I fell into a rabbit hole – again – building a scale model. This happens almost every time but this time it seemed deeper than usual. Was it because of me having an exceptionally good time? Or bad? Am I getting old and just slow? I really don’t know.
With these plunges comes a problem. I have trouble focusing on anything else while building. For someone earning a living as a freelancer this is not a good thing. And yes, now that the model is finished I need to find some paid work. I spent way too much time with this.
Anyway, I would like to say this Mandalorian N-1 starfighter model is very cool! It is from Revell Germany and at 1/24 scale it is properly big. Finally, a Star Wars plastic injection kit model big enough to my preferences! I made changes to it so it is not like the one you saw in The Mandalorian tv-show. It is not like the one in The Phantom Menace either. It’s a custom, a remake of a small white AMT model I built a couple of years ago, it is the “Royal Guardsman Mark 2”, if you will.
The cause of the deeper than usual rabbit hole was my ambition. I wanted to try something despite having failed at it earlier. The idea of using a metallic basecoat and painting colour on top is perhaps not ideal but I wanted to try it. It’s because of the effect I thought could be achieved by it. It’s about the top layer of paint peeling off due to friction or stress revealing metallic materials under it. This is a spaceship after all.
The build itself was great fun but the ambitious paint design hit a snag. Here is some of the hardest part of the build process photographed from top.
This all took a long time because every layer of paint had to dry for a couple of days. First basecoat, then gloss black, metal on top of that and then white. I was not able to do much else while waiting. The immersion building these is very deep! For me, at least.
In the meanwhile I tinkered with assorted details around the model. Installing lights here and there.
In the end everything worked quite well and I am very happy with the final version. I think this willl perform well in photographs once I get there.
I have never built a model twice. Once a model is finished I don’t want to see it for a while. You know? There has to be some distance before I can think of photographing it. But with this one I don’t feel that need and I’m thinking of building another one. Some day.
