilot a green colored F-5F, I decided I wanted to paint the carved pilot figure as well.



I tried to make Shin Kazama from Area 88. I felt pretty accomplished, and went to bed.

later today I test-fitted the seat into the cockpit and found the entire thing horrendously bare.


So I set to work making scratch details for the insides, with side panels and instrument panels and simplified detailing behind the seat to represent the mechanism that opens up the pilot's canopy. And then I pre-painted that, and after filling the nose with some ballast weight (ball chains) I sealed up the nose.

After assembling the rest of the body, I wanted to torture myself more so I made a tiny HUD for the cockpit. In hind sight this should have been the LAST step in the entire build.


oh well, enjoy the rest of the pics.



This only tells me I need finer brushes and a macro lens.

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