Monday, November 15, 2010

Some kits are better than others

Listening to: the Indie Show on Radio Active.

Modern state of the art perfectly engineered kits are all good, but old not so perfect kits can be fun as well. This is a Matchbox 1/32nd scale Westland Lysander (wiki) that I finished yesterday.
Matchbox made kits once upon a time as well as toy cars.

Starting at the start, the retro box art from 30 years ago, appropriate for a 30 year old kit, and a pile of bits moulded in three colours (the Matchbox ethos being if you didn't want to paint your model, the different coloured plastic would mean it would vaguely look like the subject anyway. That's the kind of company they were).
A few progress shots along the way.....


Final assembly and detailing done, a flat coat and some chalk pastels making the paint look faded and chipped, and generally well used in a harsh environment (Second World War Burma in this case) and its finished.

Here is a picture of the actual subject I used for reference. It was a challenging thing to build, the kit being less than perfect even when it was released, but involved oodles of creative thinking to solve construction problems, and some good basic simple modelling. I like that I can take a pile of unpainted and unassembled parts and make it look like that. Totally worth the effort.

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