Sandcrawler project

More updates - as of this morning it's FINALLY ready to paint. I'll probably have a few more pics this afternoon, I'm going home from work today at lunch to get the primer coat on. Then it'll be off to the model store to buy the paint(s) to use for the topcoat and detailwork.

Covering the hinges:

Worked on front loading door - needed to create these little diamond shaped thingies at the top of the door:

I cut them out of a 1cm square poplar dowel:

But I still needed to shave the backs down, the pieces were cut from 1 cubic cm blocks, so they're REALLY small, and at the suggestion of my girlfriend (after several attempts using a knife didn't work), I used my power sander. But how to hang on to these little parts? Stick them in some extra clay with the portion to be sanded away sticking up:

After sanding (that's a little propane tank next to them):

Got them glued on:

Then discovered that in the mess on my table, I'd missed putting one on. This is of course AFTER the glue dried. No wonder it didn't look right! So I stripped them off:

And re-made the piece of posterboard and glued them to that, then glued that whole piece back onto the door. Much better!

Is it any wonder I lost stuff? So last night I was using tweezers to try and add a small piece to the back. It had glue on it, and of course I gripped the tweezers a little too hard, the piece shifted, then suddenly shot away, bounced off something, and disappeared. No joke, I spent 10 minutes looking for the stupid thing, and finally gave up. A couple minutes later, I brushed my hand on the back of my pant leg by chance, and voila! it was stuck to the back of my leg LOL.... :rolleyes:

As of this morning, after all kit-bashing was done, much cleaner!

Prior to working on the very back:

Finished back:

It occurred to me this morning it'd be a whole lot easier to paint and move this thing if the computer was removed from the base:

And finally, some shots of the FINISHED construction, at least finished on the outside...

.... Paint on that masterpiece is going to be sweet!!!

Very nice; I love how the back is turning out.

And the first paint pics. Sadly this may be about as far as I get before the show - I only have tonight and tomorrow, and it's supposed to rain tomorrow... :( It's not nearly as "neon-ish" as it looks - the lighting was wonky and my camera decided to use the flash.

Sweet, now all the odd colours from all the different bits are 1 it really looks perfectly detailed, it all looks so excellent +rep.
Bet you could make your own star wars scene with this :) awesome.
Will you be airbrushing all the colours or using art brushes.

Thanks!! Yeah, I'm rather blown away at the effect the primer has. I plan on hitting it with one more coat of primer tonight to even it all out (it's very spotty in a few places - look at the photo of the front of it), then I'm headed to the model store while that dries so I can pick up the color(s) I'll need to do the top coat. After the main coat is on, I'll airbrush all the streaks and runs present on the film model - mostly blacks and grays, with tinges of yellow here and there. Then I want to do a thin black wash in the cracks between panels to emphasize them a bit more, then I'll use a paintbrush to do some of the small detail areas and other spots (like the cockpit window frames and in between the headlights) that are currently covered with tape, then drybrush highlights, then brush on ground up pastel chalk to give it hopefully a faded, dusty look, then hit it with a flat coat to seal the chalk dust and make sure I can't mess it up by handling it.

There's no way I'm gonna be able to get all that done by tomorrow to be in time for the museum show. Maybe if I took the day off I could do it...but I can't take the day off... oh well....

Work on it there?

well, hey, I suppose if I can get the spraying parts out of the way and just do brush painting, I probably could. I'll ask 'em, they might like to have an "in-process" thing going :) Thanks for the idea!

Ask them if I can bring my Book of Knowledge while you're at it. It's under construction and I probably could finish it in the 3 days...

Amazing...the progress I've made since December 17, 2009, when I first heard about the Exploratorium show that got me kicked into overdrive on this project:

Taken December 7, 2009:

Taken this morning, February 9, 2010:

It's still just the primer coat on, I'm hoping to do some airbrushing of the main coat tonight, despite the rain...