Moebius-1 part 11 Finished

The last look at this project was more than 5 months ago, when the model was at the primer stage. It has taken a while to both come up with a paint scheme and to actually get around to doing it but I think now it is finally done.

To re-cap, this project was based on concept art done originally for a background spaceship in the original series of Battlestar Galactica in 1978. That concept art was in turn inspired by a Moebius design in a comic. The eventual model built for the series was known as the flat top.

My goal was to try and realise in three dimensions the essence and spirit of the concept art as I interpreted it incorporating part of the original intent of the Moebius design, namely the bubble two seater cockpit.

As a reminder below is the Mobius comic version...

 ...And here is the original concept art from Battlestar Galactica...

 My model in primer.

I took the photo above into photoshop and played around with various colour schemes. My first attempt was to choose colours something similar to the Mobius comic but I couldn't seem to get it to look any good. I messed around with a few other ideas most of which were terrible before settling on the rough scheme pictured below.

I decided to try an experiment and break away from my usual paint method of using car paint for the finish colours with my usual poo juice alcohol based wash. This time, very late to the party, I thought I would try acrylic hobby paints with an oil paint based pin wash. One of the reasons for this is that I wanted multiple shades and tints of grey to go with the dark grey primer which I kept as the main colour of the craft. I also wanted a very vibrant red which is what came out of the photoshopped rough. Its hard to find the range of colours in spray cans compared to the endless range of the hobby paints.

I purchased a pile of Lifecolor hobby paints which are made in Italy. I chose these because they have good reviews and most importantly they come in 22ml pots for the same price or less than all the other 10ml or 17ml pots of the other brands. Tamiya paints used to come in jars close to this size but all I see now days are the 10ml mini jars. 10ml might be fine if all you are doing is some 1/35 scale tank kit or figures but my model is 970mm long, 10ml doesn't go very far. As it was I used a whole pot of the fluorescent red  half way through and there were no more to be had in the whole of Australia so I had to wait and order some more from the UK to complete the job.

In order for the red to come out bright on the dark grey primer I sprayed all the red areas white first. The white bits were then masked off and the red sprayed with my ancient Badger 150 airbrush.
There was some swearing as it took some getting used to the amount of thinning the acrylic paints need to get through the airbrush without instantly clogging. Eventually I got the hang of it and it worked out well. The oil paint as a wash and filter also worked out well.

The oil paints I got from a large stash from my dad who did a bit of oil painting in his younger days at night school. They are all nearly 50 years old and most of them are still perfectly usable in the tubes except for all the colours that had cadmium, they had all dried solid in the tubes along with a few other random colours over the years. The only colours I used on this model were raw umber which I got a tiny bit out of the rest having gone solid, burnt umber and a bit of ivory black. These colours were mixed with odourless turpentine to make the wash.

I am satisfied with this technique which is very similar to my old technique in that it relies on having the base colour remaining unaffected by the thinner of the wash medium.

One of the main issues I had was with the masking tape. I usually use a no bleed low tack masking tape made by Scotch 3M. I was doing this out side on some of the hottest days so far this summer and the low tack gum refused to stay put. I ended up having to use blue painters tape which has an unfortunate tendency to bleed. I used it as the stickier gum would still be in position by the time I started spraying. On the other hand, in the heat, the paint dried very fast indeed.

My preference is to always securely glue a model together so nothing will fall off in handling and then worry about how to paint it. Masking around shapes that are buried behind other chunks of detail however is not much fun and there was a bit of that on this model. The masking for the big red tanks underneath and behind the side trusses and crossing pipes took hours and then was sprayed in less than a minute.  However it had to be done and it looks the better for the effort.

Well here it is, the finished model, started in August 2018 and completed at the beginning of February 2020.

Note clicking on a picture will bring them up fullsize.

With a bit of luck I hope to be taking this model and the Resilient model to a couple of shows in Perth this year (2020) WASMEX on 2nd and 3rd of May and Supanova (which I missed last year) on the 27th and 28th June.

Thanks for looking,
More soon...

Moebius-1 part 1

I have started a new project, a spaceship model and one I have been thinking about off and on over the last 3 years or so.
I came across a concept sketch of a background spaceship called Flat Top from the original late seventies Battlestar Galactica series on the website galactica.tv a site that has a lot of interesting info on the original series.
The sketch may be by Joe Johnston, it certainly looks a lot like his style, but is not signed so it's attribution is not certain.

Here's the sketch below followed by the Flat Top model made for the show;

and for comparison here is Moebius's original ship;

​

The Flat Top in Battlestar Galactica is a particularly rough and ready model perfectly suitable for use as a background ship in the so called Rag Tag Fleet.
It does not faithfully copy the two seater bubble Moebius design but ups the scale somewhat making it a much larger ship.

As is my custom, I am not making a Flat Top replica but am freely interpreting the concept sketch in my own way. I rather liked the Moebius two seater configuration and the clear bubble cockpit so one of the first questions as to the feasibility of the project was to locate a suitable clear plastic sphere or more usefully a pair of half spheres. A couple of years ago I did eventually find some cheap domes on ebay in the form of dummy CCTV cameras at about 100mm in diameter.
Scaling up the drawing I reasoned that the length of the craft was roughly 10 times the diameter of the sphere so a 100mm sphere would equate to a metre long model.
The scale works out to be 1/24 as I think I can comfortably fit two 1/24 scale driver figures into the 100mm bubble.

More recently I started on a rough 2D cad drawing tracing over the artwork scaled up to size in the free 2D CAD
program DraftSight.

In both Moebius's ship and the BG Flat Top there is a single central support column that ties the flat upper part of the ship to the lower crew hull. This is one of the areas in which my interpretation of the concept sketch differs significantly in that I propose that there are two angled columns either side of the central spine that sits under the flat top section. In my view, the concept drawing suggests that the column is in front of the large ribbed form and not in line with it. The other significant difference is in the shape of the flat top section. Mobius's original design shows a simple rectangle and the BG version follows suit. I am going for what I can only describe as a coffin shaped outline.


One of the first tasks was to make a supporting armature that rigidly held the major sections together and provide mounting points and electrical power connectors.
This I made using aluminium rectangular and channel section, 3mm aluminium sheet and 3/8" steel water pipe fittings.
I did make an error in the angled cuts on the rectangular section. The angle struts are are several degrees too steep fore and aft but I should be able to correct this with the cladding.

As a TIG welder capable of welding aluminium is way beyond my means I used aluminium brazing rod. It goes under a few different names such As Durafix or HTS-2000 and only needs a propane torch to melt. Unlike a silver soldering process, the rods do not work with capillary action, the melted material will just bond with the surface and bridge across the joins much like welding, so to get a really strong bond, where possible, I will tin both surfaces first before placing them together and reheating them until the material on the joints melts and fuses together. This means you have to be able to precisely locate the two parts together where they need to join so they can't
move whilst heating and joining. I drilled a small hole in the plate and the strut and bolted them together whilst reheating the joints. Once remelted I had to tap the parts until the melted brazing rod flattened and joined together. The solidified material on the pre-timnned surfaces takes up some thickness which the bolts are tightened against. Once it melts again the bolts will become loose so it is a tricky operation to get right. You have to scratch the rod on the surface to get the material to bond properly as this process removes the aluminium oxide on the surface of the parts which floats to the surface, increasing the bond strength. You can also use a piece of stainless steel wire (I use a piece from an old kitchen wisk) to scratch the surface under the molten material during the melting process.
In fact you have to thoroughly clean the mating parts with a stainless steel brush before you start or the stuff will not stick. Any contamination from ordinary steel and the bond wont work at all.

The flat top surface is made from 6mm foamed PVC sheet with a stiffening spine of 12mmm aluminium C channel and a reinforcing bridge of 10mm solid grey PVC.
Provision has been made for mounting on the top surface as well as the under hull section along with 12volt DC power connections.
A second layer of 3mm foamed PVC sheet will be added to the underside so that the 3mm aluminium flat plate will become flush.

The main spine forms and under surface detailing will incorporate a number of charity shop toy parts I have on
hand and some I have recently acquired. As an example here are a couple of recent charity shop acquisitions;

The large clear plastic part of the babys' toy on the left is being used along with a similar clear dome part to the one on the right. I don't know what this clear plastic is but it has a slightly rubbery feel to the surface, deforms without cracking and sticks with the normal solvents that cement acrylic, ABS and High Impact Styrene. It can also be sanded and painted just like the previously mentioned plastics.

Below is some preliminary laying out of the charity shop main central spine parts.
From the rear the order of parts is as follows; half an acrylic wine glass, the clear dome from a baby toy followed by the baby toy part shown above, then dummy CCTV camera bases joined end for end and cut down, the inside of a plastic double walled drinking cup, two wheels halves from a WallE truck toy and then half of a strange Toy Story electronic TV game toy.

I was contemplating a few notions for the engines when I pulled out some bits left over form the first toybash truck project that used a couple of cheap rubbish truck toys.
These are two front cabs with the roof, grills and bumpers removed and turned to face upwards.

Here's a picture of the original toy for reference.

I installed two 12volt led light strips per engine which then get a screen of old fluorescent light diffuser in front and styrene strips glued over all the gaps from the inside.

I also installed a switch on the top surface so I can turn the engine light off separately from the rest of the lighting.
The baby toy shapes were made removable for access using a magnetic cupboard catch at the front.
The magnet part was stuck into the clear shell using a lump of epoxy putty placing it into position until the quick hardening putty set. The rear has a convenient lip which fits snugly under the half acrylic wine glass at the back.

I have been playing around with the arrangement of the other large detail pieces to go on the underside of the flat top section.
These comprise parts left over from the Bruder bulldozer and a transformers toy SCVNGR.
There is also wheely bin from the rubbish truck plus the two green roofs from the cabs.
Except for the central spine parts these are not yet glued into position.

The two orange ribbed tanks are the handles from the controller of a cheap motorised crane toy.
On the sides at the rear are a molding from an old washing machine with a section of disposable razor handle and a part from the WallE truck toy.
The brown shapes in front of the green engines are some inner parts from the WallE truck toy.

It all looks pretty chaotic at the moment but hopefully, with further work, will start to get a little more cohesive.

Thanks for looking, more soon...