F-103 Excalibur Space Superiority Fighter Part 6

So sorry for the delay in posting new info. As I said last time, I'd had an accident while working on the Excalibur card board mock up which resulted in a destroyed model. It was a bit of a bitter-sweet kind of screw up since on the one hand, I had to start over on the mock up. But on the other hand I specifically chose to work in cardboard for this part of the project specifically so that if I had a screw up, it wasn't going to cost me $20 in materials....

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F-103 Excalibur Space Superiority Fighter erm... had an accident.

Well...... ssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitttttttttt! I have to start over on the mock up. I was gluing the bottom panel of the body in place. What I didn't realize was some glue had leaked out of the body and onto my work space. So when it dried it dried to my work space. I went to pick up the body, and in the process tore it apart. Well this is why I started with cardboard. So I could make...

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F-103 Excalibur Space Superiority Fighter Part 5

Okay, so I've got a notable update today. I haven't finished taking measurements yet, and I'm still working on that front. What I do have is a partial card board mock up of the forward fuselage. This is little more a simple mock up with the basic measurements I've got already. Not complete. This is meant to be an exploration of the construction of the finished model. As one example, I've already encountered one mistake. When I figuring out...

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F-103 Excalibur Space Superiority Fighter Part 4

I don't have a whole lot to show this time. Because of the nature of this project, it's going to have several phases of intense work for little immediate result. This is one of those phases. Where I get to go through the line images I created, and begin extracting measurements. And measurements. and measurements. So far I have 25 measurements and I'm only... eh.... 80% finished. With the back view. I still have the front, side, top and bottom...

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F-103 Excalibur Space Superiority Fighter Part 3

So I've got to give a shout out to a fellow modeler with a Wing Commander obsession. Whiplash, thank you for your help and encouragement sir! So what am I thanking Whiplash for? Well first off, Whiplash is a member of the Wing Commander community I met via the wcnews.com forums when I posted work on my Excalibur there. Whip was directed to my thread where he then provided some guidance to me based on his own project. Whiplash had done a similar...

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F-103 Excalibur Space Superiority Fighter Part 2

When I built the paper-craft version I used Pericles' paper-craft designs for the Vampire. The... I don't want to say the word but it's the only one I can think of, the 'problem' with Pericles' plans is they are quit literally the in-game model transferred to paper, which while it makes a game-accurate model, I'm shooting for something that is more universe accurate. The best example of what I mean on the Vampire can be seen in the nose: If...

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F-103 Excalibur Space Superiority Fighter

Wing Commander 3: Heart of the Tiger is one of my favorite games of all times, and I absolutely loved piloting the Excalibur fighter in the game. So this is my effort to scratch-build a large scale (about 16" long) model of it. This is going to be a long term project. So this is going to be my project thread on here as I work through the project. I did a paper-craft version of the F-109 Vampire recently, and that really rekindled an old interest...

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Lord Gaudinzor, the hunter paret 3

So we have the running body from the Dark Vengance aspiring champion, with the faceless head made by shaving down a Tau helmet, that is connected via a half dozen cables to a lascannon backpack. Well, that leaves the arms, and by extension the weapons. I've decided to give him a pair of extending swords mainly for the modeling potential and the dynamism. Having two whip like weapons requires the entire body to be in motion in order for them to...

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Lord Gaundinzor, the hunter part 2

So last time I talked about the prototype version of Lord Gaundinzor. With the prototype I used the normal Chaos Marine legs and a Raptor Torso for the body. While this provides a solid base for the model it doesn't provide the dynamic range of motion I really want the character to convey. So I went back to the drawing board and worked to plan out the model some more. I knew I wanted to have the model showing a fair amount of motion. I also wasn't...

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Lord Gaudinzor, the hunter

So, it's that time of the year once again. You know, that one that starts with Thanksgiving and culminates with January 12th. Yes, I am referring to the holiday season for retail. We've already had Black-thanksgiving, Black Friday, Black-saturday, Pre-cyber Monday (Sunday), Cyber-monday, and Cyber-monday Follow-up (Teusday). I truly hate this time of year. 50% of the sales are crap sales that were better two weeks prior, while half of the products...

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New Video posted: Project Review of the Heavy Arms Rebuild

Some time back I started work on a conversion project where I took the 1/100 Scale Heavy Arms Custom Kai from Endless Waltz, and convert it into something more like what appeared in the Anime series. I had finished the project some time ago but hadn't had a chance to finish the review video of it. Well it is up now! ...

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New Video: Unboxing Betrayal at Calth

So Games Workshop has stepped into the Horus Heresy with their release of Horus Heresy: Betrayal at Calth. And I got mine in. So what comes in the box? Check out my video to find out. ...

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Project: OZ-13MS Gundam Epyon Part 8

And it's name is Epyon. So here we have the finished OZ-13MS Gundam Epyon on the Libra Base with lighting effects.This was an educational project and I'm glad I undertook it, even if the final result isn't quit what I had envisioned when I began. This is the root of why I run this blog, the analysis and understanding of my projects. So with a finished project, what problems did I encounter working on it? Well the legs are the first thing that...

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Project: OZ-13MS Gundam Epyon Part 7

So now we're starting to wrap up this project. Wow has it ever been a trip to get to this point, from experimenting with casting clear resins, to building new sections to replace what would otherwise be moving joints, to modifying existing parts to accept new components. Now it all begins to come together. It was a fairly simply matter to cast a new part for the chest gem. I simply attached the original gen sticker to a segment of styrene tubing,...

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Project: OZ-13MS Gundam Epyon Part 6

So today I'm talking about fabrication. One of the major features of the Gundam Epyon is its ability to transform from mobile suit mode:  to a twin-headed dragon style mobile armor: This gimmick is carried over to the model itself and is managed by way a splitting hip/waist assembly. As far a gimmick trick it's a nice setup, but for my purposes it creates some issues. Specifically the risk of the hinge joint causing the electrical...

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Project: OZ-13MS Gundam Epyon Part 5

I knew from the start that the giant beam saber was going to be a critical component of the finished model. I wanted the entire saber effect to glow bright green and that was going to be a challenge. At first I toyed with the idea of inserting a flat LED into the base of the saber effect and running wires through the hilt and into the hip. While there was ample space to place the LED in the base of the saber effect, there was the issue of...

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