Plastic modelling - Battlestar Galactica WIP

[Deonasis]

Damn i like this thread. Look at that shadow it casts

[Iriorne]

Of the same model kit?

The scale looks to be the same, though I'd imagine it's using a simplified mould compared to the kit, for easier mass production. Doesn't seem like it's available yet as most places are showing it as a preorder still. The release date looks like it might have already slipped from January, and could slip again. Moebius were almost a year behind on the Battlestar Pegasus, though the wait looks to be worth it.

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A few more photos:

From a couple of weeks back, the LEDs glued into position in the landing bays. They barely fit into the space left between top of the photoetch insert and the roof of the bay.


I got a new DC transformer and spent some time soldering together a proper power lead so I can test things without needing 6 hands. This is what the LEDs look like with the bay open.


I misjudged when installing the photoetched museum windows in the starboard pod and glued them in a fraction too low, causing a small gap between the bay halves when closed up. Spent ages filling it with superglue and sanding it back. Should be invisible once it gets a coat of paint.



Hard to take a good photo with the LEDs on, might try making an HDR photo later on.

[Iriorne]

Had a sudden pang of doubt as to whether my circuits would work (high school was a long time ago!) so I bought a breadboard to test the entire circuit.



That's about 75 candles worth of light. The room is actually normally lit but the LEDs are so bright I had to underexpose the photo a lot.



With the name plates on she's starting to take shape.

[lancalot]

you make it look like LED so easy to work with ! cool stuff

[gamblor916]

Nice work, that's going to be a sweet display piece when you're done.

[Iriorne]

Thanks guys. I thought LEDs were going to be hard too but they're pretty easy to put in simple circuits. You really only need a basic understanding of series and parallel circuits, and one equation to calculate the resistors.

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Spent a bit lot of time threading optic fibres. In total there's roughly 200 fibres, 140 in the neck section alone.

Common wisdom with fibre optic is to thread the fibres through the holes, do all your painting and weathering, then trim the ends flush with the surface to expose the ends of the fibre. I've already started painting the neck section here:


These fibres are going to provide the subtle red lighting in the garage recesses:


Windows in the lower hull. I hadn't planned to do these, but figured I might as well. The midships fibres are definitely going to kink when I place the garages in but they should still work fine as long they don't snap. *fingers crossed*



LEDs glued into the engine pods, ready to close up. The black paint on the inside is to stop light from bleeding through the plastic.



Things get a bit tricky from here on - going to be a few rounds of painting assembly and lighting installation to get everything in place in the proper order.

[lancalot]

200 optics man i cant wait to see that in action.... totally amazing !

[Iriorne]

Glued the neck onto the lower hull and got all the white fibres connected up to LEDs. There's one LED for each side of the neck, and a third for the rest of the fibres in the lower hull.

You can see I had to get a little creative with routing the fibres around the socket I'll use to connect the model to a stand and run power to it. The set of fibres on towards the aft (left most) were potentially problematic, as glueing the garage recesses in place required kinking the fibres with the possibility of snapping if they were too stiff from the glue holding them in place.



I've since glued the recesses into position and luckily the fibres all still work great.

Engine pods closed up, gaps filled, primed and with their base coat of Tamiya Dark Grey. I'd started painting with German Grey but wasn't happy with the colour. Turns out dark grey is almost the same, but I'm a lot happier with how it turned out. I think it's a fraction lighter, and a little bluer than German grey, even though I have trouble telling the difference in a side by side comparison.



Most parts are now painted in dark grey, which will be the main base colour for non-armoured areas. The armour panels will be Sky Grey, and I'll dry brush the ribs to lighten them up a bit. Next step is to gloss coat and decal the garage recesses, as well as continuing to paint the other sections.

[Iriorne]

Painting is progressing. The paint is quite delicate so I'm working in stages and clear coating in between to protect it. Unfortunately waiting for the paint to dry and then the clear coat to dry makes things a bit slow.



Half the masking done on the lower hull. It can be quite fiddly, but I quite enjoy doing it. The upper hull has had it's armour painted and is waiting for the clear coat to cure.

The contrast looks a bit high, but I plan to dry brush the ribs and engine detail to hopefully tone it down. The decals will add some variety over the armour and an oil wash should help even things out a bit too.

[Iriorne]

Almost all parts are painted and clear coated now, ready for decals to be applied. I found the paint was abrading quite easily just through handling so I started laying down clear coats between colours which made it a fairly lengthy process. The only parts left to paint are the main antennae, radar dish greeblie for the bottom, and all the gun turrets which I haven't assembled yet. No hurry as they'll be the very last things to go on.

I also managed to wreck the paint on one of the engines when I tried to test out my dry brushing. Tamiya acrylics are great for airbrushing but dry too quickly for dry brushing, not to mention that the solvent and brushing action ate through my paint. Luckily the damage was pretty minor, easy to fix with a light sand and respray.



I'd planned to make a little triangular stamping tool to paint the openings for the Viper launch tubes to the sides of the landing bays. Unfortunately at the tiny size (1 mm a side) the paint tended to form a circular blob. I ended up spraying some gloss black over a bit of decal film trimmed from the main sheets. Tested it on an old junker I never finished and the results look good (thin stripes on the near aileron and duct). Now the fun part - cutting out 80 tiny triangles!