Roktman

At the time, with November right around the corner, it was time to tackle my Pledge Project for 2021. The pledge is a group build my local IPMS club (BPMS) runs that in Feb. you pick a model that you want to do, and promise by the November meeting it will be finished. The short answer is that if you get it done, you've at least built one model. But it also gets you extra tickets in our end of the year raffle. Now because of Covid, we haven't gotten together since Mar. of' '20, but thru ZOOM, the meetings (and pledges) continued. My choice this year was the 1/4 - 1/5 scale Marlene Dietrich bust. From the Hollywood Legends series, it comes in 5 parts of tan resin and three 3D printed parts (her hand, cigarette, and lapel rose). The edges of some of the parts did need a little help. The white is Tamiya putty. Everything got a coat of primer and then the paining started. Simple red was the base coat for the rose (it will get a highlight), and Vallejo Steel for the film canisters and reel. With out looking at the illustration of the box, I thought the film on the reel would be a brownish color, so I painted it up with Vallejo's Smoke. I thought for a second about doing her up in B&W. But quickly thought again, even tho her shirt, tie, and vest were all white, and the jacket was black. The whites were actually 2 different colors. The vest and tie are V's White, and the shirt is Ivory. The jacket is V's German Gray,with Gloss Black lapels. The shadowing on the sleeves were V's Gray Black. Again a little but noticeable difference. The top hat will be the same colors. The image has her with a fair skin tone. So I used V's Basic Skin Tone this time for the base coat of the face and hands, Then I did some shadowing with V's Rose Red. I highlight will follow - then her hair has to be done. I'm still thinking of colors for that. But that will be next time. Check back and thanks for looking.

Been a few weeks but I'm back with The rock all finished. I readdressed his shirt color and finished any little bits that I felt undone. Added some paint to the rock base and that's about it. I'm not really happy with the eyes - I think they're too big - and may take another stab at it. Thanks for looking.

Thanks, but nah, no way. I'm calling it beginners luck. 😉

I finished up the little base. The Italeri soldiers haven't arrived yet. So if and when they get here, I'll add another pic. Til then I'm calling this one done. Thanks for looking.

Thanks guys! Duke, doing mostly planes I used to figure once I got past the tiny seat, stick and pedals, the rest of the parts got a little more manageable. I'm think if I had picked another tank it would have given me a break. This car was tough even with my Opti-visors. I almost didn't have nippers that cut delicately enuff to get what I guess are tow hooks from the sprue. Haha Bravo to you for doing almost 1K of them! 👍👍

Once I got the major imperfections worked out, I gave it a coat of the Vallejo primer. I found a few more things, but at what point do you say good enough? I was at that point. Checking how the arm fit. Pretty good. I dropped the gun arm, and with my luck and without looking I knew it hit the ground gun side down and the barrel was off. Yep. Then I realized there was a bubble there which made it weak. Wanting to do the gun in chrome, and not wanting to mess with the seam line - I'll make a new barrel. Not having done any airbrushing in a long while, I took the easy way out. I primed him all over . I then took a darker color and painted it up from the bottom, and then took a highlight color and sprayed down from the top. Looked good. For the uniform, my ref has him all in black so I took some artistic color license. I'm not really liking the rock base. That might change. But next time...

With my armored car on the table (see Armor section), I needed a new kit to work on while I was waiting for the glue or paint to dry on the car. Closing my eyes I reached in to my stack and pulled out a box of Rocks, well one Rock. Its a nicely done Dwayne The Rock Johnson. Since a lot of his characters are similar, and with no documentation in the box, I had a hard time trying to figure out which movie character this represented. I narrowed it down to his character in Fast and Furious 6 or Rampage. I mean what movie doesn't have him in a tight shirt and gun? I found this pic, and decided that this was the inspiration. The kit is about a 1/6 - 1/5 scale kit in tan resin. It comes in 4 parts. There are some pin holes, and it looks like the mold slipped here and there, but thats no problem for a garage kit modeler. 😉 Haha, don't remember why I drilled the extra holes. A little mold slip? No biggie. The base seemed a little narrow. We'll start painting next time... Thanks for looking.

WOW! Very nicely done!

Hello, I'm back. I lost the mojo for the longest. But it was an 'out of my comfort zone' group build from my model club that got me going again. There was a long time member of the club who was heavily into 1/72 armor. He recently passed away, and the build simply to build a 1/72 armor kit. Watching my son build his armor kits and watching him tediously put together all those tracks, I decided to try something with wheels. What I got was the 1/72 Italeri Autoblinda AB41 from Megahobby. Now I realize 1/72 is small. And I build all 1/72 aircraft, but holy moley this thing was down right tiny! Even for a tiny vehicle, there was an amazing amount of detail! The kit also gives you the option for four different versions - two Italian, and two German versions. With all the camouflage I've done from my Luft '46 planes, I decided a nice easy tan Italian car would be the way to go. Being a big fan of "Uncle Night Shift" despite not doing armor vehicles, I followed his instructions for chipping and weathering. All that's left for the vehicle is a mist coat to simulate the dust of the road. Being really small, I decided to put it on a little base, so out came the foam. I put down some glue and the sand, but didn't like it. Got out the Vallejo paste, but that's for next time. Thanks for looking.

Thanks guys!

Thanks very much David!

Thank you!

Thanks guys. Gil: well, the kit is resin so there are those issues. But I guess the biggest issue was instead of the resin parts being on a stem attached to the pour block, these were directly on the block. So it was sweat inducing cutting thin parts like the landing gear from the big pour block. Thankfully nothing broke. 😉

After building my RS Models' He112, I looked around the box at their other offerings. One caught my eye as another oddball plane. Just one small sprue with some decals. Couldn't be easier - famous last words... 😉

This was one of the short run kits from RS Models in 1:72. My penchant for the odd was a little off in that this plane wasn't that weird and it actually got made. The so called "weird" part was that they install a jet engine in the rear. The Luftwaffe didn't go for it because of the expense, but a few were made for other countries. And here it is all done. The instructions said the paint was RLM 02, but my phone had other ideas. Thanks for looking.

Thanks guys! Sorry Tony that I didn't acknowledge your post earlier.

Thanks very much!

This is another kit that was deep in the pile. My favorite Cryptid, Mothman! I'm surprised I waited this long to build it up. I picked this up from Jean StJean Studios. It came in 5 parts of gray resin. There were very few noticeable seam lines, and clean up was very quick. Now, the typical description of the monster is a black being with wings, and bright red eyes. But being that a lot of nice detail was sculpted into the wings, I couldn't just leave the entire thing black. The wings had "eyespots" on the inner and outer wing, so I mimicked the eyes with some of V's Black Red. Toward the top of the "eye" I lightened the red a bit. Then there was this crosshatching along both sides of the wings. I gave that some light gray on the outside and a darker gray on the inside. From there the body was painted in V's Black Gray, and then highlighted with some Medium Dark gray. The creases got a was of Nuln Oil. But then I didn't want it to be too monotone, and gave the whole thing a misting a Army Painter's Blue tone with the airbrush. The eyes were painted gloss black, in prep for V's White Aluminum, and then some Transparent Red. The base is rubble with the creature perched on some of the iron bridge remnants. I have the rubble a few browns and blacks, and the iron was painted steel, with a few different rust colors. I then added dots here and there of the Molotow Chrome for sparkle. I looked up and found an image for the newspaper for the day the Silver Bridge collapsed. As soon as I get more ink for my printer, 😛 I'll print that out an add it to the rubble. Thanks for looking.

Excellent paint up. Cool job on the heiroglyphics (sp?)!

Very cool! Nice highlighting of the scales.

Excellent job!

Thanks, Duke! Yep, I'm really looking fwd to the flying Edsel. Story behind it it a scientist was working on anti-graity in the mid 1920s. The Soviets got their hand on the device and supposedly they were able to make the 16,000kg vehicle only 8kg. Stick a large engine on it and it's able to fly with those tiny wings... Nice story. LOL Hope the build is as nice. 😉

Finally picked up a few kits for the to do list. First is from the movie Prometheus. I guess many people either love it or hate it. I think the ship was pretty cool! Then in my unending quest for the strange an unusual, SAMI helped me out 2X more with news of these kits. So I quickly hit eBay and grabbed them up. 🙂

Yet another oldie but goodie from Fantastic Plastic' retired line. This is the 1:288 scale Naboo Royal Yacht. It was seen in Ep. 2, when Padme and Anakin went to Tatooine to find Anakin's mother. They then used it to get to Geonosis for the failed attempt to rescue Obi Wan. I picked this one out as I wanted to give the Rust-oleum Chrome paint another go... Only a few parts on this one so it was a super quick build. Once again from sitting in the box for a decade one of the side fins and the ship's top fin had a little warp in it. But what was weird was that as soon as I put each part in the super hot water it straightened out on it's own! (insert eerie music) 😉 Once again FP gives you the option for either gear up or down. As I did the last one up, I decided that since this one is a small light model, that I would give gear down a try. With that, the parts that gave me pause was that both sides of each gear bay door was together. So careful cutting was needed to separate then evenly. A score mark made it rather easy. Next was to put on the fiddly rear ramp. I just super glued it to the rear opening and then let it droop to the table. This was the easiest way to make sure it touched the ground. A little side to side straightening, and it was attached. This time I just gave the crafty a spray of the Rust-oleum, and the shine was very good. I think I will pick up some on the metal polish to see what that does to the paint. I primed the base and gave it a shot of V's Engine Exhaust metallic paint. Next was some paint paint for the windows, and I also added some black in the back of the craft so it gave the illusion that there was something more once up the ramp. Thanks for looking.

Don't know about Sentinal 6, but if you do a search for 'NASA, card model". There are quite a few waiting to be built/scratched. What I do is use the card parts as templates for a build in styrene. Since many satellites are basically boxes and rods, many can be easily scratch built. EDIT: easy to find - - https://tdglobal.ksc.nasa.gov/servlet/sm.web.Fetch/Sentinel-6_Michael_Freilich_Spacecraft_Paper_Model_Cutout.pdf?rhid=1003&did=49711&type=released Looks pretty easy to convert to sheet styrene. 😉 HTH