Moon Bug part 7 - Completed.

 Its been 5 months since the last post on the Moon bug and I have not been able to do any modeling for some time but I have finally managed to finish the Moon Bug project.

Last time the model was at the primer stage, so the first job was to devise a paint scheme. As is my process these days I took a grey primer photo into photoshop and fiddled about until I came up with something I liked.As the vehicle has a whimsical comic book outline I wanted to do a colorful paint job to go with it. This is what I came up with.

 I then decided to design up and make some decals to add to the graphic nature of the finish. These i designed in Inkscape which is a free open source vector graphic editing program. I have always liked the graphic elements that Chriss Foss would apply to his gouache painted spacecraft book covers of the 1970s'. Referring to my Chriss Foss art book I availed myself of some of his genius and some of the decals do bear a very strong resemblance to his work. Here is the decal sheet.

One of the problems with DIY decals is that inkjet printers can't print white so if you want white in your decal you have to use white decal paper. That then means the carrier is white and you have to carefully cut around each decal to remove the extraneous white around the edges. Of course you can use clear decal paper which means you don't have to be as precise when cutting out the decal as the borders will be clear and will not be visible once applied but any white areas on your design will come out clear. If it is a big decal you can paint a white area where you want the white bit to be but for small decals I think it would be too hard to get the white painted areas that accurate.

I printed onto white decal paper and once cutting out the decals and applying them with much setting solution found that little white edges showed up which wasn't exactly what I wanted. I have since found some online tips for using white decal paper, where the edges of the decal should be coloured with a permanent marker to get rid of any white bleed once applied. Too late for me but a good idea for any future project that needs custom decals.

Paint was car paint from touch up spray cans with varying shades mixed up once decanted into airbrush jars and airbrushed on. Weathering was my usual method of a wash of Tamiya flat back diluted in much methylated spirits, wiped off with a metho soaked rag in the direction of the required streaks and drybrushing with white students acrylic. I then also added some oil paint colour modulation and a dirty brown pin wash.

One of the things I tried out on this model was painted panels lined out with a fine permanent marker pen. Models from Terrahawks recently came up for auction with accompanying photos and they had a surface that used a similar technique to very good effect. 

Photographically it seems to work just fine but in person, to the naked eye the conceit is all too obvious. My conclusion is that I prefer to have panels that are in the very least scribed into the surface if not actually separate from the underlying surface and glued on individually. I prefer the way light hits an actual edge with both a highlight on one side and a shadow on the other.

One thing I added to the model was a couple of dummy whip aerials on the top blisters at the rear. They are made from bicycle gear cable with a couple of plastic kits parts for a mount and a termination at the top. They should wave about fairly realistically when the vehicle is in motion.

I also swapped out the Kyosho springs on the shocks for some much stiffer Arrma springs part number AR330417. These are extremely stiff, fit the Mad Crusher shocks and have no trouble holding up the heavy body. If anything they are a little too stiff at 317gf/mm (17.75lb/inch or 3.109 N/mm) or but so far I haven't found any other springs the right length (75mm) and diameter (ID16mm) with a slightly less stiffness rating. The springs came with a chrome finish so I sprayed them matte black to make them a little less obvious.

Finally here is the finished model.

The next project up for completion is going to be a spaceship. In fact it will be one I started way back in 2013 and haven't touched since. Here is the first part of the project from 2013 - New Spaceship Model part 1.

In fact I need to come up with a better name for this spaceship as New Spaceship Model is pretty lame and considering it was started in 2013 it isn't all that new any more. If you have any suggestions for a decent name for the project please leave a comment.

Thanks for looking...

More soon...